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https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721418758437
Current Directions in Psychological
Science
2018, Vol. 27(5) 309 –314
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0963721418758437
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We constantly form impressions about other people. Is
my superior annoyed with me or just distracted? Is my
teenager telling the truth about what he did last night?
Will this job applicant be reliable once hired? Is this
person genuinely interested in me or just playing nice?
The consequences of being wrong can be huge. We
might hire or marry the wrong person, jeopardize rela-
tionships, and get disappointed by other people.
The skill to accurately assess other individuals’ emo-
tions, personality, intentions, motives, and thoughts is
called interpersonal accuracy (Hall, Schmid Mast, & West,
2016; Schlegel, Boone, & Hall, 2017). Surely we need this
skill for successfully developing, maintaining, and manag-
ing our social relationships and for being effective in
social interactions. But what is known empirically about
the impact of interpersonal accuracy for social interac-
tions? Does being interpersonally accurate profit the
social interaction partner or the person who is accurate?
And how exactly does interpersonal accuracy manifest
itself in social interactions? We review the existing litera-
ture on outcomes of interpersonal accuracy and discuss
when and why it is related to interaction outcomes.
What Is Interpersonal Accuracy?
Although interpersonal accuracy can fluctuate depend-
ing on current motives (Smith, Ickes, Hall, & Hodges,
2011), most often it is considered a skill because it
improves over development (Isaacowitz, Vicaria, &
Murry, 2016), correlates with declarative knowledge on
the topic (Rosip & Hall, 2004; Schlegel & Scherer, 2017),
and is trainable (Blanch-Hartigan, Andrzejewski, & Hill,
2012; Schlegel, Vicaria, Isaacowitz, & Hall, 2017). It is
different from emotional intelligence (Mayer, Salovey,
& Caruso, 2008) because emotional intelligence is at
the same time broader (e.g., it includes the manage-
ment of emotions and the expression of emotions in
the self and in others and not just the perception of
others’ emotions) and narrower (it is about emotions
only and not about motivation or personality). Both
758437CDPXXX10.1177/0963721418758437Mast, HallInterpersonal Perception Accuracy
research-article2018
Corresponding Author:
Marianne Schmid Mast, University of Lausanne, HEC Lausanne,
Department of Organizational Behavior, Quartier Unil-Chamberonne,
CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
E-mail: marianne.schmidmast@unil.ch
The Impact of Interpersonal Accuracy
on Behavioral Outcomes
Marianne Schmid Mast1 and Judith A. Hall2
1Department of Organizational Behavior, HEC Lausanne, University of Lausanne, and
2Department of Psychology, Northeastern University
Abstract
Interpersonal accuracy, the ability to correctly assess other people’s states or traits, has been studied for over 60 years,
and many correlates have been uncovered. Furthermore, theorists routinely propose that having this kind of skill matters
for social and workplace outcomes. However, much of the empirical work concerned with interpersonal accuracy does
not directly address real-life outcomes for people who have, or lack, this skill. The present article summarizes literature
pointing to behavioral correlates of interpersonal accuracy and illustrates when and why interpersonal accuracy is
related to favorable interaction outcomes. There seems to be no specific behavior associated with high interpersonal
accuracy. Instead, interpersonal accuracy seems to foster behavioral adaptability, the ability to change one’s behavior
to match the expectations of the social interaction partner. This behavioral adaptability might be responsible for the
positive interaction outcomes related to interpersonal accuracy. We illustrate the mechanism and boundary conditions
underlying and framing how interpersonal accuracy affects interaction outcomes and discuss future directions in
research on interpersonal accuracy.
Keywords
interpersonal accuracy, behavioral adaptability, emotion recognition
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310 Mast, Hall
concepts overlap with accurate emotion recognition,
which is the predominant operationalization of the con-
cept of interpersonal accuracy in empirical studies. We
know much less about how accurately assessing the
personalities of other people, for instance, relates to
social interaction outcomes.
Because it is conceptualized as a skill, interpersonal
accuracy is mainly measured with performance tests.
Participants hear or see other people’s behavior, usually
in short videos or in photographs, and infer something
about the target people, for instance their status, per-
sonality, or what emotions they display. This inference
is then compared with a criterion (the operationally
defined gold standard, such as the target’s self-reported
emotions) to obtain an accuracy score. Research shows
that people sometimes overestimate their interpersonal
accuracy (Ames & Kammrath, 2004) and that self-
reports of interpersonal accuracy are rather weakly cor-
related with tested interpersonal accuracy (Hall,
Andrzejewski, & Yopchick, 2009), which is why research-
ers use performance-based assessments.
Are People Accurate at Assessing
Others?
Although many studies have investigated whether peo-
ple are accurate in their judgments, it is hard to com-
ment on interpersonal accuracy in an absolute sense
and to compare accuracy rates across domains and tests
of interpersonal accuracy because of methodological
decisions made by test developers (e.g., using shorter
or longer exposures, selecting items for their difficulty
level, presenting posed vs. spontaneous behavior; Hall,
Andrzejewski, Murphy, Schmid Mast, & Feinstein, 2008).
At the extremes, judging deception is known to be very
difficult (Bond & DePaulo, 2006), while judging proto-
typical emotions, especially on the face, can be very
easy (Hall et al., 2008; Matsumoto et al., 2000). In the
present article, we focus on individual differences in
interpersonal accuracy.
Who Is Interpersonally Accurate?
Numerous traits are modestly positively correlated with
interpersonal accuracy, including tolerance, extraver-
sion, conscientiousness, internal locus of control, and
mental adjustment (Hall et al., 2009). Interpersonal
accuracy measured as emotion recognition accuracy is
positively correlated with general mental intelligence
(r = .19; Schlegel, Palese, et al., 2017), but intelligence
does not explain the effect of interpersonal accuracy
on interaction outcomes (Bommer, Pesta, & Storrud-
Barnes, 2011). In general, females outperform males,
although mostly what is studied are emotion judgments.
The gender difference, although not large, is very con-
sistent across tests, ages, and geography (Hall, Gunnery,
& Horgan, 2016).
Is Interpersonal Accuracy Related to
Interaction Outcomes?
Empirical evidence suggests that a person who is inter-
personally accurate is more successful in social interac-
tions. Overall, this person’s relationships are of higher
quality (Hall et al., 2009). With regard to specific set-
tings, salespeople who score higher in interpersonal
accuracy have better sales and higher salaries (Byron,
Terranova, & Nowicki, 2007). Doctors with high inter-
personal accuracy are more attentive to signs of patient
distress and have patients who are more satisfied and
more likely to keep their appointments (Hall, 2011).
More interpersonally accurate superiors have more sat-
isfied subordinates (Schmid Mast, Jonas, Cronauer, &
Darioly, 2012), and people with higher levels of inter-
personal accuracy obtain better results in negotiations
(Elfenbein, Der Foo, White, Tan, & Aik, 2007) and are
less guided by their stereotypes when evaluating others
(Frauendorfer & Schmid Mast, 2013). High school stu-
dents who have higher levels of interpersonal accuracy
are better at learning new word definitions in a dyadic
teaching situation (Bernieri, 1991), and music teachers
with high levels of interpersonal accuracy are rated as
more effective by their students and by outside observ-
ers (Kurkul, 2007). People with high interpersonal accu-
racy (together with being extraverted) also emerge
more easily as leaders in a group (Rubin, Munz, &
Bommer, 2005; Walter, Cole, van der Vegt, Rubin, &
Bommer, 2012), and female more than male managers
who have high interpersonal accuracy are given better
performance ratings by their subordinates (Byron,
2007). Being interpersonally perceptive is correlated
with good outcomes in a work context, as confirmed
by two articles statistically combining the existing
literature (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002; Hall et al.,
2009).
Thus, being interpersonally accurate is related to
benefits for the social interaction partner of an accurate
individual (e.g., more satisfaction) as well as for the
person who is interpersonally accurate (e.g., higher
salary, better able to learn, more effective as a teacher).
The relationship is probably dynamic and interactive,
in that being interpersonally accurate positively affects
one’s social interaction partner, which in turn has a
positive effect on the person who is interpersonally
accurate.
But interpersonal accuracy is not always directly
related to better interpersonal outcomes. For some
people and under certain circumstances, this link is
Interpersonal Perception Accuracy 311
stronger or weaker. Female managers more so than male
managers who scored highly on interpersonal accuracy
received better performance ratings by their subordi-
nates (Byron, 2007). Interpersonal accuracy was also
related to better performance in an assessment center,
more so for non-Whites than for Whites and more so
for people with lower general intelligence than for
people with higher levels of general intelligence
(Bommer et al., 2011). These results suggest that high
interpersonal accuracy might compensate for social
disadvantages.
Emerging as a leader or being perceived as a trans-
formational leader by subordinates were both related
to interpersonal accuracy, but only when individuals
also had high levels of extraversion (Rubin et al., 2005;
Walter et al., 2012). Extraversion seems a prerequisite
for leadership effectiveness, and only when a person
is already extraverted can possessing interpersonal per-
ception skills boost leadership. In sum, personality
characteristics seem to affect interpersonal accuracy
and the link of interpersonal accuracy to behavioral
outcomes.
How Does Interpersonal Accuracy
Affect Social Interaction Outcomes?
Researchers have proposed that interpersonally accu-
rate individuals communicate more effectively, establish
better rapport with the social interaction partner, coor-
dinate the interaction better, and show more supportive
behavior, thereby achieving better interaction outcomes
(Byron, 2007; Byron et al., 2007; Kurkul, 2007; Walter
et al., 2012). However, there are two important unknowns.
One is whether the relation between interpersonal
accuracy and outcomes is actually causal, as nearly all
studies are correlational and do not manipulate inter-
personal accuracy.
Second, there is the proverbial “black box” between
interpersonal accuracy and outcomes: Researchers have
not made much progress in identifying the behavioral
repertoire that mediates this relationship. In fact, rela-
tively little research has even documented the first link
in such a process, that is, behaviors that people with
high interpersonal accuracy display. Specific nonverbal
cues such as smiling and gazing, though little studied,
are not promising as notable correlates of interpersonal
accuracy (Hall et al., 2009). Individuals with high inter-
personal accuracy are, however, more skilled at express-
ing desired emotions (Elfenbein et al., 2010), and as
medical students, they behave in a more engaged way
with patients (Hall et al., 2015). Also, they are perceived
by peer acquaintances to be warmer and more compas-
sionate, to behave in a more sympathetic and considerate
manner in social interactions, and to be more productive
and to get things done (Funder & Harris, 1986). In line
with these findings, interpersonally accurate women
were perceived as being more socially competent in a
videotaped interaction (Firth, Conger, Kuhlenschmidt,
& Dorcey, 1986). Byron (2007) showed that female
managers who were interpersonally accurate were per-
ceived by their subordinates as being more supportive,
whereas for male managers, in contrast, being interper-
sonally accurate was related to being perceived as more
persuasive by the subordinates.
A few studies have empirically tested which variables
explain the link between interpersonal accuracy and
outcomes. As an example, interpersonally accurate
employees had better political skills (i.e., interpersonal
influence, networking ability, and apparent sincerity)
as rated by peers, and these were related to higher
interpersonal facilitation skills (i.e., being helpful and
supportive, having listening skills) as rated by their
supervisors, which in turn predicted higher income
(Momm et al., 2015).
Although it seems that there is not one type of
behavior that characterizes a highly interpersonally
accurate individual, being interpersonally accurate
appears to affect how a person acts and is perceived
in a social interaction, which brings about better inter-
action outcomes. We propose next a novel path that
does not depend on any specific behavior but rather
on the flexibility with which people with high interper-
sonal accuracy can deploy a range of behaviors in their
repertoire.
Behavioral Adaptability
Behavioral adaptability refers to a person’s skill at
adapting his or her behavior to the needs and prefer-
ences of the social interaction partner. Expectation-
confirmation theory posits that satisfaction increases if
a person’s expectations are met ( Jiang & Klein, 2009).
In a social interaction, if people can accurately assess
the other person’s needs, intentions, emotions, prefer-
ences, or personality (i.e., demonstrate interpersonal
accuracy), they possess the prerequisite to adapt their
behavior accordingly (Carrard & Schmid Mast, 2015).
To test a person’s level of behavioral adaptability, one
needs to observe whether this person changes his or
her behavior when interacting with people who have
different preferences. In a recent study (Palese & Schmid
Mast, 2017), participants gave a pep talk to two of their
subordinates (virtual humans in an immersive virtual
environment), one of whom was described as perform-
ing best under a directive leadership style (e.g., receiv-
ing orders, not being involved in decision making), and
the other was described as performing best under a
participative leadership style (e.g., discussing tasks,
312 Mast, Hall
being included in decision making). To obtain a behavior-
based measure of adaptability, the researchers filmed
participants’ talks and then coded how much participa-
tive and directive leadership behavior participants
showed toward the two subordinates. High behavioral
adaptability was operationalized as showing more par-
ticipative leadership toward the subordinate who prefers
a participative leadership style while showing more
directive leadership toward the subordinate who prefers
a directive leadership style. Female participants with
higher interpersonal accuracy showed greater behav-
ioral adaptability (Palese & Schmid Mast, 2017).
In another study, physicians who adapted their com-
munication to their patients’ preferences had patients
who were more satisfied (Carrard, Schmid Mast, &
Cousin, 2016). Behavioral adaptability of female (but
not male) physicians was positively related to their
interpersonal accuracy, and female physicians who
showed more nonverbal behavioral adaptability had
more satisfied patients (Carrard, Schmid Mast, Jaunin-
Stalder, Junod Perron, & Sommer, 2018). This is the first
evidence that individuals with high interpersonal accu-
racy obtain good interaction outcomes not because they
are particularly nice or friendly to other people
(although indeed they may be) but because they adapt
their interaction behavior to their social interaction
partners’ needs or preferences. Being able to commu-
nicate effectively, to build rapport, or to coordinate an
interaction, as well as being able to successfully navi-
gate in social networks and to influence social relation-
ships (i.e., possessing political skills), necessitates the
ability to change one’s interpersonal behavior according
to the social interaction partner; these actions require
behavioral adaptability.
Future Directions
We still do not know enough about when and for whom
interpersonal accuracy is related to behavioral adapt-
ability and to better interaction outcomes. Moreover,
the causality of the relation among interpersonal accu-
racy, behavioral adaptability, and outcomes remains to
be tested. Although the existing literature points to
positive outcomes for people with high levels of inter-
personal accuracy, there might be circumstances in
which high levels are detrimental. Sometimes people
might be better off not being accurate about others (e.g.,
showing motivated inaccuracy; Rollings, Cuperman, &
Ickes, 2011). Also, high interpersonal accuracy might
have detrimental effects on the self if a person con-
stantly adapts to others and neglects his or her own
needs. Such boundary conditions of the positive interac-
tion outcomes of interpersonal accuracy should be
addressed in future research.
Although we do know which traits are related to
interpersonal accuracy, as discussed above, we lack an
understanding of how these traits affect outcomes and
can thus contribute to opening the black box. Maybe
people with high interpersonal accuracy bring out rel-
evant behaviors from other individuals that then make
judgments easier and more accurate. Relevance and
availability of the cues for judgment are important for
accuracy (Funder, 1995).
Interpersonal accuracy is a skill that facilitates social
interactions and benefits the person who is interperson-
ally accurate. Given that the frequency with which we
meet new people has increased dramatically as a result
of globalization and social media, being able to assess
others accurately is a highly treasured skill. Individuals
who possess it will most likely be more successful in
their professional and personal lives, and those who
do not possess it will want to learn it to benefit equally.
We believe that training in interpersonal accuracy will
become a substantial demand in the future.
Recommended Reading
Carrard, V., & Schmid Mast, M. (2015). (See References).
An article outlining a model that illustrates behavioral
adaptability and how it relates to interpersonal accuracy.
Hall, J. A., Andrzejewski, S. A., & Yopchick, J. E. (2009). (See
References). A quantitative review about correlates of
interpersonal accuracy.
Hall, J. A., Schmid Mast, M., & West, T. V. (Eds.). (2016).
(See References). A comprehensive overview of different
aspects of interpersonal accuracy and empirical findings
in support of them.
Action Editor
Randall W. Engle served as action editor for this article.
Acknowledgments
We thank Katja Schlegel, Tristan Palese, and David Funder
for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this
article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest
with respect to the authorship or the publication of this
article.
Funding
This research was supported by a grant from the Swiss
National Science Foundation (Project Number 100014_15
9292/1).
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https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721418760214
Current Directions in Psychological
Science
2018, Vol. 27(5) 339 –344
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DOI: 10.1177/0963721418760214
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PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Research on the role that positive affect (PA) can play
in physical health has surged over the last two decades.
Studies have demonstrated that individuals with higher
levels of PA live longer, have lower rates of illness and
better illness outcomes, and report fewer symptoms
and less pain (Boehm & Kubzansky, 2012; Diener &
Chan, 2011; Pressman & Cohen, 2005). Researchers
have affirmed many findings in replications and exten-
sions of these studies, but there are also discrepancies
that need to be explained.
One possible source of these discrepancies is a lack
of sophistication in measurement conceptualization as
well as a theoretical orientation held by most research-
ers in this area that all types of PA are equal. It is a
common assumption that all PA scales are equivalent,
no matter what adjectives are included in the scale or
the length, timing, or measurement category of the
scale. We argue here that there are important distinc-
tions with health-relevant consequences across mea-
sures of PA. Thus, the goal of this article is to highlight
and review new methodological considerations in PA
measurement that will aid in improving future research
in this field. Although not inclusive of all possible PA
measurement issues, this article highlights critical
nuances that are gaining traction in the PA–health lit-
erature as well as those that would be simple and
straightforward to incorporate into studies in this area.
Because of the importance of understanding how PA
can improve health, we end with a short discussion of
how these measurement issues interact with the mod-
erators and mechanisms that may underlie the associa-
tions between PA and health.
Before we begin, it is important to note that health
can be operationalized in several different ways. Physical
health is best defined by “hard” outcomes such as mor-
tality and morbidity (e.g., incidence of disease). Although
not related to health per se, there are also numerous
promising mechanisms that might connect PA to health,
such as behavioral (e.g., sleep, exercise) and physiologi-
cal (e.g., inflammation, blood pressure) pathways that
we will consider as evidence that may contribute to
downstream health effects as well.
760214CDPXXX10.1177/0963721418760214Pressman, CrossPositive Affect in Health Research
research-article2018
Corresponding Author:
Sarah D. Pressman, University of California, Irvine, Department of
Psychological Science, School of Social Ecology, 4201 Social and
Behavioral Sciences Gateway, Irvine, CA 92697-7085
E-mail: pressman@uci.edu
Moving Beyond a One-Size-Fits-All
View of Positive Affect in Health Research
Sarah D. Pressman and Marie P. Cross
Department of Psychological Science, University of California, Irvine
Abstract
Although the literature that connects positive affect (PA) to health has exploded over the last 20 years, the approach
to studying this topic has remained simplistic. Specifically, researchers overwhelmingly rely on the principle that
all PA is healthful, all of the time. Here, we review recent studies indicating that a more nuanced approach is
valuable. In particular, we demonstrate that a more thoughtful approach to factors such as arousal, culture, timing,
and measurement type results in a more complex picture of when PA is helpful and when it is not. Taking these
issues into account also has implications for the types of mechanisms underlying these associations, as well as how
other moderators might operate. Thus, we argue that considering these gradations will allow researchers to develop
successful and theoretically based health interventions, untangle mixed findings, and enable a deeper understanding
of the connection between PA and health.
Keywords
positive affect, physical health, arousal, culture, stress
mailto:pressman@uci.edu
https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/journals-permissions
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1177%2F0963721418760214&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2018-08-31
340 Pressman, Cross
PA Measurement Considerations
Arousal
Research has long distinguished between subtypes of
negative affect (e.g., depression, anger) and demon-
strated that they have varying effects on physical health
(e.g., Suls & Bunde, 2005). Although many theories of
emotion support similar subcategorizations of PA—for
example, the circumplex model (Russell, 1980) and
broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001)—this dif-
ferentiation is rare in health, possibly because beliefs
about a lack of PA subtypes persist (e.g., Shiota et al.,
2014). One important way of differentiating PA is to
consider self-reported arousal, given its likely overlap
with physiological parameters that can influence health-
relevant outcomes (Pressman & Cohen, 2005). Interest-
ingly, the majority of existing studies on the link
between PA and health use high-arousal (e.g., vigor;
Robles, Brooks, & Pressman, 2009) or mid-arousal (e.g.,
happiness; Liu et al., 2016) assessments. This is likely
a side effect of the popularity of high-arousal–oriented
scales (e.g., Positive and Negative Affect Schedule;
Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) and the frequent addi-
tion of brief happiness assessments (e.g., one item) to
large epidemiological surveys.
This scale choice may be more critical than research-
ers realize, as there is growing evidence across an
impressive array of outcomes that arousal has conse-
quences. For example, many well-powered studies have
revealed by and large that high- but not low-arousal
trait (i.e., long lasting, dispositional) PA is responsible
for benefits to important outcomes such as longevity
(e.g., Pressman & Cohen, 2012; Shirom, Toker, Jacobson,
& Balicer, 2010) and lower rates of infection in carefully
designed experimentally induced illness paradigms
(e.g., Cohen, Doyle, Turner, Alper, & Skoner, 2003). On
the contrary, certain disease processes (e.g., airway and
cardiovascular dysfunction) are worsened by high-
arousal PA or, even more interestingly, have U-shaped
connections (Armon, Melamed, Berliner, & Shapira,
2014; Ritz, Steptoe, DeWilde, & Costa, 2000). These
mixed outcomes indicate that in addition to carefully
considering arousal, researchers must factor in disease
type and possible PA–health mechanisms for that out-
come when interpreting their results and designing
research.
What about low-arousal PA? Effects of calm may be
present but are rarely examined, likely because of a
frequent lack of inclusion or because of the file-drawer
problem. Calm may be important for health but perhaps
is being considered incorrectly. For example, we dem-
onstrated recently that whereas trait calm was not help-
ful for sleep, state (i.e., transient, single-day) calm was,
but only on days with high stress (Pressman, Jenkins,
Kraft-Feil, Rasmussen, & Scheier, 2017). Thus, if only
overall PA or trait assessments had been utilized in that
study, or if stress had been ignored, no effect of calm
would have been discovered. A lack of attention to
these important measurement issues may therefore par-
tially explain past null and mixed findings for calm
(e.g., Cohen et al., 2003; Pressman & Cohen, 2012).
Given the distinct autonomic profiles of different PA
subtypes (Shiota, Neufeld, Yeung, Moser, & Perea,
2011), they may cancel each other out or dilute effects
when combined into a single PA measure. Thus, there
is growing evidence that a holistic PA approach should
be supplemented by exploring arousal subcomponents
in future work.
One additional critical issue when studying high-
arousal PA is the directionality or meaning of the PA–
health connection. Specifically, because of overlap in
the use of adjectives such as “vigor” and “energetic” to
indicate emotion (e.g., Watson et al., 1988), health and
fitness (e.g., Ware et al., 1998), or physiological activa-
tion (e.g., Dermer & Berscheid, 1972), it may be that
vigor is good for you simply because it is an indicator
of health in itself. Indeed, our recent study revealed
that PA benefits on mortality were attributed almost
exclusively to self-reports of feeling “active” (Petrie
et al., 2018). Findings such as these raise the possibility
that some past connections between PA and mortality
are simply due to physical fitness, making it essential
for future studies to consider not only arousal level but
also whether effects are PA-based or artifacts of high-
positive-arousal measurement overlap with health.
Timing and change
The current PA and physical health literature is heavily
reliant on one-time measures of self-reported trait PA.
We have previously suggested that this is the type of
affect most likely to influence health because it has
multiple opportunities to influence health-relevant
behavior, physiology, and social processes (Pressman
& Cohen, 2005), but there is now early evidence that
alterations in our affect may also add something to our
understanding of health. Affect variability encompasses
changes in both different types of affect and the inten-
sity of affect over time. Although the literature is rela-
tively new and is focused on mental health (e.g.,
Gruber, Kogan, Quoidbach, & Mauss, 2013), we
recently showed that PA variability is associated with
a health-relevant physiological outcome: antibody
response to vaccination. Specifically, we found that
individuals who were both high in mean PA and high
in PA variability had a lower antibody response to
influenza vaccination than those who were high in
mean PA but low in PA variability ( Jenkins, Hunter,
Positive Affect in Health Research 341
Cross, Acevedo, & Pressman, 2018). Thus, while aver-
age affect captures information meaningful for health,
average dynamics of affect may also matter. Although
this literature is new, approximately a dozen studies
on affect variability and psychological well-being (e.g.,
Jahng, Wood, & Trull, 2008; Trull et al., 2008) suggest
that further exploration is warranted.
Although we advocate for the pursuit of affect vari-
ability, researchers must also attend carefully to their
simpler assessments and consider what timing makes
sense conceptually for their health outcome of interest.
All too often, vague time assessments or even single-
day assessments of state affect are used to predict mor-
tality years later (Liu et al., 2016; Steptoe & Wardle,
2011). From a biological standpoint, there is no reason
to think that how you feel today should predict how
long you live, except that your current feeling likely
overlaps with how you typically feel. Although transient
affect may have an important role in altering health-
relevant mechanisms such as blood pressure, immune
function, and healthy behavior, it is critical that research-
ers stop using these inappropriately timed measures for
predicting distant health outcomes, as this is potentially
a source of the mixed findings in the literature (see
Pressman & Cohen, 2005, for examples).
Non-self-report methods
There has been a tendency to equate emotional-
expression measures with self-reported affect, such as
using facial expressions in photographs and videos or
emotional expressions in writing. In general, although
these methods can enrich the literature by offsetting the
limitations of self-reports, which can be biased by social
desirability, memory, item order, and even current mood
(Schwarz & Strack, 1999), it is also important to consider
that affect data collected in these formats do not equate
with self-report data and that there are distinct strengths
and weaknesses of each. An advantage of writing, for
example, is that researchers can look at both specific
emotions and arousal without participant awareness of
what is being studied. Indeed, emotion in writing has
been tied to longer life (Danner, Snowdon, & Friesen,
2001; Pressman & Cohen, 2012), and experimental posi-
tive writing has been tied to reduced illness (King, 2001).
No study, however, has correlated these writing variables
with self-reports of affect, and researchers admit that
writing represents something distinct but possibly over-
lapping with self-reports (Pennebaker & King, 1999).
Thus, such findings must be interpreted accordingly.
Similarly, there is a lack of this consideration in the
facial-expression literature. A recent failed replication
and extension (Dufner et al., 2018) of the well-cited
study showing that smiles in baseball card photographs
predicted longer life (Abel & Kruger, 2010) was inter-
preted by the authors as an indication that PA does not
predict mortality. Nowhere, however, did they question
whether a smile in a baseball photograph is in fact an
indication of PA, and to our knowledge, no study has
shown this. Certainly, naturally occurring and manipu-
lated smiles have been tied to affective outcomes (e.g.,
Ekman, Davidson, & Friesen, 1990), but even this finding
has been called into question, for example, by a recent
failed replication of the facial-feedback hypothesis
(Wagenmakers et al., 2016). Smiles may represent PA to
some extent, but they can also be faked, associated with
negative outcomes, and an indication of something dif-
ferent, such as self-presentation, professional image, or
extraversion. It is even possible that smiling could have
direct nonemotional effects on health via the known
resulting musculature effects on the brain and body
(Ekman et al., 1990). Surprisingly, these issues never
seem to come up in the research on smiling. Therefore,
although we advocate for more work in this area to be
done, researchers need to start considering when smiles
and their health and physiological effects are indicators
of PA as opposed to, or in addition to, something else.
Cultural differences
While our own work has illustrated impressive world-
wide consistency of the PA–health association (Pressman,
Gallagher, & Lopez, 2013), cross-cultural research on PA
and health has indicated that PA is not always helpful
in regions that deemphasize its importance (e.g., East
Asia; Yoo, Miyamoto, Rigotti, & Ryff, 2017). Although
scarcely investigated, one explanation for these findings
may be that ideal affect, or the affective state one ideally
wants to feel, differs between cultures and that this dif-
ference matters for health (Tsai, 2007). Although there
is little work on its relevance to health, studies have
found that ideal affect influences physician preference
and medical adherence (Sims & Tsai, 2015; Sims, Tsai,
Koopmann-Holm, Thomas, & Goldstein, 2014), which
could have downstream impacts on important disease
outcomes. This raises the interesting question of whether
certain positive emotions are universally healthy or
whether emotion desirability sways the impact. Thus,
using a cultural framework and a consideration of ideal
affect may be critical when interpreting PA–health asso-
ciations and may partially explain some past mixed find-
ings (e.g., Wagenmakers et al., 2016).
Not all PA measures are equal
Finally, it should be clear from the previous discussion
of measurement that all PA measures are not equal.
Although these measures may not be as distinct as
342 Pressman, Cross
apples and oranges, they may represent different variet-
ies of apples with unique flavors and, thus, their down-
stream impact may differ depending on that flavor.
While we have discussed some measurement issues
above, this was only a subset that shows promise as
being relevant to the current health literature. It is also
important to focus on the quality of the PA measure
when interpreting the literature. For example, many
measures are contaminated with non-PA variables (e.g.,
optimism, life satisfaction), which may result in differ-
ent outcomes or dilute the overall PA measure. For
example, in one review on psychological well-being
and mortality (Chida & Steptoe, 2008), only about half
of the 35 studies specifically investigated PA versus
other positive assessments, which may have altered the
results in important ways. Medical researchers also fre-
quently do not attend to whether a scale is well con-
structed and whether it captures the most health-relevant
affect subtypes, and sometimes they haphazardly
include single-item assessments of emotions such as
happiness. This is rarely considered as a limitation in
media-grabbing headlines or a possible reason for lim-
ited PA effects in a health study (e.g., Liu et al., 2016).
Integrating New Measurements With
Moderators and Mechanisms
A better consideration of measurement will not solve
all of the problems related to moving this field forward.
Several other moderators and mechanisms must also
be considered in combination with this new attention
to PA measurement. For example, despite long-held
theories that PA may be most helpful to well-being in
the context of stress—namely, the undoing hypothesis
(Fredrickson & Levenson, 1998) and the stress-buffering
theory (Pressman & Cohen, 2005)—the majority of work
assumes a main effect of PA on health and ignores
stress. This is critical given that recent studies have
found support for stress buffering only in health-
relevant behavior and immune function outcomes (e.g.,
Blevins, Sagui, & Bennett, 2017; Pressman et al., 2017).
This type of issue is critical given the desire to apply
positive psychology interventions to populations facing
the stress of disease. Are there key times during stress-
ful disease processes when PA is most helpful? Are
there specific types of PA or PA arousal that are best
suited to specific high-stress contexts or even specific
disease types given their underlying physiology? These
are unstudied areas and are central for PA interventions
to be effectively designed and applied (Hernandez
et al., 2017). Beyond disease and stress, we may also
have to consider individual differences such as sex, age,
and socioeconomic status, which, like culture, may play
a role in which types of PA are helpful and when, given
that they are known to have influences on emotional
expression and experiences. Thus, we have to stop
thinking of PA and health as existing in a vacuum and
pay greater attention to both when and why PA might
help.
Context and measurement issues also play an impor-
tant role in the mechanisms responsible for PA–health
connections. Several pathways to health, such as physi-
ological processes (e.g., immune, cardiovascular, endo-
crine), behavioral processes (e.g., sleep, exercise, diet),
and social processes (see Ong, 2010, and Pressman &
Cohen, 2005, for detailed discussions), have been
hypothesized to mediate the associations between PA
and physical health. It is important to note, however,
that the acting mechanism may differ across both the
type of affect that is being investigated and the out-
comes of interest. For example, calm might encourage
physiological recovery from situations that are acute
and difficult to control, whereas vigor might be tied to
better active coping with certain energy-depleting
stressors as they occur. It is also feasible that different
affect types interact with other pathways, such as social-
relationship processes and health behaviors, but that
these effects will be moderated by factors discussed
previously, such as cultural norms or timing. Thus, the
type of affect, context, and health outcome may all alter
what mechanism we look to for allowing PA to posi-
tively or negatively influence health.
Conclusion
This article points to critical nuances in PA–health
research that will strengthen the literature and sharpen
attempts to move this field into intervention designs.
Our list of measurement issues is not exhaustive, and
other reviews have outlined additional critical factors,
such as the need to control for negative affect (Pressman
& Cohen, 2005), the value of taking a multimethod
approach and considering underutilized data sources
such as animal studies (Diener, Pressman, Hunter, &
Delgadillo-Chase, 2017), and the importance of experi-
mental work, in which factors such as PA dosage and
disease timeline are considered (Hernandez et al.,
2017). Furthermore, the issue of replication looms large
within this field, as many studies have not been repli-
cated because of cost (e.g., the prohibitive price of
physiological assays, medical assessments, and paying
participants for extensive longitudinal follow-ups). Pub-
lic health and medical research is still largely resistant
to the possibility that “fluffy” psychological concepts
such as happiness could matter to hard biological out-
comes. PA is poised, however, to be an essential ingre-
dient in reducing the negative health impacts of stress
on the populace, altering health trajectories, and
Positive Affect in Health Research 343
enhancing our understanding of who survives and
thrives in the face of disease. We hope that this discus-
sion spurs additional research on this vital topic and
helps to convince even the staunchest critic to explore
how, when, and why PA matters for physical wellness.
Recommended Reading
Diener, E., Pressman, S. D., Hunter, J., & Delgadillo-Chase, D.
(2017). (See References). A recent review article on the
connections between many forms of subjective well-being
and physical health; explores what we glean from differ-
ent methodological and statistical approaches and high-
lights necessary future research strategies within the area.
Hernandez, R., Bassett, S. M., Boughton, S. W., Schuette, S. A.,
Shiu, E. W., & Moskowitz, J. T. (2017). (See References).
A recent review article on psychological well-being and
physical health, with special emphasis on mechanisms
behind this relationship and intervention research.
Pressman, S. D., & Cohen, S. (2005). (See References). The
first extensive review article on positive affect and physi-
cal health. Reviews both physical health outcomes as
well as the evidence underlying different physiological,
behavioral, and social pathways and describes the stress-
buffering versus main-effect models of positive affect and
health.
Shiota, M. N., Neufeld, S. L., Danvers, A. F., Osborne, E. A.,
Sng, O., & Yee, C. I. (2014). (See References). An article
examining the importance of differentiating positive emo-
tions in research.
Action Editor
Randall W. Engle served as action editor for this article.
ORCID iDs
Sarah D. Pressman https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1576-6466
Marie P. Cross https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2074-1098
Acknowledgments
We thank Brooke Jenkins, Amanda Acevedo, and John Hunter
for comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest
with respect to the authorship or the publication of this
article.
Funding
Sarah D. Pressman was partially supported by the AXA
Research Fund.
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Scienc
e
2018, Vol. 27(5) 302 –30
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sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0963721418755385
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ASSOCIATION FOR
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
One traditional method of learning information, espe-
cially encouraged in an educational setting, is for stu-
dents to take written notes. But how effective is this
approach? Memory researchers have documented the
effectiveness of several strategies to boost memory that
can be carried out during encoding. Rote rehearsal
(Rundus, 1971) is somewhat helpful, though semantic
elaboration is more effective (Craik & Lockhart, 1972),
as is generating to-be-remembered information from
one’s own mind rather than simply reading (Slamecka
& Graf, 1978). Related to this is production, wherein
words read aloud are favored during memory retrieval,
relative to words read silently during study (MacLeod,
Gopie, Hourihan, Neary, & Ozubko, 2010). Finally,
enactment (Engelkamp & Zimmer, 1997) is also helpful,
at least for memory of verb phrases, which are better
remembered if one performs an associated action dur-
ing learning, compared with just reading the verbal
information.
These strategies, though useful, may not be practical
in a typical learning environment such as a classroom,
because they may be disruptive (talking aloud in class
is usually discouraged) and require additional time to
complete, as in the case of generation. While enactment
is effective in enhancing memory, not all study materials
have an associated action, limiting this strategy’s gen-
eralizability. For these reasons, there is a need to find
practical unobtrusive techniques that people can apply
in their everyday lives to remember important informa-
tion or that students can apply in classrooms.
There are theoretical reasons to believe that drawing
is particularly able to boost memory. The finding that
images are better remembered than words, termed the
picture-superiority effect, has been well supported and
replicated in the literature, consistently across various
paradigms and demographic groups (Paivio, 1971). The
source of this effect is a hypothesized dual coding: Pic-
tures can be represented in terms of visual features and
also verbal labels (Paivio, Rogers, & Smythe, 1968). It
stands to reason that drawing to-be-learned information
755385CDPXXX10.1177/0963721418755385Fernandes et al.Influence of Drawing on Memory
research-article2018
Corresponding Author:
Myra A. Fernandes, University of Waterloo, Department of
Psychology, 200 University Ave. W., Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1,
Canada
E-mail: mafernan@uwaterloo.ca
The Surprisingly Powerful Influence
of Drawing on Memory
Myra A. Fernandes, Jeffrey D. Wammes, and Melissa E. Meade
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo
Abstract
The colloquialism “a picture is worth a thousand words” has reverberated through the decades, yet there is very little
basic cognitive research assessing the merit of drawing as a mnemonic strategy. In our recent research, we explored
whether drawing to-be-learned information enhanced memory and found it to be a reliable, replicable means of
boosting performance. Specifically, we have shown this technique can be applied to enhance learning of individual
words and pictures as well as textbook definitions. In delineating the mechanism of action, we have shown that gains
are greater from drawing than other known mnemonic techniques, such as semantic elaboration, visualization, writing,
and even tracing to-be-remembered information. We propose that drawing improves memory by promoting the
integration of elaborative, pictorial, and motor codes, facilitating creation of a context-rich representation. Importantly,
the simplicity of this strategy means it can be used by people with cognitive impairments to enhance memory, with
preliminary findings suggesting measurable gains in performance in both normally aging individuals and patients with
dementia.
Keywor
ds
drawing, encoding strategy, memory enhancement
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Influence of Drawing on Memory 30
3
would also elicit dual coding and may in fact be even
more beneficial because it requires motoric as well as
elaborative processing or coding to create one’s unique,
personal depiction of target information.
Early evidence supporting this claim comes from
Paivio and Csapo’s (1973) work, in which free recall
was enhanced for words that were drawn versus written
at encoding. Later work (Peynircioğlu, 1989) revived
the study of drawing as a memory facilitator, showing
that creating drawings of scenes improved memory
relative to rating or verbally describing them. However,
because Peynircioğlu’s retrieval task involved reproduc-
ing a drawing of the original image, the observed ben-
efit might not have been attributable to drawing per se
but rather to transfer-appropriate processing (Morris,
Bransford, & Franks, 1977). There are also analogous
findings about the usefulness of drawing in the educa-
tional literature (see Van Meter & Garner, 2005, for a
review). Thus, while there is preliminary evidence that
drawing may improve memory, there is sparse evidence
for how or why.
Establishing the Drawing Effect
Across several studies, we systematically examined
whether drawing pictures depicting to-be-remembered
information boosted memory more than other encoding
strategies did. In our work, participants were typically
presented with at least 30 words in succession (e.g.,
“truck,” “pear”), each preceded by a prompt indicating
the encoding strategy to apply to the word and with
the time allotted per trial matched. The memory test
was typically incidental, except where otherwise indi-
cated. In our first demonstration of the effect (Wammes,
Meade, & Fernandes, 2016), we compared the influence
of drawing and writing prompts, presented intermixed
during encoding, allowing 40 s per trial. A prompt of
“draw” meant the participant was to draw a picture on
a pad of paper to illustrate the word on the screen and
to continue adding detail until the next prompt was
presented. A prompt of “write” meant they were to write
out the word multiple times. Alternate instructions were
explored in a subsequent experiment, in which writing
was to be embellished and drawing to be repeated. In
both experiments, words drawn relative to written at
encoding were better recalled. The effect also proved
generalizable, even when conducted in a lecture hall
with groups of 10 to 30 participants, establishing draw-
ing as an effective and reliable encoding strategy, far
superior to writing.
Ruling Out Alternate Mechanisms
Having documented a replicable drawing effect, we
aimed to contrast the magnitude of the memory boost
with that from other kinds of encoding strategies to
determine whether the benefit could be explained by
invoking these other modes of processing rather than
by drawing per se (Wammes et al., 2016). We first con-
sidered whether drawing improved memory simply as
a result of adding visual imagery, as dual-code theory
suggests is the case for pictures (Paivio, 1971). To test
this, we introduced alternate encoding trial types,
wherein participants were asked to either visualize a
study word or simply view pictures of the presented
words. We speculated that creating a mental image or
viewing a picture would boost memory relative to writ-
ing, though not as dramatically as our drawing manipu-
lation. When drawing, participants indeed must create
a mental image of the word but also perform the mech-
anistic process of moving their pencil to create an
image, which provides motor information, perhaps akin
to a muted enactment effect. As shown in Figure 1,
drawing led to recall performance that was superior
not only to writing but also to visual imagery and view-
ing pictures.
Next, we sought to determine whether the drawing
effect occurred because it invoked enhanced semantic
analysis, which is known to improve subsequent mem-
ory more than superficial encoding (Craik & Lockhart,
1972). To do so, we compared drawing with an encod-
ing task in which participants had to list semantic char-
acteristics of the target word when prompted. As shown
in Figure 1, recall of words from draw trials surpassed
recall of words from list trials, suggesting that the effect
of drawing cannot be dismissed as simply being due
to a deep (semantic) level of processing. In the follow-
ing two experiments (Wammes, Meade, & Fernandes,
2018), we switched to intentional encoding to facilitate
comparison with other established effects thought to
be driven by distinctiveness. In these experiments, we
demonstrated that drawing exerts its beneficial effects
on memory even when participants were allowed only
a fraction of the time (4 s) to draw and when the
manipulation was applied between subjects, a change
that often undermines several well-replicated effects
(McDaniel & Bugg, 2008).
Academic Materials
Graphic representation, especially in science texts, can
benefit later learning (Scaife & Rogers, 1996). Accord-
ingly, we aimed to determine whether the drawing
effect previously observed for individual words
(Wammes et al., 2016) would generalize to the learning
of lengthier definitions of academic terms consisting of
nouns, verbs, and adjectives, together describing a con-
cept. As described by Wammes, Meade, and Fernandes
(2017), participants were given 20 terms and prompted
to either draw a picture representing a given definition
304 Fernandes et al.
or write it verbatim, with trial types intermixed. For
example, participants had 60 s to either write the defi-
nition of “spore” or “isotope” or to draw an image rep-
resenting that concept.
As with individual words, drawing conferred a reli-
able memory advantage relative to verbatim writing,
even when we controlled (in separate follow-up experi-
ments) for participants’ preexisting familiarity with the
terms and even when we invented novel fictitious
terms, thus removing the influence of familiarity. As
with single words, we reasoned that drawing facilitates
retention, at least in part, because it requires elabora-
tion on the meaning of the term and translating the
definition to a new form (a picture). In line with this
interpretation, our study showed that paraphrasing our
given definitions (rewriting in one’s own words), which
like drawing and in contrast to verbatim writing,
requires self-generated elaboration, led to memory per-
formance that was comparable with that following
drawing. Together, these experiments suggest that using
transcription as a note-taking method to retain newly
learned information is not the most effective practice
and that creating drawings of information is a viable,
and much more efficacious, mnemonic strategy.
Mechanism of Action
We propose that drawing improves memory by encour-
aging a seamless integration of elaborative, motoric,
and pictorial components of a memory trace. That is,
to transfer a word into a drawn visual representation,
one must elaborate on its meaning and semantic fea-
tures, engage in the actual hand movements needed
for drawing (motor action), and visually inspect one’s
created picture (pictorial processing). We argue that the
mechanism driving the drawing effect is one that pro-
motes the seamless integration of these codes, or modes
of representation, into one cohesive memory trace, and
it is this that facilitates later retrieval of the studied
words.
For this integrated-trace hypothesis to be plausible,
however, participants must be able to retrieve specific
contextual information from the initial encoding experi-
ence to a greater extent when they had drawn, relative
to written, target items. That is, they must have a
detailed recollection, as opposed to a more general
feeling of familiarity (Yonelinas, 2002). To test whether
drawing indeed improves contextual memory (i.e., rec-
ollection), we recently conducted a study (Wammes
et al., 2018) in which we employed multiple variants
of recognition memory tasks: source memory decisions,
identifying whether a word was drawn or written during
encoding; the remember-know-new paradigm, indicat-
ing whether memory is accompanied by contextual
features from encoding (“remember”) or not (“know”);
and a response-deadline procedure, wherein responses
are forced into a time frame that is thought to precede
recollection (Sauvage, Beer, & Eichenbaum, 2010).
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Initial
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Alternate
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In Lecture
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Imagery Picture
Superiority
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Fig. 1. Proportion of words recalled following encoding instructions to draw, write, visualize, view, or list related characteristics of to-be-
remembered target words in multiple experiments in younger adults, as reported by Wammes, Meade, and Fernandes (2016). In all cases,
words were best remembered when they were drawn at encoding. Error bars show standard errors of the mean.
Influence of Drawing on Memory 305
Though each variant has its own strengths and weak-
nesses, they converged on the same conclusion: Drawing
was associated with better recognition than writing, and
this was largely driven by detailed, context-rich recol-
lections. Specifically, drawing led to better identification
of the source of the memory and a higher number of
“remember” responses. When recognition responses
were speeded (to limit the contribution of recollective
processes), the benefit of drawing was substantially
smaller or absent. Taken together, these experiments
suggest that drawing improves memory by providing
vivid contextual information that can later be called on
to aid retrieval.
The Components of Drawing
Considering an integrated-components mechanism, we
reasoned in subsequent work (Wammes et al., 2017;
Wammes, Jonker, & Fernandes, 2018) that memory
performance would scale linearly with the number of
components invoked by a given encoding strategy (Fig.
2). We tested this idea across two experiments, using
intentional encoding, by designing trial types that sys-
tematically varied the presence or absence of each of
the three proposed components (elaborative, motor,
pictorial). In addition to the draw, write, view, and
imagine (visualize) trial types, two additional ones were
devised. In trace trials, participants encoded to-be-
remembered words by tracing over a faint line drawing
depicting the object, and in blind-drawing trials, par-
ticipants drew each word in an auditorily presented
study list but did not see the outcome. The trace trial
type thus required motor action and pictorial process-
ing, but not semantic elaboration. The blind-drawing
trial type required elaboration and motor action, but
not pictorial processing.
We introduced a 2-day delay between study and
recognition test and, remarkably, still found robust ben-
efits of drawing relative to the other encoding strate-
gies. Our baseline measure was memory following the
write trial type. Adding an elaborative (imagine trials)
or pictorial (view trials) component increased memory
by a small margin, and adding a second component
(trace and blind drawing) increased memory signifi-
cantly more. Over and above these two trial types,
drawing improved memory more still, ostensibly as a
result of adding the remaining third component. In
other words, memory scaled up as components were
added to the encoding task. A secondary finding was
that drawing sometimes led to better memory than the
three components combined, suggesting that there may
be some additional benefit of drawing resulting from
the seamless integration of these components.
Drawing Benefits to Memory in Aging
Populations
It is well known that episodic memory abilities decline
with increasing age (Light, 1991). The provision of rich
pictorial stimuli at encoding, however, has been shown
to enhance memory (Luo, Hendriks, & Craik, 2007),
and picture-superiority effects are typically larger in
older adults (Ally et al., 2008). In another study (Meade,
Wammes, & Fernandes, in press), we reasoned that
incorporating visuo-perceptual information into the
memory trace, by drawing pictures at study, increases
its reliance on visual sensory regions. These regions
are relatively intact in normal aging (Raz et al., 2005).
Therefore, older adults may stand to benefit differen-
tially from this encoding strategy. In Experiment 1 of
that research, we computed the proportion of each
person’s recall for words drawn rather than written at
encoding. We indeed found a significant interaction
between age and encoding trial type; specifically, older
adults reported a larger proportion of words that were
drawn at encoding than did younger adults. Within that
study we also showed, using a remember-know-new
Fig. 2. The integrated-components model of the drawing effect. In
this model, the beneficial effects of drawing, over and above basic
verbal memory (“v”), are driven by the integrated contributions of
elaborative, motoric, and pictorial information. The draw trial type
lies at the intersection, as it engages all three components. The trace
trial type lies at the intersection of the motoric and pictorial compo-
nents, as it does not require elaborative thought. A purely motoric
task (“x”) as well as a task that involves only elaborative and pictorial
information (“y”) without undermining the elaborative process is dif-
ficult, if not impossible, to design. The model predicts additive effects
on memory from inclusion of each type of processing at encoding,
with drawing seamlessly integrating the components, resulting in a
boost to performance over and above the additive effects.
306 Fernandes et al.
recognition test, that the age groups did not differ in
hit rate or endorsements of recollection-based responses
to drawn words. In contrast, compared with young
adults, seniors had a significant deficit in memory (hit
rate and recollection) for words that were written at
encoding. This suggests that drawing has the power to
reduce age differences in recollection (Fig. 3).
We have since gone on to explore (Meade & Fernandes,
2018) whether drawing could be profitably used in a
population of senior citizens with a diagnosis of dementia.
We asked 13 patients in a long-term care facility to either
draw or write 60 words (intermixed) that were read aloud
by an experimenter. As can be seen from the samples of
their drawings in Figure 4, the quality was relatively poor
and, in some cases, consisted of little more than some
scribbles on a page. Remarkably, however, memory per-
formance showed a massive benefit for words that had
been drawn rather than written at encoding. Although
overall recall was predictably low, the words that they did
manage to remember were almost exclusively those
drawn at encoding. Recognition memory showed an
advantage in the same direction as recall. Such patterns
highlight the powerful influence of drawing on memory
in the most compromised of patient populations.
In most of our experiments, we administered the
Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ;
Marks, 1973), which quantifies drawing experience and
assesses individual differences in the ability to create
mental images of items and scenes. Interestingly, nei-
ther the VVIQ nor drawing experience was significantly
correlated with memory performance. Indeed, there
was a variety of skill level displayed in people’s drawn
images, yet the benefit was comparable in magnitude
across individual differences in artistic tendencies and
ability. This suggests that the benefit one can achieve
from drawing during encoding applies regardless of
one’s artistic talent.
Overall, our results show that drawing should be con-
sidered among the ranks of generation (Slamecka & Graf,
1978), enactment (Engelkamp & Zimmer, 1997), and
production (MacLeod et al., 2010) effects. The observed
gains in memory performance apply consistently across
tasks, settings, and populations and occur within as well
as between subjects. Strikingly, drawing also requires no
more than 4 s to provide a benefit. Taken together, the
evidence provided here demonstrates that drawing is a
robust encoding strategy that can, and does, improve
memory performance dramatically.
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Fig. 3. Results from Meade, Wammes, and Fernandes (in press). The proportion of words recalled that were written and drawn at encoding
(a) is shown for both younger and older adults. The average number of words recognized on a remember-know-new recognition test (b) is
shown for words that were written or drawn at encoding, separately for younger and older adults. Hit rates are shown both for recollection-
based recognition decisions and for familiarity-based recognition decisions. In both graphs, error bars show standard errors of the mean.
Influence of Drawing on Memory 307
Fig. 4. Samples of to-be-remembered targets that were either drawn or written at encoding. Starting from the top, the first row shows samples
of young adults’ drawings of words, as well as their writings in response to an instruction to add detail to their productions (Wammes,
Meade, & Fernandes, 2016). The second row shows samples from separate trials on which participants were asked to repeatedly draw or
write, given 40 s of allotted encoding time per word (Wammes et al., 2016). Samples in the third row are from trials in which young adults
either drew or wrote definitions for concepts (Wammes, Meade, & Fernandes, 2017). The fourth row shows words drawn or repeatedly
written by normally aging adults (Meade, Wammes, & Fernandes, in press). The fifth row shows attempted drawings from patients with
dementia, as well as productions in the repeated-writing encoding trials (Meade & Fernandes, 2018). In all cases, memory was significantly
enhanced following an instruction to draw.
308 Fernandes et al.
Recommended Reading
Luo, L., Hendriks, T., & Craik, F. I. (2007). (See References).
Provides an overview of age-related declines in memory
and illustrates that presenting pictures at encoding boosts
memory performance.
MacLeod, C. M., Gopie, N., Hourihan, K. L., Neary, K. R., &
Ozubko, J. D. (2010). (See References). A clearly written
review of established encoding techniques and an intro-
duction to the production effect, another effective means
of enhancing memory.
Van Meter, P., & Garner, J. (2005). (See References). A com-
prehensive review of applied and empirical research
suggesting that drawing can support learning goals in
classroom settings.
Wammes, J. D., Meade, M. E., & Fernandes, M. A. (2016). (See
References). A representative study that illustrates original
research documenting the drawing effect.
Action Editor
Randall W. Engle served as action editor for this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with
respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.
Funding
This work was funded by graduate-level scholarships from
the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of
Canada (NSERC) to J. D. Wammes and M. E. Meade and by
an NSERC Discovery grant to M. A. Fernandes.
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https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/bitstream/handle/10012/12114/Wammes_Jeff ?sequence=7
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Current Directions in Psychological
Science
2018, Vol. 27(5) 295 –30
1
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DOI: 10.1177/0963721418767873
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ASSOCIATION FOR
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
In his pioneering textbook on social psychology, Wil-
liam McDougall (1908) devoted dozens of pages to the
“parental instinct” and speculated broadly about its
many implications. These included not only obvious
implications for parent–child interactions but also
implications that transcend the family context entirely.
McDougall wrote that the parental instinct “is the
source, not only of parental tenderness, but of all ten-
der emotions and truly benevolent impulses, is the great
spring of moral indignation, and enters in some degree
into every sentiment that can properly be called love”
(McDougall, 1908, p. 275).
Since then, an extensive empirical literature on par-
enting has accumulated (e.g., Bornstein, 2002). That
literature focuses on the subset of people who are actu-
ally parents and on their interactions with their children.
Indeed, it might be easy to assume that the psychology
of parental care pertains only to parents and to their
children. That assumption would be wrong. There is an
emerging body of research that draws on the conceptual
principles that informed McDougall’s analysis over a
century ago and reveals evidence consistent with his
speculations about wide-ranging implications. This new
body of research focuses not on parenting per se but
instead on underlying psychological mechanisms that
form a kind of parental care motivational system. This
article provides an overview of this motivational system
and its many implications—not just for parents and their
children but for everyone.
The Parental Care Motivational System
The concept of a parental care motivational system
follows from an evolutionary perspective on human
motivation. Within an evolutionary framework, motiva-
tion refers not simply to subjective experiences (e.g.,
needs or goals) but instead to underlying regulatory
systems—suites of mechanisms that evolved to regulate
specific kinds of behavioral responses that, in ancestral
populations, had implications for genetic reproduction
(Schaller, Kenrick, Neel, & Neuberg, 2017; Tooby,
Cosmides, Sell, Lieberman, & Sznycer, 2008). Some
motivational mechanisms regulate responses that had
implications for survival; other motivational mecha-
nisms regulate responses that had implications for
mating and the consequent production of offspring. But
767873CDPXXX10.1177/0963721418767873SchallerParental Care Motivational System
research-article2018
Corresponding Author:
Mark Schaller, University of British Columbia, Department of
Psychology, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T1Z4,
Canada
E-mail: schaller@psych.ubc.ca
The Parental Care Motivational System
and Why It Matters (for Everyone)
Mark Schaller
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia
Abstract
Although it is easy to assume that the psychology of parental care pertains only to parents and their children, this is
not so. An emerging body of research on the parental care motivational system reveals implications for everyone. All
normally developing human beings are characterized by evolved psychological mechanisms that regulate parental
caregiving. These mechanisms are responsive to superficial cues and so (among nonparents as well as parents) can be
triggered by the perception of young children or other childlike things. Once activated, these mechanisms precipitate
protective and nurturant responses. These responses manifest in many different ways, with implications for a wide
range of psychological phenomena (many of which might appear, superficially, to be unrelated to caregiving)—
including risk-averse attitudes, aggression, intergroup prejudice, moral judgment, impression formation, and mate
preferences. This article provides an illustrative overview of empirical research documenting these implications and
identifies new directions for future research on the motivational psychology of parental care.
Keywords
parental care, motivation, risk aversion, prejudice, moral judgment, mating
mailto:schaller@psych.ubc.ca
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2
296 Schaller
the mere production of offspring would have been a
reproductive dead end unless those offspring survived
to maturity and consequently produced offspring of
their own. This is a nontrivial reproductive problem
because humans are slow to mature to reproductive
age. It is for this reason, it appears, that specific psy-
chological mechanisms evolved to regulate parental
caregiving behaviors (Geary, 2016; Preston, 2013;
Rilling, 2013). These parental behaviors include protec-
tive responses that helped offspring to survive and
additional nurturant responses that helped offspring to
thrive.
If indeed a regulatory system of this sort evolved,
then it must be considered part of a genetically endowed
human nature. In other words, the parental care moti-
vational system is not exclusive to people who actually
are parents; its physiological bases—and psychological
manifestations—would be expected to characterize all
normally developing human beings.
Specific motivational systems are typically associated
with specific emotional experiences (Beall & Tracy,
2017), and the parental care system is no exception.
McDougall (1908) identified the characteristic emotion
as tenderness. Empirical research suggests that tender-
ness is distinct from superficially similar affective expe-
riences (e.g., empathy) and has many of the
characteristics of a “basic” emotion (Kalawski, 2010).
Additionally, as with other evolved motivational sys-
tems, activation of the parental care system—as indicated
by the arousal of tenderness and associated behavioral
responses—is stimulated by the perception of function-
ally relevant things. Among parents, the most obvious
such things are one’s own actual offspring. But other
things can activate the system, too. Inferences about
functional relevance are highly automatized and are
often made on the basis of superficial cues. The parental
care motivational system is responsive to superficial cues
that are diagnostic of infancy—such as big eyes, small
noses, and other babyish facial features that Lorenz
(1943) referred to collectively as kindchenschema.
Consequently—among parents and nonparents alike—
the parental care system can be triggered by the percep-
tion of any young child (especially one who is subjectively
perceived to be cuter; Glocker et al., 2009). It can also
be triggered by the perception of juvenile nonhuman
animals, such as kittens and puppies (Sherman, Haidt,
& Coan, 2009), and even by the perception of baby-faced
adults (Zebrowitz & Montepare, 2008).
Once activated, the parental care motivational system
regulates behavioral responses toward the stimulus that
triggered its activation. This general principle has
proven useful in research testing specific hypotheses
about the implications of the parental care system (dis-
cussed more fully below). Additionally, people differ
in the extent to which relevant stimuli actually trigger
the system and elicit a parental response. These indi-
vidual differences are readily measurable with self-report
measures such as the Parental Care and Tenderness
(PCAT) questionnaire, which includes subscales assess-
ing conceptually distinct protective and nurturant
responses (Buckels et al., 2015; Hofer, Buckels, White,
Beall, & Schaller, 2017). Parents generally have higher
PCAT scores than nonparents, and women have higher
scores than men; but even within these demographic
categories, there are substantial individual differences.
These measurable individual differences provide a fur-
ther tool for testing hypotheses about the implications
of the parental care system.
Empirical Research Documenting
Implications for Parents and
Nonparents
An important function of parental caregiving is the
protection of vulnerable children from sources of threat
(e.g., predators, infectious diseases). It follows, there-
fore, that activation of the parental care motivational
system may predict hypervigilance to potential threats
and also predict risk-averse attitudes of various kinds.
Consistent with this reasoning is evidence that, com-
pared with nonparents, parents perceive potentially
menacing men to be more formidable and threatening
(Fessler, Holbrook, Pollack, & Hahn-Holbrook, 2014).
But even among parents, the system may be activated
especially strongly under some circumstances—such as
when children are perceptually present or when other
contextual cues make one’s parental role especially
salient. This implies predictable context-contingent
variation in parents’ inclinations toward hypervigilance
and risk aversion, and there is evidence that this is so.
For instance, following an experimental manipulation
that made their parental role temporarily salient, par-
ents expressed greater aversion to risk and reduced
trust in strangers (Eibach & Mock, 2011).
Among nonparents, too, there is evidence linking
the parental care motivational system to cautious
behavior and risk-averse attitudes. In one set of experi-
ments (Sherman et al., 2009), nonparents were ran-
domly assigned to two conditions. In one condition,
they viewed photographs of cute kittens and puppies
(stimuli that arouse a parental emotional response); in
the other condition, they viewed photographs of mature
cats and dogs (which are less likely to elicit a parental
response). All participants subsequently performed a
task requiring careful motor movements. Results
revealed that participants who saw kittens and puppies
performed the task more successfully, indicating that
activation of the parental care system inhibits
Parental Care Motivational System 297
recklessness, even among nonparents. Results from
another set of experiments revealed that when one’s
role as a parental caregiver was temporarily salient,
people—both parents and nonparents—expressed
especially negative attitudes toward a potentially threat-
ening out-group (Gilead & Liberman, 2014; see Fig. 1
for details on one of these experiments and its results).
These and other results (e.g., Hahn-Holbrook et al.,
2011) suggest that while the parental care motivational
system may indeed promote caring responses toward
some things (including individuals’ own offspring; Pres-
ton, 2013), it also precipitates more aversive responses
to other things (including other people) that are per-
ceived to be a source of threat.
A conceptually analogous phenomenon occurs in
the domain of moral judgment. Many behavioral
norms mitigate dangers of various kinds, and so peo-
ple who violate norms may be perceived to pose an
indirect threat—not just to oneself but to offspring
and to vulnerable children more generally. Therefore,
just as activation of motivational systems regulating
self-protective behavior can lead to harsher moral
judgments of norm violations (e.g., Chapman &
Anderson, 2014), activation of the parental care moti-
vational system may also lead to harsher moral judg-
ments. Results from multiple studies employing
complementary methods indicate that this is so. When
parents’ parental role was temporarily salient, they
judged norm violations more harshly (Eibach, Libby,
& Ehrlinger, 2009). When nonparents temporarily
adopted a parental caregiving role, they too judged
norm violations more harshly (Hofer, 2015). Addition-
ally, nonparents who scored higher on a trait measure
of parental care and tenderness (the PCAT question-
naire) also judged norm violations more harshly
(Buckels et al., 2015). The latter effect held even when
analyses controlled for conceptually related variables
(e.g., empathic concern), indicating a unique effect
of nonparents’ parental inclinations.
These findings provide empirical substantiation of
McDougall’s (1908) suggestion that the parental instinct
is “the great spring of moral indignation” (p. 275). But
McDougall also observed that it is the source of “truly
benevolent impulses.” It is with that observation in mind
that it is important to note that the relation between PCAT
scores and harsher moral judgments was specific to judg-
ments about transgressions perpetrated by adults. When
an identical transgression was perpetrated by a child,
PCAT scores predicted more forgiving moral judgments
instead, and whereas the former effect reflects an inclina-
tion to protect, the latter effect reflects an inclination to
nurture (Hofer et al., 2017; for details, see Fig. 2).
Individual differences in activation of the parental
care motivational system uniquely predict other social
psychological phenomena, too. In the domain of close
relationships, PCAT scores predict mate preferences,
and these preferences are specific to one particular
category of traits: More parental adults—both parents
and nonparents—more strongly prefer mates character-
ized by traits connoting the potential to be a respon-
sible partner or parent (Buckels et al., 2015). And in
the domain of impression formation, PCAT scores pre-
dict the positivity of nonparents’ impressions of baby-
faced men (Buckels et al., 2015).
Collectively, this body of evidence reveals that activa-
tion of the parental care motivational system has implica-
tions for a wide range of psychological phenomena—many
of which might superficially appear to have nothing to
do with parenting whatsoever. These results also show
that the evolved psychology of parental care matters not
just for parents and their children but for everyone.
New Questions and Emerging Research
Directions
Although scientists have spent decades studying the
evolutionary, physiological, and developmental bases
of parenting behavior (Belsky, 2012; Rilling, 2013;
Royle, Smiseth, & Kölliker, 2012), there is still a lot that
we do not know about the parental care motivational
0
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Natural Threat Out-Group Threat
B
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s
Fa
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g
In
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ro
up
O
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r
O
ut
-G
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Threat
Condition
No Caregiving Salience
Caregiving Salience
Fig. 1. Results from a study in which 450 Americans—most of whom
were nonparents—rated their prejudicial attitudes toward an ethnic
out-group (Arab Americans). Mean ratings of prejudice are shown as
a function of whether a threat was posed by the out-group or by a
natural disaster and whether or not caregiving was made salient (i.e.,
the parental care motivational system had been activated). Results
indicate that when an ethnic out-group is perceived to pose a threat,
activation of the parental care system leads to increased prejudice.
Error bars represent standard errors of the mean. (Figure based on
results reported by Gilead & Liberman, 2014.)
298 Schaller
system and its implications beyond the domain of
parent–child interactions. The preceding summary
focused especially on avoidance-oriented responses of
various kinds (e.g., risk aversion, intergroup prejudice).
There are, of course, implications for approach-oriented
responses, too. Indeed, the evolved psychology of
parental care may lie at the root of human capacities
for compassion and altruism (Goetz, Keltner, & Simon-
Thomas, 2010; Preston, 2013). It may be fundamental
to other kinds of prosocial inclinations as well, such as
generativity—which refers to a quasiparental concern
for the well-being of future generations. Measured as
an individual-difference variable, generativity not only
predicts successful parenting practices but also is asso-
ciated with civic engagement, life satisfaction, and other
valued outcomes (McAdams, 2013). These speculations
have implications—yet to be rigorously articulated or
tested—for exactly how and when prosocial tendencies
might manifest.
It will also be worthwhile to explore implications for
additional behaviors that, in ancestral environments,
might have helped offspring not merely to survive but
to thrive. Consider, for instance, potential consequences
for interpersonal communication. Humans are a highly
social species. Fitness benefits accrued to offspring
(and indirectly to their parents) to the extent that those
offspring succeeded socially—by forging friendships,
attaining social status, and attracting mates. In order to
succeed, offspring needed to navigate complex arrays
of social norms and cultural traditions. Parents likely
served as key conduits for information about these
norms and traditions and about how best to navigate
them. The implication is that activation of the parental
care motivational system may have consequences for
specific kinds of information that people communicate
to specific kinds of people.
Another promising direction for future research per-
tains to relations that the parental care system may have
with other motivational systems. Recent empirical
results reveal that activation of the parental care system
temporarily inhibits interest in short-term mating, and,
reciprocally, activation of a mating motive temporarily
inhibits the typical tenderness response to infants (Beall
& Schaller, 2017; for details, see Fig. 3). These results
suggest a mutually inhibitory relationship between
motivational systems that regulate behavior in the
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
4.5
5.0
5.5
6.0
–1 SD +1 SD
M
or
al
J
ud
gm
en
ts
A
bo
ut
A
du
lts
’ T
ra
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gr
es
si
on
s
PCAT Protection Subscale
PCAT Nurturance Subscale
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
4.5
5.0
5.5
6.0
–1 SD +1 SD
M
or
al
J
ud
gm
en
ts
A
bo
ut
C
hi
ld
re
n’
s
Tr
an
sg
re
ss
io
ns
a b
Fig. 2. Results from a study in which 410 adults—including both parents and nonparents—completed the Parental
Care and Tenderness (PCAT) questionnaire, which consists of two subscales (Protection and Nurturance), and
made moral judgments about transgressions perpetrated by either (a) adults or (b) children. The graphs depict
moral judgments of participants who were low (–1 SD) and high (+1 SD) on each PCAT subscale. Analyses of
effects for each PCAT subscale controlled for effects of the other PCAT subscale and for participants’ sex and
parental status. Among other things, the results show that adults with a more parental disposition judged other
adults’ transgressions more harshly, an effect entirely attributable to inclinations toward protectiveness; in contrast,
more parental adults judged children’s transgressions less harshly, and this effect was entirely attributable to incli-
nations toward nurturance. (Figure based on results reported by Hofer, Buckels, White, Beall, & Schaller, 2017.)
Parental Care Motivational System 299
domains of mating and parenting—which is consistent
with biological perspectives on the trade-off between
mating effort and parenting effort (e.g., life-history
theory; Del Giudice, Gangestad, & Kaplan, 2016). If
indeed such a trade-off manifests at a psychological
level of analysis, it may have many additional implica-
tions that remain to be discovered.
Finally, it will be useful to probe more deeply into
the underlying architecture of the parental care moti-
vational system. Recent research supports a conceptual
distinction between two different kinds of parental
responses: protection and nurturance (Hofer et al.,
2017). These different responses may reflect context-
contingent manifestations of a single set of underlying
mechanisms. Alternatively, they might plausibly reflect
the operation of two distinct sets of underlying moti-
vational mechanisms—one that regulates protective
behaviors (which may represent a repurposing of mech-
anisms that originally evolved in the service of self-
protection) and another that regulates nurturant
behaviors (which may have evolutionary origins that
are specific to the parent–offspring relationship). Dif-
ferent kinds of evidence—behavioral, neurochemical,
phylogenetic—will be required to determine whether
the parental care motivational system is best character-
ized as a single coherent regulatory system or whether
it might more appropriately be characterized as a com-
plementary pair of regulatory systems with distinct evo-
lutionary histories, distinct physiological bases, and
distinct implications for psychological phenomena.
Recommended Reading
Buckels, E. E., Beall, A. T., Hofer, M. K., Lin, E. Y., Zhou, Z.,
& Schaller, M. (2015). (See References). A representative
empirical article that—across multiple studies involving
both parents and nonparents—documents a wide range of
psychological outcomes that are predicted by individual
differences in activation of the parental care motivational
system.
Hahn-Holbrook, J., Holbrook, C., & Haselton, M. G. (2011).
Parental precaution: Neurobiological means and adap-
tive ends. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35,
1
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Control Mating Motive
a b
Control Parental Care
Fig. 3. Results from two studies that tested whether activation of a parental care motive temporarily inhibited
activation of a mating motive and vice versa. The graph in (a) shows results from the study assessing short-term
mating orientation (N = 92, all nonparents), in which participants were shown images depicting either aban-
doned kittens and puppies (to arouse the parental care motivational system) or abandoned furniture (control
condition). Mean ratings of short-term mating orientation are shown separately for each condition. Results
show that the arousal of a parental care motive was associated with a temporary decrease in short-term mating
orientation. The graph in (b) shows results from the study assessing the extent to which cute infants aroused
feelings of tenderness, in which participants were led to imagine either an erotic encounter with an attractive
stranger (to arouse a mating motive) or a walk through a suburban neighborhood (control condition). Mean
ratings of tenderness toward infants are shown for each condition. Results show that the arousal of a mating
motive was associated with a temporary decrease in parental tenderness responses. In both graphs, error bars
represent standard errors of the mean. (Figure based on results reported by Beall & Schaller, 2017.)
300 Schaller
1052–1066. A review article that focuses on the protective
tendencies that are fundamental to parental caregiving
and that have implications for avoidant and antisocial
behavior.
Preston, S. D. (2013). (See References). A review article that
provides a detailed overview of evolved mechanisms
that facilitate parental caregiving and explains how these
mechanisms may underlie prosocial behavior more gen-
erally.
Schaller, M., Kenrick, D. T., Neel, R., & Neuberg, S. L. (2017).
(See References). An overview of implications that fol-
low from an evolutionary approach to human motivation,
with illustrative research examples—including examples
pertaining to the parental care motivational system.
Action Editor
Randall W. Engle served as action editor for this article.
ORCID iD
Mark Schaller https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1243-4650
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest
with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.
Funding
This work was supported by Insight Grant No. 435-2012-0519
from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada.
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