Yidan Yin

• PostDoc Position at University of Southern California

thinking and concrete thinking shape how we interpret and interact with the world. One of the most influential approaches to abstract and concrete construals is Construal Level Theory, which has primarily taken a situational approach to studying construal level. The current research develops the General Construal Questionnaire to measure individual...

People want to “feel heard” to perceive that they are understood, validated, and valued. Can AI serve the deeply human function of making others feel heard? Our research addresses two fundamental issues: Can AI generate responses that make human recipients feel heard, and how do human recipients react when they believe the response comes from AI? W...

There has been much discussion around when people use "I" versus "we" pronouns, and abstract versus concrete communications, as well as how each of these can shape communication effectiveness. In the current research we bring together these separate research streams. Drawing on research arguing that abstract and concrete language are linked with co...

When does saying no to a helping request hurt a person's influence? Across five studies, when someone was asked for help, saying no had two opposing effects on their actual and perceived influence by increasing their dominance, but decreasing their prestige. The cost of providing help moderated these effects. Overall, refusing to help decreased a p...

Under what circumstances do people adopt a choice mindset? Three studies (two preregistered) tested whether higher power leads people to construe others as having more choice. When power was either measured (Study 1) or manipulated (Studies 2 and 3), high-power perceivers viewed others, even low-power others (Study 3), as having more choice than di...

Compassion benefits individuals, organizations, and society. As such, people may place greater trust in those who are perceived to be compassionate, believing that they will act with both benevolence and integrity. In some circumstances, however, acting with benevolence may seemingly require a sacrifice of integrity and vice versa. We propose that...

Setting defaults is an effective nudge, but few studies have examined situations where individuals can select their own default settings. Past research suggests that even when the final outcome is identical, observers perceive stronger signals from choices that switch from, rather than stay with, the default. In five experiments using hypothetical...

Because powerful people's thinking is impactful, it is critical to understand how power affects cognition. We detail how recent empirical findings reveal that power often improves cognitive functioning. First, power increases controlled processing, in particular intentionality. Second, power improves executive functioning, leading individuals to ex...