Heather M Maranges

Florida State University | FSU ·  Family Institute

Because a majority of the world’s population is religious and believes in some higher power, it is important to understand what may facilitate or hinder religious psychological processes that give rise to well-being. The current work therefore threads together behavioral ecological, attachment, and forgiveness theoretical perspectives to assess can...

Divine forgiveness (forgiveness by a Supreme Being or Higher Power) is central to several religions and likely a motivating force for many believers. The present research investigates antecedents and correlates of the perception of divine forgiveness. An initial cross-sectional study (N = 255) examined whether God image was related to reports of di...

Understanding academic gender gaps is difficult because gender-imbalanced fields differ across many features, limiting researchers’ ability to systematically study candidate causes. In the present preregistered research, we isolate two potential explanations—brilliance beliefs and fixed versus growth intelligence mindsets—by comparing two fields th...

Social media can help fulfill the need for belonging. Past work suggests that frequent or extreme Facebook use can engender costs to the self and relationships, such that self-control may be associated with Facebook use. Indeed, trait self-control was negatively associated with standard, reputation management, and maladaptive Facebook use (Study 1,...

The matrix of maybe can be defined as a way of conceptualizing the future, either imminent or distant, as a set of options, only some of which will come true. The “maybe” is meant to invoke not only the options readily available but also the uncertain nature of their consequences. For example, people may choose a job or a spouse from among several...

Not everyone engages in COVID‐19 related preventative health behaviors (PHB; e.g., mask wearing, social distancing) despite their demonstrated effectiveness for mitigating the spread of COVID‐19. In the United States, for instance, PHBs emerged as (and remain) a partisan issue. The current work examines partisan gaps in PHB by considering both info...

Feelings of belonging are integral in people's choice of what career to pursue. Women and men are disproportionately represented across careers, starting with academic training. The present research focuses on two fields that are similar in their history and subject matter but feature inverse gender gaps—psychology (more women than men) and philoso...

ObjectiveA burgeoning literature inspired by life history theory suggests that psychological and behavioral processes become adaptively calibrated to the levels of harshness and unpredictability encountered in early developmental environments. The current research develops and validates brief scales intended to measure perceptions of childhood hars...

The matrix of maybe can be defined as a way of conceptualizing the future, either imminent or distant, as a set of options, only some of which will come true. The “maybe” is meant to invoke not only the options readily available but also the uncertain nature of their consequences. For example, people may choose a job or a spouse from among several...

Developmentally calibrated, adult attachment guides social decision making. We examined how insecure attachment styles relate to complex social decisions—moral dilemmas. Prior work failed to dissociate deontological (harm-rejecting) from utilitarian (outcome-maximizing) decisions, treating them as inversely related. Using process dissociation, we f...

Guided by principles from life-history theory, theories of adaptive calibration provide an overarching theoretical framework for understanding the developmental roots of impulsivity and externalizing psychopathology. The current research provides evidence for robust associations between perceptions of childhood unpredictability, delay discounting (...

The matrix of maybe can be defined as a way of conceptualizing the future, either imminent or distant, as a set of options, only some of which will come true. The “maybe” is meant to invoke not only the options readily available but also the uncertain nature of their consequences. For example, people may choose a job or a spouse from among several...

People view addiction as a source of diminished free will and moral responsibility. Yet, people are also sensitive to the personal histories of moral actors, including, perhaps, the way by which people became addicted. Across two studies (N = 806), we compare people’s moral intuitions about cases in which the actor becomes addicted by force or by c...

The conscious deliberation over multiple possibilities and the mental simulation of possible future outcomes enable individuals to make better choices. Humans likely evolved the ability to deliberate about their choices and simulate the possible outcomes of different actions. This ability is also likely to have adaptive value for human decision-mak...

As applied to humans, life history theory suggests that harsh and unpredictable childhood environments shape downstream reproductive strategies. Although myriad work provides support for that idea, such work fails to take into account another potentially important childhood contributor to downstream reproductive strategies—temperament. Using data f...

People view addiction as a source of diminished free will and free will as a requisite to moral responsibility. Accordingly, people should judge addicts as less blameworthy when they act immorally. Yet, people are also sensitive to the personal histories of moral actors, such that the way by which people became addicted may influence these judgment...

Childhood unpredictability and harshness are associated with patterns of psychology and behavior that enable individuals to make the most of adverse environments. The current research assessed effects of childhood unpredictability and harshness on individual differences in sacrificial moral decision making. Six studies (N = 1,503) supported the hyp...

We conducted a preregistered multi-laboratory project (k = 36; N = 3531) to assess the size and robustness of ego depletion effects using a novel replication method, termed the paradigmatic replication approach. Laboratories implemented one of two procedures that intended to manipulate self control and tested performance on a subsequent measure of...

Personality traits are heritable, and thus, have been acted upon by natural selection over the course of human history. Researchers have forwarded two types of theories about the evolution of personality. The first set explains why personality includes the traits it does (e.g. the Big Five): humans discern variation among each other on these traits...

Goldberg's Big Five Model and Costa and McCrae's Five Factor Model proffer five personality factors that are usually referred to as Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. These models differ in three ways: (1) the former was developed via the lexical approach whereas the latter improved upon the prior model by us...

Every behavioral trait is heritable. Personality is no exception. Personality is hereditary, or passed down from one generation to the next via genetic information, and is therefore heritable. Heritability is the proportion of phenotypic variance in an attribute in a population due to genetic variance in that population. Behavioral genetics researc...

Personality traits are heritable, and thus, have been acted upon by natural selection over the course of human history. Researchers have forwarded two types of theories about the evolution of personality. The first set explains why personality includes the traits it does (e.g. the Big Five): humans discern variation among each other on these traits...

Goldberg's Big Five Model and Costa and McCrae's Five Factor Model proffer five personality factors that are usually referred to as Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. These models differ in three ways: (1) the former was developed via the lexical approach whereas the latter improved upon the prior model by us...

Every behavioral trait is heritable. Personality is no exception. Personality is hereditary, or passed down from one generation to the next via genetic information, and is therefore heritable. Heritability is the proportion of phenotypic variance in an attribute in a population due to genetic variance in that population. Behavioral genetics researc...

Tomasello argues that humans’ sense of moral obligation emerges early in development, relies on a shared “we,” and serves as the foundation of cooperation. This perspective complements our theoretical view of the human self as information agent . The shared “we” promotes not only proximal cooperative goals but also distal ones via the construction...

To what extent are low-level visual and attentional phenomena related to higher-level personality traits? Trait self-control is thought to modulate behavior via two separate mechanisms: 1) by preventing initial temptation and, 2) by inhibiting temptation when it occurs (disengagement). Similarly, the control of visual attention often entails preven...

Manipulation cases have figured prominently in philosophical debates about whether moral responsibility is in some sense deeply historical. Meanwhile, some philosophers have thought that folk thinking about manipulated agents may shed some light on the various argumentative burdens facing participants in that debate. This paper argues that folk thi...

In this essay, we aim to counter and qualify the epiphenomenalist challenge proposed in this special issue on the grounds of empirical and theoretical arguments. The current body of scientific knowledge strongly indicates that conscious thought is a necessary condition for many human behaviors, and therefore, consciousness qualifies as a cause of t...

Everything is heritable. Personality is no exception. Personality is hereditary, or passed down from one generation to the next via genetic information, and is therefore heritable. Heritability is the proportion of phenotypic variance in an attribute in a population due to genetic variance in that population. Behavioral genetics research-twin, adop...

Personality traits are heritable, and thus, have been acted upon by natural selection over the course of human history. Researchers have forwarded two types of theories about the evolution of personality. The first set explains why personality includes the traits it does (e.g., the big five): humans discern variation among each other on these trait...

Thinking about the future highlights the constructive nature of consciousness, as opposed to merely representing what is there — because the future is not yet available to be seen. We elaborate this point to emphasize how consciousness deals in alternative possibilities, and indeed preconscious interpretation confers meaning by recognizing these al...

Thinking about the future highlights the constructive nature of consciousness, as opposed to merely representing what is there — because the future is not yet available to be seen. We elaborate this point to emphasize how consciousness deals in alternative possibilities, and indeed preconscious interpretation confers meaning by recognizing these al...

A neglected aspect of human selfhood is that people are information agents. That is, much human social activity involves communicating and discussing information. This occurs in the context of incompletely shared information—but also a group’s store of collective knowledge and shared understanding. This article elucidates a preliminary theory of se...

Prior research has found both similar and different effects of self-regulatory resource depletion and cognitive load. To resolve these seeming contradictions, we experimentally compared the effects of cognitive load and self-regulatory depletion. Ego depletion led participants to pay more attention to pain and to persist less on a pain test, wherea...

Remaining satisfied with a relationship often requires thinking in ways that use self-regulatory resources-satisfied couples discount undesirable experiences when forming global evaluations of the relationship. Nevertheless, recent work indicates that the self-regulatory resources required to engage in these processes are limited. Although consumin...