Comforting
Trading in search of structure: Market relationships as a compensatory control tool
Agata Gasiorowska & Tomasz Zaleskiewicz
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Rooting our model in the compensatory control theory, we propose that one reason behind the prevalence of market relationships in modern society is that the fundamental need for orderliness makes them psychologically appealing because of the structure they provide. The initial study confirmed that market relationships are perceived as more structured than communal relationships. In 13 experiments (including 2 preregistered ones), we examined the causal relationship between personal control and preferences for market relationships. First, participants with a threatened sense of control preferred market over communal relationships and interpreted ambiguous social interactions as market-related. Second, the salience of market relationships triggered a sense of control and evoked internal explanations of various events. Finally, priming market relationships reduced the search for other compensatory control tools in the face of external threats. We also demonstrated that market relationships are appealing because of their structure, as perceiving ambiguous situations as market-related after threatening control was moderated by Personal Need for Structure, and the relation between market relationships and the sense of control was mediated by perceived structure. Finally, we tested boundary conditions of the above effects and provided evidence that people facing control threat tend to prefer market-oriented rules in relations with strangers rather than with those close to them, and that the relation between market relationships and sense of control is absent among securely attached individuals. We discuss why market relationships compensate for lack of control and refer to other disciplines to explain this phenomenon.
The effect of childhood socioeconomic status on patience
Debora Thompson, Rebecca Hamilton & Ishani Banerji Organizational
Behavior and Human Decision Processes, March 2020, Pages 85-102
Abstract:
In this research, we examine the effect of childhood socioeconomic status on patience, which is operationalized as willingness to wait for a chosen alternative. Because decision makers socialized in low (high) socioeconomic status environments learn a model of agency that emphasizes exerting self-control (vs. exerting environmental control), we predict that they will exhibit greater (less) willingness to wait for a chosen alternative. In three studies in which participants of various ages chose an alternative and then learned that it was not immediately available, lower childhood socioeconomic status consistently predicted greater willingness to wait and less negative emotional reactions to waiting. We discuss implications of this effect in organizational settings.
Individual differences in trust evaluations are shaped mostly by environments, not genes
Clare Sutherland et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 12 May 2020, Pages 10218-10224
Abstract:
People evaluate a stranger's trustworthiness from their facial features in a fraction of a second, despite common advice "not to judge a book by its cover." Evaluations of trustworthiness have critical and widespread social impact, predicting financial lending, mate selection, and even criminal justice outcomes. Consequently, understanding how people perceive trustworthiness from faces has been a major focus of scientific inquiry, and detailed models explain how consensus impressions of trustworthiness are driven by facial attributes. However, facial impression models do not consider variation between observers. Here, we develop a sensitive test of trustworthiness evaluation and use it to document substantial, stable individual differences in trustworthiness impressions. Via a twin study, we show that these individual differences are largely shaped by variation in personal experience, rather than genes or shared environments. Finally, using multivariate twin modeling, we show that variation in trustworthiness evaluation is specific, dissociating from other key facial evaluations of dominance and attractiveness. Our finding that variation in facial trustworthiness evaluation is driven mostly by personal experience represents a rare example of a core social perceptual capacity being predominantly shaped by a person's unique environment. Notably, it stands in sharp contrast to variation in facial recognition ability, which is driven mostly by genes. Our study provides insights into the development of the social brain, offers a different perspective on disagreement in trust in wider society, and motivates new research into the origins and potential malleability of face evaluation, a critical aspect of human social cognition.
When do Online Audiences Amplify Benefits of Self-Disclosure? The Role of Shared Experience and Anticipated Interactivity
Rachel Kornfield & Catalina Toma
Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, forthcoming
Abstract:
As individuals increasingly write about their distressing experiences online, it is important to understand how perceived online audiences influence the effects of self-disclosure. In an experiment, participants wrote about recent breakups for online audiences purportedly varying in 1) whether they shared recent breakup experiences and 2) their ability to leave comments. Participants perceiving audiences with shared experience showed more cognitive processing in their writing and reported increased post-traumatic growth at follow-up than participants perceiving general audiences. Those anticipating comments wrote less about emotions than those who did not. Mechanisms accounting for the benefits of shared experience warrant further investigation.
Personality and individual characteristics as indicators of lifetime climbing success among Everest mountaineers
David Savage et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
To measure the importance of personality and individual characteristics in such extreme environments as high-altitude mountaineering, this study investigated how physical, physiological, and/or hormonal markers provide insights into individual predilections for competitive and risk-taking behaviours. Because climbing outcomes depend on the ability to overcome adverse environmental conditions, avoid unnecessary risks, and exert sufficient self-regulation to handle extreme physiological and psychological stressors, it focused particularly on the relation between the successful scaling among Mount Everest climbers and risk attitudes, personality factors (from the Big Five Inventory) or traits associated with prenatal androgen exposure (2D:4D ratio). The results indicate not only that the 2D:4D ratio positively predicts lifetime mountaineering success but that the more risk averse open-minded and emotionally stable the climbers, the more active and successful compared to their peers. These findings, in addition to suggesting that human biological and psychological traits substantially influence success and long-term performance in extreme situations, offer valuable insights into how humans with different tendencies are likely to behave under such stressful conditions.
Goal Conflict Encourages Work and Discourages Leisure
Jordan Etkin & Sarah Memmi
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Leisure is desirable and beneficial, yet consumers frequently forgo leisure in favor of other activities-namely, work. Why? We propose that goal conflict plays an important role. Seven experiments demonstrate that perceiving greater goal conflict shapes how consumers allocate time to work and leisure - even when those activities are unrelated to the conflicting goals. This occurs because goal conflict increases reliance on salient justifications, influencing how much time people spend on subsequent, unrelated activities. Because work tends to be easier to justify and leisure harder to justify, goal conflict increases time spent on work and decreases time spent on leisure. Thus, despite the conflicting goals being independent of the specific work and leisure activities considered (i.e., despite goal conflict being "incidental"), perceiving greater goal conflict encourages work and discourages leisure. The findings further understanding of how consumers allocate time to work and leisure, incidental effects of goal conflict on decision making, and the role of justification in consumer choice. They also have implications for the use of "time-saving" technologies and the marketing of leisure activities.
Neural Mechanisms of Self-Affirmation's Stress Buffering Effects
Janine Dutcher et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Self-affirmation can buffer stress responses across different contexts, yet the neural mechanisms for these effects are unknown. Self-affirmation has been shown to increase activity in reward-related neural regions, including the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). Given that reward-related prefrontal cortical regions such as the VMPFC are involved in reducing neurobiological and behavioral responses to stress, we hypothesized that self-affirmation would activate VMPFC and also reduce neural responses to stress in key neural threat system regions such as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula (AI). We explored this hypothesis using self-affirmation and evaluative stress tasks following a within-subjects design in the fMRI scanner. Consistent with prior work, self-affirmation blocks led to lower self-reported stress and improved performance. With respect to neural activity, compared to control blocks, self-affirmation blocks led to greater VMPFC activity, and subsequently less left AI (but not dACC) activity during stress task blocks. Functional connectivity analyses revealed greater connectivity between the VMPFC and left and right AI during self-affirmation compared to control. These findings begin to articulate the neural circuits involved in self-affirmation's effects during exposure to stressors, and more broadly specify neural reward-based responses to stressful situations.