Paul A M Van Lange

Paul A M Van Lange
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | VU · Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology

Professor

About

328
Publications
313,960
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
29,387
Citations
Introduction
TRUST AND HUMAN COOPERATION I examine the evolutionary and psychological functions of forgiveness, generosity, empathy, fairness, retaliation, competition, and beliefs of human nature. Specific topics are social mindfulness, reputation, norm violation, helping, corruption, dishonesty, the psychology of politics, negotiation, and soccer.
Additional affiliations
January 1997 - July 2000
University of Groningen
Position
  • AIO

Publications

Publications (328)
Article
Full-text available
Conspiracy theories have been treated mostly as a homogeneous phenomenon in empirical research. However, to fully understand their causes and consequences, a multifaceted approach to conspiracy theories would be useful. Here, we propose an organizational framework with three facets (groups, ideology, and status) to conceptualize conspiracy theories...
Preprint
Full-text available
Direct reciprocity has been long identified as a mechanism to enhance cooperation in social dilemmas. While most research on reciprocal cooperation has focused on symmetrical interactions, real world interactions often involve differences in power. Verbal theories have either claimed that power differences enhance or destabilize cooperation, indica...
Article
Full-text available
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to both exacerbate and ameliorate existing socioeconomic inequalities. In this article, we provide a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary overview of the potential impacts of generative AI on (mis)information and three information-intensive domains: work, education, and healthcare. Our goal is...
Article
Full-text available
Throughout the 21st century, economic inequality is predicted to increase as we face new challenges, from changes in the technological landscape to the growing climate crisis. It is crucial we understand how these changes in inequality may affect how people think and behave. We propose that economic inequality threatens the social fabric of society...
Article
How may feelings of love and hate impact people's attention? We used a modified Attentional Blink (AB) task in which 300 participants were asked to categorise a name representing a person towards whom they felt either hate, love, or neutral (first target) plus identify a number word (second target), both embedded in a rapidly presented stream of ot...
Article
Full-text available
Status-related impressions influence important interpersonal dynamics, including moral judgments of good or bad, and right or wrong, whereas these impressions can be formed based on subtle cues (e.g., formal versus casual attire of transgressors). The current research examined how attire influences moral judgments in transgressive contexts and for...
Article
Full-text available
The emergence of COVID-19 dramatically changed social behavior across societies and contexts. Here we study whether social norms also changed. Specifically, we study this question for cultural tightness (the degree to which societies generally have strong norms), specific social norms (e.g. stealing, hand washing), and norms about enforcement, usin...
Preprint
Full-text available
Throughout the 21st century, economic inequality is predicted to increase as we face new challenges, from changes in the technological landscape to the growing climate crisis. It is crucial we understand how these changes in inequality may affect how people think and behave. We propose that economic inequality threatens the social fabric of society...
Article
Full-text available
Generative artificial intelligence, including chatbots like ChatGPT, has the potential to both exacerbate and ameliorate existing socioeconomic inequalities. In this article, we provide a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary overview of the probable impacts of generative AI on four critical domains: work, education, health, and information. Our goal...
Preprint
Full-text available
Generative artificial intelligence, including chatbots like ChatGPT, has the potential to both exacerbate and ameliorate existing socioeconomic inequalities. In this article, we provide a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary overview of the probable impacts of generative AI on four critical domains: work, education, health, and information. Our goal...
Article
Full-text available
Scientific evidence regularly guides policy decisions¹, with behavioural science increasingly part of this process². In April 2020, an influential paper³ proposed 19 policy recommendations (‘claims’) detailing how evidence from behavioural science could contribute to efforts to reduce impacts and end the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we assess 747 pandem...
Article
The evolution of cooperation is a major question in the biological and behavioral sciences. While most theoretical studies model cooperation in the context of an isolated interaction (e.g., a Prisoner’s Dilemma), humans live in heterogeneous social environments, characterized by large variations in fitness interdependence—the extent to which one’s...
Article
Full-text available
Social situations may vary in the severity of conflict between self-interest and collective welfare, and thereby pose collective action problems that might require different institutional solutions. The present study examines the effect of conflict of interests on beliefs, norms, cooperation, and choice of sanctioning institutions in social dilemma...
Article
Full-text available
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public...
Preprint
Various research suggests that xenophobia increases when infectious disease threats are salient. Here a longitudinal study tested this hypothesis by examining whether anti-immigrant sentiments varied across four time points during the COVID-19 pandemic (May 2020, February 2021, October 2021, and June 2022; N’s = 998, 711, 549, 537) and as a functio...
Article
Full-text available
The watching eyes effect has gained significant attention in recent years both from scientists and from policy makers and professionals in the field. The phenomenon posits that the mere presence of eye cues can promote prosocial behavior. However, there is a growing debate about the generality of the effect across various measures and contexts. Thi...
Article
Full-text available
A powerful avenue through which to promote the preservation of the natural and cultural environment is to afford cultural and environmental objects moral significance. In this research, we examine a range of factors that may give rise to moral concern regarding the protection of culturel and environmental objects as ends in themselves. In this way,...
Article
Psychology has been "zooming in" on individuals, dyads, and groups with a narrow lens to the exclusion of "zooming out," which involves placing the targeted phenomena within more distal layers of influential context. Here, we plea for a paradigm shift. Specifically, we showcase largely hidden scientific benefits of zooming out by discussing worldwi...
Article
Full-text available
What are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles.' There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national explor...
Article
Full-text available
As a complement to high-cost cooperation as assessed in economic games, the concept of social mindfulness focuses on low-cost acts of kindness. While social mindfulness seems quite natural, performed by many most of the time (reaching a level of 60–70 percent), what happens if such acts become more costly, and if costs become more salient? The pres...
Article
Full-text available
People cooperate every day in ways that range from largescale contributions that mitigate climate change to simple actions such as leaving another individual with choice – known as social mindfulness. It is not yet clear whether and how these complex and more simple forms of cooperation relate. Prior work has found that countries with individuals w...
Article
Full-text available
There is a growing body of work suggesting that social class stereotypes are amplified when people perceive higher levels of economic inequality—that is, the wealthy are perceived as more competent and assertive and the poor as more incompetent and unassertive. The present study tested this prediction in 32 societies and also examines the role of w...
Article
Full-text available
Despite growing scientific attention for hate, little is known about how perceived threats may influence hate and aggression. In four preregistered online studies (Ntotal = 1422), we test a threat – hate – aggression model, examining the differential effects of symbolic and realistic threats on the emergence of hate, and the associations between ha...
Article
Full-text available
The present research addresses tools that could help reduce littering in society. Four interventions were tested which, based on different processes, should reduce littering: monetary information, the depicted injunctive norm, watching eyes and a nature picture. To test these interventions, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving 440 communit...
Article
Full-text available
While the COVID-19 pandemic has been found to undermine mental health, it is unclear how it may impact individuals' motivation to tackle other global crises. There are at least two perspectives on how COVID-19 might psychologically impact how people respond to other global crises. The finite-pool-of-worry hypothesis suggests that worrying about one...
Article
Full-text available
Corruption is a pervasive phenomenon that affects the quality of institutions, undermines economic growth and exacerbates inequalities around the globe. Here we tested whether perceiving representatives of institutions as corrupt undermines trust and subsequent prosocial behaviour among strangers. We developed an experimental game paradigm modellin...
Article
Full-text available
While a great deal is known about the individual difference factors associated with conspiracy beliefs, much less is known about the country-level factors that shape people’s willingness to believe conspiracy theories. In the current article we discuss the possibility that willingness to believe conspiracy theories might be shaped by the perception...
Preprint
Full-text available
Social and behavioral science research proliferated during the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting the substantial increase in influence of behavioral science in public health and public policy more broadly. This review presents a comprehensive assessment of 742 scientific articles on human behavior during COVID-19. Two independent teams evaluated 19 sub...
Article
Full-text available
Personality traits are robust predictors of the likelihood of involvement in criminal behaviour, but how such traits predict behaviour while committing a crime is unclear. This study investigates associations between HEXACO personality traits and burglars' scouting process, as well as how burglars differ in this respect from non-offenders due to th...
Article
Full-text available
Do populist attitudes predict a growth in feelings of hate? Or does experiencing hate predict a growth in populist attitudes? Previous research has not yet examined the relation between populist attitudes and hate over time. We conducted a two-wave study with a Dutch adult sample in the Netherlands, to examine the time-extended associations between...
Article
Full-text available
Fortune telling is a widespread phenomenon, yet little is known about the extent to which people are affected by it—including those who consider themselves non-believers. The present research has investigated the power of a positive fortune telling outcome (vs. neutral vs. negative) on people’s financial risk taking. In two online experiments (n1 =...
Article
Full-text available
At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied ma...
Article
Decades of research predominantly conducted in Western societies reveals that people, especially the less wealthy, are averse to high levels of inequality. However, empirical comparative studies on perceived wealth and inequality aversion across nations are rare. Here, we examine how responses to unequal monetary allocations among those with high o...
Preprint
What are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles’. There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national explor...
Article
Full-text available
Does COVID‐19 affect people of all classes equally? In the current research, we focus on the social issue of risk inequality during the early stages of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Using a nationwide survey conducted in China (N = 1,137), we predicted and found that compared to higher‐class individuals, lower‐class participants reported a stronger declin...
Article
Full-text available
Nearly 25 years ago, four studies examined the development of social value orientation (SVO) and uncovered that SVO was related to specific and general adult attachment, the number of siblings, and age. However, some of these findings have been challenged by two recent replication studies. The present (pre-registered) research extends these replica...
Article
Full-text available
This study examines the deterrent effects of neighbourhood watch signs and police signs as measures of symbolic guardianship on burglars versus non-offenders. In a virtual reality experiment, 181 burglars and 172 non-offenders scouted a virtual neighbourhood and were exposed to neighbourhood watch signs and/or signs suggesting police surveillance i...
Article
Full-text available
Nielsen et al. (1) argue that Van Doesum et al. (2) need to consider three points for their interpretation of a positive association between individual-level social mindfulness (SoMi) and environmental performance (EPI) at the country level (3). The association is weaker when 1) it is controlled for GDP and 2) when the data of three countries are r...
Article
Full-text available
Cooperation among strangers has been hypothesized to have declined in the United States over the past several decades, an alarming trend that has potential far-reaching societal consequences. To date, most research that supports a decline in cooperation has relied on self-report measures or archival data. Here, we utilize the history of experimenta...
Article
Full-text available
Happiness is a valuable experience, and societies want their citizens to be happy. Although this societal commitment seems laudable, overly emphasizing positivity (versus negativity) may create an unattainable emotion norm that ironically compromises individual well-being. In this multi-national study (40 countries; 7443 participants), we investiga...
Preprint
Full-text available
Fostering pro-environmental behavior is central to mitigate climate change. In the present paper four distinct interventions are tested which, based on different processes, should reduce littering: monetary information, depiction of the injunctive norm, watching eyes and a nature picture. To test these interventions, a randomized controlled trial (...
Article
Full-text available
Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and str...
Article
Full-text available
It is widely documented that third parties punish norm violations, even at a substantial cost to themselves. However, little is known about how third-party punishment occurs in groups consisting of members who differ in status. Having a higher-status member promotes norm enforcement and group efficiency but also poses threats to collective goods wh...
Article
Full-text available
Is hate fundamentally different from other negative emotions? Despite a fair amount of theorizing about hate, there is little empirical evidence that helps to answer this basic question. The present research examines how people construe interpersonal and intergroup hate and provides an empirical analysis of how hate is conceptually different from d...
Article
Full-text available
Objectives This study investigates the deterrent effects of incremental levels of guardianship on residential burglary and assesses how burglars differ from non-burglars in terms of their perceptions of opportunities for burglary.Methods In a virtual reality experiment, 181 incarcerated burglars and 172 non-burglars (university students) were taske...
Article
How can we as individuals or groups mitigate climate change? One key issue is whether motives other than the pursuit of material self-interest can be used fruitfully to reduce climate change. In this article I describe recent research that supports three deeply rooted concerns: (a) concern with other humans (prosociality), (b) concern with equality...
Article
Full-text available
Gossip, or sharing information about absent others, has been identified as an effective solution to free rider problems in situations with conflicting interests. Yet, the information transmitted via gossip can be biased, because gossipers may send dishonest information about others for personal gains. Such dishonest gossip makes reputation-based co...
Article
Full-text available
Gossip—a sender communicating to a receiver about an absent third party—is hypothesized to impact reputation formation, partner selection, and cooperation. Laboratory experiments have found that people gossip about others' cooperativeness and that they use gossip to condition their cooperation. Here, we move beyond the laboratory and test several p...
Article
Full-text available
People often say one thing while doing another, and are therefore criticized as hypocrites. Despite the widespread criticism of hypocrites, relatively less is known about factors that influence moral judgment of hypocrisy. In particular, why are some word-deed inconsistencies condemned more harshly than others? The current research focuses on word-...
Article
Full-text available
Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent. Individual differences have been found, but would social mindfulness also be shaped by one’s location in the world? Expecting cross-national differences to exist, we examined if and how social mindfulness differs across countries. At little to no material cost...
Article
Contemporary society is facing many social dilemmas—including climate change, COVID-19, and misinformation—characterized by a conflict between short-term self-interest and longer-term collective interest. The climate crisis requires paying costs today to benefit distant others (and oneself) in the future. The COVID-19 crisis requires the less vulne...
Preprint
Full-text available
Gossip, or sharing information about absent others, has been identified as an effective solution to free rider problems in situations with conflicting interests. Yet, the information transmitted via gossip can be biased, because gossipers may send dishonest information about others for personal gains. Such dishonest gossip makes reputation-based co...
Article
Full-text available
Transgressions and injustice are an inevitable part of social life, both in interactions between individuals and between groups. But whereas conflict between individuals typically impacts only few, conflict between groups can be harmful to many – as is illustrated by disputes between nations, political parties, and social groups. For this reason, i...
Preprint
Contemporary society is facing many pressing challenges, including climate change, Covid-19, and misinformation. Here we illustrate how these three crises are each social dilemmas, characterized by a conflict between short-term self-interest and longer-term collective interest. The climate crisis requires paying costs today to benefit distant other...
Article
Full-text available
Even before COVID-19, it was well known in psychological science that people’s well-being is strongly served by the quality of their close relationships. But is well-being also served by social contact with people who are known less well? In this article, we discuss three propositions that support the conclusion that the benefits of social contact...
Preprint
Adults often act considerately towards others by, for example, leaving the last cookie on a plate or by stepping aside on a busy sidewalk. What do young children infer from such considerate behavior? In two preregistered studies, we assess how young children evaluate (in)considerate behavior by showing them animated videos in which targets make dec...
Article
Full-text available
Scientists have been warning the world of the threatening consequences of climate change for decades. Yet, only a few countries have made climate change mitigation a priority. One of the chief issues regarding climate change is its abstractness: consequences for the collective in the long-term are much more abstract than consequences for the self i...
Article
Full-text available
People are quick to form impressions of others’ social class, and likely adjust their behavior accordingly. If social class is linked to prosociality, as literature suggests, then an interaction partner’s class should affect prosocial behavior, especially when costs or investments are low. We test this expectation using social mindfulness (SoMi) an...
Article
Full-text available
Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriatene...
Article
Full-text available
Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriatene...
Chapter
Understanding the interaction between cooperation and conflict in establishing effective social behaviour is a fundamental challenge facing societies. Reflecting the breadth of current research in this area, this volume brings together experts from biology to political science to examine the cooperation–conflict interface at multiple levels, from g...
Preprint
Even before COVID-19, it was well-known in psychological science that our well-being is strongly served by the quality of our close relationships. But is our well-being also served by social contact with people we know less well? In this article, we discuss three propositions to support the conclusion that the benefits of social contact also derive...
Article
Full-text available
Status holders across societies often take moral initiatives to navigate group practices toward collective goods; however, little is known about how different societies (e.g., the US versus China) evaluate high- (vs. low-) status holders’ transgressions of preached morals. Two pre-registered studies (total N = 1,374) examined how status information...
Article
Full-text available
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is a global health crisis, yet certain countries have had far more success in limiting COVID-19 cases and deaths. We suggest that collective threats require a tremendous amount of coordination, and that strict adherence to social norms is a key mechanism that enables groups to do so. Here we examine how the strengt...
Article
Full-text available
A salient objective feature of the social environment in which people find themselves is group size. Knowledge of group size is highly relevant to behavioural scientists given that humans spend considerable time in social settings and the number of others influences much of human behaviour. What size of group do people actually look for and encount...
Article
Full-text available
Interpersonal trust is an important source of social and economic development. Over decades, researchers debated the question whether and how public institutions influence interpersonal trust, making this relationship a much-discussed issue for scientific debate. However, experimental and behavioral data and insights on this relationship and the un...
Preprint
Full-text available
Transgressions and injustice are an inevitable part of social life, both in interactions between individuals and between groups. But whereas conflict between individuals typically impacts only few, conflict between groups can be harmful to many – as is illustrated by disputes between nations, political parties, and social groups. For this reason, i...