Oliver Genschow

Individuals tend to automatically imitate others’ actions. Such imitative behavior is often assumed to be a universal phenomenon. However, most prior research has focused on Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) populations, leaving open whether people across different cultures imitate others in a similar manner. Ideomotor theory and the theory of objective self-awareness suggest that imitation is influenced by the extent to which individuals focus on the self versus others. Since cultural background strongly shapes self-construal—particularly along the collectivism-individualism dimension—cultural context may play a key role in shaping imitative behavior. To test this prediction, we examined automatic imitation in representative samples across 22 culturally diverse nations varying in collectivism and individualism. Consistent with prior findings, we replicated the basic automatic imitation effect across all countries but found no compelling evidence for cultural differences in automatic imitation. These findings hint to the possibility that automatic imitation is a universal phenomenon with little room for strong modulations by culture.

On the basis of two social‐affective frameworks, we posited that national football team performance (winning vs. losing) would impact spectators’ identities, affect and sociopolitical attitudes—including their intergroup attitudes (i.e., in‐group favouritism and multiculturalism) and societal perceptions (i.e., national optimism, perceived crisis severity, political trust and perceived racism). During the UEFA EURO 2024 tournament in Germany, we assessed residents ( N = 1012) from five participating countries before the tournament (baseline) and after each game. Confirming our preregistered hypotheses, national team wins led to stronger national identification, which, in turn, predicted more in‐group favouritism and less support for multiculturalism. Wins also predicted more positive affect, which then coincided with stronger national optimism. Contrary to our hypotheses, however, no direct effects emerged for spectators’ political trust, nor their perceptions of crisis severity and racism. These findings highlight ways in which national sports experiences can predict spectators’ collective identities, emotions and selected sociopolitical attitudes.

People automatically imitate each other, which is known to elicit feelings of affiliation. Previous research on mimicry has mainly studied dyadic interactions and thereby neglected that many social interactions are often observed by others. This raises the question of how observers perceive individuals who mimic or are mimicked. Based on previous research, we formulated two competing hypotheses about how third-party observers perceive people who initiate actions and people who mimic the actions along the Big Two dimensions (i.e., agency vs. communion). We tested these hypotheses against each other in eight experiments. The results strongly support the "Agency Hypothesis" according to which people who initiate actions are perceived as more agentic than people who mimic the actions. Our experiments also find some support for the "Communion Hypothesis" indicating that people who mimic actions are perceived as more communal than people who initiate the actions. Interestingly, support for the Agency Hypothesis was very robust, whereas the effect on perceived communion was more variable and dependent on the stimuli used. When investigating downstream consequences of the link between observed mimicry and ascriptions along the Big Two dimensions, we find that both ascribed agency and communion predict donation behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Does it matter whether people believe in free will? Over recent decades, this question has sparked a debate across philosophy, sociology, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Previous research has largely overlooked how this belief relates to people’s everyday affect. To address this gap, we conducted two experience-sampling studies with participants from five European countries to examine the association between belief in free will and individuals’ daily affect ( N _total = 1,381; k _total = 12,856), and one experimental study ( N = 1,053). In Studies 1 and 2, stronger belief in free will was positively associated with positive affect across the day. Importantly, all effects remained after controlling for constructs related to the belief and everyday affect. Study 3 showed that exposing participants to pro- (vs. anti-) free will viewpoints increased positive affect. Our findings highlight the unique role of belief in free will in shaping daily positive affect and its wider social implications.

Major sporting events exert manifold influences on people’s intra- and interpersonal experiences. Preliminary findings suggest that they affect sexuality, but the evidence has been limited to population-level outcomes such as birth rates. Direct, individual-level evidence and research on underlying processes are missing. In this preregistered study, we investigated the relationship between the success of national men’s soccer teams during the UEFA EURO 2024 tournament and the frequency of sexual events in daily life, with match results serving as natural within-person, quasi-experimental manipulations. Participants from five European countries ( N = 952, k = 3,627 reports) reported more cognitive, affective, and behavioral sexual events following their national teams’ wins (vs. losses). These effects were particularly pronounced among participants who identified more strongly as fans and were partly explained by higher well-being after wins. We discuss the far-reaching impact of sporting events on sexuality in daily life and future research directions.

A recent study by Bruine de Bruin, Clim Change 167, 2021 investigated how well laypeople understand eight key termini of climate change that are commonly used in IPCC reports (i.e. mitigation, carbon neutral, unprecedented transition, tipping point, sustainable development, carbon dioxide removal, adaptation, abrupt change). The results revealed systematic misinterpretations by participants. To improve laypeople’s understanding of these termini, Bruine de Bruin et al. developed recommendations for alternative formulations but did not test whether these alternative formulations actually increase understanding and lead to changes of people’s intentions to behave sustainably. To fill this gap, we carried out a preregistered online experiment ( N = 285) and compared the altered with the original formulations in terms of how well participants understand the termini subjectively and objectively. In addition, we measured participants’ confidence in the correctness of their understanding and their intention to act sustainably. The results indicate that participants in the altered wording group (1) generally understood the termini better subjectively and objectively; (2) had more confidence in the correctness of their understanding, and (3) misinterpreted the termini less by relying on their mental models of non-climate contexts (where the termini often have different meanings). Interestingly, this overall pattern did not apply to all termini, indicating that altering the termini increased people’s understanding for some concepts but not for others. Moreover, the altered wordings did not increase participants’ intentions to act sustainably. Implications and further directions are discussed.

This paper explores the transformative journey of open science in reshaping research credibility and replicability. Using psychology’s “replication crisis” as a cautionary tale, we discuss the emergence of open science as a movement aimed at reinforcing transparency and rigor in research practices. Through a discussion of open science principles and practices, we highlight both the successes and challenges that psychology faced in adopting these methods. The paper then draws parallels to business research, proposing open science as a necessary evolution to enhance trust and provide actionable insights in fields such as entrepreneurship, sustainability, and digitalization. We invite business researchers to embrace open science’s potential, not only to address emerging credibility concerns but also to redefine the impact and reliability of their findings across research fields and industries.

Conspiracy beliefs have been linked to perceptions of collective victimhood. We adopt an individual perspective on victimhood by investigating the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and the individual disposition to perceive and react to injustice as a victim, i.e., victim justice sensitivity (VJS). Data from two German samples (Ns = 370, 373) indicated a positive association between VJS and conspiracy mentality beyond conceptually related covariates (e.g., mistrust). In a multinational sample from 15 countries ( N = 14,978), VJS was positively associated with both general and specific conspiracy beliefs (about vaccines and climate change) within countries, though these associations varied across countries. However, economic, sociopolitical and cultural country‐level factors that might explain the cross‐country variability (e.g., GDP, Human Freedom Index, individualism–collectivism), including indices of collective exposure to direct violence, did not moderate the studied associations. Future research should investigate the relationship between victimhood and conspiracy beliefs, considering both intraindividual and intergroup perspectives.

People have the automatic tendency to imitate their interaction partner. Such imitative behavior can operate as a form of social influence through two different pathways. On the one hand, the imitation pathway considers imitative behavior itself as a form of social influence, where the actions of others influence one's own behavior by triggering engagement in the same actions. On the other hand, the being imitated pathway relates to the idea that being imitated by a person has several downstream consequences for the person being mimicked, but also other parties. In this chapter, we review the underlying mechanisms of these two pathways and critically evaluate its supporting evidence. At the end, we propose avenues for future research to further investigate the link between imitation and social influence.