Gregory Webster

University of Florida | UF · Department of Psychology

How do daily fluctuations in aggression relate to daily variability in affect and self‐esteem? Although research has examined how trait aggression relates to affect and self‐esteem, state aggression has received little attention. To this end, we had 120 US undergraduates participate in a 14‐day daily diary study where they responded to state‐level...

Does one’s physical size inform the development of traits and interpersonal behavioral strategies? Drawing on resource holding potential, reactive heritability and facultative calibration, the recalibration theory of anger, and the general aggression model, we predicted that there would be positive relationships between (a) height and aggression an...

Error management theory (EMT; Haselton & Buss, 2000) draws on parental investment theory (Trivers, 1972) and signal detection to make novel predictions about human cognitive biases and their adaptive implications. EMT predicts that heterosexual men overperceive sexual interest from women, whereas women underperceive honest signals of relationship c...

The Dark Tetrad is composed of four related subclinical personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism. Using Life History Theory (LHT) as a framework, the current study examined Dark Tetrad traits as predictors of a variety of sexual motivations and goals. Participants (N = 345) were recruited from a large southern U.S....

Schadenfreude is a social emotion that describes one’s happiness at the misfortune of others. Because people experience schadenfreude to different extents, it can also be considered a trait. The present research aimed to develop a trait measure of schadenfreude and investigate the relationship between schadenfreude and political downfalls. We devel...

Text of scandal stimuli. (DOCX)

Sample scandal stimuli (as seen by participants). (DOCX)

What does it take to feel you belong? Using a sample of 606 students in 30 classrooms, with 15 classrooms participating in a school-based dance intervention, we examined intra- and extrapsychic sources of social belonging using social network analysis. Whereas outdegree (the number of outgoing liking nominations to classmates) served as a proxy var...

Extreme event perception drives personal risks and, consequently, dictates household decision-making before, during, and after extreme events. Given this, increasing the extreme event perception accuracy of the public is important to improving decision-making in extreme event scenarios; however, limited research has been done on this subject. Resul...

Does daily personality relate to the daily positive and negative events people report? And do interpersonal (extraversion, agreeableness) and intrapersonal (conscientiousness) traits relate more closely to daily social and achievement events, respectively? In a diary study, 133 undergraduates provided measures of daily events and daily Big Five per...

Prior research has examined links between Dark Triad traits—Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism—and aggression in individuals, but not couples. Dating heterosexual couples self-reported measures of the Dark Triad and aggression (trait and displaced; Study 1) or negativity (Study 2). Actor–partner interdependence models showed positive lin...

We propose and test one aspect of the Parent–Partner–Peer Attachment Transfer (3PAT) model. Specifically, we examined whether adults who were more romantically avoidant were less likely to be nominated as friends by their peers. Social network analysis is ideal for this investigation because it integrates individuals (nodes) and their relationships...

Can Rosenberg's (1965) Stability of Self Scale (RSSS) capture within-person variability in state self-esteem over time? Whereas prior research found small correlations between the RSSS and temporal self-esteem instability (Kernis, Grannemann, & Barclay, 1989, 1992), we found moderate-to-large correlations. Our meta-analysis of these correlations sh...

Research has shown negative intelligence–religiosity associations among both persons (Zuckerman, Silberman, & Hall [Personality and Social Psychology Review 17 (2013) 325–354]) and countries (Lynn, Harvey, & Nyborg [Intelligence 37 (2009) 11–15]). Nevertheless, it remains unclear if these associations are stable over time or explained by education,...

While virginity prior to marriage has been historically valued, changing sociosexual scripts in the United States have made premarital sexual activity the norm for young adults, with sexual debut generally occurring in late adolescence. In the current research, we examined the impact of being developmentally off-time with first coitus (i.e., not ye...

Past studies have shown that North Americans have higher well-being compared with East Asians. Objective living conditions (e.g., wealth, education, personal and political freedom) have been found to substantially contribute to North Americans’ higher well-being. One other possible explanation is that North American culture fosters positive evaluat...

Mate preference research has focused on traits people desire in partners (i.e., dealmakers) rather than what traits they avoid (i.e., dealbreakers), but mate preferences calibrate to both maximize benefits and minimize costs. Across six studies (N > 6,500), we identified and examined relationship dealbreakers, and how they function across relations...

People use fiction and storytelling to learn about themselves and their social world. Fans of J.K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter book series often identify with one of the four Hogwarts school communities or “houses”—Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin—that correspond to characters’ specific traits. Fans use a feature on Rowling’s “Po...

A sociofunctional, threat-based approach to prejudice suggests that perceived outgroup threats lead people to act to minimize those threats. In 2 experiments the current research explores how perceived threats to values affect antiatheist prejudices. In Experiment 1 we found that atheists were perceived to pose significantly greater threats to valu...

Although social situations are enjoyable for most people, they cause extreme anxiety in others. To better understand individual differences in social anxiety, researchers have designed scales, such as the 15-item Interaction Anxiousness Scale (IAS; Leary, 1983), to measure people’s anxiousness in social situations. Despite the importance of measuri...

In contexts that increasingly demand brief self-report measures (e.g., experience sampling, longitudinal and field studies), researchers seek succinct surveys that maintain reliability and validity. One such measure is the 12-item Brief Aggression Questionnaire (BAQ; Webster et al., 2014), which uses 4 3-item subscales: Physical Aggression, Verbal...

Using an investment model (Rusbult, 1980, 1983) of sociosexual attitudes (SOI-A), we examined SOI-A’s association with relationship outcomes using actor–partner interdependence models (APIMs) of over 400 dating, engaged, and newlywed couples. Men’s SOI-A negatively related to both men’s (actor effect) and women’s (partner effect) relationship satis...

One recent criticism of psychology (e.g., Schooler, 2011) and other fields (e.g., Jennions & Møller, 2001) is that effect sizes often decline over time with subsequent investigation. In other words, later studies of a given phenomenon often report smaller effect sizes than earlier studies. This decline suggests a publication bias toward large effec...

Although the Dark Triad traits – narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy – have been studied in individuals, little is known about their roles in dating relationships. Forty-five heterosexual undergraduate couples (N = 90) reported measures of the Dark Triad and relationship commitment and satisfaction. Within couples, assortative mating was...

Is the absence of biological fathers related to their daughters' earlier age at menarche? Drawing on evolutionary psychology and life history theory, prior research has suggested such a relationship (Belsky, Steinberg, and Draper, 1991; Draper and Harpending, 1982; Ellis, 2004). Although qualitative reviews have shown narrative support for this rel...

Although the Dark Triad traits – narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy – have been studied in individuals, little is known about their roles in dating relationships. Forty-five heterosexual undergraduate couples (N = 90) reported measures of the Dark Triad and relationship commitment and satisfaction. Within couples, assortative mating was...

A key problem facing aggression research is how to measure individual differences in aggression accurately and efficiently without sacrificing reliability or validity. Researchers are increasingly demanding brief measures of aggression for use in applied settings, field studies, pretest screening, longitudinal, and daily diary studies. The authors...

Despite the applicability of the preference for consistency (PFC) scale to multiple real-world settings, the large number of items limits its use in field studies. To ease this restriction, we constructed and tested a single-item measure (i.e., the single-item need for consistency scale-SIN-C). Through three studies (N ~ 1000), we examined the conc...

This study addresses two limitations in the mate preferences literature. First, research all-too-often relies on single-item assessments of mate preferences precluding more advanced statistical techniques like factor analysis. Second, when factor analysis could be done, it exclusively has done for long-term mate preferences, at the exclusion of sho...

Although research has examined associations between attachment dimensions and relationship outcomes, theory has ignored how these associations change over time in adult romantic relationships. We proposed the Temporal Adult Romantic Attachment (TARA) model, which predicts that the negative associations between anxious and avoidant attachment on one...

People high in communal orientation care for the welfare of others based on others’ needs and desire similar care for themselves. The current study investigates the personal and interpersonal rewards associated with individual differences in communal orientation. We hypothesized that communally oriented people experience rewards from the positive e...

The need to belong is one of the most fundamental and well-researched human motives. Although a valid 10-item need to belong scale (NTB) is now readily available, many research settings may not afford researchers the luxury of including it, despite its potential relevance to a variety of research questions. The current research constructed and vali...

How accurately do people perceive extreme water speeds and how does their perception affect perceived risk? Prior research has focused on the characteristics of moving water that can reduce human stability or balance. The current research presents the first experiment on people's perceptions of risk and moving water at different speeds and depths....

The authors propose the Model of Self-Determined Sexual Motivation to examine sexual motivation in dating relationships using Self-Determination Theory (SDT) framework. This model predicted that sexual need satisfaction would mediate the association between self-determined sexual motives and the outcome variables of psychological well-being and rel...

Can variation in crime rates be traced to the threat of infectious disease? Pathogens pose an ongoing challenge to survival, leading humans to adapt defenses to manage this threat. In addition to the biological immune system, humans have psychological and behavioral responses designed to protect against disease. Under persistent disease threat, xen...

The Dark Triad traits—Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy—are theorized to facilitate short-term, exploitative social tactics. Thus, the Dark Triad traits should be positively related to (a) similar short-term-focused traits such as impulsivity and sensation-seeking, and (b) risky behaviors. In two studies (N > 1400), we examined the rela...

The Dark Triad Dirty Dozen is a new, concise personality inventory designed to measure individual differences in narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism in sub-clinical populations. To date, the psychometric work on this measure has used classical test theory to assess its validity, reliability, and structure. In two independent samples (N =...

The Dirty Dozen is a recently developed, concise measure of the Dark Triad (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, & Machiavellianism). However, recent evidence has questioned the validity of this scale. In two studies we provide details about this measure in as much as it relates to the Big Five (i.e., Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emoti...

How accurately do people perceive extreme wind speeds and how does that perception affect the perceived risk? Prior research on human-wind interaction has focused on comfort levels in urban settings or knock-down thresholds. No systematic experimental research has attempted to assess people's ability to estimate extreme wind speeds and perceptions...

This video shows participants being exposed to various wind speed in the wind simulator (see Method section of text for details). In this article, participants were exposed to dry winds; however, for better visualization, this video shows wind-driven rain, which was applied separately for a companion study. (MOV)

Although prior research has examined the relationship between genetic relatedness and helping behavior (Burnstein, Crandall, and Kitayama, 1994), less is known about its role in aggressive responses to insults (Fitzgerald and Ketterer, 2011). Drawing on inclusive fitness theory (Hamilton, 1964) and the Kinship, Acceptance, and Rejection Model of Al...

We sought to construct an efficient, reliable, and valid self-report measure of impulsivity and sensation-seeking. We used item response theory to identify the 8 best items (ImpSS-8) from the 19-item Impulsivity and Sensation-Seeking Scale (Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Joireman, Teta, & Kraft, 1993; Study 1). The ImpSS-8 interacted with a manipulated ego th...

Are altruism and aggression polar opposites, or are they two sides of the same coin? In this review, the authors examine the evolved biological roots of these behaviors and focus on the psychology of kinship and how it can serve to bridge both behaviors. Drawing on inclusive fitness theory (Hamilton, 1964), the kinship, acceptance, and rejection mo...

To demonstrate that sensory and emotional states play an important role in moral processing, previous research has induced physical disgust in various sensory modalities (visual, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory modalities, among others) and measured its effects on moral judgment. To further assess the strength of the connection between embodied s...

Social networks dominate modern life. Social networks have always existed and have been around in nonelectronic forms throughout the entirety of our species' history. It is only recently that the Internet has provided a venue for their electronic explosion. From a nonexistent phenomenon to an incessantly repeated buzzword that permeates the media a...

The Dark Triad of personality is composed of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. Despite the common belief that these traits are undesirable, the media is awash with characters that embody the Dark Triad. Characters like Gregory House, M.D., Batman (a.k.a. the Dark Knight), and James Bond all embody these traits and are some of the most...

Is uniform color related to aggressive behavior? Prior research has produced mixed results comparing the effects of black (vs. colored) uniforms on aggressive penalties in the National Hockey League (NHL), and the effect of white (vs. colored) uniforms remains unexamined. Luckily, the NHL has conducted multiple quasi-experiments with uniform (jerse...

To avoid detection, those high on Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) may adopt a protean approach to interpersonal influence. We show the Dark Triad traits correlate with a number of unique tactics of influence (Study 1; N = 259). We show this protean approach was insensitive to differences in targets of manipul...

Objectives To examine how the frequency of information regarding a real disease threat influences hand washing with soap. Design and setting The authors installed wireless devices in highway service station lavatories in England to record the proportion of individuals washing hands with soap from May 2009 to January 2010. Participants Participants...

Could measurement level be a factor worth considering when studying the Dark Triad (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism)? In two studies (N = 465), we compared the relative fit of two Dark Triad models: one that treats the three measures as separate-yet-related personality traits and another that treats the measures as tapping a sin...

Could measurement level be a factor worth considering when studying the Dark Triad (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism)? In two studies (N = 465), we compared the relative fit of two Dark Triad models: one that treats the three measures as separate-yet-related personality traits and another that treats the measures as tapping a sin...

Research productivity affects the careers of academic psychologists. Unfortunately, there is a surprising lack of consensus on productivity’s meaning, measurement, and how to compare the productivity of one academic psychologist to another. In the present study, we review academic productivity research within psychology, and using a sample of 673 p...

We investigated perceptions of spousal social control and the partners' behavior, affect, and relationship satisfaction at the start of a weight loss attempt. Gender and body mass index (BMI) were explored as moderators. In order to examine the short-term effects of social control, participants completed daily assessments reporting spouses' influen...

Dominance is a key feature on which romantic partners are evaluated, yet there is no clear consensus on its definition. In Study 1 (N=305), the authors developed scales to measure three putatively distinct dimensions of dominance: social, financial, and physical. In Study 2 (N=308), the authors used their scales in a mate-selection paradigm and fou...

Most people avoid the "big, drunk guy" in bars because they don't want to get assaulted. Is this stereotype supported by empirical evidence? Unfortunately, no scientific work has investigated this topic. Based on the recalibrational theory of anger and embodied cognition theory, we predicted that heavier men would behave the most aggressively when...

Pain, whether caused by physical injury or social rejection, is an inevitable part of life. These two types of pain-physical and social-may rely on some of the same behavioral and neural mechanisms that register pain-related affect. To the extent that these pain processes overlap, acetaminophen, a physical pain suppressant that acts through central...

The present study investigates the extent to which dispositional authenticity is associated with dating couples’ relationship behaviors and outcomes as well as their personal well-being. Sixty two heterosexual couples completed a measure of dispositional authenticity (Kernis & Goldman, 2006), as well as measures of relationship behaviors (e.g., acc...

There has been an exponential increase of interest in the dark side of human nature during the last decade. To better understand this dark side, the authors developed and validated a concise, 12-item measure of the Dark Triad: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism. In 4 studies involving 1,085 participants, they examined its structural reliabil...

Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) are frequently studied physical attractiveness variables in social and evolutionary psychology. FA represents deviations in bilateral symmetry—differences between left and right body parts. WHR is the ratio of the smallest part of the waist to the largest part of the hips. Although FA and WHR...

Comments on an article by J. J. Arnett (see record 2008-14338-003 ) regarding the assertion that American psychology focuses too narrowly on Americans while neglecting the other 95% of the world’s population. The authors argue that while Arnett’s assessment was poignant, and his call for a more inclusive, international, and cross-cultural represent...

What do evolutionary psychologists study, which are their most highly cited articles, and which variables predict high citation counts? These are important questions for any emerging science. To help answer these questions, we present new empirical research on publication trends in evolutionary psychology's flagship journal, Evolution and Human Beh...

This survey (N = 224) found that characteristics collectively known as the Dark Triad (i.e. narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism) were correlated with various dimensions of short-term mating but not long-term mating. The link between the Dark Triad and short-term mating was stronger for men than for women. The Dark Triad partially mediated...

Romantic couples often reciprocate each other’s disclosure during conversation, but to what extent do gender and individual differences in disclosure and warmth moderate the strength of disclosure reciprocity? We sought to answer this question by having 62 heterosexual dating couples discuss personal topics in the laboratory. Couples’ conversations...

Social animals, like humans, need to interact with others, but this is not always possible. When genuine social interaction is lacking, individuals may seek out or use sources of interaction that co-opt agency detection mechanisms vis-à-vis the human voice and images of people, called social snacking. Study 1 (N = 240) found that ratings of how alo...

Although evolutionary perspectives such as the inclusive fitness theory (Hamilton, 1964) have made unique contributions to explaining human altruism, their implications for interpersonal and intergroup aggression have remained largely overlooked. It is advanced that many of the same kin-based psychological mechanisms that promote altruism and proso...

Supporting Hamilton’s inclusive fitness theory, archival analyses of inheritance patterns in wills have revealed that people invest more of their estates in kin of closer genetic relatedness. Recent classroom experiments have shown that this genetic relatedness effect is stronger for relatives of direct lineage (children, grandchildren) than for re...

Comments on the article by Seyle and Newman "A house divided? The psychology of red and blue America," (see record 2006-11202-001 ). Seyle and Newman argued that perceiving the American political landscape in terms of red and blue (to describe conservative and liberal perspectives, respectively) might unnecessarily pigeonhole people's dynamic socia...

Individuals prefer helping some people more that others when it comes to finding a mate, and these preferences depend on whether long- or short-term mates are considered. Study 1 (N = 108) examined three theoretical frameworks (inclusive fitness, reciprocal altruism, and parental investment) for understanding why individuals would be more willing t...

Is the term “evolutionary psychology” supplanting “sociobiology” in the scientific literature? How influential was E. O. Wilson's (1975) book, Sociobiology, in establishing the discipline of the same name? Similarly, how influential were the two Tooby-Cosmides chapters appearing in The Adapted Mind (Cosmides and Tooby, 1992; Tooby and Cosmides, 199...

Recent research by Perez, Vohs, and Joiner [Perez, M., Vohs, K. D., & Joiner, T. E., Jr. (2005). Discrepancies between self- and other-esteem as correlates of aggression. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 24, 607–620] has supported a U-shaped curvilinear relationship between self-esteem and physical aggression in a sample of 140 undergradu...

Although sexuality is an important component of personal relationships, there has been relatively little research on relationships between personality and everyday sexual behavior. Moreover, existing research on sexual behavior and personality (defined in terms of the Five-Factor Model, FFM) has found weak and inconsistent relationships. We hypothe...

Researchers have recently questioned the unidimensionality of the sociosexual orientation inventory [SOI; Simpson, J. A., & Gangestad, S. W. (1991). Individual differences in sociosexuality: evidence for convergent and discriminant validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 870–883], which measures willingness to engage in uncommit...

Evolutionary cognitive neuroscience is an emerging and promising new scientific field that combines the meta-theoretical strengths of an evolutionary perspective with the methodological rigor of neuroscience. The purpose of the present research was to quantify and test evolution's influence in neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience journals over t...

The goal of the present comment was to empirically examine and describe the temporal trends in article length for American Psychological Association (APA) primary journals over the last 20 years (1986-2005) and the extent to which these trends were moderated by differences in journal impact factor (i.e., frequency of article citation).