Wilson Merrell

If you could win a prize by guessing the number on a die 🎲 hidden under a cup, would you want to guess before the die was rolled, or after?
The odds of winning are the same in both, but they can feel different. 🧵

New paper accepted at JEP:G with @sakierahudson.bsky.social, Brandon Kinsler, & former students Ian Davis and Alissa Vandenbark!

Come for the opening Aladdin quote, stay for a developmental perspective on SDO!

osf.io/preprints/ps...

New from @ara-eunkyung.bsky.social + me: social psychologists are often interested in space, but have to choose between abstractions at high levels of geography or images taken with limited geographic scope. We identify a tool to sample space at scale: mapping platforms, such as Google Street View.

a cartoon of homer simpson and bart simpson sitting on a couch with the words join us above them . Alt: a cartoon of homer simpson and bart simpson sitting on a couch with the words join us above them .

Just found out I can put this gif on my lab website so this is gonna be a game changer 😂 Anyway I will be reviewing PhD applications for UIC social-personality psych area to start in Fall 2026, so please let your students know. More info on my website: www.pbandjlab.com/team

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS:

CEPDISC’25 Conference on Discrimination

September 24-26, 2025
Horsens, Denmark

The conference brings together researchers working on discrimination from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.

Deadline for abstract submission is 15 May.

See the website for more info:

Flaunting Porsches or Paris? Comparing the Social Signaling Value of Experiential and Material Conspicuous Consumption - Wilson N. Merrell, Joshua M. Ackerman, 2025 Humans have always found ways to flaunt how they spend money. In studying this conspicuous consumption behavior, researchers have focused almost exclusively on ...

So, conspicuous experiences may offer "the best of both worlds" when it comes to signaling status and warmth as long as they are seen as intrinsically motivated.

For more info on these studies (and two additional ones), please see the full paper here: doi.org/10.1177/0146... (7/7)

Figure depicting the effect described in the text.

When no motivation was given, conspicuous experiences were assumed to be more intrinsically motivated and judged as warmer (panel A).

But when this flipped (e.g., extrinsically motivated vacations, intrinsically motivated jewelry), the warmth advantage disappeared and even reversed (panel C). (6/7)

Example conspicuous experiential social media profile

Example conspicuous material social media profile

Why does this experiential warmth advantage exist? A key factor was perceived motivation.

In another study, participants saw profiles representing either experiential or material purchases accompanied by intrinsic (“for me”) or extrinsic (“to impress”) purchase motivations (or none at all). (5/7)

Example stimuli including pictures showing a coastal vacation, fancy breakfast, gold watch, and designer sweatshirt.

Figure depicting the effect described in the text.

In one study, we scraped Instagram posts tagged with experiential and material hashtags (see examples below).

Participants saw conspicuous experiential consumers as equally high status—but significantly higher warmth—than conspicuous material consumers. (4/7)

Compared to material goods, experiences have distinct features: they're temporary, harder to compare, and often seen as more intrinsically motivated.

So we asked: do conspicuous experiences provide a similar social signal to material goods, or do they offer distinct costs/benefits? (3/7)

Most research on conspicuous consumption—spending that signals status—focuses on material goods 🚗👗⌚. These ⬆️ status perceptions but often ⬇️ warmth.

But what about conspicuous experiential purchases—things like international travel✈️, exclusive concerts🎫, and fine dining🍜? (2/7)

Screenshotted title and abstract from this paper: https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251331658

From fancy cars 🚗 to luxury vacations 🏖️, people often show off how they spend their money.

In new work with @joshackman.bsky.social, we find that how this flashy behavior is perceived depends on WHAT purchases are being shown off.

🧵on conspicuous consumption, experiences, and status signals (1/7)

🚨New article🚨

Why does the ethnic majority expect that ethnic minorities "free ride" and contribute less to the collective?

In a new article in @bjpols.bsky.social, I show that negative expectations are driven by the correlates of ethnicity rather than ethnicity itself 🧵👇

OA-link: cup.org/4lOX7jN

BJPolS societal views towards immigrants and ethnic minorities in Europe, focusing on resource contribution and compliance with societal norms. The text discusses a study in Denmark regarding information manipulation and its effects on societal perceptions.

NEW -

The Correlates of Ethnicity: Why the Ethnic Majority Expects That Ethnic Minorities Contribute Less to the Collective - cup.org/4lOX7jN

- @matkruse.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

🙌 Hot off the presses @natcomms.nature.com! We created a custom #Minecraft environment to study a long-standing puzzle in cognitive science:
How do humans flexibly adapt their individual and social learning strategies in dynamic, realistic situations? Check it out 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵👇

💥Postdoc call 💥

Join my @erc.europa.eu project #YOPOW at Aarhus University

🎇 3-y position (possibility of 1-y extension)

❓How societal norms give rise to biased beliefs about political power in youth

🤖 Computational social science (large-scale text & image data)

Deadline May 15: bit.ly/4hIpSeD

Here's a new preprint from my lab. My student and I ran the first study in our last year at Colby, and I finally got around to running follow-up studies. Trying to write about race and racism in the midst of everything is definitely something... Hopefully this will fare well in the review process...

Deconfounding Sex and Sex of Partner in Mate-Preference Research - Ashley J. Coventry, Selina Mixner, Benjamin Gelbart, Kathryn V. Walter, Daniel Conroy-Beam, Tamsin C. German, 2025 Much of the previous research examining sex differences in human mate preferences has relied exclusively on heterosexual participants. Consequently, prior work ...

🚨New paper! I tackle a confound in mate preference research: Are preferences & standards driven by one's own sex or target sex? Two studies show preferences are (mostly) driven by own sex, but overall standards are driven by target sex. Full paper: doi.org/10.1177/0956... #MatePreferences #Research

🧵1/4
Excited to celebrate Anna Huang‘s first first-authored paper just published in EJSP. 🥳
In this theoretical article, Anna explores how Social Identity Theory (SIT) and Self-Categorization Theory (SCT) apply to individuals with Mixed racial-ethnic identities.

Next up, @joshackman.bsky.social reminded us that disease remains a potent threat post-pandemic, and has been throughout human history - to the point that we’ve got psychological mechanisms dedicated to preventing and coping with it. (1/5) #EPatSPSP2025 #SPSP2025

Presentation title, time, and location. Mapping conflict: How spatial resource patchiness shapes perceptions of territoriality. Thursday 20 February 2025, 9:15 - 10:00. Blueburd ballroom

Presentation title, time, and location. Patchy resource ecologies can evoke intergroup conflict. Thursday February 20, 16:30 - 17:00. Four seasons ballroom

Whether we're foraging for food or hunting for houses, humans expect resources to be clumped. What are the implications of this'patchiness psychology' for intergroup relations? Excited to share new geospatial approaches tackling this❓at #SPSP2025 this week--stop by and say hi if you're in town!

Fun fact I just learned: 30+ countries invest *more than $500M* to fight loneliness and social isolation—but what do we actually know about their global health risks? Not much.

Join us at SPSP next Saturday, where we tackle this question with data from 350,000 people across 58 nations:

In science and in backlash, identities matter In this political moment, anti-science and anti-diversity social forces are resurgent, and they threaten diversity within our disciplines. In this reflection, I discuss why diversity matters by summa...

I wrote a little reflection on objectivity and diversity in science. Could be useful if you are teaching research methods, as is the companion paper on objectivity interrogation.

communities.springernature.com/posts/in-sci...

If you'd like living in the Middle East and looking at the world from a different angle, check out and share these ads for Postdoctoral Fellow (2-yr renewable: apply.interfolio.com/160826) and Lab Manager (1-yr renewable: apply.interfolio.com/160827) and help me build up the Societal Psychology Lab!

Starter pack of people I share a research group with who are studying decision-making in contexts of adversity go.bsky.app/CN2PKvY

Does childhood exposure to coethnics impede or promote the acquisition of citizenship?

In a new article in @pnas.org, I show that the modest presence of coethnic peers in school increases migrant children’s probability of getting 🇩🇰 citizenship later in life. 🧵👇 1/15

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Feeling a bit ingroupy these days? A little open to extreme punishments for certain crimes? A little down on sibling incest? Maybe living near family (or seeing them at the holidays) is shaping your psychology. New paper on the ecology of relatedness: psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-...