Method

Participants

All participants were recruited through Prolific. Responses were excluded if they were incomplete, flagged by Qualtrics as likely fraudulent, contained a duplicated Prolific ID, or failed the requisite attention checks. Two pilot studies were reported in Supplementary. The two pre-registered studies used stratified sampling to ensure balanced representation across sex, age, ethnicity (based on simplified U.S. census categories), and political affiliation. The demographic characteristics for Study 1 and Study 2 are presented in Table 1.

Study 1 (N=348; pre-registered: https://aspredicted.org/mv2z-t7dw.pdf; data collected March 27, 2025) and Study 2 (N=347; pre-registered: https://aspredicted.org/z378hg.pdf; data collected September 23–25, 2025) served as the formal replication and mediation samples. All data and supplementary materials are at: https://osf.io/qfv9d/.

Table 1: Demographic Characteristics of Study 1 and Study 2

Characteristic

Study 1

Study 2

Data Collection Date

March 27, 2025

September 23–25, 2025

Sample Size (N)

348

347

Age (Mean +/- SD)

45.52 +/- 16.12

45.24 +/- 15.77

Gender - Woman

177 (50.86%)

172 (49.57%)

Gender - Man

170 (48.85%)

170 (48.99%)

Gender - Other

1 (0.29%)

4 (1.15%)

Gender - Prefer not to disclose

0 (0%)

1 (0.29%)

SES (1-10) (Mean +/- SD)

5.26 +/- 1.77

5.01 +/- 1.66

Political Leaning (1-7) (Mean +/- SD)

3.86 +/- 1.86

3.93 +/- 1.85

Race - Black or African American

45 (12.93%)

45 (12.97%)

Race - East Asian

13 (3.74%)

11 (3.17%)

Race - Hispanic or Latina/o/x/e

17 (4.89%)

23 (6.63%)

Race - Indigenous American, American Indian, or Alaska Native

5 (1.44%)

3 (0.86%)

Race - Middle Eastern or North African

5 (1.44%)

0 (0%)

Race - South Asian

6 (1.72%)

9 (2.59%)

Race - Southeast Asian

8 (2.3%)

10 (2.88%)

Race - White

213 (61.21%)

210 (60.52%)

Race - Other

2 (0.57%)

3 (0.86%)

Race - Multirace

33 (9.48%)

33 (9.51%)

Race - Did not answer

1 (0.29%)

0 (0%)

Faith - Agnostic

52 (14.94%)

64 (18.44%)

Faith - Atheist

30 (8.62%)

41 (11.82%)

Faith - Buddhist

3 (0.86%)

3 (0.86%)

Faith - Christian

203 (58.33%)

197 (56.77%)

Faith - Hindu

2 (0.57%)

5 (1.44%)

Faith - Jewish

4 (1.15%)

4 (1.15%)

Faith - Muslim

4 (1.15%)

4 (1.15%)

Faith - Other

36 (10.34%)

21 (6.05%)

Faith - Multifaith

14 (4.02%)

8 (2.31%)