Do your best
The Green Eggs and Ham Hypothesis: How Constraints Facilitate Creativity
Catrinel Haught-Tromp
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two experiments tested the hypothesis that constraints imposed on a common writing task yield more creative outputs. In the 1st study, participants were asked to include a given noun in a 2-line rhyme for a special occasion. In the 2nd study, they generated their own nouns, which they then had to include in their rhymes. Both studies show a main effect of constraints on creativity and an interaction with order of presentation, which suggests a carryover effect: Mere practice with constraints can stimulate creativity. The Green Eggs and Ham model is put forth to explain the current findings and why Dr. Seuss's best-seller, written using only 50 words, was such a creative and commercial success.
---------------------
Keep in touch: The effects of imagined touch support on stress and exploration
Brittany Jakubiak & Brooke Feeney
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although social support buffers stress and helps individuals to embrace challenges (exploration), individuals often experience stressors when close others are not proximally available to provide support. The current research tested whether imagining supportive touch from a romantic partner promotes exploration and buffers stress better than imagining verbal support or control imagination tasks. Participants completed a 5-min imagined support manipulation prior to experiencing a physical stressor, the cold pressor pain task (Exp. 1) or social/performance stressors, the Trier Social Stress task (Exp. 2). In Experiment 1, participants who imagined touch support experienced pain-buffering benefits compared to participants who imagined verbal support, and women who imagined touch support were more likely than women in other conditions to accept the challenge of a more difficult cold pressor task. In Experiment 2, participants who imagined touch support were more buffered from the stress of the socially-evaluative tasks and viewed these tasks with more enthusiasm than participants in all other imagination conditions. Potential mechanisms and implications are discussed.
---------------------
Do People Anticipate Loss Aversion?
Alex Imas, Sally Sadoff & Anya Samek
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is growing interest in the use of loss contracts that offer performance incentives as up-front payments that employees can lose. Standard behavioral models predict a trade-off in the use of loss contracts: employees will work harder under loss contracts than under gain contracts, but, anticipating loss aversion, they will prefer gain contracts to loss contracts. In a series of experiments, we test these predictions by measuring performance and preferences for payoff-equivalent gain and loss contracts. We find that people indeed work harder under loss than gain contracts, as the theory predicts. Surprisingly, rather than a preference for the gain contract, we find that people actually prefer loss contracts. In exploring mechanisms for our results, we find suggestive evidence that people do anticipate loss aversion but select into loss contracts as a commitment device to improve performance, using one bias, loss aversion, to address another, dynamic inconsistency.
---------------------
Adam Green et al.
Cerebral Cortex, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent neuroimaging evidence indicates neural mechanisms that support transient improvements in creative performance (augmented state creativity) in response to cognitive interventions (creativity cueing). Separately, neural interventions via tDCS show encouraging potential for modulating neuronal function during creative performance. If cognitive and neural interventions are separately effective, can they be combined? Does state creativity augmentation represent "real" creativity, or do interventions simply yield divergence by diminishing meaningfulness/appropriateness? Can augmenting state creativity bolster creative reasoning that supports innovation, particularly analogical reasoning? To address these questions, we combined tDCS with creativity cueing. Testing a regionally specific hypothesis from neuroimaging, high-definition tDCS-targeted frontopolar cortex activity recently shown to predict state creativity augmentation. In a novel analogy finding task, participants under tDCS formulated substantially more creative analogical connections in a large matrix search space (creativity indexed via latent semantic analysis). Critically, increased analogical creativity was not due to diminished accuracy in discerning valid analogies, indicating "real" creativity rather than inappropriate divergence. A simpler relational creativity paradigm (modified verb generation) revealed a tDCS-by-cue interaction; tDCS further enhanced creativity cue-related increases in semantic distance. Findings point to the potential of noninvasive neuromodulation to enhance creative relational cognition, including augmentation of the deliberate effort to formulate connections between distant concepts.
---------------------
When Red Means Go: Non-Normative Effects of Red Under Sensation-Seeking
Ravi Mehta et al.
Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although previous research has identified red as the color of compliance, the current work proposes that this effect of red may not hold under high sensation-seeking propensity conditions. It is argued that the color red has the capability to induce arousal, which in turn has been shown to enhance a person's default tendencies. Further, because high sensation-seekers have a higher tendency to react, the exposure to the color red for these individuals will increase reactance and thereby non-compliant behavior. One field study and two lab experiments provide support for this theorizing. The first experiment, a field study, examines prank-chatting incidences at a child helpline and shows a positive effect of red on such non-compliant behavior. Experiment 2 confirms this finding in a controlled lab setting and shows that when one has a high sensation-seeking propensity, the color red positively affects one's attitude towards non-compliance. The final study illuminates the underlying process and explicates the role of arousal and reactance in the color - non-compliance relationship. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
---------------------
Disentangling Sunk-Costs and Completion Proximity: The Role of Regulatory Focus
Adam Barsky & Michael Zyphur
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do some people escalate commitment to a project that is unlikely to succeed? Existing research shows that people tend to escalate when prior expenditures (e.g., sunk costs) are high, whereas other research suggests that people tend to escalate when a project nears completion, regardless of prior expenditures. In this paper, we argue decision-makers have diverse goals driven by regulatory foci that represent alternative motivations for escalation. Specifically, people who regulate their behavior towards achieving gains (i.e., a promotion focus) are influenced more strongly by proximity to project completion than those who focus on the presence or absence of losses (i.e., a prevention focus). Across empirical studies using different operationalizations of regulatory focus, we show that increased promotion focus, but not prevention focus, exacerbates escalation behavior as a project nears completion. Our findings highlight the importance of accounting for individual motivations when designing interventions to curb escalation behavior.
---------------------
Saar Mollen et al.
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigated the influence of framed norm messages about food consumption on motivation to consume, and actual consumption of, healthy and unhealthy foods. We proposed that the effects of positive and negative message frames would vary by the type of underlying norms (i.e., injunctive, descriptive). More specifically, based on information processing theories, it was expected that injunctive norms would be more effective when framed negatively compared with positively, while the opposite was expected for descriptive norms. In both experiments, participants were randomly assigned to one of four framed social norm conditions or a no-norm control condition. In Experiment 1, motivation to consume healthy and unhealthy foods was assessed by means of both indirect and self-report measures. In Experiment 2, actual food consumption was assessed. In both experiments, the predicted interaction was found. Results show that injunctive norms benefit from a negative (vs. positive) frame, while preliminary evidence suggests the opposite for descriptive norms.