research paper related to psychology

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts

Collection  06 March 2024

Psychology Top 100 of 2023

This collection highlights the most downloaded* psychology research papers published by Scientific Reports in 2023. Featuring authors from around the world, these papers highlight valuable research from an international community.

You can also view the journal's overall Top 100 or the Top 100 within various subject areas . *Data obtained from SN Insights, which is based on Digital Science’s Dimensions.

Mild internet use is associated with epigenetic alterations of key neurotransmission genes in salivary DNA of young university students

• Eugenia Annunzi
• Loreta Cannito
• Claudio D’Addario

Association between cannabis use and blood pressure levels according to comorbidities and socioeconomic status

• Alexandre Vallée

Effect of breathwork on stress and mental health: A meta-analysis of randomised-controlled trials

• Guy William Fincham
• Clara Strauss
• Kate Cavanagh

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder traits are a more important predictor of internalising problems than autistic traits

• Luca D. Hargitai
• Lucy A. Livingston

Married women with children experience greater intrasexual competition than their male counterparts

• Joyce F. Benenson
• Henry Markovits

Treatment of 95 post-Covid patients with SSRIs

• Carla P. Rus
• Bert E. K. de Vries
• J. J. Sandra Kooij

Co-use of MDMA with psilocybin/LSD may buffer against challenging experiences and enhance positive experiences

• Richard J. Zeifman
• Hannes Kettner
• Robin L. Carhart-Harris

Learning and memory deficits produced by aspartame are heritable via the paternal lineage

• Sara K. Jones
• Deirdre M. McCarthy
• Pradeep G. Bhide

Exercising is good for the brain but exercising outside is potentially better

• Katherine Boere
• Kelsey Lloyd
• Olave E. Krigolson

Modulation of amygdala activity for emotional faces due to botulinum toxin type A injections that prevent frowning

• Shauna Stark
• Craig Stark
• Mitchell F. Brin

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide metabolism and arterial stiffness after long-term nicotinamide mononucleotide supplementation: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

• Takeshi Katayoshi
• Sachi Uehata
• Kentaro Tsuji-Naito

Measuring acute effects of subanesthetic ketamine on cerebrovascular hemodynamics in humans using TD-fNIRS

• Adelaida Castillo
• Julien Dubois
• Moriah Taylor

Cerebral hypoperfusion in post-COVID-19 cognitively impaired subjects revealed by arterial spin labeling MRI

• Miloš Ajčević
• Katerina Iscra
• Paolo Manganotti

Circulating microRNA expression signatures accurately discriminate myalgic encephalomyelitis from fibromyalgia and comorbid conditions

• Evguenia Nepotchatykh
• Iurie Caraus
• Alain Moreau

Examining the association between social media fatigue, cognitive ability, narcissism and misinformation sharing: cross-national evidence from eight countries

• Saifuddin Ahmed
• Muhammad Ehab Rasul

The illusion of the mind–body divide is attenuated in males

• Iris Berent

Genome-wide association study of school grades identifies genetic overlap between language ability, psychopathology and creativity

• Veera M. Rajagopal
• Andrea Ganna
• Ditte Demontis

Reverse effect of home-use binaural beats brain stimulation

• Michal Klichowski
• Andrzej Wicher
• Roman Golebiewski

Impacts of spaceflight experience on human brain structure

• Heather R. McGregor
• Kathleen E. Hupfeld
• Rachael D. Seidler

Frequency and characteristics of patients with bispectral index values of 60 or higher during the induction and maintenance of general anesthesia with remimazolam

• Byung-Moon Choi
• Ju-Seung Lee
• Gyu-Jeong Noh

Cognitive impairment in young adults with post COVID-19 syndrome

• Elena Herrera
• María del Carmen Pérez-Sánchez
• María González-Nosti

Giraffes make decisions based on statistical information

• Alvaro L. Caicoya
• Montserrat Colell
• Federica Amici

Genetic insights into the causal relationship between physical activity and cognitive functioning

• Boris Cheval
• Liza Darrous
• Matthieu P. Boisgontier

Nicotine exposure decreases likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 RNA expression and neuropathology in the hACE2 mouse brain but not moribundity

• Ayland C. Letsinger
• James M. Ward
• Jerrel L. Yakel

Presenting rose odor during learning, sleep and retrieval helps to improve memory consolidation: a real-life study

• Jessica Knötzele
• Dieter Riemann
• Jürgen Kornmeier

Brain activity during a working memory task after daily caffeine intake and caffeine withdrawal: a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial

• Yu-Shiuan Lin
• Janine Weibel
• Carolin Franziska Reichert

Autistic traits associated with dichotomic thinking mediated by intolerance of uncertainty

• Masahiro Hirai

Love and affectionate touch toward romantic partners all over the world

• Agnieszka Sorokowska
• Marta Kowal

Semaglutide and Tirzepatide reduce alcohol consumption in individuals with obesity

• Fatima Quddos
• Zachary Hubshman
• Warren K. Bickel

Daily exposure to virtual nature reduces symptoms of anxiety in college students

• Matthew H. E. M. Browning
• Seunguk Shin
• Wendy Heller

The role of cognitive flexibility in moderating the effect of school-related stress exposure

• Einat Levy-Gigi

Association of preexisting psychiatric disorders with post-COVID-19 prevalence: a cross-sectional study

• Mayumi Kataoka
• Megumi Hazumi
• Daisuke Nishi

Evaluating the complete (44-item), short (20-item) and ultra-short (10-item) versions of the Big Five Inventory (BFI) in the Brazilian population

• Raul Costa Mastrascusa
• Matheus Loli de Oliveira Fenili Antunes
• Tatiana Quarti Irigaray

Exposure to hate speech deteriorates neurocognitive mechanisms of the ability to understand others’ pain

• Agnieszka Pluta
• Joanna Mazurek
• Michał Bilewicz

Drug-induced social connection: both MDMA and methamphetamine increase feelings of connectedness during controlled dyadic conversations

• Hanna Molla
• Harriet de Wit

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in depression induces structural plasticity

• Mayank A Jog
• Cole Anderson
• Katherine Narr

A whole-brain model of the neural entropy increase elicited by psychedelic drugs

• Rubén Herzog
• Pedro A. M. Mediano
• Rodrigo Cofre

Impact and centrality of attention dysregulation on cognition, anxiety, and low mood in adolescents

• Clark Roberts
• Barbara J. Sahakian
• Graham K. Murray

Change in brain asymmetry reflects level of acute alcohol intoxication and impacts on inhibitory control

• Ryan M. Field

A generalized reinforcement learning based deep neural network agent model for diverse cognitive constructs

• Sandeep Sathyanandan Nair
• Vignayanandam Ravindernath Muddapu
• V. Srinivasa Chakravarthy

Exploring the role of empathy in prolonged grief reactions to bereavement

• Takuya Yoshiike
• Francesco Benedetti
• Kenichi Kuriyama

Children and adults rely on different heuristics for estimation of durations

• Sandra Stojić
• Vanja Topić
• Zoltan Nadasdy

Horses discriminate human body odors between fear and joy contexts in a habituation-discrimination protocol

• Plotine Jardat
• Alexandra Destrez
• Léa Lansade

Prognosis prediction in traumatic brain injury patients using machine learning algorithms

• Hosseinali Khalili
• Maziyar Rismani
• U. Rajendra Acharya

Results of a phase Ib study of SB-121, an investigational probiotic formulation, a randomized controlled trial in participants with autism spectrum disorder

• Lauren M. Schmitt
• Elizabeth G. Smith
• Craig A. Erickson

Light exposure behaviors predict mood, memory and sleep quality

• Mushfiqul Anwar Siraji
• Manuel Spitschan
• Shamsul Haque

Personality traits and dimensions of mental health

• Francois Steffens
• Antonio Malvaso

Neuroplasticity enables bio-cultural feedback in Paleolithic stone-tool making

• Erin Elisabeth Hecht
• Justin Pargeter
• Dietrich Stout

APOE ɛ4, but not polygenic Alzheimer’s disease risk, is related to longitudinal decrease in hippocampal brain activity in non-demented individuals

• Sofia Håglin
• Karolina Kauppi

Exploring regional aspects of 3D facial variation within European individuals

• Franziska Wilke
• Noah Herrick
• Susan Walsh

Personality traits and decision-making styles among obstetricians and gynecologists managing childbirth emergencies

• Gabriel Raoust
• Petri Kajonius
• Stefan Hansson

Greater traditionalism predicts COVID-19 precautionary behaviors across 27 societies

• Theodore Samore
• Daniel M. T. Fessler
• Xiao-Tian Wang

Gray matter differences associated with menopausal hormone therapy in menopausal women: a DARTEL-based VBM study

• Tae-Hoon Kim
• ByoungRyun Kim
• Young Hwan Lee

Prevalence and therapeutic impact of adverse life event reexperiencing under ceremonial ayahuasca

• Brandon Weiss
• Aleksandra Wingert
• W. Keith Campbell

Mindfulness may be associated with less prosocial engagement among high intelligence individuals

Proteomic association with age-dependent sex differences in Wisconsin Card Sorting Test performance in healthy Thai subjects

• Bupachad Khanthiyong
• Sutisa Nudmamud-Thanoi

Contribution of sustained attention abilities to real-world academic skills in children

• Courtney L. Gallen
• Simon Schaerlaeken
• Adam Gazzaley

Synchrony to a beat predicts synchrony with other minds

• Sophie Wohltjen
• Brigitta Toth
• Thalia Wheatley

Spicy food intake predicts Alzheimer-related cognitive decline in older adults with low physical activity

• Jaeuk Hwang
• Young Min Choe
• Jee Wook Kim

Academic burnout among master and doctoral students during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Diego Andrade
• Icaro J. S. Ribeiro
• Orsolya Máté

Ketogenic diet for epilepsy control and enhancement in adaptive behavior

• Omnia Fathy El-Rashidy
• May Fouad Nassar
• Yasmin Gamal Abdou El Gendy

Imaginary pills and open-label placebos can reduce test anxiety by means of placebo mechanisms

• Sarah Buergler
• Dilan Sezer

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people with and without pre-existing mental health problems

• Ronja Kleine
• Artur Galimov
• Julia Hansen

Dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal axis and its influence on aging: the role of the hypothalamus

• Melanie Spindler
• Marco Palombo
• Christiane M. Thiel

LPS induces microglial activation and GABAergic synaptic deficits in the hippocampus accompanied by prolonged cognitive impairment

Dynamic effects of bilingualism on brain structure map onto general principles of experience-based neuroplasticity

• J. Treffers-Daller
• C. Pliatsikas

Alternative beliefs in psychedelic drug users

• Alexander V. Lebedev
• Predrag Petrovic

Psychological profiles of anti-vaccination argument endorsement

• Dawn L. Holford
• Angelo Fasce
• Stephan Lewandowsky

Memory compensation strategies in everyday life: similarities and differences between younger and older adults

• Madeleine J. Radnan
• Riley Nicholson
• Celia B. Harris

Long-lasting effects of World War II trauma on PTSD symptoms and embodiment levels in a national sample of Poles

• Marcin Rzeszutek
• Małgorzata Dragan
• Szymon Szumiał

Overlap in meaning is a stronger predictor of semantic activation in GPT-3 than in humans

• Jan Digutsch
• Michal Kosinski

Poorer sleep impairs brain health at midlife

• Tergel Namsrai
• Ananthan Ambikairajah
• Nicolas Cherbuin

Screen time, impulsivity, neuropsychological functions and their relationship to growth in adolescent attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms

• Jasmina Wallace
• Elroy Boers
• Patricia Conrod

Linguistic identity as a modulator of gaze cueing of attention

• Anna Lorenzoni
• Giulia Calignano
• Eduardo Navarrete

Serum ferritin level during hospitalization is associated with Brain Fog after COVID-19

• Teruyuki Ishikura
• Tomohito Nakano
• Takashi Naka

Articulatory effects on perceptions of men’s status and attractiveness

• Sethu Karthikeyan
• David A. Puts
• Glenn Geher

Altered functional connectivity of the ascending reticular activating system in obstructive sleep apnea

• Jung-Ick Byun
• Geon-Ho Jahng
• Won Chul Shin

Exploring individual differences in musical rhythm and grammar skills in school-aged children with typically developing language

• Rachana Nitin
• Daniel E. Gustavson
• Reyna L. Gordon

Experiencing sweet taste is associated with an increase in prosocial behavior

• Michael Schaefer
• Anja Kühnel
• Matti Gärtner

Hypnotic suggestions cognitively penetrate tactile perception through top-down modulation of semantic contents

• Marius Markmann
• Melanie Lenz
• Albert Newen

Long-term high-fat diet increases glymphatic activity in the hypothalamus in mice

• Christine Delle
• Neža Cankar

Emotional face expression recognition in problematic Internet use and excessive smartphone use: task-based fMRI study

• Szilvia Anett Nagy
• Gergely Darnai

Conflict experience and resolution underlying obedience to authority

• Felix J. Götz
• Vanessa Mitschke
• Andreas B. Eder

Comparative efficacy of onsite, digital, and other settings for cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia: a systematic review and network meta-analysis

• Laura Simon
• Lisa Steinmetz
• Harald Baumeister

Simultaneous multimodal fNIRS-EEG recordings reveal new insights in neural activity during motor execution, observation, and imagery

• Wan-Chun Su
• Hadis Dashtestani
• Amir Gandjbakhche

Facial emotion recognition in patients with depression compared to healthy controls when using human avatars

• Marta Monferrer
• Arturo S. García
• Patricia Fernández-Sotos

Evidence that the aesthetic preference for Hogarth’s Line of Beauty is an evolutionary by-product

• Ronald Hübner
• David M. G. Lewis
• Jonathon Flores

Effects of COVID-19 pandemic on structural brain development in early adolescence

• L. van Drunen
• Y. J. Toenders
• E. A. Crone

Improving stress management, anxiety, and mental well-being in medical students through an online Mindfulness-Based Intervention: a randomized study

• Teresa Fazia
• Francesco Bubbico
• Luisa Bernardinelli

Sex-related differences in parental rearing patterns in young adults with bipolar disorder

• Huifang Zhao
• Xujing Zhang
• Fengchun Wu

A follow-up study of early intensive behavioral intervention program for children with Autism in Syria

• Wissam Mounzer
• Donald M. Stenhoff
• Amal J. Al Khatib

Dog owner mental health is associated with dog behavioural problems, dog care and dog-facilitated social interaction: a prospective cohort study

• Ana Maria Barcelos
• Niko Kargas
• Daniel S. Mills

Languages with more speakers tend to be harder to (machine-)learn

• Alexander Koplenig
• Sascha Wolfer

How priming with body odors affects decision speeds in consumer behavior

• Mariano Alcañiz
• Irene Alice Chicchi Giglioli
• Gün R. Semin

Relationship between asymmetric nostril use and human emotional odours in cats

• Serenella d’Ingeo
• Marcello Siniscalchi
• Angelo Quaranta

Social support enhances the mediating effect of psychological resilience on the relationship between life satisfaction and depressive symptom severity

• Yun-Hsuan Chang
• Cheng-Ta Yang
• Shulan Hsieh

Predicting wellbeing over one year using sociodemographic factors, personality, health behaviours, cognition, and life events

• Miranda R. Chilver
• Elyse Champaigne-Klassen
• Justine M. Gatt

Multimodal assessment of the spatial correspondence between fNIRS and fMRI hemodynamic responses in motor tasks

• João Pereira
• Bruno Direito
• Teresa Sousa

Childhood maltreatment and emotion regulation in everyday life: an experience sampling study

• Mirela I. Bîlc
• Andrei C. Miu

Individual personality predicts social network assemblages in a colonial bird

• Fionnuala R. McCully
• Paul E. Rose

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• HHS Author Manuscripts

The Future of Psychology: Connecting Mind to Brain

Lisa feldman barrett.

Boston College, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School

Psychological states such as thoughts and feelings are real. Brain states are real. The problem is that the two are not real in the same way, creating the mind–brain correspondence problem. In this article, I present a possible solution to this problem that involves two suggestions. First, complex psychological states such as emotion and cognition an be thought of as constructed events that can be causally reduced to a set of more basic, psychologically primitive ingredients that are more clearly respected by the brain. Second, complex psychological categories like emotion and cognition are the phenomena that require explanation in psychology, and, therefore, they cannot be abandoned by science. Describing the content and structure of these categories is a necessary and valuable scientific activity.

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. — Einstein & Infeld (1938 , p. 33)

The cardinal passions of our life, anger, love, fear, hate, hope, and the most comprehensive divisions of our intellectual activity, to remember, expect, think, know, dream (and he goes on to say, feel) are the only facts of a subjective order… — James (1890 , p. 195)

From its inception in the early 18th century (as an amalgam of philosophy, neurology, and physiology), psychology has always been in a bit of an identity crisis, trying to be both a social and a natural science. 1 Psychologists attempt bridge the social and natural worlds using the conceptual tools of their time. Throughout our history, the link between the social (mind and behavior) and the natural (brain) has felt less like a solid footbridge and more like a tightrope requiring lightness of foot and a really strong safety net. Mind–brain, and relatedly, behavior–brain, correspondence continue to be central issues in psychology, and they remain the largest challenge in 21st century psychology.

The difficulty in linking the human mind and behavior on the one hand and the brain on the other is rooted, ironically enough, in the way the human brain itself works. Human brains categorize continuously, effortlessly, and relentlessly. Categorization plays a fundamental role in every human activity, including science. Categorizing functions like a chisel, dividing up the sensory world into figure and ground, leading us to attend to certain features and to ignore others. Via the process of categorization, the brain transforms only some sensory stimulation into information. Only some of the wavelengths of light striking our retinas are transformed into seen objects, and only some of the changes in air pressure registered in our ears are heard as words or music. To categorize something is to render it meaningful. It then becomes possible to make reasonable inferences about that thing, to predict what to do with it, and to communicate our experience of it to others. There are ongoing debates about how categorization works, but the fact that it works is not in question.

The brain’s compulsion to categorize presents certain unavoidable challenges to what can be learned about the natural world from human observation. Psychologists know that people don’t contribute to their perceptions of the world in a neutral way. Human brains do not dispassionately look on the world and carve nature at its joints. We make self-interested observations about the world in all manner of speaking. And what holds true for people in general certainly holds for scientists in particular. Scientists are active perceivers, and like all perceivers, we see the world from a particular point of view (which is not always shared by other scientists). We parse the world into bits and pieces using the conceptual tools that are available at a particular point in time and with a particular goal in mind (which is often inextricably linked to said conceptual tools). This is not a failing of the scientific method per se—it is a natural consequence of how the human brain sees and hears and feels … and does science.

An example of how categorization shapes science comes from the study of genetics. When molecular biologists first began to study the units of inheritance, they (inspired by Mendel) searched for and found genes : bits of DNA that make the proteins needed to constitute the human body. Yet, only a small proportion of human DNA (somewhere between 2% to 5%, depending on which paper you read) are genes; the rest of the stuff (that does not directly produce proteins) was labeled “junk” on the assumption that it was largely irrelevant to the biological understanding of life. As it turns out, however, “junk DNA” has some rather important functions, including regulating gene expression (i.e., turning on and off protein production) in a contextually sensitive fashion (for a generally accessible review, see Gibbs, 2003 ). Scientists have discovered that much of what makes us human and makes one person different from another lurks in this junk. The result has been nothing short of a revolution in molecular genetics. Genes do not, in and of themselves, provide a sufficient recipe for life. The unit of selection is not the gene, but the individual, who, for the purposes of molecular genetics, can be thought of as a bundle of genes that are turned on and off by the rest of our DNA, which serves to regulate the epigenetic context. And, the more they learned about junk DNA, the more scientists realized that it is not so easy to define what is a gene and what is not. Some molecular geneticists now try to avoid the word “gene” altogether. Instead they use the more mechanistic term transcriptional unit .

In this article, I argue that perhaps psychology needs to reconsider its vocabulary of categories. Like any young science, psychology has been practicing a very sophisticated form of phenomenology, observing the psychological world using categories derived from our own experiences. We then use common sense words to name these categories, leading us to reify them as entities. We then search for the counterparts of these categories within the brain. These two practices—carving and naming—have a far-reaching consequence: Psychology may more or less accept the Kantian idea that the knowledge stored in a human brain contributes to thoughts, feelings, memories, and perceptions in a top-down fashion, but at the same time we accept without question that emotions, thoughts, memories, the self, and the other psychological categories in folk psychology reflect the basic building blocks of the mind. We do this in much the same way that Aristotle assumed that fire, earth, air, and water were the basic elements of the material universe; as if the categories themselves are not constructed out of something else more basic. In our causal explanations, psychologists talk about psychological facts as if they are physical facts.

But what if psychological facts are not physical facts? What if the phenomena we want to explain—emotions, cognitions, the self, behaviors—are not just the subject matter of the human mind, but are also the creations of that mind? What if the boundaries for these categories are not respected in the very brain that creates them?

Such a state of things might lead some scientists to conclude that psychological categories are not real, or that psychology as a science can be dispensed with. That all scientists need to do is understand the brain. But nothing can be further from the truth. The main point I make in this article is that, in psychology, we simultaneously take our phenomenology too seriously and not seriously enough: too seriously when trying to understand how the mind corresponds to the brain and not seriously enough when we want to understand psychological phenomena as real and scientifically valuable, even in the face of spectacular and unrelenting progress in neuroscience. Changing this state of affairs is a central task for the future.

THE METAPHYSICS OF WHAT EXISTS

Scientific ontology.

The vocabulary of categories in any field of science segregates the phenomena to be explained and in so doing makes them real. Yet not all categories are real in the same way.

Natural sciences like physics deal with scientific categories that are assumed to be observer independent (they are real in the natural sense and can be discovered by humans). These kinds of categories function like an archeologist’s chisel we need a mind to discover and experience instances of these categories, but they do not depend on our minds for their existence. In 2007, I discovered that philosopher John Searle (in writing about social institutions and social power; Searle, 1995 ) called these ontologically objective categories or “brute facts.” They are also called natural kind categories. At times, human experience can lull scientists into using the wrong categories at first (e.g., genes and junk DNA), but the phenomena themselves (e.g., DNA, RNA, proteins, and so on) exist outside of human experience and can have a corrective influence on which categories are used. Here, the presumption is that the scientific method takes us on what can seem like a long, slow, carnival ride toward discovering and explaining the material world.

Social sciences like sociology or economics deal with categories that are observer-dependent (and are real because they are invented and shared by humans). Observer dependent categories function like a sculptor’s chisel—they constitute what is real and what is not. Humans create observer-dependent categories to serve some function. Their validity, and their very existence, in fact, comes from consensual agreement. Little pieces of paper have value to procure goods not because of their molecular structure, but because we all agree that they do, and they would cease to have value if many people changed their mind (and refused to accept the paper in lieu of material goods). Only certain types of pair bonds between humans are defined as “marriages” and confer real social and monetary benefits. People are citizens of the same country (e.g., Canada, Yugoslavia, or the Soviet Union) only as long as they all agree that the country exists and this membership becomes part of a person’s identity and often confers social and economic advantage. 2 Searle calls these ontologically subjective categories because they exist only by virtue of collective intentionality (which is a fancy way of saying that they are real by virtue of the fact that everybody largely agrees on their content). We might also think of them as nominal kind categories, 3 as artifact categories, or as cognitive tools for getting along and getting ahead.

Psychology, in walking a tightrope between the social world and the natural world, tries to map observer dependent categories to observer independent categories. The trick, of course, is to be clear about which is which and to never mistake one for the other. Once psychology more successfully distinguishes between the two, I predict that we will be left with the more tractable but never simple task of understanding how to map mind and behavior to the human brain.

Beginning in 1992, I began to craft the position that emotion categories labeled as anger and sadness and fear are mistakenly assumed to be observer independent, when in fact they are dependent on human (particularly Western) perceivers for their existence. I published the first sketch of these ideas about a decade later ( Barrett, 2005 , 2006b ), spurred on by my discovery of the emotion paradox : In the blink of an eye, perceivers experience anger or sadness or fear and see these emotions in other people (and in animals, or even simple moving shapes) as effortlessly as they read words on a page, 4 yet perceiver-independent measurements of faces, voices, bodies, and brains do not clearly and consistently reveal evidence of these categories ( Barrett, 2006a ; Barrett & Wager, 2006 ; also see Barrett, Lindquist, et al., 2007 ). Some studies of cardiovascular measurements, electromyographic activity of facial muscles, acoustical analyses of vocal cues, and blood-flow changes within the brain are consistent with the traditional idea that emotions are observer-independent categories, but the larger body of evidence disconfirms their status as ontologically objective entities. There is not a complete absence of statistical regularities across these measures during the events that we name as the same emotion, but the variability across different categories is not dramatically larger than the variance observed within any single category.

One solution to the emotion paradox suggests that anger , sadness , fear , and so on are observer-dependent psychological categories and that instances of these emotions live in the head of the perceiver ( Barrett, 2006b ). This is not to say that emotions like anger exist only in the head of the perceiver. Rather, it is more correct to say that they cannot exist without a perceiver. I experience myself as angry or I see your face as angry or I experience the rat’s behavior as angry, but anger does not exist independent of someone’s perception of it. Without a perceiver, there are only internal sensations and a stream of physical actions.

In 2007, based largely on neuroanatomical grounds, I extended this line of reasoning, arguing that the categories labeled as emotion and cognition are not ontologically objective categories ( Duncan & Barrett, 2007 ; for a similar view, see Pessoa, 2008 ). Thinking (e.g., sensing and categorizing an object, or deliberating on an object) feels like a fundamentally different sort of mental activity than feeling (i.e., representing how the object influences one’s internal state). As a result, psychologists have believed for some time that cognitions and emotions are separate and distinctive processes in the mind that interact like the bit and parts of a machine. But the brain does not really respect these categories, and thus mental states cannot be said to be categorically one or the other. Nor can behavior be caused by their interaction.

In this article, I am extending this reasoning even further by proposing that many—perhaps even the majority—of the categories with modern psychological currency are like money, marriage, nationality, or any of the observer-dependent categories that Searle writes about. The complex psychological categories we refer to by the words thoughts , memories , emotions , and beliefs , or automatic processing , controlled processing , or the self , and so on, are observer dependent. They are collections of mental states that are products of the brain, but they do not correspond to brain organization in a one-to-one fashion. These categories exist because a group of people agreed (for phenomenological and social reasons) that this is a functional way to parse the ongoing mental activity that is realized in the brain. Some of the categories are cross-culturally stable (because they function to address certain universal human concerns that stem from living in large, complex groups), whereas others are culturally relative. The distinction between categories like emotion and cognition , for example, is relative and can vary with cultural context (e.g., Wikan, 1990 ), thus calling into question the fact that they are universal, observer-independent categories of the mind.

Even the most basic categories in psychology appear to be observer dependent. Take, for example, behaviors (which are intentional, bounded events) and actions (which are descriptions of physical movements). We easily and effortlessly see behaviors in people and in nonhuman animals. We typically believe that behaviors exist and are there to be detected, but not created, by the human brain. But this is not quite true. Behaviors are actions with a meaning that is inferred by an observer. Social psychology has accumulated a large and nuanced body of research on how people come to see the physical actions of others as meaningful behaviors by inferring the causes for those actions (usually by imputing an intention to the actor; for a review, see Gilbert, 1998). People and animals are constantly moving and doing things—that is, they are constantly engaging in a flow of actions. A perceiver automatically and effortlessly partitions continuous movements into recognizable, meaningful, discrete behavioral acts using category knowledge about people and animals ( Vallacher & Wegner, 1987 ). In emotion research, a rat that kicks up bedding at a threatening creature is said to be defensive treading or in a state of fear . Similarly, standing still in a small spare box in response to a tone that all of the sudden predicts an electric shock can be described as freezing or it can be called fear . It can also be called a state of vigilance — an alert, behavioral stance that allows an organism to martial all its attentional and sensory resources to quickly learn more about a stimulus when its predictive value is uncertain (cf. Barrett, Lindquist, et al., 2007 ). Depending on the category used, intention is inferred to different degrees as part of the categorization of the action into a behavior. The same point can be made about situations. Physical surroundings exist separately from observers, but situations do not.

A similar point can even be made about what are typically assumed to be the observer-independent phenomena measured during functional magnetic resonance functional imaging. Areas of the brain that show increased activity during memory, perception, or emotion (or whatever the researcher is interested in measuring) are assumed to reflect changes in blood flow caused by neuronal firing at those locations. But just as behavioral scientists separate the variance in a measured behavior into effect (i.e., the measured variance of interest) and error (i.e., the measured variance that is not of interest), so do cognitive neuroscientists routinely separate in blood oxygen level dependent changes into signal (the strong changes that they believe to be task dependent) and noise (the weaker changes that they don’t care about). This separation is guided by the neuropsychological assumption that psychological functions are localized to modules in particular brain areas, like islands on a topographical map, because lesions in particular areas appear to disrupt specific psychological functions. In recent years, however, it has become clear (using multivariate voxel pattern analysis procedures) that noise carries meaningful psychological information (e.g., Haynes & Rees, 2006 ; Kay, Naselaris, Prenger, & Gallant, 2008 ; Norman, Polyn, Detre, & Haxby, 2006 ), just as junk DNA is not junk at all. This turn of events makes brain mapping less like cartography (mapping stationary masses of land) and more like meteorology (mapping changing weather patterns or “brainstorms”).

Let me be clear about what I am saying here—it is a brute fact that the brain contains neurons that fire to create mental states or cause behavior and this occurs independent of human experience and measurement. It is not a brute fact, however, that this neuronal activity can be easily classified as automatic processing or controlled processing ; that some “islands” in the brain realize cognitions whereas others realize emotion ; or even that the self , or goals , or memories live in specific parts of the brain (whether in a local or distributed specific, unchanging network). We use categories to separate ongoing mental activity into discrete mental states (such as, in this culture, anger, an attitude, a memory, or self-esteem), to classify a stream of physical movements into behaviors (such as lying, stealing, or joking), or to classify parts of the physical surroundings as situations. These categories come from and constitute human experience. The category instances are real, but they derive their reality from the human mind (in the context of other human minds). Mental activity is classified this way for reasons having to do with collective intentionality, communication, and even self-regulation, but not because this is the best way to understand how the brain mechanistically creates the mind and behavior. Emotion and cognition make up the Western psychological and social reality, and they must be explained by the brute fact of how the human brain works, but emotion and cognition are not mechanisms that are necessarily respected by the human brain or categories that are required by the human brain. Brain states are observer-independent facts. The existence of mental states is also an observer-independent fact. Cognitions, emotions, memories, self-esteem, beliefs, and so on are not observer-dependent events, however. They are categories that have been formed and named by the human mind to represent and explain the human mind.

What’s In a Name?

Words are powerful in science. When dealing with observer-independent categories, words set the ground rules for what to look for in the world. To the extent that scientists understand and use the word in a similar way, they agree on what to search for. They assume, for the moment, that genetic material really is segregated into genes and junk, and they then go about searching for the deep properties that ground these categories in the material world, with the hope either that they are right or that their observations will lead them to formulate better, more accurate categories. When dealing with observer-dependent categories that populate psychology, words are ontologically powerful. They set the ground rules for what exists.

Words can also be dangerous. They present scientists with a Faustian bargain. We need words to do the work of science, but the words lead us to mistake observer-dependent categories (or nominal kinds) for observer-independent categories (or natural kinds). By naming both defensive treading and freezing as fear , for example, scientists are lulled into thinking these behaviors share a deep property, and they will spend years searching for it, even when it may not exist. This is because a word doesn’t only name a category, it also encourages a very basic form of essentialism that Paul Bloom (2004) argues is already present in how people think about the events and objects in their everyday lives. A word functions like an “essence placeholder” that encourages people to engage in psychological essentialism—it convinces the perceiver that there is some deep reality to the category in the material world ( Medin & Ortony, 1989 ; this is true even in young children, e.g., Xu, Cote, & Baker, 2005 ). William James (1890) described the danger of referring to psychological categories with words when he wrote “Whenever we have made a word…to denote a certain group of phenomena, we are prone to suppose a substantive entity existing beyond the phenomena, of which the word shall be the name” (p. 195). In psychology’s active and ongoing attempt to knit the social and natural worlds together into one seamless universe, words cause us to take phenomenology inspired categories—Western categories no less—and search for years (often in vain) for the specific brain areas, genes, hormones, or some other biological product that they correspond to. Then we end up arguing about whether the amygdala is the brain locus of fear, whether dopamine is the hormone for reward, or whether the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) is the cause of depression.

FORWARD INTO THE PAST

Thus far, I have suggested that psychology is populated by a set of observer-dependent categories that do not directly correspond (in a one-to-one fashion) to the observer-independent facts of neurons firing in the brain. If this claim is true, then psychology’s current vocabulary of phenomenologically grounded categories won’t interface very well with neuroscience to effectively weave social and natural sciences together into one cozy blanket and solve the problem of mind–brain (or behavior–brain) correspondence. Psychology may need a different set of psychological categories—categories that more closely describe the brain’s activities in creating the mind and causing behavior. That being said, if emotion, cognition, memory, the self, and so on, exist— they are real by virtue of the fact that everyone within a culture experiences them, talks about them, uses them as reasons for actions then they cannot be discarded or ontologically reduced to (or merely redefined as nothing but) neurons firing. Psychology must explain the existence of cognition and emotion because they are part of the world that we (in the Western hemisphere) live in (even if it is a part that we, ourselves, created). 5 Can psychology both describe what emotions and cognitions (or whatever the mental categories within a given cultural context) are and also explain how they are caused? I think the answer is yes. And as with most things psychological, the answer begins with William James.

Over a century ago, William James wrote about the psychologist’s fallacy. “The great snare of the psychologist,” James wrote, “is the confusion of his own standpoint with that of the mental fact about which he is making his report.” ( James, 1890 , p. 196). This is pretty much the same thing as saying that psychologists confuse observer-dependent (or ontologically subjective) distinctions with observer-independent (or ontologically objective) ones. The solution to the psychologist’s fallacy, according to James, is to take a psychological constructionist approach. “A science of the relations of mind and brain” James wrote, “must show how the elementary ingredients of the former correspond to the elementary functions of the latter.” ( James, 1890 , p. 28).

Psychological constructionist models of the mind were developed in early years of psychology and have appeared consistently throughout the history of our science, although they have tended not to dominate (for a review, see Gendron & Barrett, in press ). They are grounded in the assumption that experienced psychological states are not the elemental units of the mind or the brain, just as fire, water, air, and earth are not the basic elements of the universe. Instead, they are products that emerge from the interplay of more basic, all-purpose components. The importance of distinguishing between the function of a mechanism (or process) and the products that it creates (what the functions are in the service of or what they allow to emerge) is inherent to a psychological constructionist approach. The contents of a psychological state reveal nothing about the processes that realize it in much the same way that a loaf of bread does not reveal the ingredients that constitute it.

A RECIPE FOR PSYCHOLOGY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

The modern constructionist approach that I envision for psychology in the 21st century is grounded in a simple observation. Every moment of waking life our brain realizes mental states and actions by combining three sources of stimulation: sensory stimulation made available by and captured from the world outside the skin (the exteroceptive sensory array of light, vibrations, chemicals, etc.), sensory signals captured from within the body that holds your brain (somatovisceral stimulation, also called the interoceptive sensory array or the internal milieu ), and prior experience that the brain makes available by the reactivation and reinhibition of sensory and motor neurons (i.e., cognition). These three sources—sensations from the world, sensations from the body, and prior experience—are continually available, and they form the three fundamental aspects of all mental life. Different recipes (combinations and weights of these three ingredients) produce the myriad of mental events that constitute the mind. Depending on the focus of attention and proclivities of the scientist, this stream of brain activity is parsed into discrete psychological moments that we call by different names: “feeling,” “thinking,” “remembering,” or even “seeing.” Each view is right in its own way.

When the focus is trying to understand what externally driven sensations refer to in the world, mental activity is called perception . Researchers who are interested in understanding perception (“What is the object?”) and behavior (“How do I act on it?”) might ask how sensory stimulation from the body and prior experience with an external sensory array are required to keep track of and impart meaning to that sensory stimulation. Said another way, scientists are asking how the brain makes predictions about what the meaning of the current sensory array from the world ( Barrett & Bar, 2009 ), allowing us to know our relation to the immediate surroundings in a moment-to-moment way and act accordingly.

When the focus is trying to understand how prior experiences are reinstated in the brain, mental activity is called cognition . When a person experiences the act of remembering, this mental activity is called memory . When they do not, it is called thinking . When the mental activity refers to the future, it is called imagining . And this mental activity provides a sense of self that continues through time. Researchers who are interested in understanding cognition (“How is the past reconstituted?”) typically ask how prior instances of sensory stimulation from the world, and from the body, are encoded and associatively recombined or reinstated for future use.

When the focus is trying to understand what internal sensations from the body stand for, the mental activity is called emotion . Researchers who are interested in understanding emotion experience (“How do I feel?”) examine how sensory information from the world and conceptual knowledge about emotion together create a context for what internal bodily sensations stand for in psychological terms. 6 Together, these three sources of input create the mental states named with emotion words. These conceptualized states are the mental tools that the human brain uses to regulate itself and the body’s internal state either directly or by acting on the world. This last piece is essentially a restatement of the model of emotion that I proposed in Barrett (2006b) .

This very general description of mental life can be developed into a psychological constructionist approach that consists of five principles: (a) the mind is realized by the continual interplay of more basic primitives that can be described in psychological terms; (b) all mental states (however categorized) can be causally reduced to these more basic psychological primitives; (c) these basic psychological primitives correspond closely to distributed networks in the brain; (d) the mind is more like a set of recipes than like a machine; and (e) mental events are probabilistically, not mechanistically, causal.

Principle 1: Psychological Primitives

The basic processes that constitute complex psychological categories can be described as psychologically primitive (to borrow a phrase from Ortony & Turner, 1990 ), meaning that they are psychologically irreducible and cannot be redescribed as anything else psychological. These “ psychological primitives ” are the ingredients in a recipe that will produce an instance of a complex psychological state—what we call an emotion, or memory, or thought, and so on—although they are not specific to any one state (see Fig. 1 ). Unlike the culturally relative complex psychological categories that they realize, psychological primitives are universal to all human beings. (This is not the same as proposing that there are broad, general laws for psychology or for domains of psychology like emotion or memory.) It might be possible to describe the operations that the brain is performing to create psychological primitives, but these operations would be identified in terms of the psychological primitives that they constitute.

Depictions of three brain states comprised of different combinations of the same three psychological primitives (represented in yellow, pink, and blue). Depending on the recipe (the combination and relative weighting of psychological primitives in a given instance) and a psychologist’s interest and theoretical proclivities, mental states are called seeing or thinking or feeling .

Although identifying specific psychological primitives is beyond the scope of this article, elsewhere, my lab and I nominated three phenomena as psychological primitives. One psychological primitive may be what has been termed valuation, salience, or affect (producing a change in a person’s internal physical state that can be consciously experienced as pleasant or unpleasant, and arousing to some degree). Another may be categorization (determining what something is, why it is, and what to do about it). And a third may be a matrix consisting of different sources of attention (where attention is defined as anything that can change the rate of neuronal firing; for discussion, see Barrett, 2006b ; Barrett, Tugade, & Engle, 2004 ; Duncan & Barrett, 2007 ). 7 And of course there are others.

Principle 2: An Ontology of Levels, Not Kinds

Complex psychological categories refer to the contents of the mind (representations) that can be redescribed as the psychological primitives that are themselves the products of neuronal firing. What psychology needs in the 21st century is a toolbox filled with categories for representing both the products and the processes at the various levels. Like David Marr’s (1982) famous computational framework for vision (which has been oft-discussed in mind—brain correspondence; e.g., Mitchell, 2006 ; Ochsner & Lieberman, 2001 ), the categories at each level of the scientific ontology capture something different from what their component parts capture, and each must be described in its own terms and with its own vocabulary. Unlike Marr’s framework, as well as other recent treatments of mind brain correspondence that explicitly discuss the need for a multilevel approach, it is assumed here that each level of the ontology must stand in relation to (and help set the boundaries for) the other levels. That is, there must be an explicit accounting of how categories at each level relate to one another. 8 One such ontology of categories to describe mind brain correspondence is suggested in Table 1 and is discussed as Principle 3.

Mind–Brain Correspondence

Principle 3: Networks, Not Locations

At the top of the ontology, complex psychological categories, such as anger, correspond to a collection of brain states that can be summarized as a broadly distributed neural reference space . A neural reference space, according to neuroscientist Gerald Edelman, refers to the neuronal workspace that implements the brain states that correspond to a class of mental events. A specific instance of a category (e.g., a specific instance of anger) corresponds to a brain state within this neural reference space. The individual brain states transcend anatomical boundaries and are coded as a flexible, distributed assembly of neurons. For example, the brain states corresponding to two different instances of anger may not be stable across people or even within a person over time.

Each mental state can be redescribed as a combination of psychological primitives. In this ontology, psychological primitives are functional abstractions for brain networks that contribute to the formation of neuronal assemblies that make up each brain state. They are psychologically based, network-level descriptions. 9 These networks are distributed across brain areas. They are not necessarily segregated (meaning that they can partially overlap). Each network exists within a context of connections to other networks, all of which run in parallel, each shaping the activity in the others.

All psychological states (including behaviors) emerge from the interplay of networks that work together, influencing and constraining one another in a sort of tug-of-war as they create the mind. From instance to instance, networks may be differentially constituted, configured, and recruited. This means that instances of a complex psychological category (e.g., different instances of anger) will be constituted as different neuronal assemblies within a person at different times (which means that there is considerable intraindividual variability, in addition to variability, that can be accounted for by differences across people or cultural contexts). It also means that phenomena that bear no subjective resemblance are constituted from many of the same brain areas.

This scientific ontology has a family resemblance to other discussions of how psychology might map to brain function (e.g., Henson, 2005 ; Price & Friston, 2005 ). Like these other scientific ontologies, it takes its inspiration from a number of notable neuroscience findings that together appear to constitute something of a paradigm shift in the field of cognitive neuroscience away from attempting to localize psychological functions to one spot or in a segregated network and toward more distributed approaches to understanding how the brain constitutes mental content. Specifically, the proposed ontology is consistent with: (a) research on large-scale distributed networks in the human brain ( Friston, 2002 ; Fuster, 2006 ; Mesulam, 1998 ; Seeley et al., 2007 ); (b) neuroanatomical evidence of pervasive feedback connections within the primate brain (e.g., Barbas, 2007 ) that are further enhanced in the human brain, as well as evidence on the functional importance of feedback ( Ghuman, Bar, Dobbins, & Schnyer, 2008 ); (c) population-based coding and multivoxel pattern analysis, in which information is contained in spatial patterns of neuronal activity (e.g., Haynes & Rees, 2006 ; Kay et al., 2008 ; Norman et al., 2006 ); (d) studies that demonstrate considerable degeneracy in brain processing (the idea being that there are multiple neuronal assemblies that can produce the same output; cf. Edelman 1987 ; Noppeney, Friston, & Price, 2004 ); (e) evidence that psychological states require temporally synchronized neuronal firing across different brain areas (e.g., Axmacher, Mormanna, Fernández, Elgera, & Fell, 2006 ; Dan Glauser & Scherer, 2008 ) so that the local field potentials that are associated with neuronal synchronization are strongly correlated to the hemodynamic signals that are measured in functional neuroimaging ( Niessing et al., 2005 ); and (f) the idea that neurons do not code for only one feature (i.e., even individual neurons in early sensory areas such as primary visual cortex may not be “feature detectors” in the strict sense of the term because they appear to respond to more than one feature; e.g., Basole, White, & Fitzpatrick, 2003 ). By combining these novel approaches, it becomes clear that psychological states are emergent phenomena that result from a complex system of dynamically interacting neurons within the human brain at multiple levels of description. Neither the complex psychological categories nor the psychological primitives that realize them correspond to particular locations in the brain per se, and thus do not reconcile well with the kind of localization approach to brain function that was inspired by neuropsychology, remained popular in neuroscience throughout much of the 20th century, and continues to prevail today. 10

The scientific ontology proposed here is also distinct from other scientific ontologies in three important ways. First, and perhaps most important, it deals with the existence of two domains of reality (one that is subjective and one that is objective) and their relation to one another.

Second, it helps solve a puzzle of why different sorts of behavioral tasks are associated with similar patterns of neural activity. For example, the so-called “default network” (which includes the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate and retrosplenial cortex, inferior parietal cortex, and at times, medial temporal structures like the hippocampus and lateral temporal cortex) shows increased activity not only during the spontaneous, highly associative mental activity that is without an external stimulus, but also when one remembers the autobiographical past, envisions the future, or infers mental states in others; during self-referential processing and moral decision making; while imagining fictitious experiences ( Buckner, Andrews-Hanna, & Schacter, 2008 ); during scene construction and contextual framing ( Bar, 2007 ); and during the experience and perception of emotion ( Barrett & Lindquist, 2008 ; Kober et al, 2008 ; Wager et al., 2008 ). Many functions have been proposed for this circuitry, but one approach is to ask what all these tasks have in common: They draw on stored, prior experience (in the form of episodic projection or mental simulation) that shapes sensory information from the body and the world. When working together as a functional network, this circuitry’s more general purpose may be to impart meaning to the current sensory array based on prior, episodic experience. They allow the brain to predict what the current sensory information means based on that last time something like it was encountered and to formulate an appropriate response. A similar view is discussed in Bar (2007) , who suggested that this circuitry functions to connect sensory input with memory to create predictions about what the sensory input means.

Finally, this psychological constructionist ontology also unifies a number of smaller scientific paradoxes with one solution. For example, it helps us to understand how perceptual memory can influence declarative memory tasks (even though implicit and explicit memory are supposed to be mechanistically different; e.g., Voss, Baym, & Paller, 2008 ), as well as how the same subjective feeling of remembering ( Phelps & Sharot, 2008 ) or mental imagery ( Kosslyn, Thompson, Sukel, & Alpert, 2005 ) can be produced in different ways (or, as I might say, with different recipes).

Principle 4: Recipes, Not Machines

In the psychological constructionist ontology proposed here, the metaphor for the mind in the 21st century is not a machine, but a recipe book. Psychological primitives are not separate, interacting bits and pieces of the mind that have no causal relation to one another like the cogs and wheels of a machine. Instead, they are more like the basic ingredients in a well-stocked pantry that can be used to make any number of different recipes (which make the mental states that people experience and give names to). 11 The products of the various recipes are not universal, although they are not infinitely variable or arbitrary either (e.g., bread can be baked with or without eggs, but you need some kind of grain to make bread what it is). The recipes are not universal. The recipe for anger will differ from instance to instance (with a context) within a person, and even if there is a modal recipe, it might differ across persons within a particular cultural context, as well as across cultural contexts. At the psychological level, however, the ingredients that make up the recipes might be universal (although how they function in conjunction with one another may not be). And as with all recipes, the amount of each ingredient is only one factor that is important to making the end product what it is. The process of combining ingredients is also important (e.g., are the dry ingredients added to the wet or vice versa, and are they whipped in, stirred in, or cut in?). As a result, it is not enough to just identify what the factors are, but also how they coordinate and shape one another during the process of construction.

The recipe analogy also helps us to see the scientific utility of distinguishing between complex psychological categories, psychological primitives, and neuronal firing. Scientists must understand that the category anger differs at each level in much the same way that the category bread differs for a food critic, a chef, or a chemist. Food critics don’t need to know the recipe for two different breads to be able to say which one has the preferred flavor and texture. If a chef wants to know which bread will taste best with a particular meal, it helps to know the recipe, or at least some of the key ingredients. And although a chef must know the recipe, he or she doesn’t need to know that flour and water interact to produce an interconnected network of coiled proteins (called gluten) that trap and hold the gases made by the yeast when bread is baking; it is only necessary to know that one must add yeast for bread to rise. That being said, it is much more efficient (and less costly in both the economic and caloric sense) to change the taste of bread by modifying the recipe than by slathering a slice in butter and jam. And although it is not necessary, all chefs know that it helps to have some knowledge of chemistry, otherwise experimenting with changing the recipe can feel like shots in the dark.

Principle 5: Probabilistic Causation, Not Linear Causation

If mental events are constructed like recipes, then goals or anger or memories or attitudes do not cause behavior in the typical mechanistic way that psychologists now think about causation, where Psychological Process A localized in Brain Area 1 causes the separate and distinct Psychological Process B localized in Brain Area 2, and so on (see Fig. 2a ). Saying that anger causes aggressive behavior, for example, might translate into the claim that one constructed mental state corresponding to Brain State A at Time 1 (categorized as anger ) increases the probability that a second constructed mental state corresponding to Brain State B at Time 2 (slamming one’s fist against the table) will occur (see Fig. 2b ). This is similar to what connectionist modelers like Spivey (2007) and computational neuroscientists like O’Reilly and Munakata (2000) might argue. Alternatively, saying that anger causes aggressive behavior might mean one constructed psychological state that realizes, among other things, a certain physical action (a hand with clenched fingers to strike a table) but registers them as separate events (anger on the one hand, and the behavior of slamming one’s fist against the table on the other) because the inferred intentions for each are different (blocked goals and a desire to cause harm, respectively). Either way, to say that a person pounds a table because he is angry is to give a reason for the behavior, and reasons are not causes for behavior and therefore do not constitute an explanation of it (for a discussion, see Searle, 2007 ).

Two models of mental causation. A: In the mechanistic linear model, Psychological Process A localized in Brain Area 1 causes the separate and distinct Psychological Process B localized in Brain Area 2, and so on. B: In the probabilistic model, Brain State A at Time 1 (left panel) makes it easier to enter Brain State B than Brain State C at Time 2 (right panel).

Either option points to the implication that psychologists must abandon the linear logic of an experiment as a metaphor for how the mind works. In the classic experiment, we present a participant (be it a human or some nonhuman animal) with some sensory stimulation (a stimulus), and then we measure some response. Correspondingly, psychological models of the mind (and brain) almost always follow a similar ordering (stimulus → organism → response). Neurons are presumed to generally lie quiet until stimulated by a source from the external world. Scientists talk about independent variables because we assume that they exist separate from the participant.

In real life, however, there are no independent variables. Our brains (not an experimenter) help to determine what is a stimulus and what is not, in part by predicting what will be important in the future ( Bar, 2007 ). Said another way, the current state of the human brain makes some sensory stimulation into information and relegates the rest to the psychologically impotent category of physical surroundings . In this way, sensory stimulation from the world only modulates preexisting neuronal activity, but does not cause it outright ( Llinas, Ribary, Contreras, & Pedroarena, 1998 ), and our brain contributes to every mental moment whether we experience a sense of agency or not (and usually we do not). This means that the simple linear models of psychological phenomena that psychologists often construct (stimulus → organism → response) may not really offer true explanations of psychological events.

The implication, then, is that mental events are not independent of one another. They occur in a context of what came before and what is predicted in the future. This kind of model building is easy for a human brain to accomplish, but difficult for a human mind to discover, because we have a tendency to think about ingredients in separate and sequential rather than emergent terms (e.g., Hegarty, 1992 ).

LOSING YOUR MIND?

As complex categories such as emotions , memories , goals , and the self are collections of mental states that are created from a more basic set of psychological ingredients, it might be tempting to assume that psychology can dispense with the complex categories altogether. After all, a complex psychological category like anger will not easily support the accumulation of knowledge about how anger is caused if varieties of anger are constituted by many different recipes. This was certainly William James’ position when describing his constructionist approach: “ Having the goose which lays the golden eggs, the description of each egg already laid is a minor matter.” ( James, 1890 , p. 449). When it came to emotion, James was both a constructionist and a material reductionist espousing a token–token identity model of emotion, in which every instance of emotion that feels different, even when part of the same category, can be ontologically reduced to a distinctive physical state (as opposed to a type type identity model in which every kind of emotion can be reduced to one and only one type of physical state). Like James, some scientists believe that once we understand how such psychological events are implemented in the brain, we won’t need a science of psychology at all. Mental states will be reduced to brain states, and psychology will disappear. But even William James can be wrong.

In the constructionist account proposed here, a process should not be confused with the mental content it produces, but neither can it replace the need for describing that content. Said another way, the kind of material reductionism that James advocated should be avoided if for no other than the very pragmatic reason that complex psychological categories are the targets of explanation in psychology. You have to know what you are explaining in order to have something to explain. You have to be able to identify it and describe it well. A scientific approach to understanding any psychological phenomenon requires both description (“What is it?”) and explanation (“How was it constructed or made?”).

But the more important reason to avoid material reduction is that the various phenomena we are discussing (complex psychological categories, psychological primitives, and neuronal firing) each exist at different levels of scientific inquiry and do not exist at others. Complex psychological categories like cognition ( memories , beliefs , imaginings , thoughts ), emotions ( anger , fear , happiness ), and other varieties of psychological categories ( the self , attitudes , and so on) are phenomena that fall squarely in the social science camp. They dwell at the boundary between sociology and anthropology on the one hand, and psychology on the other. Being observer-dependent categories that exist by virtue of collective intention (a group of human minds agree that anger exists and so it does), they are phenomenological distinctions. To understand them is to understand the nature, causes, and functions of these phenomenological distinctions (or the distinctions between whatever categories exist in your cultural context). They may not correspond to the brute facts of neuronal firing, but they are real in a relational way. If I categorize my mental state as a thought (instead of a feeling) and communicate this to you, you will understand something about the degree to which I feel responsible for that state and the degree to which I feel compelled to act on it, as long as you belong to a culture where the emotion cognition distinction exists (because in some cultures it does not). Furthermore, from a descriptive standpoint, we have to understand what these categories are for, both for the collective (which could be a dyad or a group of people) and for the individual. They can be epistemologically objective (i.e., studied with the methods of science) because they exist by consensus (in fact, this is what the science of emotion recognition is). And these categories may even have a biologically constructive quality of their own (see Fig. 3 ). As many neuroscientists have pointed out, humans are not born with the genetic material to provide a sufficient blueprint for the synaptic complexity that characterizes our brains. Instead, our genetic make up requires plasticity. Evolution has endowed us with the capacity to shape the microstructure of our own brains, in part via the complex categories that we transmit to one another within the social and cultural context.

Causal relations among levels. Networks of neurons realize psychological primitives that in turn are the basic ingredients of the mind. These basic ingredients construct instances of complex psychological categories like the self , attitudes , controlled processing , emotion , and so on.

At the other end of the continuum, there are brain states that are made up of collections of neurons firing with some frequency. Brain states are phenomena that fall squarely in the natural science camp. Brain states are observer-independent—they do not require the mind they create to recognize them. In realizing the mind, they change from moment to moment within a person, and they certainly vary across people. But understanding how a neuron fires is not the same as understanding why it fires, and the latter question cannot be answered without appealing to something psychological.

In between are psychological primitives—the basic ingredients of the mind that are informed by both the categories above and below them. They are not completely observer-independent, but neither are they free from the objective fact of the workings of the brain. Psychological primitives are caused by physical and chemical processes in the brain, but understanding these causes alone will never provide a sufficient scientific understanding of what psychological primitives are. They, too, have content that must be described for a complete understanding of what they are. That being said, when discussing psychological primitives, the structure of the brain cannot be ignored either. Psychological primitives will not necessarily replace complex psychological categories in the science of psychology, although sometimes they should. Whether complex psychological categories can be ontologically reduced to psychological primitives depends on the question that a scientist is trying to answer.

As a result of all this, it is possible to causally reduce complex psychological events to brain states and psychological primitives to distributed neuronal activity (what Searle, 1992 , calls causal reduction ) without redefining the mental in terms of the physical (what Searle calls ontological reduction ). Just as knowing that a car is made of atoms (or quarks) will not help a mechanic understand what happens when the motor stops working (Searle’s example), the firing of neurons alone is not sufficient for a scientific understanding of why a book is enjoyable, whether you enjoyed the book the last time you read it, why you like to read, or what joy feels like.

Now, it may be possible that the scientific need for psychological primitives is merely the result of the rudimentary state of cognitive neuroscience methods, and that even these psychological categories can be dispensed with once we have methods that can better measure cortical columns, which are (by conventional accounts) the smallest unit of functional specialization in the cortex (whose size is measured in microns). 12 It is possible that once we can measure columns in a human cortex while it is realizing some psychological state (e.g., see Kamitani & Tong, 2005 ), “what” (process) may finally correspond to “where” (one specific place in the brain), and it will be possible to ontologically reduce psychological primitives into the functioning of these units. 13 (Although this discussion is not meant to imply that only the cortex is important to psychology; it goes without saying that subcortical areas are important.

But I suspect this will not happen, for four reasons. First of all, there is some debate over whether columns are, in fact, the most basic functional units of cortical organization. Dendrites and axons of the neurons within a column extend beyond those columns ( DeFilpe et al., 2007 ; Douglas & Martin, 2007 ), which suggests that the functional units of the cortex may be somewhat larger than a column itself. Second, a single neuron within a column can participate in a number of different neuronal assemblies, depending on the frequency and timing of its firing ( Izhikevich, Desai, Walcott, & Hoppensteadt, 2003 ), which suggests that a given neuron can potentially participate in a variety of different psychological primitives (meaning it is selective, rather than specific, for a function). Third, recent evidence suggests that specific neurons do not necessarily code for single features of a stimulus. A recent study in ferrets suggests that individual neurons (when participating in neuronal assemblies) appear to respond to more than one type of sensory cue, even in primary sensory areas where receptive fields for neurons are supposed to be well defined (as in primary visual cortex or V1; Basole et al., 2003 ). In addition, a recent study with rats demonstrates that there is a functional remapping of cells in the nucleus accumbens (part of the ventral striatum)—sometimes they code for reward and other times for threat, depending on the context ( Reynolds & Berridge, 2008 ).

Finally, and perhaps most controversially, it may be a bit of an overstatement to assume that all humans have exactly the same nervous system. Human brains continue to expand at a rapid rate after birth ( Clancy, Darlington, & Finlay, 2001 ), with most of the size increase being due to changes in connectivity with other neurons ( Schoenemann, Sheehan, & Glotzer, 2005 ; for a review, see Schoenemann, 2006 ; but see Schenker, Desgouttes, & Semendeferi, 2005 ), including an increase in the size dendritic trees and density of dendritic spines ( Mai & Ashwell, 2004 ). This means that although all humans may have the same brain at a gross anatomical level, the connections between neurons are exceptionally plastic and responsive to experience and environmental influence, producing considerable variability in brains at the micro level. The implication is that the neuronal networks that constitute psychological primitives will be molded by experience or epigenetic influences and that they may not be isometric across people.

If these kinds of findings forecast the future of neuroscience, then they suggest even more strongly that psychological primitives may be the best categories for consistently describing what the brain is doing when it realizes the mind. If one accepts this reasoning, then psychology will never disappear in the face of neuroscience.

CONCLUSIONS

As a science of the mind, psychology is equipped with the ability to analyze how being human affects the process of doing science. We are in a better position than most to see how scientists make unintentionally biased observations of the world and have the capacity to correct for this all too common mistake. For the last century, psychology has largely used phenomenological categories to ground our scientific investigations into the mind and behavior. These categories influence the questions we ask, the experiments we design, and the interpretation of our data. We have spent the last century differentiating among psychological phenomena, improving on their labels, and searching for their correspondence in the natural world (i.e., locations in the brain).

In this regard we are in good company. As I mentioned at the outset of this article, Aristotle assumed that fire, earth, air, and water were the basic elements of matter because these are the substances that he experienced. When modern physicists first looked at the world to discover the building blocks of matter, they saw discrete particles, like atoms. Later they identified parts of atoms, like electrons, protons, and neutrons. Then it was discovered that electrons were not really physical particles at all but that they are instead more like probabilistic energy states. Eventually physicists proposed the existence of something even smaller—particles they could not see and had to create new names for (e.g., quarks and leptons). Now, amidst much debate, many physicists believe that the universe is constituted of little strings vibrating in various modes across 11 different dimensions.

Time and space are experienced as separate phenomena and were once used by physicists to guide questions about the material universe. That is, until Einstein changed the terms of the questions entirely with his theory of relativity. We now know that time and space are not rigidly independent categories—they are different ways of experiencing the same phenomenon. Psychology, of course, has studied time and space as subjective experiences for many years. Perhaps we should start approach emotion and cognition in the same way.

This is not to say that psychology’s work in the 20th century was all for naught. All the work on describing psychological categories delineates the phenomena to be explained, even if the categories themselves don’t do the actual explaining. A major task of 21st century psychology, however, is to link description to explanation.

In this article, I have argued that psychology has a crucial role in understanding how the observer relative mental phenomena (our human way of parsing ongoing mental activity into distinct psychological events) are created by a set of observer-independent neural phenomena. To accomplish this, psychology will need a major revision of concepts and framework. Specifically, in the psychology that I envision, we will have a hierarchy of categories: complex psychological categories that are observer-relative and are collections of mental states that correspond to broadly distributed neural reference spaces in the brain, and psychological primitives or building blocks of the mind that combine to make various brain states and that exist as the basic level of description that is psychologically meaningful but is informed by the more observer-independent facts about neuroanatomy and how the brain works.

The psychological science that I envision for the 21st century is not a social constructionist science. I am not claiming that scientific knowledge is constructed independently of what we can discover and know about the world. Instead, I am suggesting that psychology is a young science, and, like any young science, we must divest ourselves of the assumption that human experience reveals the way the world (in this case, the brain) works. That being said, phenomenology has a place in psychology, even if it is not a causal place in the way that we typically understand cause. Complex psychological categories may be the targets of explanation, but this does not completely strip them of their scientific utility.

When it comes to understanding mind–brain correspondence, perhaps the empiricists, the rationalists, and the Kantians were all a little bit correct. Knowledge about the human mind is achieved from data captured by observing the natural world (e.g., neuronal firing), but not independently of our conceptual understanding of what those data mean for a human living in large, complex groups of other humans. Believing that a psychological phenomenon exists and is real can, in a certain sense, make it so.

Acknowledgments

The ideas contained in this essay were developed, in part, from discussions with many colleagues over the past several years. I especially thank Mahzarin Banaji, Moshe Bar, Larry Barsalou, Brad Dickerson, Dave DeSteno, James Gross, Dae-Shik Kim, Kristen Lindquist, Batja Mesquita, and Wendy Wood. Many thanks again to Moshe, Batja, Kristen, and Dave and also to Jerry Clore, Jennifer Fugate, Paul Gade, Yang-Ming Huang, Kevin Quinn, Debbie Prentice, Mike Ross, and Maya Tamir, who commented on an earlier draft of this article. Preparation of this manuscript was supported by the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award (DP1OD003312), a National Institute of Mental Health’s Independent Scientist Research Award (K02 MH001981), grants from the National Institute of Aging (AG030311) and the National Science Foundation (BCS 0721260, BCS 0527440), a contract with the Army Research Institute (W91WAW-08-C-0018), and by a James McKeen Cattell Award and a Sabbatical Fellowship from the American Philosophical Society. The views, opinions, and/or findings contained in this article are solely those of the author and should not be construed as an official Department of the Army or DOD position, policy, or decision.

1 Of course, psychology is not now, nor has it ever been, a unified discipline with a single approach to science. It encompasses many different topics, methods, and assumptions, as well as much diversity in its level of interest toward and treatment of the brain.

2 If enough people withdraw this agreement, the country splinters into two or more new countries. If people cannot agree to disagree, as is the case of those living in Quebec, which is still a province in Canada (the country where I am from), then the country remains intact.

3 A nominal kind is a category, denoted by a word, that is a combination of more fundamental properties ( Frawley, 1992 ).

4 People don’t always agree with each other in these perceptions, but that is a different story.

5 The same point can be made about other mental categories that exist in other cultural contexts.

6 Researchers who are interested in emotion perception (“Is the rat fearful?”,”Is my dog sad?”, “Is my friend angry?”) focus their attention more like perception researchers, by asking how the perceiver’s bodily sensations and prior knowledge create the momentary experience of another creature’s behavior as emotional.

7 There are a number of different sources of attention in the human brain, which neuroanatomist Marcel Mesulam (2000) refers to as an attentional matrix. In my reading of the neuroanatomy, this matrix is made up of at least five interconnected sources of neurons that can apply attention to a sensory neuron: (a) sensory stimulation from the world (which scientists alternatively term a bottom-up or sensory-driven or exogenous source of attention, (b) projections from lateral prefrontal cortex (which scientists term a top-down or goal-directed or endogenous source of attention, (c) projections from association areas that are involved with encoding prior experience (what might be called a memory-based source of attention), (d) projections from limbic areas and paralimbic cortex (which I have called an affective source of attention); and (e) projections from the ascending arousal systems. The lateral prefrontal cortex, the nuclei that originate the ascending arousal systems in the brainstem and forebrain, and the selected thalamic nuclei themselves receive projections from affective circuitry and, in a way, can be considered mediators of affective attention.

8 Marr’s abstract computational level of analysis specifies what processes do, without specifying how they do it. His algorithmic middle level provides a description of the logical steps that are needed to implement the computational level. The most basic implementation level of analysis specifies how to build something to carry out the sequence of steps outlined by the algorithms.

9 Flour, stock, and butter are the basic ingredients of gravy, but flour and butter are first mixed together first to prepare a roux, which is then mixed into the stock to give a gravy its silkiness. So, a roux would not be considered a basic ingredient of the recipe, but it is a necessary stage or step for gravy without lumps. Similarly, large-scale brain networks may themselves be broken down into circuits that have different levels of complexity and stand in relation to the network in a hierarchical fashion.

10 Even Brodmann, the originator of the much relied on Brodmann areas of cortical topography, did not believe in the idea that psychological functions are localized to specific, discrete brain areas. In 1909, in describing his views on function location correspondence, he wrote “one cannot think of their taking place in any other way than through an infinitely complex and involved interaction and cooperation of numerous elementary activities […] we are dealing with a physiological process extending widely over the whole cortical surface and not a localised function within a specific region.” ( Brodmann, 1909/1994 , p. 255).

11 The metaphor of a recipe works for describing any emergent phenomenon, such as the interplay of genes and epigenetic factors that together produce observed phenotypic behaviors ( Bateson, 1976 ).

12 Neurons with common functional properties lay stacked in a column, from white matter to cortical surface ( Mountcastle, 1997 ). Minicolumns are between 25 and 80 um (about 11 neurons wide; Buldyrev et al., 2000 ) and columns (also called hypercolumns or macrocolumns) are aggregates of minicolumns ranging in size from about 300–900 um wide ( Goldman & Nauta, 1977 ; Mountcastle, 1997 ). Columns vary in width, neuron make-up, and density and in connectivity across species ( Elston, 2007 ), with humans having the greatest connectivity between neurons both within a column and across columns.

13 Although I do not mean to imply that the cortex alone is important to psychology; it goes without saying that subcortical areas are important.

• Axmacher N, Mormanna F, Fernández G, Elgera CE, Fell J. Memory formation by neuronal synchronization. Brain Research Reviews. 2006; 52 :170–182. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bar M. The proactive brain: Using analogies and associations to generate predictions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 2007; 11 :280–289. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barbas H. Specialized elements of orbitofrontal cortex in primates. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 2007; 1121 :10–32. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF. Feeling is perceiving: Core affect and conceptualization in the experience of emotion. In: Barrett LF, Niedenthal PM, Winkielman P, editors. Emotions: Conscious and unconscious. New York: Guilford; 2005. pp. 255–284. [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF. Emotions as natural kinds? Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2006a; 1 :28–58. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF. Solving the emotion paradox: Categorization and the experience of emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2006b; 10 :20–46. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF, Bar M. See it with feeling: Affective predictions in the human brain. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: Series B. Biological Sciences. 2009; 364 :1325–1334. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF, Lindquist KA. The emotion enigma. Boston College; 2008. Unpublished manuscript. [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF, Lindquist K, Bliss-Moreau E, Duncan S, Gendron M, Mize J, Brennan L. Of mice and men: Natural kinds of emotion in the mammalian brain? Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2007; 2 :297–312. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF, Mesquita B, Ochsner KN, Gross JJ. The experience of emotion. Annual Review of Psychology. 2007; 58 :373–403. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF, Tugade MM, Engle RW. Individual differences in working memory capacity and dual-process theories of the mind. Psychological Bulletin. 2004; 130 :553–573. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF, Wager TD. The structure of emotion: Evidence from the neuroimaging of emotion. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2006; 15 :79–85. [ Google Scholar ]
• Basole A, White LE, Fitzpatrick D. Mapping multiple features in the population response of visual cortex. Nature. 2003; 423 :986–990. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bateson P. Specificity and the origins of behaviour. In: Rosenblatt J, Hinde RA, Beer C, editors. Advances in the study of behavior. Vol. 6. New York: Academic Press; 1976. pp. 1–20. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bloom P. Descartes’ baby: How the science of child development explains what makes us human. New York: Basic; 2004. [ Google Scholar ]
• Brodmann K. In: Localization in the cerebral cortex. Garey LJ, translator. London: Smith-Gordon; 1994. Original work published 1909. [ Google Scholar ]
• Buckner RL, Andrews-Hanna JR, Schacter DL. The brain’s default network: Anatomy, function, and relevance to disease. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 2008; 1124 :1–38. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Buldyrev SV, Cruz L, Gomez-Isla T, Gomez-Tortosa E, Havlin S, Le R, et al. Description of microcolumnar ensembles in association cortex and their disruption in Alzheimer and Lewy body dementias. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 2000; 97 :5039–5043. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Clancy B, Darlington RB, Finlay BL. Translating developmental time across mammalian species. Neuroscience. 2001; 105 :7–17. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dan Glauser ES, Scherer KR. Neuronal processes involved in subjective feeling emergence: Oscillatory activity during an emotional monitoring task. Brain Topography. 2008; 20 :224–231. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• DeFelipe J, Alonso-Nanclares L, Arellano J, Ballesteros-Yanez I, Benavides-Piccione R, Munoz A. Specializations of cortical microstructure of humans. In: Kass JH, Preuss TM, editors. Evolution of nervous systems: A comprehensive reference. Vol. 4. New York: Elsevier; 2007. pp. 168–190. [ Google Scholar ]
• Douglas RJ, Martin KAC. Mapping the matrix: The ways of neocortex. Neuron. 2007; 56 :226–238. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Duncan S, Barrett LF. Affect as a form of cognition: A neurobiological analysis. Cognition and Emotion. 2007; 21 :1184–1211. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Edelman GM. Neural Darwinism: The theory of neuronal group selection. New York: Basic; 1987. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Einstein A, Infeld L. Evolution of physics. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press; 1938. [ Google Scholar ]
• Elston GN. Specialization of the neocortical pyramidal cell during primate evolution. In: Kass JH, Preuss TM, editors. Evolution of nervous systems: A comprehensive reference. Vol. 4. New York: Elsevier; 2007. pp. 191–242. [ Google Scholar ]
• Frawley W. Linguistic semantics. New York: Erlbaum; 1992. [ Google Scholar ]
• Friston KJ. Beyond phrenology: What can neuroimaging tell us about distributed circuitry? Annual Review of Neuroscience. 2002; 25 :221–250. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fuster JM. The cognit: A network model of cortical representation. International Journal of Psychophysiology. 2006; 60 :125–132. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gendron M, Barrett LF. Reconstructing the past: A century of ideas about emotion in psychology. Emotion Review in press. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ghuman A, Bar M, Dobbins IG, Schnyer D. The effects of priming on frontal-temporal communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. 2008; 105 :8405–8409. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gibbs WW. The unseen genome: Gems among the junk. Scientific American. 2003; 289 :47–53. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Goldman PS, Nauta WJ. Columnar distribution of cortico-cortical fibers in the frontal association, limbic, and motor cortex of the developing rhesus monkey. Brain Research. 1977; 122 :393–413. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Haynes JD, Rees G. Decoding mental states from brain activity in humans. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 2006; 7 :523–534. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hegarty M. Mental animation: Inferring motion from static displays of mechanical systems. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 1992; 18 :1084–1102. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Henson R. What can functional neuroimaging tell the experimental psychologist? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 2005; 58A :193–233. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Izhikevich EM, Desai NS, Walcott EC, Hoppensteadt FC. Bursts as a unit of neural information: Selective communication via resonance. Trends in Neurosciences. 2003; 26 :161–167. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• James W. The principles of psychology. New York: Holt; 1890. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kamitani Y, Tong F. Decoding the visual and subjective contents of the human brain. Nature Neuroscience. 2005; 8 :679–685. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kay KN, Naselaris T, Prenger RJ, Gallant JL. Identifying natural images from human brain activity. Nature. 2008; 452 :352–355. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kober H, Barrett LF, Joseph J, Bliss-Moreau E, Lindquist KA, Wager TD. Functional grouping and cortical-subcortical interactions in emotion: A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies. NeuroImage. 2008; 42 :998–1031. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kosslyn SM, Thompson WL, Sukel KE, Alpert NM. Two types of image generation: Evidence from PET. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience. 2005; 5 :41–53. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Llinas R, Ribary U, Contreras D, Pedroarena C. The neuronal basis for consciousness. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences. 1998; 353 :1841–1849. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mai JK, Ashwell KWS. Fetal development of the nervous system. In: Paxinos G, Mai JK, editors. The human nervous system. Vol. 1. New York: Elsevier; 2004. pp. 49–94. [ Google Scholar ]
• Marr D. Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. New York: Freeman; 1982. [ Google Scholar ]
• Medin D, Ortony A. Psychological essentialism. In: Vosniadou S, Ortony A, editors. Similarity and analogical reasoning. New York: Cambridge University Press; 1989. pp. 179–195. [ Google Scholar ]
• Mesulam MM. From sensation to cognition. Brain. 1998; 121 :1013–1052. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mesulam MM. Behavioral neuroanatomy: Large-scale networks, association cortex, frontal syndromes, the limbic system, and hemispheric specializations. In: Mesulam MM, editor. Principles of behavioral and cognitive neurology. 2. New York: Oxford University Press; 2000. pp. 1–120. [ Google Scholar ]
• Mitchell JP. Mentalizing and Marr: An information processing approach to the study of social cognition. Brain Research. 2006; 1079 :66–75. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mountcastle VB. The columnar organization of the neocortex. Brain. 1997; 120 :701–722. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Niessing J, Ebisch B, Schmidt KE, Niesseng M, Singer W, Galsuke RAW. Hemodynamic signals correlate rightly with synchronized gamma oscillations. Science. 2005; 309 :948–951. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Noppeney U, Friston KJ, Price CJ. Degenerate neuronal systems sustaining cognitive functions. Journal of Anatomy. 2004; 205 :433–442. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Norman KA, Polyn SM, Detre GJ, Haxby JV. Beyond mind-reading: Multi-voxel pattern analysis of fMRI data. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 2006; 10 :424–430. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ochsner KN, Lieberman MD. The emergence of social cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist. 2001; 56 :717–734. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• O’Reilly RC, Munakata JA. Computational explorations in cognitive neuroscience: Understanding the mind by simulating the brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2000. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ortony A, Turner TJ. What’s basic about basic emotions? Psychological Review. 1990; 97 :315–331. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pessoa L. On the relationship between emotion and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 2008; 2 :148–158. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Phelps EA, Sharot T. How (and why) emotion enhances the subjective sense of recollection. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2008; 17 :147–152. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Price CJ, Friston KJ. Functional ontologies for cognition: The systematic definition of structure and function. Cognitive Neuropsychology. 2005; 22 :262–275. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Reynolds SM, Berridge KC. Emotional environments return the valence of appetitive versus fearful functions in nucleus accumbens. Nature Neuroscience. 2008; 11 :423–425. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schenker NM, Desgouttes AM, Semendeferi K. Neural connectivity and cortical substrates of cognition in hominoids. Journal of Human Evolution. 2005; 49 :547–569. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schoenemann PT. Evolution of the size and function of the human brain. Annual Review of Anthropology. 2006; 35 :379–406. [ Google Scholar ]
• Schoenemann PT, Sheehan MJ, Glotzer LD. Prefrontal white matter volume is disproportionately larger in humans than in other primates. Nature Neuroscience. 2005; 8 :242–252. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Searle JR. The rediscovery of the mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 1992. [ Google Scholar ]
• Searle JR. The construction of social reality. New York: Free Press; 1995. [ Google Scholar ]
• Searle JR. Freedom and neurobiology: Reflections on free will, language, and political power. New York: Columbia University Press; 2007. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Seeley WW, Menon V, Schatzberg AF, Keller J, Glover GH, Kenna H, et al. Dissociable intrinsic connectivity networks for salience processing and executive control. Journal of Neuroscience. 2007; 27 :2349–2356. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Spivey M. The continuity of mind. New York: Oxford University Press; 2007. [ Google Scholar ]
• Vallacher RR, Wegner DM. What do people think they’re doing? Action identification and human behavior. Psychological Review. 1987; 94 :3–15. [ Google Scholar ]
• Voss JL, Baym CL, Paller KA. Accurate forced-choice recognition without awareness of memory retrieval. Learning and Memory. 2008; 15 :454–459. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wager TD, Barrett LF, Bliss-Moreau E, Lindquist K, Duncan S, Kober H, et al. The neuroimaging of emotion. In: Lewis M, Haviland-Jones JM, Barrett LF, editors. The handbook of emotion. 3. New York: Guilford; 2008. pp. 249–271. [ Google Scholar ]
• Wikan U. Managing turbulent hearts: A Balinese formula for living. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1990. [ Google Scholar ]
• Xu F, Cote M, Baker A. Labeling guides object individuation in 12-month-old infants. Psychological Science. 2005; 316 :372–377. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]

• Singing Boosts Language Proficiency in Brains Impacted by Stroke
• 23-year-long study shows teenage loneliness increases adult mental illness risk by 20%
• Groupthink or Growth? Rethinking Decision-Making Dynamics in Teams

Exploring the Many Facets of Intelligence in Children

• The Psychology Behind Worship: Why Humans Believe in Religion and Spirituality

Your cart is empty

Master the Art of Research: Topics and Tips for Your Psychology Paper

• by Psychologs Magazine
• May 14, 2024
• 6 minutes read

Writing a psychology research paper is a journey through the depths of human behaviour and mental processes. Therefore, choosing psychology research topics is crucial for a compelling paper. Before diving into your research proposal, a thorough investigation of journal databases like PsychInfo and ERIC can unveil a wealth of relevant studies. The importance of selecting the right topics for psychology research cannot be overstated. It sets the tone for the entire research paper, ensuring your work is grounded in innovative inquiry. A roadmap can be constructed by outlining your ideas of how to go about writing the paper in detail.

Topic Selection

It’s always best to identify general areas of interest in psychology such as cognition and social behavior or mental health. This broad area will help you to narrow down to more specific topics. Identifying gaps in existing research helps to identify areas of interest. This can provide a good foundation for your study and ensure a meaningful contribution to the field of mental health. 

It’s time to narrow down your broad interests to focus on a specific and manageable topic. Structure and organization become essential at this stage to follow. Just remember that the more a research question intrigues you the more it will help you to follow through with all the research phases. 

Also, when you are narrowing down your topic, it is important to select one which is not only in trend currently, but also well-researched. This will help you during the literature review phase of your research process. Lastly, it’s always best to keep in mind guidelines or criteria set by your research guide and educational institution. Your topic should meet academic standards and procedures.

Read More: 6 Reasons You Should Study Psychology

The Review of Literature 

When you begin conducting your literature review, you must refer to online databases like PsycInfo, Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and Medline to search for relevant research literature.

Make sure to read the abstract, introduction, method, results, and discussion sections of each article. Discussion sections are also important since they highlight gaps in existing research. An Excel sheet must be made where you write down the summaries and key points of each research for your literature review. 

In your literature review, you must describe, compare and evaluate the research studies. The goal of evaluation is to identify gaps and inconsistencies in the literature, thus providing suggestions for solving the research problem. These tips help you develop a thorough literature review. It highlights significant studies as well as sets a foundation for your research paper.

Read More: The Depths of Indian Psychology: Traditions and Modern Insights

Adhering to APA Format

The general structure of the APA format includes the title page, abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, and references.

The title page should have a running head, page number, title of the paper, author’s name, and institutional affiliation. The title should be concise including the key variables or the study’s focus. The abstract should be on a new page, limited to 120 words. It should summarize the research topic, methods, results, and significance. 

Your introduction should start with an exploration of your research question, including a brief history of the same. The introduction will also include a summary of the previous findings in the form of a literature review. Make sure to address gaps in the current research and how the current research will impact the field.

The method section describes in detail how the research was performed. It includes a description of the participants, the study design, the materials that were used, and the procedure of the study. It is essential to provide enough information for another researcher to duplicate your research.

The results section should describe the data that was collected through descriptive statistics as well as inferential statistics which is your t-test, ANOVA and other appropriate tests for your study. Your discussion has to interpret the results and address your research topic. It is essential to discuss the limitations and scope of future research surrounding your research. 

When referring to current research for your review literature, make sure to compile a list of all the sources . It’s also important to cite them throughout the paper wherever direct quotations are used. Refer to the APA format for in-text citations .

Read More; Do You Know About the Basic Principles of Psychology?

Analyzing Your Data

Descriptive statistics in research provide a summary of your data sets. Calculate the mean, median and mode of your data set. Thereafter, you calculate the dispersion of your data which includes variance, standard deviation and range to understand the spread of your data. 

Creating graphs and charts like histograms, bar charts and scatter plots helps visually present the data. Identify the skewness of your data to understand the asymmetry of your data distribution. Identify the techniques you will analyze your data with like t-tests, regression, or ANOVA. This analysis should help answer your research question. 

These tips help ensure that your data analysis is communicated which makes your findings understandable to other researchers and the psychology community. 

Read more: 10 Job Roles in the Field of Psychology

The importance of selecting engaging and significant topics, conducting comprehensive literature reviews, and adhering to the standards of APA format thus far has been highlighted. Researchers ensure their work helps in the understanding of human behaviour. The journey from topic selection to data presentation has its challenges, however, research papers tend to influence the scholarly community and societal perceptions of psychological phenomena. We encourage aspiring researchers to continually seek out new avenues for inquiry and adopt a critical yet open-minded stance toward their findings. The pursuit of knowledge in psychology research helps formulate interventions and policies that can help human well-being. 

1. What are the top topics for conducting Research in psychology? 

To select a psychology research topic, consider areas such as psychotropic medications for mental health, disorders like anxiety , depression , and bipolar disorder , schizoaffective disorder, accessibility of mental health services, the impact of systemic racism on mental health, and mental health concerns within the LGBTQIA+ community.

2. What are some essential tips for writing an effective psychology research paper? 

When writing a psychology research paper, ensure to support your arguments with solid evidence from scientific studies. Adhere to the appropriate academic format.

3. Where can I get extra help with APA style for my research?

You can find support online and offline to improve your understanding of APA style. The APA Publication Manual is a key resource for guidance on formatting, citations and other important aspects. 

• Chiang, I. A., Jhangiani, R. S., & Price, P. C. (2015, October 13). Generating good research questions . Pressbooks. https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/generating-good-research-questions/
• Paré, G., & Kitsiou, S. (2017, February 27). Chapter 9 Methods for literature reviews . Handbook of eHealth Evaluation: An Evidence-based Approach – NCBI Bookshelf. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK481583/
• Ratan, S. K., Anand, T., & Ratan, J. (2019). Formulation of research question – Stepwise approach. Journal of Indian Association of Pediatric Surgeons , 24 (1), 15. https://doi.org/10.4103/jiaps.jiaps_76_18
• Chiang, I. A., Jhangiani, R. S., & Price, P. C. (2015, October 13). American Psychological Association (APA) style . Pressbooks. https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/american-psychological-association-apa-style/
• Chiang, I. A., Jhangiani, R. S., & Price, P. C. (2015, October 13). Conducting your analyses . Pressbooks. https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/conducting-your-analyses/
• Chiang, I. A., Jhangiani, R. S., & Price, P. C. (2015, October 13). Expressing your results . Pressbooks. https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/expressing-your-results/
• San José State University Writing Center, & Tablas-Mejia, I. (n.d.). Conclusion section for research papers. Fall 2021 . https://www.sjsu.edu/writingcenter/docs/handouts/Conclusion%20Section%20for%20Research%20Papers.pdf
• P, B. (2024, March 27). Learn how to write a psychology research paper here . https://www.sharkpapers.com/blog/research-paper-writing-guides/psychology-research-paper

Share This Post:

Top 12 psychology books that are a must-read in 2024, nmc showed 37,000 medicos with disturbed mental well-being, leave feedback about this cancel reply.

• Rating 5 4 3 2 1

Related Post

Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development

Exceptionality: Special Education Insights

Top 12 Psychology Books That Are A Must-Read

What is the Importance of Studying Behaviourism?

Research Topics & Ideas: Psychology

100+ Psychology Topic Ideas To Fast-Track Your Research

If you’re starting out on the dissertation or thesis journey for your psychology degree, the very first challenge you’ll face is finding a solid research topic . In this post, we’ll help get the topic ideation process started by providing a meaty list of research ideas, spanning a range of psychology sub-disciplines. We’ll also look at some examples from actual theses and dissertations to give you an idea of what these look like in the real world.

NB – This is just the start…

The topic ideation and evaluation process has multiple steps (which we’ll explain a little later). Therefore, it’s important to recognise that this post is only the first step in finding a high-quality psychology-centred research topic. To develop a research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , and a viable plan of action to fill that gap.

If this all sounds a bit intimidating, be sure to check out our free dissertation mini-course , which covers the process of writing a dissertation or thesis from A-Z. You can also sign up for our free webinar that explores how to find a high-quality research topic. Alternatively, if you’d like hands-on help, have a look at our 1-on-1 coaching service .

Overview: Psychology-Related Topics

• How to find a research topic (video)
• Behavioural psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Educational psychology
• Forensic psychology
• Social psychology
• Sports psychology
• Examples of actual dissertation topics
• Free Webinar : Topic Ideation 101
• Where to get extra help

How To Find A Research Topic

In the video below, we explain how to find suitable research ideas (in psychology or any field), and how to then refine those into well-articulated potential topics for your dissertation or thesis. We also discuss a few important evaluation criteria to help you make the right choice for your project.

Below you’ll find a list of research ideas to get your thinking started. Please note that these research topic ideas are intentionally broad and generic, so you will need to refine them a fair deal using the techniques we discussed in the video above.

We’ve grouped the topic ideas based on a few popular areas of psychology to make it a little easier for you to find something in your particular field of interest. That said, there is naturally some overlap between topics, so keep this in mind.

Research Ideas: Behavioural Psychology

• Cultural variation in behaviour and mental health of adolescents during a disaster: a case study
• The impact of parental drug use and risky behaviour on early child development
• The effects of video game violence on aggressive behaviour among teenage boys in school
• The relationship between adverse childhood experiences and adult risk-seeking behaviour
• The impact of physical exercise on anxiety and health-harming behaviour
• The relationship between personality traits and addiction behaviour
• The effects of reinforcement schedules on decision-making and associative learning
• The effects of daily mindfulness practice on stress and anxiety in middle-aged women
• The use of behavioural interventions in the treatment of eating disorders in poorer communities
• Understanding implicit cognitive processes involved in the over-consumption of fast food
• The use of cognitive behavioural therapy for alcohol addiction treatment
• The impact of extensive technology use in children on long-term attention and focus
• The impact of social media on self-destructive behaviour and poor mental health outcomes
• Exploring the role of sleep and sleep deprivation on healthy behaviours

Research Ideas: Clinical Psychology

• The use of mindfulness-based approaches in the treatment of anxiety disorders among college students
• The use of technology in the delivery of psychological services in war-torn countries
• The effectiveness of dialectical behaviour therapy for borderline personality disorder
• The use of virtual reality technology in the treatment of phobias and PTSD among war veterans
• The role of childhood adversity on adult mental health in immigrant populations in the USA
• The role of genetics and epigenetics in the development of bipolar disorder in Pakistani women: an integrative review
• The effectiveness of pharmacotherapy in the treatment of social anxiety among hikikomori in Japan
• The perception of healthcare workers and patients on the use of teletherapy for the delivery of psychological services
• The impact of social support on mental health outcomes among single parents.
• The effectiveness of integrative therapeutic approaches in the treatment of schizophrenia
• The effectiveness of trauma-focused therapies on post-traumatic growth in domestic abuse survivors
• The role and use of cognitive-behavioural therapy for depression among first-generation students
• The effectiveness of family therapy in addressing childhood trauma and depression
• The impact of cultural mistrust on the diagnosis and treatment of mental health issues in culturally-diverse populations
• The effectiveness of group therapy on post-traumatic stress symptoms among survivors of sexual assault

Research Ideas: Cognitive Psychology

• The impact of lifelong aerobic exercise on cognitive function in old age
• The effects of evening screen use on cognitive development in preschool children
• The impact of sleep deprivation on decision-making among graduate students
• The use of neuroimaging to understand the neural basis of memory retrieval
• The effect of conservative religious homes on social functioning in LGBT+ adolescents
• The role of positive emotions in working memory among high school learners
• The neural basis of decision-making and problem-solving during undergraduate statistic assessments
• The neural basis of language processing among adults learning English as a second language
• The role of technological tools in improving working memory in older adults
• The role of attention in emotional face processing among adult males
• The impact of depression on cognitive function during ageing The impact of daily meditation and mindfulness practice on cognitive function
• The relationship between increased protein intake and improved cognitive function
• The effects of stress on cognitive function among final-year learners

Research Ideas: Developmental Psychology

• The impact of maternal affection on cognitive, social, and emotional development
• The effects of parenting styles on children’s executive function
• The impact of late-night screen use on child development
• The role of digital play on child development outcomes
• Exploring the impact of poverty on early child development in Brazil
• The trauma-informed care as moderating the impact of trauma on child development
• Evaluating the relationship between peer relationship quality and child social development
• The impact of child-targeted media and advertising on child behavioural development
• The role of parental attachment in child resilience
• The moderating impact of culture on bullying and child social development
• The impact of single-parenting on child development in India
• The impact of early educational interventions on child socio-emotional development
• The impact of digital technology use on adolescent development and mental health
• The impact of socioeconomic status on child executive function
• The role of genetics and epigenetics on child neurodevelopmental outcomes linked to depression

Need a helping hand?

Research Ideas: Educational Psychology

• The relationship between self-regulated learning and academic performance in asynchronous versus synchronous learning environments
• Exploring effective parental involvement strategies and their impact on student achievement
• The role of intrinsic motivation in formative assessment in the classroom
• The impact of classroom management and practice on student learning and behaviour
• University students’ preference regarding online learning environments
• The effects of gentrification on student achievement in traditionally poor neighbourhoods
• The impact of teacher expectations and academic self-concept on K12 student mathematics performance
• The use and effectiveness of game-based learning in a high school biology classroom
• The impact of prejudice on the relationship between student motivation and academic performance among Black university students
• The impact of culture on second language English student learning preferences
• The effects of student self-efficacy and engagement on academic performance in secondary school mathematics
• The role of metacognition in learning musicality in hip hop
• The role of small group instruction on teacher efficacy and stress in early childhood education
• The perception and use of multimedia among high school biology teachers in France
• The use of augmented reality applications and its impact on student learning, motivation and attitude

Research Ideas: Forensic Psychology

• The impact of trauma on the psychological functioning of police officers and first responders
• Understanding cultural considerations during forensic psychological assessment and treatment of trauma
• Ethical considerations of the use of AI in forensic psychology in the legal system
• The psychological factors related to recidivism among white collar female offenders in the USA
• The psychological factors related to false confessions among juveniles
• Understanding the use of psychological assessment in the evaluation of eyewitness testimony in criminal courts in England
• The impact of trauma on the reflective functioning of adult female sexual assault victims
• The use and effectiveness of psychological interventions in reducing recidivism among non-violent criminals
• The impact of domestic violence on the mental health and forensic evaluation of men
• Exploring the ethical considerations and use of behavioural analysis in the study of criminal behaviour
• The use and limitations of neuropsychological assessment in forensic evaluations
• The use of social media forensics in evaluating criminal behaviour in violent crimes
• The racialised use of psychological assessment in the evaluation of competency to stand trial in Canada
• Exploring the use and availability of virtual reality technologies in forensic psychology in Spain
• The impact of motivational interviewing-based interventions among criminalized drug users

Research Ideas: Social Psychology

• The impact of prejudice and discrimination on social behaviour among African immigrants in South Africa
• The impact of social networks on behaviour and well-being among young adult females
• The effects of social identity on non-conformity in University students
• The effects of group dynamics on risk-seeking behaviour in adult men
• The impact of social media on the quality of interpersonal relationships among high school learners
• The impact of parental emotional intelligence on pro-social behaviour in children and adolescents
• The effects of conformity and deviance on social attitudes and behaviour during a global recession
• The effects of Tik Tok on social comparison and self-esteem among teenage girls
• Understanding gendered differences in social influence and algorithms on impulsive decision-making
• The effects of social support on mental health among healthcare workers in the UK
• The effects of gender roles on social behaviour among trans teens
• The impact of perceived power and social status on the behaviour of social media influencers
• The impact of social norms on prosocial behaviour among women
• The effects of community participation on aggression and violence in middle-aged men
• The impact of culture and gender on social behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic

Research Ideas: Sports Psychology

• The moderating role of cultural factors on the relationship between mental health and sports performance in team sports
• The role of mindfulness practice in addressing stress and anxiety in young national athletes
• The relationship between team cohesion and performance in cricket teams
• The effect of transformational leadership on female sports teams in Canada
• The effect of positive self-talk on athletic performance and motivation among Olympic athletes
• The use and perception of hypnosis in New Zealand team sports Understanding stress and burnout in University team athletes
• The efficacy of personalised nutrition and diet on athletic performance among sprinters
• Exploring mental preparation techniques and their effect on athletic motivation and resilience among team-sport athletes
• Exploring the perception and understanding of goal-setting characteristics on athletic performance among team coaches
• The effects of motivational feedback on the performance of female gymnasts
• The perception and use of visualization and imagery among coaches as a means to enhance sport performance
• The impact of sports injuries on mental health and recovery in high school athletes
• The moderating role of sleep on mental toughness and sports performance in Olympic athletes
• The use and perception of technology in sports training and performance in little league softball

Psychology-Related Dissertations & Theses

While the ideas we’ve presented above are a decent starting point for finding a research topic in psychology, they are fairly generic and non-specific. So, it helps to look at actual dissertations and theses to see how this all comes together in practice.

Below, we’ve included a selection of research projects from various psychology degree programs to help refine your thinking. These are actual dissertations and theses, written as part of Master’s and PhD-level programs, so they can provide some useful insight as to what a research topic looks like in practice.

• Effects of a Patient Question Prompt List on Outpatient Palliative Care Appointments (McDarby, 2022)
• The role of affect and exercise goals in physical activity engagement in younger and older adults (Stojanovic, 2022)
• Lay Theories about Whether Emotion Helps or Hinders Reasoning and Well-being (Karnaze, 2022)
• The effects of blast-induced traumatic brain injury on two transgenic models of Alzheimer’s Disease (Gann, 2020)
• Understanding the parental mind: Examining the stability of parental reflective functioning across the birth of a child and associations with maternal mind-mindedness (Pitzen, 2021)
• An investigation of ineffective ally behaviours (Collier, 2019)
• Response Inhibition-Related Beta Power: Distinguishing Cognitively Intact Elders by Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease (Evans, 2021)
• Recognition Memory of Extremely High-Frequency Words (Miller, 2019)
• The Relationship between Dementia Caregiver Burden and Caregiver Communications in a Memory Clinic Setting (Martin, 2021)
• Examination of Maternal Versus Paternal Ratings of Child Pre-Injury Functioning in Predicting Child Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms (Sayer, 2021)
• Electromyography As A Means of Predicting The Rubber Hand Illusion (Teaford, 2021)
• Linking Diversity Climate and Feedback Seeking Through Interpersonal Processes and Race Effects (Flores, 2021)

Looking at these titles, you can probably pick up that the research topics here are far more specific and narrowly-focused , compared to the generic ones presented earlier. This is an important thing to keep in mind as you develop your own research topic. That is to say, to create a top-notch research topic, you must be precise and target a specific context with specific variables of interest . In other words, you need to identify a clear, well-justified research gap.

Fast-Track Your Topic Ideation

Still unsure about how to find the right topic for your research project? Check out our private coaching services , where we work with psychology students on a 1:1 basis to help them find the perfect topic.

You Might Also Like:

10 Comments

Great insight

A very interesting site that offers a variety of options regarding research topics.

You’re most welcome

A good platform to get information

Amazing and interesting options 👌

Very useful but had not any field of research in health psychology

I feel honored going through this lovely stuff put together. Thank you so much

I need counseling psychology research topics

very empowering and insightful presentations. Can I be assisted in crafting a school psychology-related research topic about African context

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Print Friendly

• Bipolar Disorder
• Therapy Center
• When To See a Therapist
• Types of Therapy
• Best Online Therapy
• Best Couples Therapy
• Best Family Therapy
• Managing Stress
• Sleep and Dreaming
• Understanding Emotions
• Self-Improvement
• Healthy Relationships
• Student Resources
• Personality Types
• Guided Meditations
• Verywell Mind Insights
• 2024 Verywell Mind 25
• Mental Health in the Classroom
• Editorial Process
• Meet Our Review Board
• Crisis Support

Social Psychology Research Topics

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Emily is a board-certified science editor who has worked with top digital publishing brands like Voices for Biodiversity, Study.com, GoodTherapy, Vox, and Verywell.

Choosing topics for social psychology research papers or projects for class can be challenging. It is a broad and fascinating field, which can make it challenging to figure out what you want to investigate in your research.

Social psychology explores how individual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are affected by social influences. It explores how each person's behavior is affected by their social environment.

This article explores a few different social psychology topics and research questions you might want to study in greater depth. It covers how to start your search for a topic as well as specific ideas you might choose to explore.

How to Find a Social Psychology Research Topic

As you begin your search, think about the questions that you have. What topics interest you? Following your own interests and curiosities can often inspire great research questions.

Choose a Sub-Topic

Social psychologists are interested in all aspects of social behavior. Some of the main areas of interest within the field include social cognition, social influence, and social relationships investigating subtopics such as conformity, groupthink, attitude formation, obedience, prejudice, and so on.

• Social cognition : How do we process and use information about social experiences? What kinds of biases influence how we engage with other people?
• Social influence: What are the key social factors that influence our attitudes and behavior? What are group dynamics and how do we understand patterns of behavior in groups?
• Social relationships : What are the different types of social relationships? How do they develop and change over time?

To help ensure that you select a topic that is specific enough, it can be helpful to start by confining your search to one of these main areas.

Browse Through Past Research

After narrowing down your choices, consider what questions you might have. Are there questions that haven't been fully answered by previous studies? At this point, it can be helpful to spend some time browsing through journal articles or books to see some examples of past findings and identify gaps in the literature.

You can also find inspiration and learn more about a topic by searching for keywords related to your topic in psychological databases such as PsycINFO or browsing through some professional psychology journals.

Narrow Down Your Specific Topic

Once you have a general topic, you'll need to narrow down your research. The goal is to choose a research question that is specific, measurable, and testable. Let's say you want to study conformity; An example of a good research question might be, “Are people more likely to conform when they are in a small group or a large group?” In this case, the specific topic of your paper would be how group size influences social conformity .

Review the Literature on Your Chosen Topic

After choosing a specific social psychology topic to research, the next step is to do a literature review. A literature review involves reading through the existing research findings related to a specific topic.

You are likely to encounter a great deal of information on your topic, which can seem overwhelming at times. You may find it helpful to start by reading review articles or meta-analysis studies. These are summaries of previous research on your topic or studies that incorporate a large pool of past research on the topic.

Talk to Your Instructor

Even if you are really excited to dive right in and start working on your project, there are some important preliminary steps you need to take.

Before you decide to tackle a project for your social psychology class, you should always clear your idea with your instructor. This initial step can save you a lot of time and hassle later on.

Your instructor can offer clear feedback on things you should and should not do while conducting your research and might be able to offer some helpful tips. Also, if you plan to implement your own social experiment, your school might require you to present to and gain permission from an institutional review board.

Thinking about the questions you have about social psychology can be a great way to discover topics for your own research. Once you have a general idea, explore the literature and refine your research question to make sure it is specific enough.

Examples of Social Psychology Research Topics

The following are some specific examples of different subjects you might want to investigate further as part of a social psychology research paper, experiment, or project:

Implicit Attitudes

How do implicit attitudes influence how people respond to others? This can involve exploring how people's attitudes towards different groups of people (e.g., men, women, ethnic minorities) influence their interactions with those groups. For example, one study found that 75% of people perceive men to be more intelligent than women .

In your own project, you might explore how implicit attitudes impact perceptions of qualities such as kindness, intelligence, leadership skills, or attractiveness.

Prosocial Behavior

You might also choose to focus on prosocial behavior in your research. This can involve investigating the reasons why people help others. Some questions you could explore further include:

• What motivates people to help others?
• When are people most likely to help others?
• How does helping others cause people to feel?
• What are the benefits of helping other people?

How do people change their attitudes in response to persuasion? What are the different techniques that can be used to persuade someone? What factors make some people more susceptible to persuasion than others?

One way to investigate this could be through collecting a wide variety of print advertisements and analyzing how​ persuasion is used. What types of cognitive and affective techniques are utilized? Do certain types of advertisements tend to use specific kinds of persuasive techniques ?

Another area of social psychology that you might research is aggression and violence. This can involve exploring the factors that lead to aggression and violence and the consequences of these behaviors. Some questions you might explore further include:

• When is violence most likely to occur?
• What factors influence violent behavior?
• Do traumatic experiences in childhood lead to more aggressive behavior in adulthood?
• Does viewing violent media content contribute to increased aggressive behavior in real life?

Prejudice and discrimination are areas that present a range of research opportunities. This can involve studying the different forms that prejudice takes (e.g., sexism, racism, ageism ), as well as the psychological effects of prejudice and discrimination. You might also want to investigate topics related to how prejudices form or strategies that can be used to reduce such discrimination.

Nonverbal Behavior

How do people respond when nonverbal communication does not match up to verbal behavior (for example, saying you feel great when your facial expressions and tone of voice indicate otherwise). Which signal do people respond to most strongly?

How good are people at detecting lies ? Have participants tell a group of people about themselves, but make sure some of the things are true while others are not. Ask members of the group which statements they thought were true and which they thought were false.

Social Norms

How do people react when social norms are violated? This might involve acting in a way that is outside the norm in a particular situation or enlisting friends to act out the behaviors while you observe.

Some examples that you might try include wearing unusual clothing, applauding inappropriately at the end of a class lecture, cutting in line in front of other people, or some other mildly inappropriate behavior. Keep track of your own thoughts as you perform the experiment and observe how people around you respond.

Online Social Behavior

Does online social networking make people more or less likely to interact with people in face-to-face or other offline settings? To investigate this further, you could create a questionnaire to assess how often people participate in social networking versus how much time they spend interacting with their friends in real-world settings.

Social Perception

How does our appearance impact how people respond to us? Ask some friends to help you by having two people dress up in dramatically different ways, one in a professional manner and one in a less conventional manner. Have each person engage in a particular action, then observe how they are treated and how other people's responses differ.

Social psychologists have found that attractiveness can produce what is known as a halo effect . Essentially, we tend to assume that people who are physically attractive are also friendly, intelligent, pleasant, and likable.

To investigate this topic, you could set up an experiment where you have participants look at photographs of people of varying degrees of physical attractiveness, and then ask them to rate each person based on a variety of traits, including social competence, kindness, intellect, and overall likability.

Think about how this might affect a variety of social situations, including how employees are selected or how jurors in a criminal case might respond.

Social psychology is a broad field, so there are many different subtopics you might choose to explore in your research. Implicit attitudes, prosocial behavior, aggression, prejudice, and social perception are just a few areas you might want to consider.

A Word From Verywell

Social psychology topics can provide a great deal of inspiration for further research, whether you are writing a research paper or conducting your own experiment. In addition to some of the social psychology topics above, you can also draw inspiration from your own curiosity about social behavior or examine social issues that you see taking place in the world around you. 

American Psychological Association.  Frequently asked questions about institutional review boards .

Storage D, Charlesworth TES, Banaji M, Cimpian A.  Adults and children implicitly associate brilliance with men more than women .  J Exp Soc Psychol . 2012;90:104020. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2020.104020

Talamas SN, Mavor KI, Perrett DI. Blinded by beauty: Attractiveness bias and accurate perceptions of academic performance . PLoS ONE . 2016;11(2):e0148284. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0148284

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

80 fascinating psychology research questions for your next project

Last updated

15 February 2024

Reviewed by

Brittany Ferri, PhD, OTR/L

Psychology research is essential for furthering our understanding of human behavior and improving the diagnosis and treatment of psychological conditions.

When psychologists know more about how different social and cultural factors influence how humans act, think, and feel, they can recommend improvements to practices in areas such as education, sport, healthcare, and law enforcement.

Below, you will find 80 research question examples across 16 branches of psychology. First, though, let’s look at some tips to help you select a suitable research topic.

• How to choose a good psychology research topic

Psychology has many branches that break down further into topics. Choosing a topic for your psychology research paper can be daunting because there are so many to choose from. It’s an important choice, as the topic you select will open up a range of questions to explore.

The tips below can help you find a psychology research topic that suits your skills and interests.

Tip #1: Select a topic that interests you

Passion and interest should fuel every research project. A topic that fascinates you will most likely interest others as well. Think about the questions you and others might have and decide on the issues that matter most. Draw on your own interests, but also keep your research topical and relevant to others.

Don’t limit yourself to a topic that you already know about. Instead, choose one that will make you want to know more and dig deeper. This will keep you motivated and excited about your research.

Tip #2: Choose a topic with a manageable scope

If your topic is too broad, you can get overwhelmed by the amount of information available and have trouble maintaining focus. On the other hand, you may find it difficult to find enough information if you choose a topic that is too narrow.

To determine if the topic is too broad or too narrow, start researching as early as possible. If you find there’s an overwhelming amount of research material, you’ll probably need to narrow the topic down. For example, instead of researching the general population, it might be easier to focus on a specific age group. Ask yourself what area of the general topic interests you most and focus on that.

If your scope is too narrow, try to generalize or focus on a larger related topic. Expand your search criteria or select additional databases for information. Consider if the topic is too new to have much information published on it as well.

Tip #3: Select a topic that will produce useful and relevant insights

Doing some preliminary research will reveal any existing research on the topic. If there is existing research, will you be able to produce new insights? You might need to focus on a different area or see if the existing research has limitations that you can overcome.

Bear in mind that finding new information from which to draw fresh insights may be impossible if your topic has been over-researched.

You’ll also need to consider whether your topic is relevant to current trends and needs. For example, researching psychology topics related to social media use may be highly relevant today.

• 80 psychology research topics and questions

Psychology is a broad subject with many branches and potential areas of study. Here are some of them:

Developmental

Personality

Experimental

Organizational

Educational

Neuropsychology

Controversial topics

Below we offer some suggestions on research topics and questions that can get you started. Keep in mind that these are not all-inclusive but should be personalized to fit the theme of your paper.

Social psychology research topics and questions

Social psychology has roots as far back as the 18th century. In simple terms, it’s the study of how behavior is influenced by the presence and behavior of others. It is the science of finding out who we are, who we think we are, and how our perceptions affect ourselves and others. It looks at personalities, relationships, and group behavior.

Here are some potential research questions and paper titles for this topic:

How does social media use impact perceptions of body image in male adolescents?

2. Is childhood bullying a risk factor for social anxiety in adults?

Is homophobia in individuals caused by genetic or environmental factors?

What is the most important psychological predictor of a person’s willingness to donate to charity?

Does a person’s height impact how other people perceive them? If so, how?

Cognitive psychology research questions

Cognitive psychology is the branch that focuses on the interactions of thinking, emotion, creativity, and problem-solving. It also explores the reasons humans think the way they do.

This topic involves exploring how people think by measuring intelligence, thoughts, and cognition. 

Here are some research question ideas:

6. Is there a link between chronic stress and memory function?

7. Can certain kinds of music trigger memories in people with memory loss?

8. Do remote meetings impact the efficacy of team decision-making?

9. Do word games and puzzles slow cognitive decline in adults over the age of 80?

10. Does watching television impact a child’s reading ability?

Developmental psychology research questions

Developmental psychology is the study of how humans grow and change over their lifespan. It usually focuses on the social, emotional, and physical development of babies and children, though it can apply to people of all ages. Developmental psychology is important for understanding how we learn, mature, and adapt to changes.

Here are some questions that might inspire your research:

11. Does grief accelerate the aging process?

12. How do parent–child attachment patterns influence the development of emotion regulation in teenagers?

13. Does bilingualism affect cognitive decline in adults over the age of 70?

14. How does the transition to adulthood impact decision-making abilities

15. How does early exposure to music impact mental health and well-being in school-aged children?

Personality psychology research questions

Personality psychology studies personalities, how they develop, their structures, and the processes that define them. It looks at intelligence, disposition, moral beliefs, thoughts, and reactions.

The goal of this branch of psychology is to scientifically interpret the way personality patterns manifest into an individual’s behaviors. Here are some example research questions:

16. Nature vs. nurture: Which impacts personality development the most?

17. The role of genetics on personality: Does an adopted child take on their biological parents’ personality traits?

18. How do personality traits influence leadership styles and effectiveness in organizational settings?

19. Is there a relationship between an individual’s personality and mental health?

20. Can a chronic illness affect your personality?

Abnormal psychology research questions

As the name suggests, abnormal psychology is a branch that focuses on abnormal behavior and psychopathology (the scientific study of mental illness or disorders).

Abnormal behavior can be challenging to define. Who decides what is “normal”? As such, psychologists in this area focus on the level of distress that certain behaviors may cause, although this typically involves studying mental health conditions such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and phobias.

Here are some questions to consider:

21. How does technology impact the development of social anxiety disorder?

22. What are the factors behind the rising incidence of eating disorders in adolescents?

23. Are mindfulness-based interventions effective in the treatment of PTSD?

24. Is there a connection between depression and gambling addiction?

25. Can physical trauma cause psychopathy?

Clinical psychology research questions

Clinical psychology deals with assessing and treating mental illness or abnormal or psychiatric behaviors. It differs from abnormal psychology in that it focuses more on treatments and clinical aspects, while abnormal psychology is more behavioral focused.

This is a specialty area that provides care and treatment for complex mental health conditions. This can include treatment, not only for individuals but for couples, families, and other groups. Clinical psychology also supports communities, conducts research, and offers training to promote mental health. This category is very broad, so there are lots of topics to explore.

Below are some example research questions to consider:

26. Do criminals require more specific therapies or interventions?

27. How effective are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in treating mental health disorders?

28. Are there any disadvantages to humanistic therapy?

29. Can group therapy be more beneficial than one-on-one therapy sessions?

30. What are the factors to consider when selecting the right treatment plan for patients with anxiety?

Experimental psychology research questions

Experimental psychology deals with studies that can prove or disprove a hypothesis. Psychologists in this field use scientific methods to collect data on basic psychological processes such as memory, cognition, and learning. They use this data to test the whys and hows of behavior and how outside factors influence its creation.

Areas of interest in this branch relate to perception, memory, emotion, and sensation. The below are example questions that could inspire your own research:

31. Do male or female parents/carers have a more calming influence on children?

32. Will your preference for a genre of music increase the more you listen to it?

33. What are the psychological effects of posting on social media vs. not posting?

34. How is productivity affected by social connection?

35. Is cheating contagious?

Organizational psychology research questions

Organizational psychology studies human behavior in the workplace. It is most frequently used to evaluate an employee, group, or a company’s organizational dynamics. Researchers aim to isolate issues and identify solutions.

This area of study can be beneficial to both employees and employers since the goal is to improve the overall work environment and experience. Researchers apply psychological principles and findings to recommend improvements in performance, communication, job satisfaction, and safety. 

Some potential research questions include the following:

36. How do different leadership styles affect employee morale?

37. Do longer lunch breaks boost employee productivity?

38. Is gender an antecedent to workplace stress?

39. What is the most effective way to promote work–life balance among employees?

40. How do different organizational structures impact the effectiveness of communication, decision-making, and productivity?

Forensic psychology research questions

Some questions to consider exploring in this branch of psychology are:

41. How does incarceration affect mental health?

42. Is childhood trauma a driver for criminal behavior during adulthood?

43. Are people with mental health conditions more likely to be victims of crimes?

44. What are the drivers of false memories, and how do they impact the justice system?

45. Is the media responsible for copycat crimes?

Educational psychology research questions

Educational psychology studies children in an educational setting. It covers topics like teaching methods, aptitude assessment, self-motivation, technology, and parental involvement.

Research in this field of psychology is vital for understanding and optimizing learning processes. It informs educators about cognitive development, learning styles, and effective teaching strategies.

Here are some example research questions:

46. Are different teaching styles more beneficial for children at different times of the day?

47. Can listening to classical music regularly increase a student’s test scores?

48. Is there a connection between sugar consumption and knowledge retention in students?

49. Does sleep duration and quality impact academic performance?

50. Does daily meditation at school influence students’ academic performance and mental health?

Sports psychology research question examples

Sport psychology aims to optimize physical performance and well-being in athletes by using cognitive and behavioral practices and interventions. Some methods include counseling, training, and clinical interventions.

Research in this area is important because it can improve team and individual performance, resilience, motivation, confidence, and overall well-being

Here are some research question ideas for you to consider:

51. How can a famous coach affect a team’s performance?

52. How can athletes control negative emotions in violent or high-contact sports?

53. How does using social media impact an athlete’s performance and well-being?

54. Can psychological interventions help with injury rehabilitation?

55. How can mindfulness practices boost sports performance?

Cultural psychology research question examples

The premise of this branch of psychology is that mind and culture are inseparable. In other words, people are shaped by their cultures, and their cultures are shaped by them. This can be a complex interaction.

Cultural psychology is vital as it explores how cultural context shapes individuals’ thoughts, behaviors, and perceptions. It provides insights into diverse perspectives, promoting cross-cultural understanding and reducing biases.

Here are some ideas that you might consider researching:

56. Are there cultural differences in how people perceive and deal with pain?

57. Are different cultures at increased risk of developing mental health conditions?

58. Are there cultural differences in coping strategies for stress?

59. Do our different cultures shape our personalities?

60. How does multi-generational culture influence family values and structure?

Health psychology research question examples

Health psychology is a crucial field of study. Understanding how psychological factors influence health behaviors, adherence to medical treatments, and overall wellness enables health experts to develop effective interventions and preventive measures, ultimately improving health outcomes.

Health psychology also aids in managing stress, promoting healthy behaviors, and optimizing mental health, fostering a holistic approach to well-being.

Here are five ideas to inspire research in this field:

61. How can health psychology interventions improve lifestyle behaviors to prevent cardiovascular diseases?

62. What role do social norms play in vaping among adolescents?

63. What role do personality traits play in the development and management of chronic pain conditions?

64. How do cultural beliefs and attitudes influence health-seeking behaviors in diverse populations?

65. What are the psychological factors influencing the adherence to preventive health behaviors, such as vaccination and regular screenings?

Neuropsychology research paper question examples

Neuropsychology research explores how a person’s cognition and behavior are related to their brain and nervous system. Researchers aim to advance the diagnosis and treatment of behavioral and cognitive effects of neurological disorders.

Researchers may work with children facing learning or developmental challenges, or with adults with declining cognitive abilities. They may also focus on injuries or illnesses of the brain, such as traumatic brain injuries, to determine the effect on cognitive and behavioral functions.

Neuropsychology informs diagnosis and treatment strategies for conditions such as dementia, traumatic brain injuries, and psychiatric disorders. Understanding the neural basis of behavior enhances our ability to optimize cognitive functioning, rehabilitate people with brain injuries, and improve patient care.

Here are some example research questions to consider:

66. How do neurotransmitter imbalances in specific brain regions contribute to mood disorders such as depression?

67. How can a traumatic brain injury affect memory?

68. What neural processes underlie attention deficits in people with ADHD?

69. Do medications affect the brain differently after a traumatic brain injury?

70. What are the behavioral effects of prolonged brain swelling?

Psychology of religion research question examples

The psychology of religion is a field that studies the interplay between belief systems, spirituality, and mental well-being. It explores the application of the psychological methods and interpretive frameworks of religious traditions and how they relate to both religious and non-religious people.

Psychology of religion research contributes to a holistic understanding of human experiences. It fosters cultural competence and guides therapeutic approaches that respect diverse spiritual beliefs.

Here are some example research questions in this field:

71. What impact does a religious upbringing have on a child’s self-esteem?

72. How do religious beliefs shape decision-making and perceptions of morality?

73. What is the impact of religious indoctrination?

74. Is there correlation between religious and mindfulness practices?

75. How does religious affiliation impact attitudes towards mental health treatment and help-seeking behaviors?

Controversial topics in psychology research question examples

Some psychology topics don’t fit into any of the subcategories above, but they may still be worthwhile topics to consider. These topics are the ones that spark interest, conversation, debate, and disagreement. They are often inspired by current issues and assess the validity of older research.

Consider some of these research question examples:

76. How does the rise in on-screen violence impact behavior in adolescents.

77. Should access to social media platforms be restricted in children under the age of 12 to improve mental health?

78. Are prescription mental health medications over-prescribed in older adults? If so, what are the effects of this?

79. Cognitive biases in AI: what are the implications for decision-making?

80. What are the psychological and ethical implications of using virtual reality in exposure therapy for treating trauma-related conditions?

• Inspiration for your next psychology research project

You can choose from a diverse range of research questions that intersect and overlap across various specialties.

From cognitive psychology to clinical studies, each inquiry contributes to a deeper understanding of the human mind and behavior. Importantly, the relevance of these questions transcends individual disciplines, as many findings offer insights applicable across multiple areas of study.

As health trends evolve and societal needs shift, new topics emerge, fueling continual exploration and discovery. Diving into this ever-changing and expanding area of study enables you to navigate the complexities of the human experience and pave the way for innovative solutions to the challenges of tomorrow.

Should you be using a customer insights hub?

Do you want to discover previous research faster?

Do you share your research findings with others?

Do you analyze research data?

Start for free today, add your research, and get to key insights faster

Editor’s picks

Last updated: 11 January 2024

Last updated: 15 January 2024

Last updated: 17 January 2024

Last updated: 12 May 2023

Last updated: 30 April 2024

Last updated: 18 May 2023

Last updated: 25 November 2023

Last updated: 13 May 2024

Latest articles

Related topics, .css-je19u9{-webkit-align-items:flex-end;-webkit-box-align:flex-end;-ms-flex-align:flex-end;align-items:flex-end;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;-webkit-box-flex-wrap:wrap;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;row-gap:0;text-align:center;max-width:671px;}@media (max-width: 1079px){.css-je19u9{max-width:400px;}.css-je19u9>span{white-space:pre;}}@media (max-width: 799px){.css-je19u9{max-width:400px;}.css-je19u9>span{white-space:pre;}} decide what to .css-1kiodld{max-height:56px;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}@media (max-width: 1079px){.css-1kiodld{display:none;}} build next, decide what to build next.

Users report unexpectedly high data usage, especially during streaming sessions.

Users find it hard to navigate from the home page to relevant playlists in the app.

It would be great to have a sleep timer feature, especially for bedtime listening.

I need better filters to find the songs or artists I’m looking for.

Log in or sign up

Get started for free

New Content From Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science

• Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science
• Cognitive Dissonance
• Meta-Analysis
• Methodology
• Preregistration
• Reproducibility

A Practical Guide to Conversation Research: How to Study What People Say to Each Other Michael Yeomans, F. Katelynn Boland, Hanne Collins, Nicole Abi-Esber, and Alison Wood Brooks  

Conversation—a verbal interaction between two or more people—is a complex, pervasive, and consequential human behavior. Conversations have been studied across many academic disciplines. However, advances in recording and analysis techniques over the last decade have allowed researchers to more directly and precisely examine conversations in natural contexts and at a larger scale than ever before, and these advances open new paths to understand humanity and the social world. Existing reviews of text analysis and conversation research have focused on text generated by a single author (e.g., product reviews, news articles, and public speeches) and thus leave open questions about the unique challenges presented by interactive conversation data (i.e., dialogue). In this article, we suggest approaches to overcome common challenges in the workflow of conversation science, including recording and transcribing conversations, structuring data (to merge turn-level and speaker-level data sets), extracting and aggregating linguistic features, estimating effects, and sharing data. This practical guide is meant to shed light on current best practices and empower more researchers to study conversations more directly—to expand the community of conversation scholars and contribute to a greater cumulative scientific understanding of the social world. 

Open-Science Guidance for Qualitative Research: An Empirically Validated Approach for De-Identifying Sensitive Narrative Data Rebecca Campbell, McKenzie Javorka, Jasmine Engleton, Kathryn Fishwick, Katie Gregory, and Rachael Goodman-Williams  

The open-science movement seeks to make research more transparent and accessible. To that end, researchers are increasingly expected to share de-identified data with other scholars for review, reanalysis, and reuse. In psychology, open-science practices have been explored primarily within the context of quantitative data, but demands to share qualitative data are becoming more prevalent. Narrative data are far more challenging to de-identify fully, and because qualitative methods are often used in studies with marginalized, minoritized, and/or traumatized populations, data sharing may pose substantial risks for participants if their information can be later reidentified. To date, there has been little guidance in the literature on how to de-identify qualitative data. To address this gap, we developed a methodological framework for remediating sensitive narrative data. This multiphase process is modeled on common qualitative-coding strategies. The first phase includes consultations with diverse stakeholders and sources to understand reidentifiability risks and data-sharing concerns. The second phase outlines an iterative process for recognizing potentially identifiable information and constructing individualized remediation strategies through group review and consensus. The third phase includes multiple strategies for assessing the validity of the de-identification analyses (i.e., whether the remediated transcripts adequately protect participants’ privacy). We applied this framework to a set of 32 qualitative interviews with sexual-assault survivors. We provide case examples of how blurring and redaction techniques can be used to protect names, dates, locations, trauma histories, help-seeking experiences, and other information about dyadic interactions. 

Impossible Hypotheses and Effect-Size Limits Wijnand van Tilburg and Lennert van Tilburg

Psychological science is moving toward further specification of effect sizes when formulating hypotheses, performing power analyses, and considering the relevance of findings. This development has sparked an appreciation for the wider context in which such effect sizes are found because the importance assigned to specific sizes may vary from situation to situation. We add to this development a crucial but in psychology hitherto underappreciated contingency: There are mathematical limits to the magnitudes that population effect sizes can take within the common multivariate context in which psychology is situated, and these limits can be far more restrictive than typically assumed. The implication is that some hypothesized or preregistered effect sizes may be impossible. At the same time, these restrictions offer a way of statistically triangulating the plausible range of unknown effect sizes. We explain the reason for the existence of these limits, illustrate how to identify them, and offer recommendations and tools for improving hypothesized effect sizes by exploiting the broader multivariate context in which they occur. 

It’s All About Timing: Exploring Different Temporal Resolutions for Analyzing Digital-Phenotyping Data Anna Langener, Gert Stulp, Nicholas Jacobson, Andrea Costanzo, Raj Jagesar, Martien Kas, and Laura Bringmann  

The use of smartphones and wearable sensors to passively collect data on behavior has great potential for better understanding psychological well-being and mental disorders with minimal burden. However, there are important methodological challenges that may hinder the widespread adoption of these passive measures. A crucial one is the issue of timescale: The chosen temporal resolution for summarizing and analyzing the data may affect how results are interpreted. Despite its importance, the choice of temporal resolution is rarely justified. In this study, we aim to improve current standards for analyzing digital-phenotyping data by addressing the time-related decisions faced by researchers. For illustrative purposes, we use data from 10 students whose behavior (e.g., GPS, app usage) was recorded for 28 days through the Behapp application on their mobile phones. In parallel, the participants actively answered questionnaires on their phones about their mood several times a day. We provide a walk-through on how to study different timescales by doing individualized correlation analyses and random-forest prediction models. By doing so, we demonstrate how choosing different resolutions can lead to different conclusions. Therefore, we propose conducting a multiverse analysis to investigate the consequences of choosing different temporal resolutions. This will improve current standards for analyzing digital-phenotyping data and may help combat the replications crisis caused in part by researchers making implicit decisions. 

Calculating Repeated-Measures Meta-Analytic Effects for Continuous Outcomes: A Tutorial on Pretest–Posttest-Controlled Designs David R. Skvarc, Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz  

Meta-analysis is a statistical technique that combines the results of multiple studies to arrive at a more robust and reliable estimate of an overall effect or estimate of the true effect. Within the context of experimental study designs, standard meta-analyses generally use between-groups differences at a single time point. This approach fails to adequately account for preexisting differences that are likely to threaten causal inference. Meta-analyses that take into account the repeated-measures nature of these data are uncommon, and so this article serves as an instructive methodology for increasing the precision of meta-analyses by attempting to estimate the repeated-measures effect sizes, with particular focus on contexts with two time points and two groups (a between-groups pretest–posttest design)—a common scenario for clinical trials and experiments. In this article, we summarize the concept of a between-groups pretest–posttest meta-analysis and its applications. We then explain the basic steps involved in conducting this meta-analysis, including the extraction of data and several alternative approaches for the calculation of effect sizes. We also highlight the importance of considering the presence of within-subjects correlations when conducting this form of meta-analysis.   

Reliability and Feasibility of Linear Mixed Models in Fully Crossed Experimental Designs Michele Scandola, Emmanuele Tidoni  

The use of linear mixed models (LMMs) is increasing in psychology and neuroscience research In this article, we focus on the implementation of LMMs in fully crossed experimental designs. A key aspect of LMMs is choosing a random-effects structure according to the experimental needs. To date, opposite suggestions are present in the literature, spanning from keeping all random effects (maximal models), which produces several singularity and convergence issues, to removing random effects until the best fit is found, with the risk of inflating Type I error (reduced models). However, defining the random structure to fit a nonsingular and convergent model is not straightforward. Moreover, the lack of a standard approach may lead the researcher to make decisions that potentially inflate Type I errors. After reviewing LMMs, we introduce a step-by-step approach to avoid convergence and singularity issues and control for Type I error inflation during model reduction of fully crossed experimental designs. Specifically, we propose the use of complex random intercepts (CRIs) when maximal models are overparametrized. CRIs are multiple random intercepts that represent the residual variance of categorical fixed effects within a given grouping factor. We validated CRIs and the proposed procedure by extensive simulations and a real-case application. We demonstrate that CRIs can produce reliable results and require less computational resources. Moreover, we outline a few criteria and recommendations on how and when scholars should reduce overparametrized models. Overall, the proposed procedure provides clear solutions to avoid overinflated results using LMMs in psychology and neuroscience.   

Understanding Meta-Analysis Through Data Simulation With Applications to Power Analysis Filippo Gambarota, Gianmarco Altoè  

Meta-analysis is a powerful tool to combine evidence from existing literature. Despite several introductory and advanced materials about organizing, conducting, and reporting a meta-analysis, to our knowledge, there are no introductive materials about simulating the most common meta-analysis models. Data simulation is essential for developing and validating new statistical models and procedures. Furthermore, data simulation is a powerful educational tool for understanding a statistical method. In this tutorial, we show how to simulate equal-effects, random-effects, and metaregression models and illustrate how to estimate statistical power. Simulations for multilevel and multivariate models are available in the Supplemental Material available online. All materials associated with this article can be accessed on OSF ( https://osf.io/54djn/ ).   

Feedback on this article? Email  [email protected]  or login to comment.

APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website. Effective February 2021, you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations present in article comments are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of APS or the article’s author. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines .

Please login with your APS account to comment.

Privacy Overview

Connecting value creation for society with work engagement: the relevance of an organization’s public value as an extension of the job characteristics model

• Open access
• Published: 16 May 2024

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

• Timo Meynhardt   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2762-7538 1 , 2 ,
• Carolin Hermann 2 &
• Jessica Bardeli 1  

Since the seminal work by Hackman and Oldham ( 1975 ) there has been a growing body of literature demonstrating how work characteristics can positively both organizations and their employees. While the very nature of the task or job at hand is well explored, insufficient attention has been given to the social and cultural context in which the work is done (Spreitzer & Cameron, 2012 ). Based on Meynhardt’s public value approach ( 2009 , 2015 ), we investigate whether organizational public value acts as an additional work characteristic in the Job Characteristics Model (JCM), thus extending the model. Specifically, we theorize that organizational public value is an additional unique resource for employees and social context work characteristic in the JCM that is positively related to employees work engagement. Additionally, our study analyzes that the positive relationship between the work characteristics, including organizational public value, and work engagement is mediated by self-efficacy. Moreover, we analyze whether employees working in industries with a public focus integrated into their core business will experience higher levels of public value in their jobs than employees in other industries. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a representative online survey in different public and non-public organizations in Switzerland ( N  = 949). Overall, the results support our hypotheses and contribute to close the gap by taking social context factors into the JCM and to reveal processes between the macro-level (organizational public value, work characteristics) and micro-level (employees work experience). Further theoretical and practical implications as well as future research avenues are discussed in the paper.

Similar content being viewed by others

Engagement at a higher level: The effects of public value on employee engagement, the organization, and society

Work engagement in the third sector.

Doing Good, Feeling Good? Entrepreneurs’ Social Value Creation Beliefs and Work-Related Well-Being

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

What makes individuals, workgroups and organizations flourish at work is an important topic that has attracted increasing interest from researchers. To find out more about how positive states at work emerge, positive organizational scholarship researchers have called for further research that addresses the interrelationships among individuals and the broader organization as well as the social and cultural context of work (Dutton & Glynn, 2008 ; Spreitzer & Cameron, 2012 ). Moreover, this relationship receives more public attention due to issues such as ecological, demographical or geopolitical grand challenges (Brammer et al., 2019 ). Due to the rising number of global events, business needs to step up on societal issues. Because public and non-public organizations contribute to societal cohesion (Meynhardt, 2015 ), societal legitimization of organizational activities remains a critical point. Thus, scholars and practitioners are focusing on the relationship between organizations, society and individuals, pursuing concepts such as public value (Meynhardt, 2009 , 2015 ). The public value approach of Meynhardt ( 2009 , 2015 ) describes the individual perception of an organization’s contribution to the common good, so that the evaluation can be positive or negative, depending on the shared collective need fulfilment. Already Bryson et al. ( 2021 ) emphasized, “[t]o create public value and advance the common good is […] what the grand challenges of our time require” (p. 180). In particular, current data highlights that existing crisis and challenges have a negative impact on employees work outcomes (Newman et al., 2022 ; Liu et al., 2021 ). Therefore, organizations are being called upon to find ways to counteract this (Gabriel & Aguinis, 2022 ; Pearson & Mitroff, 2019 ). One pathway begins with the recognition that the social context in which organizations are embedded, has an impact on the organizational and individual level and should be considered in the work design. However, current work design models neglect the social impact of organizations for employees and society and the effect on positive work outcomes, such as work engagement (Bailey et al., 2017 ). Established models, such as the job characteristics model (JCM) (Hackman & Oldham, 1975 ), addresses questions of how tasks need to be designed to positively influence employee-related outcomes through related work characteristics, but the broader social and organizational context has barely been taken into account, so there is a need to expand the JCM. Previous studies have mainly focused on the relationship of work characteristics such as skill variety or task identity on positive work outcomes (Milovanska-Farrington, 2023 ; Rai & Maheshwari, 2020 ; Saks, 2006 ). Consequently, we need more research into the relevance of work characteristics, not only in terms of the task itself (Parker et al., 2001 ), but rather in terms of the social context of the organization and the associated impact on employees’ work outcomes. In this regard, our main aim of the study is to include public value as an organizational social context factor and additional unique work characteristic into the JCM to investigate the relationship with positive work-related outcomes, especially on employees work engagement. In order to close the gap between the macro-level (organizational public value, work characteristics) and micro-level (employees work experience), it is important to understand the underlying processes. While organizations are stronger called upon to reflect their purpose and role in society, at the same time, employees search for purpose and meaning in work (Jasinenko & Steuber, 2023 ; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001 ). Experiencing work meaningfulness is one of the most important factor related to organizational outcomes such as employee well-being or work engagement (e.g., Albrecht et al., 2021 ; Chen et al., 2011 ; Lysova et al., 2019 ; Panda et al., 2022 ). Thus, understanding alternative sources of meaning and motivation at work, which are associated with human thriving and contribution to the greater good, is central for work researchers. Following the meaningfulness of work that arises from the underlying mechanisms of the JCM and public value theory, we further include self-efficacy beliefs as mediator of this connection. Thus, our study connects to the work of Grant ( 2008 ), who found that when employees see the significance of their work by improving the welfare of others, it positively influences their job performance. By extending these findings to the organizational level instead of the task level, we assume that when employees recognize their organization contributes to the greater good, it enables them to perceive their work as more meaningful and strengthens also their self-efficacy, which should be positively related to their work engagement. So far, the purposeful strategic focus on creating public value has already been linked to increased organizational performance at the macro-level (Gartenberg et al., 2019 ), but the outcomes of perceived public value creation at the intra-individual micro-level have not yet been sufficiently researched (Hartley et al., 2017 ). We also seek to examine whether there is a difference in the perception of the public value of public and non-public organizations. Ritz et al. ( 2023 ) have already pointed out to closing this research gap by encouraging future research to examine the extent to which perceptions of public value depend on sector affiliation and other organizational characteristics. For the purpose of our study, we applied a cross-sectional design with study data from different industries in public and non-public organizations in Switzerland.

With this paper, we contribute three-fold: First, we supplement the JCM with Meynhardt’s public value approach ( 2009 , 2015 ), which considers the contribution to the common good as social contextual factor at the macro-level and investigate the relationship with micro-level experience of employee work engagement. In this context the organizational, societal and individual levels are considered in our study. Second, our study serves as a further addition to the field of research on public value (Grubert et al., 2022 ; Meynhardt & Jasinenko, 2020 ; Ritz et al., 2023 ) that has also supported to bridge the gap between micro- and macro-level processes. Third, our study shows practitioners what positive consequences organizational public value has on employees beside other work characteristics, so that measures to create public value within the organization should be established.

Theoretical background and hypotheses development

• Job characteristics model

Work design research can be described as “the study, creation, and modification of the composition, content, structure, and environment within which jobs and roles are enacted” (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2008 , p. 47). In the following, we employ the term work design rather than job design because this term better reflects the fact that important aspects of work include characteristics of the environment in which work takes place in addition to the content and organization of tasks (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006 ). The JCM proposes five core dimensions of work – skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback from the job (Hackman & Oldham, 1975 ). These characteristics produce three “critical psychological states”, namely experienced meaningfulness of work, experienced responsibility for the outcomes of work, and knowledge of the results of work activities (Hackman & Oldham, 1975 ). These psychological states are considered to be responsible for positive personal and work outcomes such as internal motivation, work satisfaction, or performance (Hackman & Oldham, 1975 ). Working in jobs with high task significance leads employees to feel that their job is meaningful (Hackman & Oldham, 1975 ). However, by focusing on the task level, task significance signals the employee that their own endeavors provide opportunities to contribute to others’ welfare (Grant, 2008 ). Task significance does not refer to contributing to others’ welfare at an organizational level, which is considered in our study. Some studies support the importance of social characteristics in work design (e.g., Humphrey et al., 2007 ; Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006 ). Results of the analysis showed that social characteristics explained a large amount of unique variance concerning different employee outcomes like organizational commitment (40%), job satisfaction (17%) and subjective performance (9%) apart from motivational characteristics (Humphrey et al., 2007 ). However, just a few researchers have addressed social and contextual factors of work. Morgeson and Humphrey ( 2006 ), for example, developed an extended model of work design that considers social characteristics (e.g., social support and feedback from superiors and employees) and contextual characteristics (e.g., ergonomics and work conditions). Grant ( 2007 ) took another important step toward a broader social perspective on work design, developing a conceptual framework to explain relational aspects of work design. He proposed that a relational architecture of jobs can enhance employees’ prosocial motivation and performance (Grant, 2007 ). Although these approaches extend the view on work design models toward emphasizing social and contextual factors of work, they do not consider the broad view of how organizations are embedded in society and how the current grand challenges affect the organizational and employee level in this context. Therefore, we address the question of the relevance of an organization’s public value as an addition in the JCM for employees work engagement.

• Public value

Organizations are “organs of society. They do not exist for their own sake, but to fulfill a specific social purpose and satisfy a specific need of society, community, or individual” (Drucker, 2011 , p. 36). Since organizations work in and for society, they have an important role in shaping societal values that are collectively shared (Meynhardt, 2009 , 2015 ). Organizations behave responsibly when corporate actions are aligned with society’s values and needs and are legitimized by society (Meynhardt, 2009 , 2015 ). One needs to look at its micro foundation to understand better the consequences of socially responsible firm behavior for employees. In this context, the construct of organizational public value is used to identify the value contribution of an organization to society. Based on Meynhardt’s approach ( 2009 , 2015 ), the theory includes a psychologically-based explanation for the relationship between individual experiences and the evaluation of business activities to improve the greater good. Public value refers to the interrelatedness between the individual and society and links individual basic needs to societal value creation of organizations. According to Meynhardt’s approach, “value for the public is a result of evaluations about how basic needs of individuals, groups and the society as a whole are influenced in relationships involving the public” (Meynhardt, 2009 , p. 212). Thereby, emotional-motivational processes like needs, emotions, or attitudes that initiate evaluations build the basis of evaluation (Meynhardt, 2009 ). Further, psychological needs build the basis of public value because every evaluation is grounded in psychological needs, which serve as reference points for evaluations (Meynhardt, 2009 , 2015 ). This evaluation of organizational activities is calibrated according to these basic psychological needs, which have their foundation in Epstein’s cognitive-experiential self-theory (Epstein, 2003 ): the need for orientation and control, which reflects a utilitarian-instrumental dimension; the need for positive self-evaluation, which reflects a moral-ethical dimension; the need for positive relationships, which reflects a political-social dimension; and the need for gaining pleasure and avoiding pain, which reflects a hedonistic-aesthetical dimension (Meynhardt, 2009 ). Hence, organizations can contribute to the fulfillment of basic needs and, in this way, can create public value but can also destroy public value if basic needs are not satisfied (Meynhardt, 2009 , 2015 ). Public value integrates different equally important value dimensions and thus takes a more holistic view on value creation. We grounded our study on the public value approach by Meynhardt ( 2009 , 2015 ). Especially, value creation for society can be seen as a resource for the individual (Meynhardt, 2009 ), because the satisfaction of needs is a condition for personal development (Epstein, 2003 ). It responds to the needs of individuals to find meaning and purpose in life. Previous research findings has shown a positive relationship between organizational public value and motivational work outcomes at the organizational and employee level (Grubert et al., 2022 ; Ritz et al., 2023 ). Accordingly, the current research results lead to the assumption that organizational public value is an important social context work characteristic at the organizational level that is positively related to work engagement at the individual level. In this regard, Meynhardt’s public value approach ( 2009 , 2015 ) provides an organizational perspective and allows us to integrate processes between the macro- and micro-level.

The relationship between work characteristics, including organizational public value, and work engagement

Our model aims to create understanding about the relationship between work characteristics, including the employee perception of an organizational public value, and employee work engagement and their underlying mechanism. In the recent years, the work engagement concept and research field gained interest. The authors Schaufeli et al. ( 2002 ) describe the experience of engagement among employees as a positive work-related state of mind with character traits of vigour, dedication and absorption. A majority of work engagement research focuses on the impact at the individual factors instead of situational and contextual factors (Bailey et al., 2017 ). Thus, previous research has been undertaken by work design research, which has shown that good working conditions and workplace lead to higher levels of work engagement (Dinh, 2020 ; Rasool et al., 2021 ; Jurek & Besta, 2021 ; Truss et al., 2013 ). In the context of the JCM, a meta-analyze pointed out that task-related work characteristics (task variety and autonomy) are positively linked to engagement at work (Crawford et al., 2010 ). Further research has indicated that work characteristics are positively related to work engagement (e.g., Hakanen et al., 2008 ; Rai & Maheshwari, 2020 ; Saks, 2006 ). But the field has broadened through additional research examining not only work-specific characteristics (Chen et al., 2011 ) as in the JCM, but also contextual characteristics related to work engagement (Bailey et al., 2017 ; Christian et al., 2011 ; Humphrey et al., 2007 ). However, so far, there is no research that take social context characteristics as the public value into consideration. In this sense, this study attempts to identify the positive relationship of the organizational and societal level on work engagement on the individual level in order to bridge the gap, which was already postulated by Bailey et al. ( 2017 ). This is becoming increasingly important due to the current challenges organizations are confronted with (Brammer et al., 2019 ). We extended the JCM by the inclusion of the employee perception of organizational public value, which leads to our argument that an organization’s contribution to society is a source of meaningfulness for employees and an important additional work characteristic in the JCM, which has not been researched before according to our knowledge. Many employees are searching for more than mere financial compensation and want to find work that offers the possibility to achieve something meaningful. Hence, work design models should integrate alternative manifestations of work meaningfulness that are not limited to the characteristics of certain tasks (Chaudhary, 2022 ; Glavas, 2012 ). One source of meaningfulness for the employee should be represented by the organization’s contribution to the common good in the sense of public value. In this study the term meaningfulness is defined as the perception of the importance of goals and activities they perform in the organizations in relation to employees own self and life (Barrick et al., 2013 ). In order to provide employees with meaningfulness, organizations have a responsibility to balance the needs of the organization with the needs of the employees (Cartwright & Holmes, 2006 ). Organizations that contribute to the common good can satisfy the basic needs of employees, as described in Meynhardt’s public value theory ( 2009 , 2015 ), which leads to employees valuing their work as more meaningful, rewarding and worthwhile for themselves and others (Aguinis & Glavas, 2019 ; May et al., 2004 ). Accordingly, work meaning arises when employees understand what they are doing and why their work is significant (Wrzesniewski et al., 2003 ). In this view, work meaning is socially constructed and dynamic over time. Individual characteristics like personal values and preferences, along with the social context – the interaction with others – contribute appreciably to work meaning (Wrzesniewski et al., 2003 ). Work meaning at the individual task level focuses on the content of the work itself, whereas work meaning at the organizational level focuses on the interaction between organizational members and the values and goals of the organization (Pratt & Ashfort, 2003 ). Since meaningfulness depends on employees’ identities and individual sense-making, it cannot just be provided by the organization. However, organizations can facilitate employees’ experiences of meaningfulness in and at work (Pratt & Ashfort, 2003 ). Organizational practices that concentrate on the job itself, such as job redesign to increase skill variety or autonomy, foster the experience of meaningfulness in work. The experience of meaningfulness at work can be achieved by enriching employees’ organizational membership by promoting organizational goals, values, or beliefs or the alteration of relationships between employees (Pratt & Ashfort, 2003 ). Employees’ perception of work as meaningful has a positive impact on work outcomes (Albrecht et al., 2021 ; Allan et al., 2019 ; Frieder et al., 2018 ; Hackman & Oldham, 1975 ; Lysova et al., 2019 ; Panda et al., 2022 ), especially on work engagement (Woods & Sofat, 2013 ; Demirtas et al., 2017 ; Fairlie, 2011 ). Particularly important is the research on work engagement that has identified an indirect relationship between work characteristics and work engagement through meaningfulness (May et al., 2004 ; Rothmann & Welsh, 2013 ). Consequently, it is not surprising that meaningful work characteristics – in the sense of self-actualizing work, work that has a social impact, reflects values and realizes one’s life goals – were found to predict substantive variance of employee engagement in addition to other work characteristics (e.g., Fairlie, 2011 ). Other studies have shown that the experience of work meaningfulness has been the most powerful mediator between all motivational work characteristics and work outcomes (Humphrey et al., 2007 ). Hence, we argue that in the same way task-specific work characteristics contributes to experienced meaningfulness in work, public value should contribute to experienced meaningfulness at work. Therefore, we believe that the organization’s value creation for society offers an additional resource for the employee (Meynhardt, 2015 ) by infusing meaningfulness at work and thus should be positively related to employee work engagement. Thus, we formulate the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1

Employee perception of an organization’s public value accounts for additional unique variance in employee work engagement beyond the work characteristics skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback from the job.

The mediating role of self-efficacy in the relationship between work characteristics, including organizational public value, and work engagement

In addition to work characteristics and organizational public value as a resource for the employee work engagement, individual factors are also important to consider, because they play an important role in work design models owing to their interaction with work characteristics (Schaufeli & Taris, 2014 ). Individual factors might act as “third variables” (Schaufeli & Taris, 2014 , p. 51) in the sense that they not only influence how work characteristics are perceived, but also influence employee well-being and motivation. According to the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989 ), individuals strive to gain, build and preserve resources as well as experience stress when resources are threatened. A key resource that relates to physical and emotional well-being, and which is important for human functioning as a personal resource, is self-efficacy (Bandura, 1994 ; Hobfoll, 1989 ; Judge et al., 2007 ). The self-efficacy theory is based on Bandura’s conception ( 1997 ) and describes individuals’ assessment of how effectively they can organize and perform the cognitive, social and behavioral skills that constitute them in dealing with future situations (Bandura, 1997 , 1983 ). The belief that one’s skills are sufficient in a situation arises from successful past experiences, vicarious learning, verbal persuasion, and physiological and psychological states (Bandura, 1997). Moreover, they are continuously adjusted and revised in the face of incoming information (Epstein, 2003 ; Judge et al., 2007 ). As a result, previous experiences with work characteristics should enhance individual self-efficacy (Deci & Ryan, 2000 ; Epstein, 2003 ). However, we also assume that the employees’ perception of the organizations contribution to the common good can increase their self-efficacy. One explanation for this assumption is based on the social identity theory (Ashfort & Mael, 1989 ; Tajfel & Turner, 1985 ). It proposes that individuals derive their identity from their membership to relevant social groups. One membership that shapes identity is organizational membership, and if organizations can meet employees’ need for meaning, it leads to positive identification (Ashfort & Mael, 1989 ). Individuals strive for a positive social identity and identify as employees with the actions and image of their organizations, especially if those organizations are perceived positively by others (Ashfort & Mael, 1989 ). From a public value perspective, this means that if employees can associate themselves with organizations that fulfill their personal needs and the needs of society, it should lead to a positive anticipated external appraisal and positive feelings, which should enhance their self-concept and accordingly their self-efficacy. More specifically, belonging to an organization that contributes greatly to the common good can facilitate employees’ identification with the organization and perceived meaning in work, thereby positively influencing employees’ self-image as well as their sense of belonging to the organization (Brieger et al., 2020 ; Jia et al., 2019 ). Consequently, based on the social identity theory and experience of meaningful work, we argue that the employee’s understanding of contributing to society through membership in an organization with public value orientation should enhance their self-efficacy. Therefore, we assume that organizational membership and perception of public value as a unique additional social context resource will constitute a work characteristic for the employee and expands the framework of the JCM, which is positively related to work engagement and mediated by self-efficacy. Our assumption is supported by numerous studies, which have found individual factors, such as self-efficacy, foster work engagement (Christian et al., 2011 ; Schaufeli & Salanova, 2007 ). In addition, studies have found the mediating influence of personal resources like self-efficacy in the relationship between work resources and engagement (Albrecht & Marty, 2020 ; Llorens et al., 2007 ; Xanthopoulou et al., 2007 ). These findings confirm Gist and Mitchell’s ( 1992 ) theoretical perspective that self-efficacy is an important personal resource which directly and indirectly influences motivation- and performance-related outcomes. Further findings revealed a mediating influence of personal resources on the relationship between work characteristics and engagement, since providing a resourceful environment enhances personal feelings to be capable of controlling the work environment and makes people stay engaged (Xanthopoulou et al., 2007 ). But there is a lack of research on social context factors that influence self-efficacy (Guan & So, 2016 ). Additionally, integrating insights from self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2012 ) and social-cognitive theory (Bandura, 2001 ), researchers have begun to uncover a supplementary path from self-efficacy beliefs towards work engagement: human agency. Given these theories hold human nature to be inherently proactive and generative (Bakker & van Woerkom, 2017 ), research has increasingly focused on how need-fulfillment through e.g., the confirmation of self-efficacious beliefs can promote agentic behaviors fostering work engagement, such as an increased focus on the task and increased helpful relating at work (Spreitzer et al., 2005 ). Based on the literature and previous research findings we expect self-efficacy partially mediate the relationship between work characteristics and work engagement, because we did not include all possible mediators within this process (Xanthopoulou et al., 2007 ). In light of our study’s work-context, we therefore hypothesize:

Hypothesis 2

Self-efficacy will partially mediate the relationship between work characteristics, including the additional resource as employee perception of public value, and work engagement.

The resulting mediation model is depicted in Fig.  1 .

Main research model with self-efficacy mediating the relationship between work characteristics, including the additional resource as employee perception of organizational public value, and work engagement

The difference of organizational public value in industries

Linking to the theory of social identity and the sense of belonging to an organization, there can be different perceptions based on the organizational industry. Employees who work in organizations that contribute more to the common good can more easily identify with the organization, which in turn affects their self-efficacy and perceived meaning of work (Brieger et al., 2020 ). Moreover, research has shown differences regarding the task significance of certain occupations (Grant, 2008 ; Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006 ). Employees who worked in jobs that focused on the promotion of human life reported higher task significance owing to the increased salience of their work’s purpose, which resulted in a more affective engagement. Grant ( 2007 ) suggested that if employees see that their work positively impacts other people, their productivity increases. Furthermore, employees who know the impact of their work on society or community perceive work as more significant and meaningful (Grant, 2008 ). Furthermore, the authors Levitats and Vigoda-Gadot ( 2020 ) emphasized that employees, especially in the public sector, make not only within, but also outside the organization an engaged contribution to society in order to serve the organization’s mission. However, prior research does not investigated the different perceptions of organizational level contribution to the welfare of others and society in various industries. Referred to the organizational level, we argue that public value is more salient in organizations where the significance of serving a collective is part of its core business. Hence, we hypothesize:

Hypothesis 3

Employees working in industries with a public focus integrated into their core business will experience higher levels of public value in their work than employees in other industries.

Participants

We tested the hypotheses with data from Switzerland from 2015. Respondents were asked to evaluate the public value of their employing organizations within an online survey. Participants were 949 Swiss German-speaking citizens who were employed at the time of the survey. They were members of a large panel of an independent Swiss market research institute intervista (intervista.ch) and worked across 31 industries. Within the industries, a distinction can be made between public and non-public industries. The public industries include e.g., public administration and healthcare. The non-public industries consists e.g., of banks and insurance. Prior to the main study, a qualitative ( N  = 5) and quantitative ( N  = 100) pretest revealed that the length of the survey was adequate and the questions were comprehensible. Respondents’ age ranged between 19 and over 70 years, of whom 46.6% of the respondents were female and 34.2% had a college degree or higher. In addition, 40.0% held a leadership position and 67.1% worked full-time. Overall, this distribution of socio-economic characteristics corresponds to that of the Swiss population, indicating a comparatively representative sample. After completing the socio-demographic data, participants were asked to complete the survey, which included instruments that test our three hypotheses.

Preliminary analysis

Since we used the short version of the public value scale and abbreviated the self-efficacy scale, we tested construct validity by conducting a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using maximum likelihood estimates following Hinkin ( 1998 ) and Harman’s one-factor test for endogeneity (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986 ). These procedures found that common source bias was not an issue, as a common factor would only extract 30.53% of the variance on average, which is far below the recommended threshold. If the first factor had accounted for the majority of variance among all measures, the presence of a substantial amount of common method bias would have been likely (Podsakoff et al., 2003 ). Following advice by Hinkin ( 1998 ), we statistically tested the validity of the variables public value and self-efficacy by conducting an individual confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). To further test a good fit, we performed a test for convergent validity and composite reliability for the variables public value and self-efficacy. We used the following five indices for the results of the CFA: chi-square/df ratio (χ 2 / df), Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI), Comparative Fit Index (CFI), Root-Mean-Square-Error of Approximation (RMSEA) and Standardized Root-Mean-Square-Residual (SRMR). All items load significantly ( p  < .01) on the specified factor. Factor loadings are generally high (≥ 0.71). Maximum likelihood-based estimation results indicate the model fit for public value (χ 2 (2) = 146.96; p  < .001; CFI = 0.93; TLI = 0.79; RMSEA = 0.27; SRMR = 0.055) and self-efficacy (χ 2 (3) = 403.8; p  < .001; CFI = 1.0; TLI = 1.0). For the variable public value the SRMR value is below the value of 0.08 and likewise the CFI and TLI show good values for the model fit of the variables public value and self-efficacy, even the RMSEA value does not match the value under 0.05 for the variable public value (Brown, 2015 ). Moreover, the average variances extracted (AVE) of 0.73 and 0.59 indicate that convergent validity was not an issue for the variables public value and self-efficacy. The composite reliability (CR) for public value is 0.91 and for self-efficacy 0.81. Hence, we are confident in our short measure since the fit indices indicate overall good construct to data fit and suggesting that the short scales are indeed appropriate.

Work characteristics

For the assessment of the work characteristics, the Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) of Hackman and Oldham ( 1975 ) was used in the German translation (Schmidt & Kleinbeck, 1999). The five core dimensions of the work environment were each assessed with three items: skill variety (α = 0.77) with items like “The job is quite simple and repetitive,” task identity (α = 0.73) with items like “The job provides me the chance to completely finish the pieces of work I begin”, task significance (α = 0.71) with items like “The job is one where a lot of other people can be affected by how well the work gets done”, autonomy (α = 0.75) with items like “The job gives me considerable opportunity for independence and freedom in how I do the work” and feedback from the job (α = 0.75) with items like “After I finish a job, I know whether I performed well”. Participants responded on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (completely incorrect) to 7 (completely correct).

Each employee evaluated the public value of their employing organization using the short version of the public value scale (Meynhardt & Jasinenko, 2020 ) with four items. Respondents indicated the degree to which their employing organization (1) “behaves decently” (moral-ethical dimension), (2) “contributes to the quality of life in society” (hedonistic-aesthetical dimension), (3) “contributes to social cohesion in society” (political-social dimension) and (4) “does good work in its core business” (utilitarian-instrumental dimension). The respondents gave their assessment for each item on a six-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (disagree) to 6 (agree). The measure for public value showed good reliability (α = 0.87).

Self-efficacy

We assessed self-efficacy with three items of the 10-item German General Self-Efficacy Scale (Schwarzer & Jerusalem, 1999 ). We selected three items to reduce respondent burden and chose items that had shown the highest discriminatory power across three measurement points: “When I am confronted with a problem, I can usually find several solutions”, “I can solve most problems if I invest the necessary effort” and “I can usually handle whatever comes my way”. These were answered on a four-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). Cronbach’s α was 0.66.

• Work engagement

We assessed work engagement with the German version of the nine-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004 ) with three items for each of the three aspects of work engagement: vigor, dedication and absorption. Example items included “At my work, I feel bursting with energy” (which represents the aspect of vigor), ”My job inspires me” (which represents the aspect of dedication) and “I feel happy when I am working intensely” (which represents the aspect of absorption). Answers were given on a seven-point Likert scale, anchored at 1 (never) and 7 (always). Cronbach’s α was 0.95.

Control variables

Based on previous studies, we considered several control variables. We controlled for age as a continuous variable; gender (male = 1, female = 2); income (six groups, ranging from a gross monthly income of less than CHF 3,000 to more than CHF 12,000); education (nine groups, ranging from no school-leaving certificate to high tertiary education); current profession (five groups, ranging from apprentice to independent entrepreneur). We also controlled for employee health based on the sick days and the organization’s industry by considering 31 industries.

Analysis and results

Descriptives.

Means, standard deviations and correlations between the variables are displayed in Table  1 . The results show for work engagement ( M  = 4.67, SD = 1.12) and public value ( M  = 4.87, SD = 0.95) positive values. The work characteristics, skill variety ( M  = 5.48, SD = 1.12), task identity ( M  = 5.54, SD = 1.18), task significance ( M  = 5.58, SD = 1.08), autonomy ( M  = 5.56, SD = 1.10) and feedback from the job ( M  = 5.59, SD = 1.02), show above-average means. The potential mediator self-efficacy also shows a higher average value ( M  = 3.12, SD = 0.45). Consistent with other research, we found significant positive correlations between work characteristics and work engagement (see Table  1 ).

Hierarchical regression

To test H1, that public value acts as an additional resource beyond skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback from the job in regard to employee work engagement, we conducted hierarchical regression analyses. Table  2 presents the results of the analyses. Model 1 investigated the relationship between the control variables and work engagement, Model 2 analyzed the relationship between skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, feedback from the job and work engagement. Model 3 examined the relationship between public value and work engagement. The control variables age, gender, education, gross monthly income, industry, current profession and sick days accounted for 9.6% of the total variance in work engagement. The work characteristics entered in Model 2 explained an additional 31.0% of the variance. Public value, entered in Model 3, accounted for an additional 3.7% of unique variance in the overall model. The change in R 2 between the second and third model that resulted from the addition of the public value variable was significant ( p  < .001). The regression weights indicate that public value and skill variety were the most important variables in the overall model. Thus, we could confirm H1.

Mediation analysis

For testing the mediating effect of self-efficacy in the relationship between work characteristics, including the additional resource as public value, and work engagement, we conducted a structural equation modeling (SEM) using IBM SPSS Amos 26. We defined all five work characteristics and public value as the independent variable, self-efficacy as the mediator, and work engagement as the dependent variable. The indirect effect (ab) is described through the path X → M path ( a ), M → Y path (b). First, we performed a CFA to test the measurement model. The CFA results indicate that each item load significantly ( p  < .001) on the specific factor. Factor loadings are high (≥ 0.61). The model fit indices also suggest that the measurement model was a good fit to the data (χ 2 (406) = 1152.67; p  < .001; CFI = 0.95; TLI = 0.94; RMSEA = 0.04; SRMR = 0.03). Second, we conducted a structural test for our mediation research model and specified a just-identified structural equation model ( df  = 0) with good values of CFI = 1.0 and GFI = 1.0. The path coefficients are also significant. Third, we conducted the mediation model test. Table  3 presents the results of the analysis. The results with a 95% bias-corrected bootstrap confidence interval indicate a significant mediation model (standardized indirect effects) (see Fig.  2 ): ab skill variety ß = 0.021; 95%-CI = [0.007; 0.039], ab task significance ß = 0.013; 95%-CI = [0.001; 0.029], ab feedback from the job ß = 0.028; 95%-CI = [0.014; 0.046] and ab public value ß = 0.014; 95%-CI = [0.001; 0.030]. Only the indirect effects of the work characteristics ab task identity ß = -0.001; 95%-CI = [-0.016; 0.013] and ab autonomy ß = 0.009; 95%-CI = [-0.006; 0.024] are not significant. The direct effects of all five work characteristics and public value on work engagement also remain significant c skill variety ß = 0.249; 95%-CI = [0.186; 0.314]; c task identity ß = 0.101; 95%-CI = [0.040; 0.161], c task significance ß = 0.139; 95%-CI = [0.081; 0.197], c autonomy ß = 0.074; 95%-CI = [0.007; 0.145], c feedback from the job ß = 0.137; 95%-CI = [0.078; 0.192] and c public value ß = 0.198; 95%-CI = [0.138; 0.255]. The results showed the partially mediating effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between work characteristics, including the additional resource as public value, and work engagement. Thus, H2 could be confirmed.

Visualization of the tested mediation model including completely standardized indirect effects and direct effects. Note : * p  < .05, ** p  < .01, *** p  < .001

Industry differences in regard to employee public value perception

We created two broad categories to test H3, including only industries for which we had responses from more than 20 respondents. Therefore, out of 31 industries, 18 industries were considered (Table  4 ). The category of “non-public focus industries” comprised 12 industries. The category of “public focus industries” was composed of six industries.

T -test results revealed significant differences between both categories, with public focus industries ( M  = 5.16, SD = 0.83, n  = 392) show higher public value ratings than non-public focus industries ( M  = 4.67, SD = 0.98, n  = 420), t (811) = 7.56, p  < .001. The effect size indicated a Cohen’s d  = 0.53, revealing a medium to large effect. Therefore, H3 could be confirmed.

Robustness analysis

For the robustness of our results of H3, we analyzed the public value score of public and non-public industries from a second dataset in Switzerland. The data were collected via an online-survey in 2019. Participants were 7430 Swiss German-speaking citizens which were employed at the time of the survey. They were members of a large-scale representative online-survey of an independent Swiss market research institute intervista (intervista.ch) and worked across 27 industries. Within the industries, also a distinction between public and non-public industries can be made. Participants age ranged between 18 and over 70 years. Moreover, 47,3% of the respondents were female, 38,7% had a college degree or higher. In addition, 38,8% held a leadership position and 58,8% worked full-time. Overall, the distribution of socio-economic characteristics of the sample corresponds to that of the Swiss population, which is an indication of a comparatively representative sample. After collecting the demographic data, the participants were asked to complete the survey.

To support the results of H3, we calculated an independent samples t -test, which also revealed significant differences between the two categories. Industries with public interest ( M  = 5.21, SD = 0.84, n  = 2833) show higher public value ratings than industries without public interest ( M  = 4.78, SD = 1.00, n  = 4597), t (7428) = 18.88, p  < .001. The data indicated a medium effect with Cohen’s d  = 0.61. Thus, the additional test also analyzes whether the public value of organizations with a public focus receives higher ratings than those with a less public focus. Consequently, the additional consideration of the data from 2019 underpins the results of H3.

Finding meaning and purpose in work is highly relevant for employees (Hackman & Oldham, 1975 ; Jasinenko & Steuber, 2023 ; Wrzesniewski et al., 2003 ), especially in time of grand challenges increasing pressure on organizations. While previous studies have focused on the positive effects of work characteristics in terms of employees’ work behavior and meaningful work (e.g., Milovanska-Farrington, 2023 , Rai & Maheshwari, 2020 ; Saks, 2006 ), the social context factors as additional work characteristics have remained largely unexplored. Hence, we theoretically argued and empirically tested, whether the perceived public value contribution of an organization is an additional unique work characteristic and resource for the employee in the JCM, which is positively related to employee work engagement. This study contributes to the theoretical foundation of JCM by supporting previous findings on the positive relationship between work characteristics and positive work outcomes, such as work engagement. But by integrating the public value theory (Meynhardt, 2009 , 2015 ) into the JCM, we broaden the perspective of existing work design models by going beyond the previous work characteristics and taking the social context into account and using the conceptualization of organizational value creation for the common good. Accordingly, we also support previous studies on public value and positive organizational and individual outcomes (Grubert et al., 2022 ; Ritz et al., 2023 ). However, it is the first study to our knowledge, to propose an extension of JCM with social contextual factors underlying intra-individual processes and to investigate in this context the relationship between organizational public value and positive work outcomes. Thus, we tried to contribute to bridge the gap to understand the value creation processes at the micro- and macro-level by investigating the potential benefits of public value, which positively affects changes at the organizational and individual level. Our study contributes novel empirical evidence to the role public value plays for employees’ work engagement using a Swiss citizen sample and real organizations from public and non-public industries.

As hypothesized, our research reveals three key findings: First, to extend the JCM by adding social contextual factors is important. The results are consistent with our first hypothesis about the positive relationship of work characteristics, including the employees’ perceptions of their organization’s public value, and work engagement. Specifically, hierarchical regression analysis demonstrated the positive relationship between public value and work engagement beyond the work characteristics skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback from the job. We found this result despite our conservative approach to testing H1, because we entered all other work characteristics in the first step of the regression so that all shared variance between the motivational work characteristics and public value was associated with the other five work characteristics. Furthermore, the regression coefficients revealed that public value was the second most important variable beside skill variety that was linked to work engagement. Second, to explain the phenomena behind the relationship, individual factors are important. The results also support our second hypothesis that self-efficacy partially mediates the relationship between work characteristics, including the additional resource as public value, and work engagement. The results also showed that public value is one of the three strongest effect sizes on work engagement via self-efficacy and also in the direct effect on work engagement. Third, the perception of public value differs from sectoral factors. The reported findings also correspond to our third hypothesis that employees who worked in industries with a strong public focus had a higher perception of the public value of their organizations than employees who worked in industries without such a focus. To strengthen these result, we considered another dataset from 2019, which confirmed this as well.

Based on these findings and building on extant research, our results provide evidence that it is necessary that work design theory looks at different sources of work meaningfulness (Glavas, 2012 ). Apart from other work characteristics that focus more on the task level, the social context factor public value is important for employee engagement and should be seen as an additional work characteristic within the JCM. Although we applied a conservative testing of our hypotheses, we found evidence for a significant and unique contribution of public value. Thus, for a more comprehensive view on work design models and the impact of work design on employee well-being, researchers should take into account the value creation of an organization within a community or society. We assumed that if employees are capable to see a significant societal value contribution of their employing organization, their self-efficacy beliefs are activated by their membership in the organization. As a result, they feel more capable of contributing to something larger in their environment. These positive feelings are likely to promote the experience of confidence and meaningfulness so that employees engage more strongly with their work (Xanthopoulou et al., 2007 ). Accordingly, highlighting the positive relationship between public value-oriented organizational behavior and a flourishing a healthy workplace, our findings provide new insights for research on positive organizational scholarship and an extension of the JCM. In addition, our analysis showed regardless of sectoral affiliation in our first hypothesis, there was a positive association with employees’ work engagement. This is based on the assumption that all organizations have a social function and are relevant to society (Meynhardt, 2015 ). Despite the lower perception of public value in non-public organizations, they can also benefit from the advantages of public value. However, our third hypothesis revealed differences in the perception of public value with regard to sectoral affiliation. As already assumed, one possible explanation for the difference in public value perception between public and non-public industries could come from social identity theory, which assumes that individuals strive for a positive social identity and self-image (Ashforth & Mael, 1989) which in turn affects their meaning of work (Brieger et al., 2020 ). Therefore, employees find identification with the job role that has high task significance. In this context, Grant ( 2008 ) showed that task significance is associated with a greater awareness of its social influence and value. Thus, we assumed that the perception of public value of a public organization is higher among its employees, because their profession has a direct influence on them and the social identity of their work role is more in focus. For employees in non-public organizations, where the social contribution of the organization to the common good is not directly tangible in the work environment and in the work characteristics, there is a lower perception of public value. A further possible explanation could be that employees in public organizations show an increased public service motivation, which concerns the motivation of individuals to contribute to society as a whole by providing public services and serving the public interest (Ritz et al., 2020 ; Weißmüller et al. 2022 ). This leads to a greater tendency to seek employment in the public sector (Asseburg & Homberg, 2020 ; Ritz et al., 2023 ; Vandenabeele, 2008 ). Existing studies showed that public service motivation is an important facet of value congruence between public employees and public employers (Bright, 2008 ; Teo et al., 2016 ). Thus, by measuring the common good contribution of an organization as the fulfillment of four basic needs, following Meynhardt’s ( 2009 , 2015 ) conceptualization of public value, the needs of employees can be satisfied and increase the perception of the public value of the organization.

Theoretical implications

There are at least four reasons why the results of our study are considered theoretically important. First, our study highlights the positive relationship between work characteristics, including the additional resource public value, and work engagement. Previous studies have examined the relationship between work characteristics and positive work outcomes like work engagement or motivation. However, the social context factors in this interaction has not been sufficiently investigated. Some studies consider social support, feedback from others or interdependence as social work characteristics as well as ergonomics, physical demands or work conditions as contextual work characteristics (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006 ), but they do not consider the social perspective and the embedding of organizations into society. Therefore, our study complements the JCM with the valuable unique social context work characteristic of public value, which acts as a resource for employees, and is a further antecedence for the occurrence of work engagement. Second, the present study examined a mediation model to understand the relationship between the work characteristics, including public value, and work engagement via self-efficacy. Although past research has investigated that self-efficacy plays a key role in determining meaningfulness of work and employees’ well-being (Christian et al., 2011 ; Schaufeli & Salanova, 2007 ), empirical investigations of this important variable have been incomplete. Our results confirmed the mediation model and made an important contribution to science by including individual factors in explaining the processes on the micro- and macro-level in the context of work design models. Third, we were able to make an additional contribution to science by shed light on the perception of public value in public and non-public organizations. However, most of the existing related literature focuses on public organizations for e.g., public administration, but there is a need to shift the attention also to non-public organizations in this context. As studies have already shown all sectors can contribute to the common good (Grubert et al., 2022 ). Even if our study showed that the contribution to the common good of public organizations is perceived higher than of non-public organizations, it does not rule out that all organizations are relevant for society (Drucker, 2011 ) as they all confront with the current grand challenges. Finally, our study made an important contribution to the public value research stream by attempting to bridge the gap between macro-level (organizational public value, work characteristics) and micro-level (employees work experience) processes. This complements previous public value studies like those from Brieger et al. ( 2020 ), Grubert et al. ( 2022 ) and Ritz et al. ( 2023 ).

Managerial implications

Our findings offer important insights for management practice and, in particular, for practical implications in the areas of human resources and leadership. They provide evidence of the importance of an organization’s public value in addition to the other work characteristics for an engaged and healthy workforce. Organizations can enrich employees’ membership in the organization and thereby foster meaningfulness at work, for example by promoting values and goals of the organization (Pratt & Ashfort, 2003 ). Therefore, management strategies and measures should be aimed at increasing employees’ experience of meaningfulness at all these levels. Public value should be seen as one source of enhanced meaningfulness at work at the organizational level. Making the purpose of tasks transparent and the organization as a whole and pointing to the connection of the core business with its contribution to society is essential for employees to experience meaningfulness at the organizational level. As our results demonstrate, the experience of doing something good for society by being a member of an organization with a high public value is likely to increase employee engagement. It has been shown that especially this combination of high work engagement and workplace well-being is highly relevant for key organizational outcomes (Leitão et al., 2019 ). Results revealed, for example, that engaged employees were not only more likely to report higher well-being levels and better performance at the task and organizational level, they also reported a better adaptability in situations of change. In times of crisis and grand challenges, this change became particularly visible as employees were confronted with high work demands. Companies and managers in particular are responsible for ensuring that employee engagement does not suffer as a result. Moreover, respecting society’s needs and expectations in business models, services and products should therefore be integral to management decisions. In this process, a dialogue with society and an intensive reflection among organizational members on whether business activities are aligned with societal needs is necessary to create public value. But also a transparent and regular communication with the organization’s employees in order to identify their needs and perceived public value of the organization in which they work is an important measurement. In addition, communicating the public value contribution outside the organization and integrating it into internal and external projects can also be useful. Our results indicate that taking such steps in stressing values and goals beyond financial aspects and providing employees with opportunities to see the greater purpose of their work should lead to increased work engagement.

Limitations and avenues for future research

There are limitations to the present research despite our results. One important limitation is that our study is based on cross-sectional data, so that no causal interpretation of the results can be made. Moreover, the data were self-reported and collected at the same time in a cross-sectional research design, common method and common source bias might be present (Podsakoff et al., 2003 ). For this reason, we used several methods and appropriate survey designs in advance to minimize the potential of common method bias, tested subsequently whether it had been a threat and followed established recommendations (Jakobsen & Jensen, 2015 ; Podsakoff et al., 2003 ). First, to avoid common method bias at the comprehensive stage and to reduce social desirability bias, we assured anonymity of all responses to our study participants. Second, we made sure that all items were formulated precisely by conducting a qualitative and quantitative pretest. Third, our online questionnaire included different response formats and scale endpoints for our items, which should decrease method biases caused by anchoring effects (Podsakoff et al., 2003 ). Also the survey used questionnaires that had been tested in previous studies. Fourth, the items were part of a large-scale questionnaire, so participants had limited knowledge of the purpose of the study and thus would not have guided their responses appropriately for consistency. Fifth, our study included several objective control variables, such as age, gender, income, education, current profession, the industry of the organization as well as employee health days, which allowed us to control for differences in response bias between groups. Sixth, we used Harman’s single-factor test (Harman, 1976 ) to assess retrospectively the presence of common method bias. Nonetheless, that common method bias could threaten the validity of our results because the predictor and criterion variables were from the same source (Podsakoff et al., 2003 ). However, considering all methods, we concluded that bias from common methods did not pose a significant threat to our data for the analysis. We created sufficient variance with the different organizations from the public and non-public industries and used a sample of a relatively large number of 949 individual respondents drawn from the general population of Swiss citizens. Also, the latent factor tests for construct validity did not reveal any such issues. Moreover, methodological research by Siemsen et al. ( 2010 ) indicated that regression estimates of interaction effects would be attenuated rather than artificially increased by common method bias, further supporting the robustness of our results. Additional limitations are that other factors might have influenced the perception of public value, for example, employees’ attitudes toward supervisors. Since the company name of the employing organization was kept anonymous and our analysis relied solely on self-reported data, we are not able to compare public value ratings across team or organizational levels or to compare the evaluations of the employees with other sources, such as assessments of the respective supervisor or coworkers. Finally, we provided a solid theoretical rationale for our assumption that an organization’s public value is positively related to employee work engagement in addition to the work characteristics of the JCM, other pathways are still possible. For example, more engaged workers could be more likely to evaluate the public value of their employing organization more highly than less engaged employees.

However, our study points out further avenues for future research. The study design did not allow for detecting causality between the relationship of public value and employee well-being. Thus, we hope researchers will address this issue and examine this relationship for example in long-term studies and with an experimental design. Further, individual differences could shape the perception of public value and its relevance might be higher for certain individuals. Research has shown for example that individuals with higher prosocial values were more concerned about the impact of their work on other people, and the experience of task significance strongly affected their performance (Grant, 2008 ). Additionally, not only individual values could interfere with the perception of public value, but the orientation toward work could also be important. Work orientations can be relevant to a better understanding how employees derive meaning from their work (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001 ). Individuals who see their job as a calling, as socially valuable and purposeful, could be more strongly affected by public value. Researchers should address the influence of individual differences in values and work orientations concerning the perception of public value and its relationship with well-being.

We have analyzed the relevance of an organization’s public value for employee outcomes across various industries and demonstrated a positive relationship between work characteristics, including public value, and employee work engagement. Additionally, our findings have shown that the positive relationship was partially mediated by self-efficacy. This study is an example how to reintegrate society into work design research and can be seen as a renaissance of considering societal factors in employees’ workplace experience. Organizations should acknowledge public value as a source of meaning and additional resource for employees to create a more engaged and healthy workforce, especially in times of grand challenges organizations are confronted with. More specifically, organizational public value contributes positively to the employee’s identification with the organization and promotes the meaning of work, which leads to a stronger sense of self-efficacy and work engagement. In other words, organizational public value serves as a resource for the individual at work. The evidence from our study should encourage researchers to take another perspective on work design and reintegrate the societal dimension of organizational activities. The extension of the job characteristics model towards social context may allow to better understand the social nature of work with all its cultural, political and moral dimensions.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Aguinis, H., & Glavas, A. (2019). On corporate social responsibility, sensemaking, and the search for meaningfulness through work. Journal of Management , 45 (3), 1057–1086. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206317691575 .

Article   Google Scholar  

Albrecht, S. L., & Marty, A. (2020). Personality, self-efficacy and job resources and their associations with employee engagement, affective commitment and turnover intentions. The International Journal of Human Resource Management , 31 , 657–681. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2017.1362660 .

Albrecht, S. L., Green, C. R., & Marty, A. (2021). Meaningful work, job resources, and employee engagement. Sustainability , 13 (7), 4045. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13074045 .

Allan, B. A., Batz-Barbarich, C., Sterling, H. M., & Tay, L. (2019). Outcomes of meaningful work: A meta-analysis. Journal of Management Studies , 56 (3), 500–528. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12406 .

Ashfort, B. E., & Mael, F. (1989). Social identity theory and the organization. The Academy of Management Review , 14 (1), 20–39. https://doi.org/10.2307/258189 .

Asseburg, J., & Homberg, F. (2020). Public service motivation or sector rewards? Two studies on the determinants of sector attraction. Review of Public Personnel Administration , 40 (1), 82–111. https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X18778334 .

Bailey, C., Madden, A., Alfes, K., & Fletcher, L. (2017). The meaning, antecedents and outcomes of employee engagement: A narrative synthesis. International Journal of Management Reviews , 19 , 31–53. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12077 .

Bakker, A. B., & Van Woerkom, M. (2017). Flow at work: A self-determination perspective. Occupational Health Science, 1 , 47–65.

Bandura, A. (1983). Self-efficacy determinants of anticipated fears and calamities. Journal of personality and social psychology, 45 (2), 464–469. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.45.2.464

Bandura, A. (1994). Self-efficacy. In V. S. Ramachandran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior (pp. 71–81). Academic.

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control . Freeman

Bandura, A. (2001). Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52 (1), 1–26.

Barrick, M. R., Mount, M. K., & Li, N. (2013). The theory of purposeful work behavior: The role of personality, higher-order goals, and job characteristics. Academy of Management Review , 38 (1), 132–153. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.10.0479 .

Brammer, S., Branicki, L., Linnenluecke, M., & Smith, T. (2019). Grand challenges in management research: Attributes, achievements, and advancement. Australian Journal of Management , 44 (4), 517–533. https://doi.org/10.1177/0312896219871337 .

Brieger, S. A., Anderer, S., Fröhlich, A., Bäro, A., & Meynhardt, T. (2020). Too much of a good thing? On the relationship between CSR and employee work addiction. Journal of Business Ethics , 166 (2), 311–329. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04141-8 .

Bright, L. (2008). Does public service motivation really make a difference on the job satisfaction and turnover intentions of public employees? The American Review of Public Administration , 38 (2), 149–166. https://doi.org/10.1177/0275074008317248 .

Brown, T. A. (2015). Confirmatory factor analysis for applied research. Methodology in the social sciences (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Bryson, J. M., Barberg, B., Crosby, B. C., & Patton, M. Q. (2021). Leading Social Transformations: Creating Public Value and Advancing the Common Good. Journal of Change Management, 21 (2), 180–202.

Cartwright, S., & Holmes, N. (2006). The meaning of work: The challenge of regaining employee engagement and reducing cynicism. Human Resource Management Review , 16 , 199–208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2006.03.012 .

Chaudhary, R. (2022). Deconstructing work meaningfulness: Sources and mechanisms. Current Psychology, 41 (9), 6093–6106. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01103-6

Chen, Z. J., Zhang, X., & Vogel, D. (2011). Exploring the underlying processes between conflict and knowledge sharing: A work–engagement perspective. Journal of Applied Social Psychology , 41 (5), 1005–1033. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00745.x .

Christian, M. S., Garza, A. S., & Slaughter, J. E. (2011). Work Engagement: A quantitative review and test of its relations with Task and Contextual Performance. Personnel Psychology , 64 , 89–136. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2010.01203.x .

Crawford, E. R., Lepine, J. A., & Rich, B. L. (2010). Linking job demands and resources to employee engagement and burnout: A theoretical extension and meta-analytic test. Journal of Applied Psychology , 95 (5), 834–848. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019364 .

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological inquiry, 11 (4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2012). Self-determination theory. In P. A. M. Van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (pp. 416–436). Sage Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446249215.n21

Demirtas, O., Hannah, S. T., Gok, K., Arslan, A., & Capar, N. (2017). The moderated influence of ethical leadership, via meaningful work, on followers’ engagement, organizational identification, and envy. Journal of Business Ethics , 145 , 183–199. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2907-7 .

Dinh, L. (2020). Determinants of employee engagement mediated by work-life balance and work stress. Management Science Letters , 10 (4), 923–928. https://doi.org/10.5267/j.msl.2019.10.003 .

Drucker, P. F. (2011). Management: An abridged and revised version of management: Tasks, responsibilities, practices . Routledge.

Dutton, J., & Glynn, M. A. (2008). Positive Organizational Scholarship. In C. L. Cooper & J. Barling (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational behavior. Vol. 1: Micro approaches (pp. 693–712). SAGE.

Epstein, S. (2003). Cognitive-experiential self-theory of personality. In I. B. Weiner, D. K. Freedheim, J. A. Schinka, & W. F. Velicer (Eds.), Handbook of psychology (pp. 159–184). Wiley.

Fairlie, P. (2011). Meaningful work, Employee Engagement, and other Key Employee outcomes: Implications for human Resource Development. Advances in Developing Human Resources , 13 (4), 508–525. https://doi.org/10.1177/1523422311431679 .

Frieder, R. E., Wang, G., & Oh, I. S. (2018). Linking job-relevant personality traits, transformational leadership, and job performance via perceived meaningfulness at work: A moderated mediation model. Journal of Applied Psychology , 103 (3), 324–333. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000274 .

Gabriel, K. P., & Aguinis, H. (2022). How to prevent and combat employee burnout and create healthier workplaces during crises and beyond. Business Horizons , 65 (2), 183–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2021.02.037 .

Gartenberg, C., Prat, A., & Serafeim, G. (2019). Corporate purpose and financial performance . Organization Science , 30 (1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2018.1230 .

Gist, M. E., & Mitchell, T. R. (1992). Self-efficacy: A theoretical analysis of its determinants and malleability. Academy of Management review, 17 (2), 183–211. https://doi.org/10.2307/258770

Glavas, A. (2012). Employee engagement and sustainability: A model for implementing meaningfulness at and in work. The Journal of Corporate Citizenship , 46 , 13–29. https://doi.org/10.9774/GLEAF.4700.2012.su.00003 .

Grant, A. M. (2007). Relational Job Design and the motivation to make a Prosocial difference. Academy of Management Review , 32 (2), 393–417. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMR.2007.24351328 .

Grant, A. M. (2008). The significance of task significance: Job performance effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions. The Journal of Applied Psychology , 93 (1), 108–124. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.1.108 .

Grubert, T., Steuber, J., & Meynhardt, T. (2022). Engagement at a higher level: The effects of public value on employee engagement, the organization, and society. Current Psychology , 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03076-0 .

Guan, M., & So, J. (2016). Influence of social identity on self-efficacy beliefs through perceived social support: A social identity theory perspective. Communication Studies , 67 (5), 588–604. https://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2016.1239645 .

Hackman, R. J., & Oldham, G. R. (1975). Development of the Job Diagnostic Survey. Journal of Applied Psychology , 60 (2), 159–170. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076546 .

Hakanen, J. J., Schaufeli, W. B., & Ahola, K. (2008). The job demands-resources model: A three-year cross-lagged study of burnout, depression, commitment, and work engagement. Work and Stress , 22 (3), 224–241. https://doi.org/10.1080/02678370802379432 .

Harman, H. H. (1976). Modern factor analysis (3rd ed.). The University of Chicago.

Hartley, J., Alford, J., Knies, E., & Douglas, S. (2017). Towards an empirical Research Agenda for Public Value Theory. Public Management Review , 19 (5), 670–685. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2016.1192166 .

Hinkin, T. R. (1998). A brief tutorial on the development of measures for use in survey questionnaires. Organizational Research Methods , 1 (1), 104–121. https://doi.org/10.1177/109442819800100106 .

Hobfoll, S. E. (1989). Conservation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualizing stress. American Psychologist , 44 (3), 513–524. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.44.3.513 .

Humphrey, S. E., Nahrgang, J. D., & Morgeson, F. P. (2007). Integrating motivational, social, and contextual work design features: A meta-analytic summary and theoretical extension of the work design literature. Journal of Applied Psychology , 92 (5), 1332–1356. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.5.1332 .

Jakobsen, M., & Jensen, R. (2015). Common method bias in public management studies. International Public Management Journal , 18 (1), 3–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/10967494.2014.997906 .

Jasinenko, A., & Steuber, J. (2023). Perceived organizational purpose: Systematic literature review, construct definition, measurement and potential employee outcomes. Journal of Management Studies , 60 (6), 1415–1447. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12852 .

Jia, Y., Yan, J., Liu, T., & Huang, J. (2019). How does Internal and External CSR affect employees’ work Engagement? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health , 16 (14), 2476. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16142476 .

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Judge, T. A., Jackson, C. L., Shaw, J. C., Scott, B. A., & Rich, B. L. (2007). Self-efficacy and work-related performance: The integral role of individual differences. Journal of Applied Psychology , 92 (1), 107–127. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.1.107 .

Jurek, P., & Besta, T. (2021). Employees’ self-expansion as a mediator between perceived work conditions and work engagement and productive behaviors. Current Psychology , 40 , 3048–3057. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00241-w .

Leitão, J., Pereira, D., & Gonçalves, Â. (2019). Quality of work life and organizational performance: Workers’ feelings of contributing, or not, to the organization’s productivity. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health , 16 (20), 3803. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16203803 .

Levitats, Z., & Vigoda-Gadot, E. (2020). Emotionally engaged civil servants: Toward a multilevel theory and multisource analysis in public administration. Review of Public Personnel Administration , 40 (3), 426–446. https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X18820 .

Liu, D., Chen, Y., & Li, N. (2021). Tackling the negative impact of COVID-19 on work engagement and taking charge: A multi-study investigation of frontline health workers. Journal of Applied Psychology , 106 (2), 185–198. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000866 .

Llorens, S., Schaufeli, W., Bakker, A., & Salanova, M. (2007). Does a positive gain spiral of resources, efficacy beliefs and engagement exist?. Computers in human behavior, 23 (1), 825–841. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2004.11.012

Lysova, E. I., Allan, B. A., Dik, B. J., Duffy, R. D., & Steger, M. F. (2019). Fostering meaningful work in organizations: A multi-level review and integration. Journal of Vocational Behavior , 110 , 374–389. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JVB.2018.07.004 .

May, D. R., Gilson, R. L., & Harter, L. M. (2004). The psychological conditions of meaningfulness , safety and availability and the engagement of the human spirit at work. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology , 77 (1), 11–37. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317904322915892 .

Meynhardt, T. (2009). Public value inside: What is public value creation? International Journal of Public Administration , 32 (3–4), 192–219. https://doi.org/10.1080/01900690902732632 .

Meynhardt, T. (2015). Public value: Turning a conceptual framework into a scorecard. In J. M. Bryson, B. C. Crosby, & L. Bloomberg (Eds.), Public Value and Public Administration (pp. 147–169). Georgetown University Press.

Meynhardt, T., & Jasinenko, A. (2020). Measuring public value: Scale development and construct validation. International Public Management Journal , 24 (2), 222–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/10967494.2020.1829763 .

Milovanska-Farrington, S. (2023). Gender differences in the association between job characteristics, and work satisfaction and retention. American Journal of Business , 38 (2), 62–88. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJB-07-2022-0115 .

Morgeson, F. P., & Humphrey, S. E. (2006). The Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ): Developing and validating a comprehensive measure for assessing job design and the nature of work. The Journal of Applied Psychology , 91 (6), 1321–1339. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.91.6.1321 .

Morgeson, F. P., & Humphrey, S. E. (2008). Job and Team Design: Toward a More Integrative Conceptualization of Work Design. In J. J. Martocchio (Eds.), Research in personnel and human resources management. (vol. 27 , pp. 39–91). Emerald.

Newman, A., Eva, N., Bindl, U. K., & Stoverink, A. C. (2022). Organizational and vocational behavior in times of crisis: A review of empirical work undertaken during the COVID-19 pandemic and introduction to the special issue. Applied Psychology , 71 (3), 743–764. https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12409 .

Panda, A., Sinha, S., & Jain, N. K. (2022). Job meaningfulness, employee engagement, supervisory support and job performance: A moderated-mediation analysis. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management , 71 (6), 2316–2336. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPPM-08-2020-0434 .

Parker, S. K., Wall, T. D., & Cordery, J. L. (2001). Future work design research and practice: Towards an elaborated model of work design. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology , 74 , 413–440. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317901167460 .

Pearson, C. M., & Mitroff, I. I. (2019). From crisis prone to crisis prepared: A framework for crisis management. In Risk management (pp. 185–196). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.5465/AME.1993.9409142058 .

Podsakoff, P. M., & Organ, D. W. (1986). Self-reports in organizational research: Problems and prospects. Journal of Management , 12 (4), 531–544. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920638601200408 .

Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Lee, J. Y., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2003). Common method biases in behavioral research: A critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. The Journal of Applied Psychology , 88 (5), 879–903. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.5.879 .

Pratt, M. G., & Ashfort, B. E. (2003). Fostering meaningfulness in Working and at work. In K. Cameron, J. E. Dutton, & R. E. Quinn (Eds.), Positive organizational scholarship. Foundations of a New Discipline (pp. 309–327). Berrett-Koehler.

Rai, A., & Maheshwari, S. (2020). Exploring the mediating role of work engagement between the linkages of job characteristics with organizational engagement and job satisfaction. Management Research Review , 44 (1), 133–157. https://doi.org/10.1108/MRR-10-2019-0442 .

Rasool, S. F., Wang, M., Tang, M., Saeed, A., & Iqbal, J. (2021). How toxic workplace environment effects the employee engagement: The mediating role of organizational support and employee wellbeing. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health , 18 (5), 2294. https://doi.org/10.3390%2Fijerph18052294.

Ritz, A., Schott, C., Nitzl, C., & Alfes, K. (2020). Public service motivation and prosocial motivation: Two sides of the same coin? Public Management Review , 22 (7), 974–998. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2020.1740305 .

Ritz, A., Weißmüller, K. S., & Meynhardt, T. (2023). Public value at Cross Points: A comparative study on Employer attractiveness of Public, Private, and Nonprofit organizations. Review of Public Personnel Administration , 2 (4), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X221098153 .

Rothmann, S., & Welsh, C. (2013). Employee engagement: The role of psychological conditions. Management Dynamics: Journal of the Southern African Institute for Management Scientists , 22 (1), 14–25.

Google Scholar  

Saks, A. M. (2006). Antecendents and consequences of work engagement. Journal of Managerial Psychology , 600–619. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940610690169 .

Schaufeli, W. B., & Bakker, A. B. (2004). UWES: Utrecht work engagement scale . Preliminary manual.

Schaufeli, W. B., & Salanova, M. (2007). Efficacy or inefficacy, that’s the question: Burnout and work engagement, and their relationships with efficacy beliefs. Anxiety Stress and Coping , 20 (2), 177–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615800701217878 .

Schaufeli, W. B., & Taris, T. W. (2014). A critical review of the job demands-resources model: Implications for improving work and health. In G. F. Bauer, & O. Hämmig (Eds.), Bridging occupational, organizational and public health: A transdisciplinary approach (pp. 43–68). Springer Science + Business Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5640-3_4 .

Schaufeli, W. B., Salanova, M., González-Romá, V., & Bakker, A. B. (2002). The measurement of engagement and burnout: A two sample confirmatory factor analytic approach. Journal of Happiness Studies , 3 (1), 71–92. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015630930326 .

Schwarzer, R., & Jerusalem, M. (1999). Skalen Zur Erfassung Von Lehrer- Und Schülermerkmalen. Dokumentation Der Psychometrischen Verfahren Im Rahmen Der Wissenschaftlichen Begleitung Des Modellversuchs Selbstwirksame Schulen . Freie Universität Berlin.

Siemsen, E., Roth, A., & Oliveira, P. (2010). Common method bias in regression models with linear, quadratic, and interaction effects. Organizational Research Methods , 13 (3), 456–476. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428109351241 .

Spreitzer, G., & Cameron, K. (2012). A path Forward. In K. S. Cameron, & G. M. Spreitzer (Eds.), Oxford library of psychology. The Oxford handbook of positive organizational scholarship (pp. 1034–1048). Oxford University Press.

Spreitzer, G., Sutcliffe, K., Dutton, J., Sonenshein, S., & Grant, A. M. (2005). A socially embedded model of thriving at work. Organization Science , 16 (5), 537–549. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1050.0153 .

Tajfel, H., & Turner, C. J. (1985). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel, & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 7–24). Nelson-Hall.

Teo, S. T., Pick, D., Xerri, M., & Newton, C. (2016). Person–organization fit and public service motivation in the context of change. Public Management Review , 18 (5), 740–762. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2015.1045016 .

Truss, C., Shantz, A., Soane, E., Alfes, K., & Delbridge, R. (2013). Employee engagement, organisational performance and individual well-being: exploring the evidence, developing the theory. The international journal of human resource management, 24 (14), 2657–2669. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2013.798921

Vandenabeele, W. (2008). Government calling: Public service motivation as an element in selecting government as an employer of choice. Public Administration , 86 (4), 1089–1105. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2008.00728.x .

Weißmüller, K. S., De Waele, L., & van Witteloostuijn, A. (2022). Public service motivation and prosocial rule-breaking: An international vignettes study in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. Review of Public Personnel Administration , 42 (2), 258–286. https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X20973441 .

Woods, S. A., & Sofat, J. A. (2013). Personality and engagement at work: The mediating role of psychological meaningfulness. Journal of Applied Social Psychology , 43 (11), 2203–2210. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12171 .

Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of Management Review , 26 (2), 179–201. https://doi.org/10.2307/259118 .

Wrzesniewski, A., Dutton, J. E., & Debebe, G. (2003). Interpersonal sensemaking and the meaning of work. Research in Organizational Behavior , 25 , 93–135. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-3085(03)25003-6 .

Xanthopoulou, D., Bakker, A. B., Demerouti, E., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2007). The role of personal resources in the job demands-resources model. International Journal of Stress Management , 14 (2), 121–141. https://doi.org/10.1037/1072-5245.14.2.121 .

Download references

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Dr. Arend Oetker Chair of Business Psychology and Leadership, HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, Saxony, Germany

Timo Meynhardt & Jessica Bardeli

Center for Leadership and Values in Society, University of St.Gallen, St.Gallen, Switzerland

Timo Meynhardt & Carolin Hermann

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Timo Meynhardt .

Ethics declarations

Compliance with ethical standards.

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and also with ESOMAR code of conduct. ( https://www.esomar.org/uploads/public/knowledge-and-standards/codes-and-guidelines/ICCES_OMAR_Code_English_.pdf ). Our research is not a medical study conducted with the participation of patients; therefore, the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments are not applicable here.

Informed consent

This was a fully anonymous online study and the participants were informed about it and agreed to participate by clicking on the link in the invitation e-mail. We did not collect any other forms of informed consent.

Conflict of interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no further conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Meynhardt, T., Hermann, C. & Bardeli, J. Connecting value creation for society with work engagement: the relevance of an organization’s public value as an extension of the job characteristics model. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05922-9

Download citation

Accepted : 21 March 2024

Published : 16 May 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05922-9

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Common good
• Meaningfulness
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• Open access
• Published: 10 May 2024

Navigating an unpredictable environment: the moderating role of perceived environmental unpredictability in the effectiveness of ecological resource scarcity information on pro-environmental behavior

• Dian Gu 1 , 2 &
• Jiang Jiang 3  

BMC Psychology volume  12 , Article number:  261 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

135 Accesses

6 Altmetric

Metrics details

The global issue of ecological resource scarcity, worsened by climate change, necessitates effective methods to promote resource conservation. One commonly used approach is presenting ecological resource scarcity information. However, the effectiveness of this method remains uncertain, particularly in an unpredictable world. This research aims to examine the role of perceived environmental unpredictability in moderating the impact of ecological resource scarcity information on pro-environmental behavior (PEB).

We conducted three studies to test our hypothesis on moderation. Study 1 ( N  = 256) measured perceived general environmental unpredictability, perceived resource scarcity and daily PEB frequencies in a cross-sectional survey. Study 2 ( N  = 107) took it a step further by manipulating resource scarcity. Importantly, to increase ecological validity, Study 3 ( N  = 135) manipulated the information on both ecological resource scarcity and nature-related environmental unpredictability, and measured real water and paper consumption using a newly developed washing-hands paradigm.

In Study 1, we discovered that perceived resource scarcity positively predicted PEB, but only when individuals perceive the environment as less unpredictable (interaction effect: 95% CI  = [-0.09, -0.01], Δ R 2  = 0.018). Furthermore, by manipulating scarcity information, Study 2 revealed that only for individuals with lower levels of environmental unpredictability presenting ecological resource scarcity information could decrease forest resource consumption intention (interaction effect: 95% CI  = [-0.025, -0.031], Δ R 2  = .04). Moreover, Study 3 found that the negative effect of water resource scarcity information on actual water and (interaction effect: 95%CI = [3.037, 22.097], η p 2  = .050) paper saving behaviors (interaction effect: 95%CI = [0.021, 0.275], η p 2  = .040), as well as hypothetical forest resource consumption (interaction effect: 95%CI = [-0.053, 0.849], η p 2  = .023) emerged only for people who receiving weaker environmental unpredictability information.

Across three studies, we provide evidence to support the moderation hypothesis that environmental unpredictability weakens the positive effect of ecological resource scarcity information on PEB, offering important theoretical and practical implications on the optimal use of resource scarcity to enhance PEB.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Ecological resource scarcity, such as water and energy, poses significant challenges in our current times. The reduction of renewable freshwater resources per capita by 55% from 1993 to 2014 emphasizes the urgency of addressing this issue [ 1 ]. According to the World Economic Forum (2019), water shortages remain a top concern for policymakers and business leaders worldwide. In response to resource scarcity, various entities, including governments, water utilities, and community-based organizations, have employed different strategies to promote resource conservation [ 2 ]. One of the most common approaches is to raise problem awareness by conveying information about resource scarcity [ 2 ]. For example, the fact that billions of people lack access to safe water is utilized in the World Water Day campaign in 2023 to encourage more people to take action. Additionally, the Hong Kong SAR Government’s “Let’s Save 10L Water 2.0” campaign emphasizes the importance of conserving water by highlighting the limited availability of this resource.

Despite these efforts, it is important to recognize the complexity and interconnectedness of the world we live in, which makes predicting future environmental conditions challenging. Unforeseen events such as pathogen prevalence, natural disasters, wars, and financial crises illustrate the dynamic nature of our environment. In such an unpredictable world, can simply providing information about ecological resource scarcity lead to a significant increase in pro-environmental behaviors?

In the current research, we aimed to explore whether ecological resource scarcity information could promote pro-environmental behaviors effectively in the unpredictable world. We argued that ecological resource scarcity information is not necessarily useful in promoting pro-environmental behaviors and proposed that environmental unpredictability is a vital factor weakening the effect of ecological resource scarcity on resource consumption.

Uncertain association between ecological resource scarcity information and pro-environmental behaviors

Based on the information-motivation-behavioral skills (IMB) model, individuals are more likely to change their behavior when they are informed about a problem, along with being motivated to act and have skills to act [ 3 ]. In the environmental protection domain, there is a general lack of problem awareness about ecological resource scarcity [ 4 , 5 ]. This lack of awareness hinders individuals from engaging in pro-environmental behaviors (PEB), which refers to the actions that enhance the quality of the environment, regardless of the intent behind them [ 6 ]. Resource conservation campaigns often focus on resource scarcity information to encourage PEB [ 7 ]. In some empirical studies, the resource scarcity information was found to be effective. For example, individuals living in regions that experience drought have a higher tendency to make behavioral changes to conserve water [ 8 , 9 ]. People who perceived stronger ecological resource scarcity reported higher resource-saving behavioral frequencies [ 10 ], and indicated a higher frequency of PEB [ 11 ]. And water scarcity information was linked to a significant decrease in water use [ 12 , 13 , 14 ].

However, we identified some conflicting evidence. Information about resource scarcity is often not sufficient to reduce resource consumption in intervention [ 15 ], and the effectiveness of awareness campaigns is unclear [ 16 ]. For example, presenting the information about water resource scarcity only was evaluated as ineffective to promote water-saving behaviors by lay people [ 10 ]. Energy scarcity information was not strong enough to affect attitudes, intentions, and behaviors toward electricity energy saving [ 17 ]. Moreover, resource scarcity information failed to modify resource consumption behaviors in experimental settings [ 2 , 18 ].

The uncertain relationship between resource scarcity and PEB can be understood through an evolutionary psychological approach. According to the life history theory, individuals may adopt various strategies for allocating resources [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]. Those who choose a slow life history strategy prioritize long-term benefits and future planning, which leads them to behave in an environmentally friendly manner for the sake of future generations. On the other hand, individuals adopting a fast life history strategy prioritize immediate gains over long-term consequences [ 24 ], resulting in less PEB.

This theory, combined with empirical evidence, suggest that the impact of resource scarcity on PEB may vary depending on the situation, implying that promoting pro-environmental actions may require considering factors beyond simply informing individuals about scarcity. If PEB is seen as an investment in the environment, people engaging in PEB expect long-term benefits from it. However, the environment does not always provide consistent long-term benefits, particularly in today’s unpredictable world. When the expected advantages of environmental protection become uncertain, individuals may prioritize immediate gains, exploit natural resources, and reduce their commitment to PEB. This study hence focuses on the situational factor related to the unpredictable environment, testing its importance in influencing individuals’ PEB under resource scarcity.

Moderating role of environmental unpredictability

Environmental unpredictability is defined as the level of spatial–temporal variation in environmental harshness [ 24 ]. Past empirical studies measured environmental unpredictability in diverse ways [ 25 ]. In the current research, we tried to capture both individual-related and nature-related environmental unpredictability in temporal or spatial dimensions. Individual-related environmental unpredictability is mostly indicated by residential changes, and changes in parental financial status for children [ 19 , 24 , 26 ]. It shows whether the structure of an environment, such as the social or economic environment in which one lives, changes over time. Nature-related environmental unpredictability focuses on the pattern of variation that makes environments unpredictable, such as unpredictability of weather and the unpredictability of natural disasters [ 25 ].

Based on the life history theory, the environment plays a crucial role in shaping individuals’ life history strategies [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]. In predictable environments individuals are more likely to adopt a slow life-history strategy, while highly unpredictable environments promote a fast life-history strategy [ 24 ]. Importantly, environmental unpredictability during childhood can influence short-sighted tendencies [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ], and this effect can also be observed in adulthood [ 31 ]. In an unpredictable environment, individuals prioritize immediate desires over future needs because investing in long-term environmental protection may not yield future benefits. This has implications for PEB, as present efforts on environmental protection may not be effective in improving resource scarcity in the future when the environment is unpredictable.

There are two aspects that illustrate the expectation that PEB efforts may not pay off in unpredictable environments. Firstly, in an unpredictable environment, there is a flow of uncontrollable information, which makes it challenging for individuals to maintain strong beliefs that their actions can bring about positive outcomes, such as improving resource scarcity [ 32 ]. According to the theories of reasoned action and planned behavior, the impact of awareness of the problem on behavior is greater when individuals perceive a higher level of control over their actions [ 33 ]. Hence, environmental unpredictability not only reduces the perceived personal control but also creates a barrier between scarcity awareness and PEB.

Secondly, in unpredictable environments, individuals are more likely to fear free riders, which further hinders behavioral change towards environmental protection under resource scarcity. When deciding whether to take action to protect the environment, people consider whether others will cooperate. However, in unpredictable environments, the likelihood of others investing in PEB becomes uncertain as well, which induces a heightened fear of free riders. For instance, experimental games have shown that individuals behave less cooperatively and invest fewer public goods when the probability of benefiting from them is uncertain [ 34 ]. Moreover, studies have demonstrated that individuals are less likely to prioritize the interests of others over their own when environmental unpredictability is primed [ 31 , 35 ]. Due to the fear that others will not take action in an unpredictable environment, individual efforts to protect the environment may appear less effective in solving the issue of resource scarcity.

Taken together, stronger environmental unpredictability is associated with a fast life-history strategy characterized by low self-efficacy and high fear of free riders, which ultimately leads to less PEB performance in the face of resource scarcity. Both multilevel and individual-level studies have indicated that psychological traits similar to the fast life history strategy weaken the association between environmental problem awareness and actual PEB [ 10 , 36 ]. Besides, some indirect evidence revealed that resource scarcity and environmental unpredictability could lead to some psychological outcomes that go against promoting PEB. Specifically, poorer childhood and economic uncertainty jointly increase the present orientation and decrease the sense of control [ 37 , 38 ]. A strong present orientation and low sense of control discourage people from taking actions to save resources [ 39 ]. With the above in mind, the following moderation hypothesis was proposed:

Hypothesis: Environmental unpredictability will moderate the effect of ecological resource scarcity on PEB. Specifically, ecological resource scarcity information would play a less effective role in promoting PEB when environmental unpredictability is stronger.

Current research

In the current research, we conducted three studies to test our hypothesis on moderation. In Study 1, we examined whether perceived general environmental unpredictability would moderate the relationship between perceived resource scarcity and daily PEB frequencies. Study 2 took it a step further by manipulating resource scarcity to test whether the positive effect of ecological resource scarcity information on forest resource consumption intention would be weakened by individual-related environmental unpredictability, specifically the frequency of residential changes. Importantly, to increase ecological validity, Study 3 manipulated the information on both ecological resource scarcity and nature-related environmental unpredictability, and measured real water and paper consumption using a newly developed washing-hands paradigm.

To examine the moderating effect of environmental unpredictability on the relationship between ecological resource scarcity and daily PEB frequency, we conducted a cross-sectional survey for Study 1. We hypothesised that ecological resource scarcity would predict higher frequencies of daily PEB for individuals who perceived the environment as predictable. However, we expected this positive association to diminish for individuals who perceived high levels of environmental unpredictability.

Participants

To ensure sufficient statistical power (80% power, α = .05) to detect a small-to-medium-sized effect for our moderation hypothesis, based on previous research in the same domain [ 10 ], we estimated that a sample size of 256 participants would be required using G*Power 3.1 [ 40 ]. Participants were recruited from a Chinese online survey platform ( www.wjx.cn ) and received monetary compensation for their participation. The survey platform utilized a voluntary opt-in panel, inviting users to complete the questionnaire. A total of 263 participants from China completed the survey. It is important to note that data collection was planned to conclude once 256 observations were collected within a three-week period.

The average age of the participants was 32.21 ± 7.11 years (ranging from 18 to 66 years), with 44.1% of them being male ( N  = 116). In terms of educational attainment, 1.9% held a middle-school degree or below, 1.9% had a high school degree, 8.7% held a junior college degree, 79.8% had a bachelor’s degree, and 7.6% had a master’s degree or higher. The average annual family income was 23.65 ± 21.04 ten thousand yuan.

Procedure and measures

To address the potential influence of priming participants’ perceived resource scarcity through items expressing the seriousness of resource scarcity [ 11 , 41 , 42 ], we carefully structured the data collection process. Firstly, we measured the dependent variable, PEB frequencies. Following this, participants completed the measure of perceived environmental unpredictability, and subsequently rated their perceived ecological resource scarcity. Additionally, to account for potential bias in self-reported PEB due to social desirability [ 43 ], we included a measurement of social desirability as a control variable. Finally, participants provided their demographic information, including age, gender, educational attainment, and annual personal income.

Perceived resource scarcity

The measurement of perceived ecological resource scarcity, consisting of 5 items, was adapted from a previous study conducted by Gu and her colleagues [ 10 ] (Cronbach’s α in the current study is 0.79). Participants were asked to indicate their level of agreement with statements such as “There are not enough resources for everyone in the place where I live” and “In the place where I live, I have already noticed some signs of resource scarcity.” Each item was rated on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 ( strongly disagree ) to 7 ( strongly agree ). The mean score of the entire scale was computed. Higher scores on this scale indicated higher levels of perceived ecological resource scarcity.

Perceived general environmental unpredictability

The item “For me, the environment we live in is unpredictable” developed by Reynolds and McCrea [ 44 ], was used to measure how participants perceived the general unpredictability of their environment. Participants rated this item on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 ( strongly disagree ) to 7 ( strongly agree ). Higher score indicated stronger perceived unpredictability.

Daily PEB frequency

Participants were asked to rate the frequency of PEB in their daily lives on a scale from 1 ( never ) to 5 ( always ). They were presented with six common resource conservation actions and asked to consider their behaviors in the year prior to the survey. The items are “do not turn the tap to the maximum when using water”, “switch off the lights when you leave”, “set the air conditioner’s temperature to 26–28 degrees centigrade in summer”, “buy and use energy-efficient appliances”, “avoid using disposable tableware whenever possible”. These six PEB were then converted into a PEB frequency scale, and a mean score was calculated for each participant. Higher scores indicated a higher frequency of PEB. Although the Cronbach’s α for the PEB scale was relatively low at .50, we decided to keep the measure because the items were face-valid. It is worth noting that removing any of the items did not improve the Cronbach’s alpha. Consistent with findings from previous studies, different types of PEB were not completely consistent [ 45 , 46 ]. And importantly, using the common score derived from the six items did not significantly alter the results.

Social desirability

Social desirability was measured using the liar subscale of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) [ 47 ]. This subscale consists of 12 items, with participants answering each question with a “ Yes ” or “ No ” response. A code of 1 was assigned to “ Yes ” and 0 to “ No ”. Higher scores on this subscale indicated a stronger tendency towards social desirability. The measure demonstrated good internal consistency with a Cronbach’s α of .75.

Correlation analyses

Prior to conducting hypothesis testing, all variables exhibited normal distributions, as indicated by skewness values ranging from -0.89 to + 0.05 and kurtosis values ranging from -0.72 to + 0.77. We computed Pearson’s correlation coefficients to explore the relations among the studied variables (see Table  1 for descriptive statistics and intercorrelation coefficients). We found a marginally significant positive relationship between perceived ecological resource scarcity and PEB frequency ( r  = 0.12, p  = .058). And there was no correlation between environmental unpredictability and PEB frequency ( r  = -0.07, p  = .29). Importantly, as expected, social desirability was positively associated with PEB ( r  = 0.30, p  < .001), indicating that it should be controlled for in subsequent analyses.

Moderation analyses

To examine the impact of environmental unpredictability on the relationship between perceived ecological resource scarcity and PEB, we used the PROCESS macro for SPSS [ 48 ]. Controlling for social desirability, we found a significant interaction effect between perceived ecological resource scarcity and environmental unpredictability ( b  = -0.05, SE  = 0.02, t  = -2.26, p  = .025, 95% CI  = [-0.09, -0.01], Δ R 2  = 0.018). To further understand this interaction, we conducted a floodlight analysis [ 49 ]. The results showed that perceived ecological resource scarcity was positively and significantly associated with PEB when environmental unpredictability was below 4.41 ( b  = 0.07, SE  = 0.03, t  = 1.97, p  = .05, 95% CI  = [0.000, 0.136]), but not when it was above 4.41.

Additionally, we performed a simple slope analysis to examine the relationship between perceived ecological resource scarcity and PEB for individuals with different levels of perceived environmental unpredictability with social desirability controlled (see Fig.  1 ). The results indicated that perceived ecological resource scarcity positively predicted PEB for individuals with lower levels of environmental unpredictability (-1 SD ), b  = 0.13, SE  = 0.05, t  = 2.83, p  = .005, 95% CI  = [0.039, 0.219]. However, this relationship was not significant for individuals with higher levels of environmental unpredictability (+ 1 SD ), ( b  = -0.02, SE  = 0.05, t  = -0.35, p  = 0.73, 95% CI  = [-0.114, 0.079]).

The effect of resource scarcity on PEB at different levels of environmental unpredictability (Study 1)

Furthermore, controlling for demographic variables did not significantly change the results of moderation analysis. In summary, individuals who perceived the environment as more predictable were more likely to engage in PEB when facing ecological resource scarcity.

Brief discussion

Study 1 identified a moderating effect of environmental unpredictability on associations between perceived ecological resource scarcity and daily PEB. Individuals who perceived the environment as less unpredictable were more likely to adopt environmentally friendly ways to respond to ecological resource scarcity. However, it is important to consider the potential influence of responding to the PEB items on participants’ perceptions of ecological resource scarcity. The act of responding to these items may have directed participants’ attention towards environmental issues, potentially leading to an implicit increase in their perceived ecological resource scarcity. Therefore, it is not possible to infer the direction of the causal relationship between perceived ecological resource scarcity and PEB frequencies solely from correlational data. In addition, using a single item for measuring environmental unpredictability may raise concerns about the comprehensiveness of measurement. To address these limitations, we conducted Study 2, where we manipulated perceived ecological resource scarcity in order to demonstrate its causal effect, and further explore the moderating effect of environmental unpredictability by using another measurement.

Furthermore, it is important to note that the observed moderation effect size was small, which could be attributed to the fact that we measured various types of PEB in this study. According to the Goal System Theory, PEB can be motivated by multiple goals. In the context of resource scarcity, individuals who perceive the environment as more predictable are more likely to prioritize environmental protection for the benefit of future generations, especially if they themselves also stand to gain [ 50 ]. For instance, engaging in electricity-saving behaviors not only benefits the environment in the long run but also reduces personal electricity bills. In other words, personal benefits may matter. In our subsequent studies, we will focus on examining PEB that does not involve salient personal benefits in order to highlight the moderating effect of environmental unpredictability.

In Study 2, we sought to replicate the moderating effect of environmental unpredictability on the link between ecological resource scarcity and PEB by manipulating resource scarcity information. We proposed that receiving ecological resource scarcity information would increase PEB intention for individuals with lower levels of environmental unpredictability but that the effect would disappear for individuals with higher levels of environmental unpredictability.

To test our moderation hypothesis, we determined that a sample size of 107 would be necessary to achieve 80% power (α = .05) in order to detect a small-to-medium-size effect ( f 2  = .075) based on previous research [ 10 ] using G*Power 3.1 [ 40 ]. We established the rule for ending data collection prior to gathering data, stipulating that the survey link would be closed after obtaining more than 150 observations. Ultimately, we recruited 155 Chinese adults who completed an anonymous online questionnaire and all of these responses were valid.

The participants had an average age of 32.91 ± 10.10 years (range = 18–59 years) and 41.90% of them were males ( N  = 65). In terms of educational attainment, 9.70% held a high school degree, 16.1% held a junior college degree, 66.6% held a bachelor’s degree, and 13.5% held a master’s degree or higher. The average annual personal income was 11.18 ± 44.58 ten thousand yuan.

In the present study, participants reported their demographic information first. Then, environmental unpredictability was measured. Next, participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions to read a news article, where exposure to the information of resource scarcity (vs. control condition) was the manipulated factor. Finally, PEB intention was measured using a forest management task.

Manipulation of ecological resource scarcity information

Participants were assigned at random to read one of two news articles. The articles were created specifically to manipulate perceptions of ecological resource scarcity. In the scarcity group ( n  = 77), participants read an article titled “Interpretation of China’s Resources through Big Data: Invisible Resource Scarcity in China”, which highlighted the severity of natural resource scarcity in China. In the control group ( n  = 78), participants read an article of similar length that aimed to evoke similar levels of negative arousal. This article was titled “Interpretation of Sleep through Big Data: Invisible Sleeping Problems in China” and discussed sleep issues in China. To ensure the credibility of the mock news articles, participants were informed that the articles were sourced from The People’s Daily , a reputable Chinese newspaper.

Immediately after reading their respective article, participants rated their perception of ecological resource scarcity using a 7-point Likert scale ranging from “ strongly disagree ” (1) to “ strongly agree ” (7). The item presented was: “Currently, I believe that we live in an environment where natural resources are extremely scarce.” Besides, participants also responded to one item on their mood at the moment for the manipulation check on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = “ very negative ” to 7 = “ very positive ”).

• Environmental unpredictability

At the individual level, environmental unpredictability is mostly indicated by residential changes [ 24 , 25 ]. The frequency of residential changes showed whether the structure of an environment one lives in changes over time, which is the important aspect of environmental unpredictability. Therefore, Study 2 used the frequency individuals moved in the past to represent their environmental unpredictability. Higher score indicates stronger environmental unpredictability ( M  = 3.59, SD  = 2.17, Min  = 0, Max  = 11). The variable showed approximately normal distribution, with skewness = 0.64 and kurtosis = 0.65. Hence, the raw data of moving frequency are used for analysis.

PEB intention

A forest management task was used to measure PEB intention, specifically in relation to forest resource conservation intention [ 51 ]. Participants were asked to imagine that they were the owner of a timber company and must compete with three other companies to harvest timber in the same forest. They need to cut down as many trees as possible for their companies to profit and thrive. However, the rapid deforestation could lead to forest destruction. Then, participants were asked to answer one question about deforestation rate on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 ( very slow ) to 7 ( very fast ), which asked, ‘How fast do you want your company to cut down trees?’ Additionally, they were asked one question about forest resource consumption, ranging from 1 to 100 acres, which asked, ‘How many acres of trees do you expect your company to cut down?’. Give that both questions indicate greedy for forest resources, the average of participants’ reversed standardized scores on the two questions was computed to represent PEB intention. Higher scores indicate stronger forest resource conservation intention. We also treated the two items separately to test our hypothesis, which can be found in the Additional file 1 .

Manipulation checks

The manipulation of resource scarcity information was successful. Specifically, participants in the scarcity condition ( M  = 5.17, SD  = 1.25) compared to those in the control condition ( M  = 4.55, SD  = 1.56), reported higher levels of awareness on ecological resource scarcity, t (153) = 2.72, p  = .007, 95%CI = [0.169, 1.066], d  = 0.44. Furthermore, there was no difference of mood between the two conditions ( M scarcity  = 5.06, SD scarcity  = 1.19; M control  = 4.92, SD control  = 1.23), t (153) = 0.73, p  > .05, 95%CI = [-0.526, 0.242].

Hypothesis test

To test for the moderating effect of environmental unpredictability, we regressed the forest resource conservation intention on ecological resource scarcity information (dummy coded: 1 =  scarcity condition, 0 =  control condition), environmental unpredictability and their interaction by employing the PROCESS macro (Model 1, 5000 bootstrap samples) for SPSS [ 48 ]. The results showed a significant main effect of ecological resource scarcity information ( b  = 0.63, SE  = 0.23, t  = 2.78, p  = .006, 95% CI  = [0.183, 1.078]). And there was no main effect of environmental unpredictability ( b  = 0.04, SE  = .03, t  = 1.23, p  > .05, 95% CI  = [-0.026, 0.109]).

Results showed a significant interaction effect ( b  = -0.14, SE  = 0.06, t  = -2.54, p  = .012, 95% CI  = [-0.025, -0.031], Δ R 2  = .04), meaning that the effect of ecological resource scarcity information on forest resource conservation intention was moderated by environmental unpredictability. Specifically, for individuals with lower levels of environmental unpredictability (below 1 SD ), participants in the scarcity condition exhibited stronger forest resource conservation intention relative to those in the control condition, b  = 0.43, SE  = 0.16, t  = 2.63, p  = .0095, 95% CI = [0.107, 0.755]. In contrast, for individuals with higher levels of environmental unpredictability (above 1 SD ), the ecological resource scarcity manipulation had no effect on forest resource conservation intention, b  = -0.17, SE  = 0.17, t  = -1.04, p  > .05, 95% CI = [-0.512, 0.158] (see Fig.  2 ).

The effect of resource scarcity × environmental unpredictability on forest resource conservation intention (Study 2)

Besides, a floodlight analysis was performed to decompose the interaction [ 49 ]. It revealed that ecological resource scarcity manipulation increased forest resource conservation intention for any value of environmental unpredictability less than 2.78 ( b  = 0.24, SE  = 0.12, t  = 1.98, p  = .05, 95% CI = [0.000, 0.487]), but not for any value greater than 2.78. More importantly, the above findings did not significantly differ after controlling for demographic variables.

Study 2 replicated results of Study 1 and identified that environmental unpredictability weakened the positive effect of ecological resource scarcity information on resource conservation. Presenting ecological resource scarcity information could effectively increase forest conservation intention, particularly for individuals who move less frequently, indicating lower levels of environmental unpredictability.

However, the results of Study 2 were limited in several aspects. First, environmental unpredictability can be caused either by individuals themselves, such as frequent relocation, or by nature, such as unforeseen natural disasters. The present study focused on individual-related environmental unpredictability only. Secondly, the measurement of resource conservation intention instead of actual behaviors may have restricted the ecological validity of the findings. Thirdly, it is possible that the moderation effect was underestimated. In the forest management task, the psychological experience of forest resource scarcity may have been primed in both conditions, as participants were informed about the need to compete with other companies for limited forest resources. Consequently, participants’ decisions may have been heavily influenced by the forest management scenario.

Based on above discussions of Study 2, in Study 3, actual PEB was measured to increase ecological validity, and nature-caused environmental unpredictability was focused to improve generalizability. In addition, hypothetical forest resource conservation was also measured to replicate findings of Study 2. We proposed that receiving ecological resource scarcity information would increase actual resource conservation and forest resource conservation intention under predictable environmental conditions but that this effect would disappear under unpredictable environmental conditions.

We conducted a power analysis through G*Power 3.1 with the moderating effect size in Study 2, which suggested that a sample size of 135 would be required to achieve 80% power ( α  = .05) [ 40 ]. A total of 142 college students in Beijing, China was recruited to participate in the experiment in exchange for monetary compensation. Six participants who failed to finish all experimental tasks were excluded from data analysis. It is worth noting that the rule for terminating data collection was decided before data collection began: the experiment was terminated when more than 135 observations were collected in two weeks.

The average age of the participants was 21.87 ± 2.67 years (range = 17–29 years), and 75.00% of them were female ( N  = 102). The average annual household income was 12.37 ± 17.10 thousand yuan .

Research design and procedure

A 2 (water resource scarcity vs. control) × 2 (unpredictable vs. predictable environment) between-subject design was used.

Before arriving at the lab, participants were asked to fill out their demographic information in an online survey. Upon arrival at the lab, participants were randomly assigned into one of four groups to read a newspaper. These newspapers were designed to be looked like real Beijing Daily newspapers. In each type of newspaper, there were two pieces of news. One was designed to manipulate the water resource scarcity information, and another was designed to manipulate environmental unpredictability information. Then, actual water and paper consumption data was recorded in a washing-hands paradigm. Finally, forest resource consumption intention was measured.

Manipulation of water resource scarcity information

Similar to Study 2, in the scarcity condition ( n  = 67), the news article described the seriousness of water resource scarcity in Beijing. While, in the control condition ( n  = 69), the news article described Beijing residents’ sleep problems. After reading the article, participants responded to 1 item on perceived ecological resource scarcity on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = “ strongly disagree ” to 7 = “ strongly agree ”), which was adapted from new ecological paradigm scale (NEP): “The earth has plenty of natural resources if we just learn how to develop them” [ 52 ].

Manipulation of environmental unpredictability information

In the unpredictable condition ( n  = 68), the news article was titled “Natural Disasters are Unpredictable and Difficult to Prevent: 9.578 million People were Affected by Various Natural Disasters in January”. The news conveyed the information that natural disasters happened frequently, which caused many people to be affected in January, and there was no way to predict and prevent disasters. By contrast, in the predictable condition ( n  = 68), the news stated that even though natural disasters are frequent in China and many people were affected, now some devices can help predict and prevent disasters. The title was “Predication and Prevention of the Occurrence of Natural Disasters is Possible: 9.578 million People were Affected by Various Natural Disasters in January”.

Manipulation check items were rated right after reading the news article. Participants responded to 2 items about perceived unpredictability on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = “ strongly disagree ” to 7 = “ strongly agree ”): “The environment where I live is unstable”, and “The environment where I live is unpredictable”. The average score of the two items was computed such that a higher score indicated stronger perceived unpredictability.

Actual water and paper resource consumption

To cover up our real purpose, participants were told that the research was attempting to study palms, so that we would collect their fingerprints in the study. In the washing-hands paradigm, participants were asked to use the inkpad and leave their fingerprints on a sheet of white paper to study their palms. After that, they had to wash their hands in the lab. The amount of water and paper they used was recorded.

To measure the water consumption, the experimenter placed one measuring cylinder under the washbasin, and the measuring cylinder was linked to the washbasin’s outlet pipe. Importantly, participants could not see the cylinder. To measure their paper consumption, a bag of paper was placed on the washbasin for the participants to use. Besides, to exclude the experimenter effect, participants washed their hands without experimenter observation. Importantly, participants did not know that their behaviors were recorded, and participants were not aware of the real purpose of the study (see Fig.  3 ). All of the participants were debriefed at the end of the study.

Set-up of washing-hands paradigm

Considering that water and paper consumption for washing ink from hands might be affected by palm size, we recorded the palm area for each participant based on their fingerprints. Then, actual resource consumption was represented by average water consumption and average paper consumption, calculated by water or paper consumption divided by palm area.

Hypothetical forest resource conservation

Same as Study 2, the forest management task was used. After reading the scenario, participants were asked to answer the question, “How many acres of trees do you expect your company to cut down?”, ranging from 1 to 100 acres. A higher score on the measurement indicates a lower intention for forest resource conservation.

Perceived resource scarcity was significantly greater in the scarcity condition ( n  = 67, M  = 5.61, SD  = 1.19) than that in the control condition ( n  = 69, M  = 5.13, SD  = 1.38), t (134) = 2.17, p  = .032, 95%CI = [0.043, 0.920], d  = 0.37. Perceived unpredictability was also significantly greater in the unpredictable condition ( n  = 68, M  = 5.13, SD  = 1.28) compared to the predictable condition ( n  = 68, M  = 4.55, SD  = 1.39), t (134) = 2.51, p  = .013, 95%CI = [0.121, 1.026], d  = 0.43. Overall, the manipulations were successful and valid.

To examine the interaction effect between water resource scarcity and environmental unpredictability on resource conservation, two-factor MANOVAs were conducted.

Concerning the average water consumption, gender, age, household income, and cleanliness habits are included as control variables. The findings revealed that the main effect of scarcity was significant ( F (1,128) = 5.44, p  = 0.021, 95%CI = [-14.168, -0.673], η p 2  = .041), and the main effect of environmental unpredictability was not significant ( F (1,128) = 0.23, p  > .05, 95%CI = [-7.437, 5.984]). As expected, the interaction was significant ( F (1,128) = 6.81, p  = .01, 95%CI = [3.037, 22.097], η p 2  = .050). Then, simple effect analysis revealed that under the predictable condition, the average water consumption was significantly less under the scarcity condition ( M  = 25.29, SD  = 13.87) than under the control condition ( M  = 37.13, SD  = 13.91), F (1,128) = 12.25, p  < .001, 95%CI = [-18.535, -5.146], η p 2  = .087. However, under the unpredictable condition, there was no significant difference between the scarcity condition ( M  = 32.71, SD  = 13.93) and control condition ( M  = 31.98, SD  = 13.90), F (1,128) = 0.05, p  > .05, 95%CI = [-5.984, 7.437] (see Fig.  4 ).

Average water consumption as a function of resource scarcity and environmental unpredictability manipulations (Study 3)

Moreover, the results in average paper consumption showed a similar pattern. Main effects of scarcity ( F (1,128) = 0.42, p  > .05, 95%CI = [-0.137, 0.042]) and environmental unpredictability ( F (1,128) = 0.70, p  > .05, 95%CI = [-0.143, 0.036]) were not significant. A significant interaction effect was detected, F (1,128) = 5.30, p  = .023, 95%CI = [0.021, 0.275], η p 2  = .040. As predicted, in the predictable condition, paper consumption in the scarcity condition ( M  = 0.28, SD  = 0.18) was significantly less than in the control condition ( M  = 0.38, SD  = 0.18), F (1,128) = 4.39, p  = .038, 95%CI = [-0.184, -0.005], η p 2  = .033. No significant difference in paper consumption were observed between scarcity condition ( M  = 0.33, SD  = 0.19) and control condition ( M  = 0.28, SD  = 0.19) in unpredictable condition, F (1,128) = 1.39, p  > .05, 95%CI = [-0.036, 0.143] (see Fig.  5 ).

Average paper consumption as a function of resource scarcity and environmental unpredictability manipulations (Study 3)

More importantly, the above findings did not significantly differ without control variables in data analysis, and also did not significantly differ using the raw scores of water and paper consumption. Detailed results can be found in the Additional file 1 .

Hypothetical forest resource consumption was log transformed as it showed non-normal distribution. The findings showed that the main effects of scarcity ( F (1,130) = 1.800, p  > .05, 95%CI = [-0.363, 0.271]) and environmental unpredictability ( F (1,130) = 2.189, p  > .05, 95%CI = [-0.688, 0.049]) were not significant. A marginally significant interaction effect was detected, F (1, 130) = 3.04, p  = .084, 95%CI = [-0.053, 0.849], η p 2  = .023. As predicted, in the predictable condition, forest resource consumption in the scarcity condition ( M raw  = 30.76, SD raw  = 14.97) was significantly less than the control condition ( M raw  = 40.74, SD raw  = 25.41), F (1,130) = 4.71, p  = .032, 95%CI = [-0.672, -0.031], η p 2  = .035. No significant difference of forest resource consumption was observed between scarcity condition ( M raw  = 42.15, SD raw  = 20.41) and control condition ( M raw  = 44.00, SD raw  = 28.17) in unpredictable condition, F (1,130) = 0.08, p  > .05, 95%CI = [-0.027, 0.363] (see Fig.  6 ).

Forest resource consumption as a function of resource scarcity and environmental unpredictability manipulations (Study 3)

As expected, Study 3 replicated the findings of the previous two studies. We identified a moderating effect of nature-caused environmental unpredictability on ecological resource scarcity information’s effect on actual PEB. Specifically, individuals who received lower levels of environmental unpredictability information exhibited more water-saving and paper-saving behaviors, and were inclined to harvest fewer forest resources in the face of water scarcity. Interestingly, even though our manipulation focused solely on water scarcity, both paper consumption and forest resource consumption were affected as well, despite their lack of direct association with water. These results highlight the robust influence of resource scarcity information and environmental unpredictability on PEB, thereby enhancing the ecological validity of our findings.

General discussion

Focusing on the global issue of environmental unpredictability, the current research explored when does showing resource scarcity information promote PEB. In Study 1, a cross-sectional study, we discovered that resource scarcity information effectively enhances PEB, but only when individuals perceive the environment as less unpredictable. Furthermore, by manipulating scarcity information, Study 2 revealed that only for individuals with lower levels of environmental unpredictability could presenting ecological resource scarcity information decrease forest resource consumption intention. Moreover, an experiment with high ecological validity was conducted in Study 3 and found that the negative effect of water resource scarcity information on actual water and paper saving behaviors, as well as hypothetical forest resource consumption emerged only for people who receiving weaker environmental unpredictability information.

Theoretical contribution and practical implication

Environmental unpredictability is an important concept in life history theory. Numerous studies have verified that childhood environmental unpredictability plays a crucial role in shaping life history strategies [ 27 , 28 , 30 , 37 , 53 ]. However, little is known about how adulthood environmental unpredictability functions. The current research provided preliminary evidence that unpredictability in adulthood can also function in shaping behaviors. Adulthood unpredictability, including both individual- and nature-related environmental unpredictability, demotivates individuals to sacrifice present interests for future environmental benefits when facing scarcity.

Some psychological factors, including those discussed earlier (such as short-sighted tendency, fear of free riders, and perceived lack of control), as well as self-interest and competitive orientation, can serve as potential mechanisms underlying the moderating effect of environmental unpredictability. Self-interest and competitive orientation are important ways for individuals to survive in a harsh environment. Individuals may adopt a competitive orientation to obtain more benefits for themselves to survive during periods of scarcity. In addition, they may also seek to weaken others’ interests. These factors have been identified as “Stone Age” psychological biases leading to environment destruction [ 54 ]. To better respond to ecological resource scarcity, the current research demonstrated the importance of creating a predictable and peaceful world by removing the psychological barriers to mitigate ecological resource scarcity.

The IMB model provides a comprehensive framework advancing resource conservation research and intervention implements [ 3 ]. Even though the IMB model captures three vital components, information, motivation, and behavioral skills on behavior change, the psychological barriers caused by environmental unpredictability were ignored. As illustrated in a recent meta-analysis [ 15 ], compared with the control group, of the 38 interventions including IMB components, water use was reduced by only 5.9% in average with a small effect size, and the magnitude of effect varied widely in different interventions. According to the findings in the current research, levels of environmental unpredictability may be the underlying reason for the varied efficacy. Therefore, to best strengthen reducing resource consumption interventions based on the IMB model, it’s necessary to take environmental unpredictability into consideration.

Importantly, the current research developed a new paradigm, washing-hands paradigm, to measure actual resource consumption in the lab. As illustrated in previous studies, there are gaps between self-reported behaviors, and objective behaviors [ 43 ]. However, over 80% of recent studies only relied on self-reported data [ 55 ]. The washing-hands paradigm sets up a situation to capture actual water and paper resource consumption data. Importantly, the confounding variables can be controlled in the paradigm, such as habits, individual difference on palm size, and social desirability. This paradigm can help to establish causality and improve ecological validity of lab experiments, advancing resource conservation research.

The current research also provides some vital practical implications for both policy makers and environmental organizations. Our data suggested that creating a predictable environment can help promote resource conservation when facing ecological resource scarcity information. Governments should try to eliminate unpredictable factors. However, some unpredictable factors are difficult to address, such as natural disasters and virus spread. In such conditions, individual-level practices appear to be more important. For countries with a predictable environment, the strategy of the reminders of the ecological resource scarcity information is effective. However, for countries with an unpredictable environment, governments and organizations can consider using public media to decrease residents’ perceived unpredictability. Moreover, inspired by our Study 2, emphasizing predictable environmental information when reminding residents of scarcity should be encouraged. Environmental organizations should provide information that the environment is predictable when calling for resource conservation to respond to scarcity.

Limitations and future directions

The current research faces the limitation that the measurement in the correlation study is restricted due to the use of only one item to measure the moderator, and the alpha level of the PEB measure is low. For future studies, one aspect to consider is the exploration potential mechanisms of the moderation hypothesis. The current research did not delve into psychological mechanisms. It is suggested that future research could investigate underlying potential mechanisms of the moderation hypothesis to enrich the framework. Another related issue pertains to the IMB model. In the current research, we mainly focused on the effectiveness of scarcity information component but didn’t include motivation and behavioral skills components. It’s worthy for future research to test if creating a predictable environment can still strengthen the effect of IMB intervention. Besides, there are various types of resource conservation behaviors that individuals can engage in. Importantly, different behaviors are not necessarily highly relevant. For example, factors predicting shutting down electronics at night could not predict upgrading to energy-efficient appliances because these behaviors may cluster into distinct dimensions [ 56 , 57 ]. In the current research, we may not be able to generalize our findings to other types of behaviors. Thus, future research is encouraged to investigate whether the moderation hypothesis can be verified in other types of resource conservation behaviors.

Across three studies, we provided evidence to support the moderation hypothesis that environmental unpredictability weakens the positive effect of ecological resource scarcity information on PEB. Moving forward, it would be valuable to delve deeper into the underlying mechanisms, examine the moderation effect across various types of PEB, and investigate its potential application in PEB interventions.

Availability of data and materials

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

World Bank. World development indicators 2016. Washington, DC: World Bank; 2016.

Book   Google Scholar  

Syme GJ, Nancarrow BE, Seligman C. The evaluation of information campaigns to promote voluntary household water conservation. Eval Rev. 2000;24(6):539–78. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193841x0002400601 .

Article   Google Scholar  

Fisher WA, Fisher JD, Shuper PA. Social psychology and the fight against AIDS: an information-motivation-behavioral skills model for the prediction and promotion of health behavior. Adv Exp Soc Psychol. 2014;50:105–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-800284-1.00003-5 .

Famiglietti JS. The global groundwater crisis. Nat Clim Chang. 2014;4(11):945–8. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2425 .

Fisher JD, Fisher WA, Amico KR, Harman J. An information-motivation- behavioral skills model of adherence to antiretroviral therapy. Health Psychol. 2006;25(4):462–73. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.25.4.462 .

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Steg L, Perlaviciute G, van der Werff E, Lurvink J. The significance of hedonic values for environmentally relevant attitudes, preferences, and actions. Environ Behav. 2014;46(2):163–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916512454730 .

Ehret PJ, Hodges HE, Kuehl C, Brick C, Mueller S, Anderson SE. Systematic review of household water conservation interventions using the information–motivation–behavioral skills model. Environ Behav. 2020;53(5):001391651989686. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916519896868 .

Hannibal B, Sansom L, E. Portney K. The effect of local water scarcity and drought on water conservation behaviors. Environ Sociol. 2019;5(3):294–307. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2018.1519882 .

Rodriguez-Sanchez C, Sarabia-Sanchez FJ. Does water context matter in water conservation decision behaviour? Sustainability. 2020;12(7):3026. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12073026 .

Gu D, Jiang J, Zhang Y, Sun Y, Jiang W, Du X. Concern for the future and saving the earth: when does ecological resource scarcity promote pro-environmental behavior? J Environ Psychol. 2020;72(101501):101501. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101501 .

Berthold A, Cologna V, Siegrist M. The influence of scarcity perception on people’s pro-environmental behavior and their readiness to accept new sustainable technologies. Ecol Econ. 2022;196(107399):107399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107399 .

Katz D, Grinstein A, Kronrod A, Nisan U. Evaluating the effectiveness of a water conservation campaign: combining experimental and field methods. J Environ Manage. 2016;180:335–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2016.05.049 .

March H, Domènech L, Saurí D. Water conservation campaigns and citizen perceptions: the drought of 2007–2008 in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. Nat Hazards (Dordr). 2013;65(3):1951–66. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0456-2 .

Quesnel KJ, Ajami NK. Changes in water consumption linked to heavy news media coverage of extreme climatic events. Sci Adv. 2017;3(10):1–9. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1700784 .

Ehret PJ, Hodges HE, Kuehl C, Brick C, Mueller S, Anderson SE. Systematic review of household water conservation interventions using the information–motivation–behavioral skills model. Environ Behav. 2021;53(5):485–519. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916519896868 .

Inman D, Jeffrey P. A review of residential water conservation tool performance and influences on implementation effectiveness. Urban Water J. 2006;3(3):127–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/15730620600961288 .

Fatmawati I, Dharmmesta BS, Purwanto BM, Nugroho SS. Promoting young adults to perform energy saving behavior through message framing: a lesson learned from Indonesia. Acad Strateg Manag J. 2018;17(5):1–282. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.08.011 .

Kimbrough EO, Vostroknutov A. The social and ecological determinants of common pool resource sustainability. J Environ Econ Manag. 2015;72(C):38–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2015.04.004l .

Belsky J, Schlomer GL, Ellis BJ. Beyond cumulative risk: distinguishing harshness and unpredictability as determinants of parenting and early life history strategy. Dev Psychol. 2012;48(3):662–73. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024454 .

Charnov EL. Life history invariants: some explorations of symmetry in evolutionary ecology. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1993.

Roff DA, ed. Evolution of life histories: theory and analysis. 1993rd ed. NY: Chapman and Hall; 1993.

Roff DA. Life history evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2002.

Stearns SC. The evolution of life histories. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1992.

Ellis BJ, Figueredo AJ, Brumbach BH, Schlomer GL. Fundamental dimensions of environmental risk: the impact of harsh versus unpredictable environments on the evolution and development of life history strategies. Hum Nat. 2009;20(2):204–68. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-009-9063-7 .

Young ES, Frankenhuis WE, Ellis BJ. Theory and measurement of environmental unpredictability. Evol Hum Behav. 2020;41(6):550–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2020.08.006 .

Simpson JA, Griskevicius V, Kuo SIC, Sung S, Collins WA. Evolution, stress, and sensitive periods: the influence of unpredictability in early versus late childhood on sex and risky behavior. Dev Psychol. 2012;48(3):674–86. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027293 .

Chen BB, Qu W. Life history strategies and procrastination: the role of environmental unpredictability. Pers Individ Dif. 2017;117:23–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.05.036 .

Chen BB, Shi Z, Sun S. Life history strategy as a mediator between childhood environmental unpredictability and adulthood personality. Pers Individ Dif. 2017;111:215–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.02.032 .

Frankenhuis WE, Panchanathan K, Nettle D. Cognition in harsh and unpredictable environments. Curr Opin Psychol. 2016;7:76–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.08.011 .

Hill EM, Jenkins J, Farmer L. Family unpredictability, future discounting, and risk taking. J Socio Econ. 2008;37(4):1381–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2006.12.081 .

Zhang Y, Gao Y, Jiang J. An unpredictable environment reduces pro-environmental behavior: a dynamic public goods experiment on forest use. J Environ Psychol. 2021;78(101702):101702. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101702 .

Brumbach BH, Figueredo AJ, Ellis BJ. Effects of harsh and unpredictable environments in adolescence on development of life history strategies: a longitudinal test of an evolutionary model. Hum Nat. 2009;20(1):25–51. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-009-9059-3 .

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Ajzen I, Fishbein M. The influence of attitudes on behavior. In: Albarracín D, ed. The handbook of attitudes, Vol 826. Mahwah: Psychology Press; 2005. p. 173–221.

Wit A, Wilke H. Public good provision under environmental and social uncertainty. Eur J Soc Psychol. 1998;28(2):249–56. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0992(199803/04)28:2%3C249::AID-EJSP868%3E3.0.CO;2-J .

Zhu N, Hawk ST, Chang L. Unpredictable and competitive cues affect prosocial behaviors and judgments. Pers Individ Dif. 2019;138:203–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.10.006 .

Tam KP, Chan HW. Generalized trust narrows the gap between environmental concern and pro-environmental behavior: Multilevel evidence. Glob Environ Change. 2018;48:182–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2017.12.001 .

Griskevicius V, Ackerman JM, Cantú SM, et al. When the economy falters, do people spend or save? Responses to resource scarcity depend on childhood environments. Psychol Sci. 2013;24(2):197–205. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612451471 .

Mittal C, Griskevicius V. Sense of control under uncertainty depends on people’s childhood environment: a life history theory approach. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2014;107(4):621–37. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037398 .

Gifford R. The dragons of inaction: psychological barriers that limit climate change mitigation and adaptation. Am Psychol. 2011;66(4):290–302. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023566 .

Faul F, Erdfelder E, Buchner A, Lang AG. Statistical power analyses using G*Power 3.1: tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behav Res Methods. 2009;41(4):1149–60. https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.41.4.1149 .

Lee AJ, Zietsch BP. Experimental evidence that women’s mate preferences are directly influenced by cues of pathogen prevalence and resource scarcity. Biol Lett. 2011;7(6):892–5. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2011.0454 .

Watkins CD, DeBruine LM, Little AC, Feinberg DR, Jones BC. Priming concerns about pathogen threat versus resource scarcity: dissociable effects on women’s perceptions of men’s attractiveness and dominance. Behav Ecol Sociobiol. 2012;66(12):1549–56. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-012-1408-2 .

Kormos C, Gifford R. The validity of self-report measures of proenvironmental behavior: a meta-analytic review. J Environ Psychol. 2014;40:359–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2014.09.003 .

Reynolds JJ, McCrea SM. Life history theory and exploitative strategies. Evol Psychol. 2016;14(3):1–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474704916659483 .

Barr S. Factors influencing environmental attitudes and behaviors: a U.k. case study of household waste management. Environ Behav. 2007;39(4):435–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916505283421 .

Bratt C, Stern PC, Matthies E, Nenseth V. Home, car use, and vacation: the structure of environmentally significant individual behavior. Environ Behav. 2015;47(4):436–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/001391651452503 .

Eysenck H, Eysenck SB. Manual of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire : (Epq-R Adult). CA: EdITS/Educational and Industrial Testing Service; 1994.

Hancock GR, Mueller RO, eds. Structural equation modeling: a second course. 2nd ed. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing; 2013.

Spiller SA, Fitzsimons GJ, Lynch JG Jr, Mcclelland GH. Spotlights, floodlights, and the magic number zero: simple effects tests in moderated regression. J Mark Res. 2013;50(2):277–88. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.12.0420 .

Kruglanski AW, Shah JY, Fishbach A, Friedman R, Chun WY, Sleeth-Keppler D. A theory of goal systems. In: Advances in experimental social psychology. NY: Elsevier; 2002. p. 331–378. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(02)80008-9 .

Wang L, Gu D, Jiang J, Sun Y. The not-so-dark side of materialism: can public versus private contexts make materialists less Eco-unfriendly? Front Psychol. 2019;10:1–10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00790 .

Dunlap RE, Van Liere KD, Mertig AG, Jones RE. New trends in measuring environmental attitudes: measuring endorsement of the new ecological paradigm: a revised NEP scale. J Soc Issues. 2000;56(3):425–42. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00176 .

White AE, Li YJ, Griskevicius V, Neuberg SL, Kenrick DT. Putting all your eggs in one basket: life-history strategies, bet hedging, and diversification. Psychol Sci. 2013;24(5):715–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612461919 .

van Vugt M, Griskevicius V, Schultz PW. Naturally green: harnessing stone age psychological biases to foster environmental behavior. Soc Issues Policy Rev. 2014;8(1):1–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/sipr.12000 .

Lange F, Steinke A, Dewitte S. The pro-environmental behavior task: a laboratory measure of actual pro-environmental behavior. J Environ Psychol. 2018;56:46–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2018.02.007 .

Karlin B, Davis N, Sanguinetti A, Gamble K, Kirkby D, Stokols D. Dimensions of conservation: exploring differences among energy behaviors. Environ Behav. 2014;46(4):423–52. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916512467532 .

Nair G, Gustavsson L, Mahapatra K. Factors influencing energy efficiency investments in existing Swedish residential buildings. Energy Policy. 2010;38(6):2956–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2010.01.033 .

Download references

The authors acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31871126), Chongqing Normal University (23XWB043) and Social Science Fund of Chongqing, China (2023BS076).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Key Laboratory of Applied Psychology, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China

School of Education, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China

Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education (Beijing Normal University), Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, No.19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Beijing, 100875, China

Jiang Jiang

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

GD and JJ contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by GD. GD and JJ contributed to the interpretation of data. The first draft of the manuscript was written by GD. JJ commented on previous versions of the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jiang Jiang .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

The study was conducted after getting approval from the Institutional Review Board of the Beijing Normal University and was conducted following the ethical standards of the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations of Beijing Normal University. Participants were informed that their names and institution names would be kept confidential and their privacy rights were protected. Participants were included in the process on a voluntary basis and informed consent was obtained from all subjects.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

Supplementary material 1., rights and permissions.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Gu, D., Jiang, J. Navigating an unpredictable environment: the moderating role of perceived environmental unpredictability in the effectiveness of ecological resource scarcity information on pro-environmental behavior. BMC Psychol 12 , 261 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-024-01762-1

Download citation

Received : 01 December 2023

Accepted : 02 May 2024

Published : 10 May 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-024-01762-1

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Ecological resource scarcity information
• Pro-environmental behaviors
• Life history theory
• Washing-hands paradigm

BMC Psychology

ISSN: 2050-7283

• General enquiries: [email protected]