It is important for people to feel listened to in professional and personal communications, and yet they can feel unheard even when others have listened well. We propose that this feeling may arise because speakers conflate agreement with listening quality. In 11 studies (N = 3,396 adults), we held constant or manipulated a listener’s objective listening behaviors, manipulating only after the conversation whether the listener agreed with the speaker. Across various topics, mediums (e.g., video, chat), and cues of objective listening quality, speakers consistently perceived disagreeing listeners as worse listeners. This effect persisted after controlling for other positive impressions of the listener (e.g., likability). This effect seemed to emerge because speakers believe their views are correct, leading them to infer that a disagreeing listener must not have been listening very well. Indeed, it may be prohibitively difficult for someone to simultaneously convey that they disagree and that they were listening.

When deciding whether to negotiate, individuals typically assess any potential costs of negotiation. We propose that one major cost that individuals are concerned about, particularly in the context of job offers, is an offer being withdrawn from the bargaining table—losing out on a deal entirely. We refer to this heretofore unexamined concern as the perceived likelihood of jeopardizing a deal by negotiating. We investigate job candidates’ perceived likelihood of jeopardizing a deal, as compared to hiring managers’ reports, across seven studies (total N = 3,338), including surveys of academic job candidates and members of academic hiring committees, managers and hiring professionals, and experimental studies with interactive, incentivized negotiations conducted both in person and online. We consistently document that job candidates’ perception of the likelihood of jeopardizing a deal is exaggerated, i.e., discrepant with that of the hiring side. In some cases, this perception is associated with negotiation avoidance. We also theorize and find support for two underlying psychological mechanisms: zero-sum perceptions and psychological power. We further document contextual factors that decrease candidates’ zero-sum perceptions or increase their perceived power, which, in turn, diminish (but do not fully eliminate) the discrepancy between candidates’ and managers’ perceptions of the likelihood of jeopardizing a deal.

Across a pilot study and three preregistered experiments (N = 4128), we demonstrated that people knowingly shared conspiracy theories to advance social motives (e.g., to receive “likes”). In addition to accuracy, people seemed to value social engagement (e.g., “likes” and reactions). Importantly, people not only expected most conspiracy theories to generate greater social engagement than factual news, but they were also more willing to share conspiracy theories when they expected such theories, compared to factual news, to generate sufficiently greater levels of social engagement. In an interactive, multi-round, content-sharing paradigm, we found that people were very sensitive to the social feedback they received. When they received greater social feedback for sharing conspiracy theories than factual news, participants were significantly more likely to share conspiracy theories, even when they knew these theories to be false. Our findings advance our understanding of why and when individuals are likely to share conspiracy theories and identify important prescriptions for curbing the spread of conspiracy theories.

Philosophers, scholars, and clergy have asserted that deception is immoral [1]. Despite the prevalence of absolute prohibitions against deception, most laypeople are not absolutists. They make distinctions about the ethicality of deception based on factors such as the motive of deception, the context, and the tactics employed [2]. For example, people judge prosocial lies intended to help targets as significantly more moral than selfish lies [3], and judge indirect forms of deception, such as omission or paltering, to be more moral than blatant lies of commission [4, 5].

Notably, most extant work has focused on how communicators’(ie, deceivers’) motives and tactics shape observers’ evaluations of and reactions to deception. This work often implicitly conceptualized targets of deception as passive recipients (see Refs.[6, 7] for exceptions). The broad focus on the communicators’ perspective is consistent with the dominant mental model people hold when evaluating unethical behavior: People typically encode unethical acts as occurring between active agents (who are responsible for the act) and passive targets (who experience the harm associated with the act [8]). However, several articles in this special issue highlight the role that targets play in either promoting or curbing deception; for example, targets can curb their likelihood of being deceived by asking questions, listening carefully, and signaling their receptivity to the truth [9 e11]. In this article, we integrate these findings to develop predictions about when and why observers perceive targets as active participants in deception rather than passive recipients.

Although many virtuous leaders are guided by the ideal of prioritizing the needs and welfare of their subordinates, others advance their self-interest at the expense of the people they purport to serve. In this article, we discuss conspiracy theories as a tool that leaders use to advance their personal interests. We propose that leaders spread conspiracy theories in service of four primary goals: 1) to attack opponents; 2) to galvanize followers; 3) to shift blame and responsibility; and 4) to undermine institutions that threaten their power. We argue that authoritarian, populist, and conservative leaders are most likely to spread conspiracy theories during periods of instability.