End Result
Put your plan into action: The influence of action plans on agency and responsibility
Tom Damen et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, June 2015, Pages 850-866
Abstract:
While action plans and intentions have been considered to be important factors contributing to the personal sense of causation known as agency, the present research is the first to empirically investigate how action plans influence agency. Participants in multiple studies were required to plan or not to plan ahead their actions. Results consistently show that on trials in which participants were required to plan their actions, participants experienced reduced agency compared to trials in which participants were not required to plan their actions. These results were found for both explicit agency paradigms in which participants were asked for their experiences of causation (Studies 1 and 2), as well as in an implicit agency paradigm in which participants were asked to estimate the time between their actions and the consequences of their actions (Study 3). In addition, it was shown that the reduction in agency was smaller when plans and actions were temporally closer together (Study 4). In a final line of experiments we discovered that prior planning similarly reduced both the emotional experience of acting and feelings of responsibility in agents (Studies 5-7). However, the direction of this effect was reversed in observers, for whom cues related to planning by others increased attributions of responsibility toward those others (Study 8).
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Stephanie Tully, Hal Hershfield & Tom Meyvis
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Consumers with limited discretionary money face important trade-offs when deciding how to spend it. In the current research, we suggest that feelings of financial constraint increase consumers' concern about the lasting utility of their purchases, which in turn increases their preference for material goods over experiences. The results of seven studies confirm that the consideration of financial constraints shifts consumers' preferences toward material goods (rather than experiences), and that this systematic shift is due to an increased concern about the longevity of the purchase. This preference shift persists even when the material goods are more frivolous than the experiences, indicating that the effect is not driven by an increased desire for sensible and justifiable purchases. However, the shift towards material purchases disappears when the material purchase is unusually short-lived, further implicating concern about longevity as the key driver of the effect. Finally, the consideration of financial constraints increases preference for material purchases even when the potential memories that experiences can provide are made explicitly salient. Together, these results indicate that financially constrained consumers spend their discretionary money on material purchases as a means of securing long-term consumption utility.
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Can a Near Win Kindle Motivation? The Impact of Nearly Winning on Motivation for Unrelated Rewards
Monica Wadhwa & JeeHye Christine Kim
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Common intuition and research suggest that winning is more motivating than losing. However, we propose that just failing to obtain a reward (i.e., nearly winning it) in one task leads to broader, positive motivational effects on subsequent unrelated tasks relative to clearly losing or actually obtaining the reward. We manipulated a near-win experience using a game app in Experiments 1 through 3 and a lottery in Experiment 4. Our findings showed that nearly winning in one task subsequently led participants to walk faster to get to a chocolate bar (Experiment 1), salivate more for money (Experiment 2), and increase their effort to earn money in a card-sorting task (Experiment 3). A field study (Experiment 4) demonstrated that nearly winning led people to subsequently spend more money on desirable consumer products. Finally, our findings showed that when the activated motivational state was dampened in an intervening task, the nearly-winning effect was attenuated.
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The Impact Of Pressure On Performance: Evidence From The PGA Tour
Daniel Hickman & Neil Metz
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do large rewards lead to psychological pressure causing underperformance? Previous studies have tested this 'choking' phenomenon using the world of sports, but such studies often lack an explicit link between performance and reward. This study utilizes a large PGA TOUR dataset to more directly analyze the effect of pressure on individual performance by calculating the potential change in earnings from making or missing a putt on the final hole of a tournament. We find that as the amount of money riding on a shot increases, the likelihood that shot is made is significantly reduced.
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When pressure sinks performance: Evidence from diving competitions
Christos Genakos, Mario Pagliero & Eleni Garbi
Economics Letters, July 2015, Pages 5-8
Abstract:
Tournaments are designed to enhance participants' effort and productivity. However, ranking near the top may increase psychological pressure and reduce performance. We empirically study the impact of interim rank on performance using data from international diving tournaments. We find that competitors systematically underperform when ranked closer to the top, despite higher incentives to perform well.
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Power Affects Performance When the Pressure Is On: Evidence for Low-Power Threat and High-Power Lift
Sonia Kang et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, May 2015, Pages 726-735
Abstract:
The current research examines how power affects performance in pressure-filled contexts. We present low-power-threat and high-power-lift effects, whereby performance in high-stakes situations suffers or is enhanced depending on one's power; that is, the power inherent to a situational role can produce effects similar to stereotype threat and lift. Three negotiations experiments demonstrate that role-based power affects outcomes but only when the negotiation is diagnostic of ability and, therefore, pressure-filled. We link these outcomes conceptually to threat and lift effects by showing that (a) role power affects performance more strongly when the negotiation is diagnostic of ability and (b) underperformance disappears when the low-power negotiator has an opportunity to self-affirm. These results suggest that stereotype threat and lift effects may represent a more general phenomenon: When the stakes are raised high, relative power can act as either a toxic brew (stereotype/low-power threat) or a beneficial elixir (stereotype/high-power lift) for performance.
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Goal projection in public places
Janet Naju Ahn, Gabriele Oettingen & Peter Gollwitzer
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three studies investigated the phenomenon of goal projection in everyday life considering three moderators: goal commitment, the perceived similarity of the target person, and goal attainment. Moviegoers' (Study 1) highly committed to see a particular movie projected this goal onto other movie patrons. Commuters (Study 2) highly committed to catch a certain train projected this goal onto other commuters, given that these commuters were perceived as similar. Shoppers (Study 3) projected buying a particular item when both their goal commitment and the perceived similarity of another shopper were high, and the goal was not yet attained. The results imply that goal projection is part of our everyday life and is fostered by high-goal commitment, perceiving others as similar, and ongoing goal striving.
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Samuel Smithers
Economics Letters, June 2015, Pages 75-77
Abstract:
I present an experiment on non-binding goals and motivational effects. Consistent with results from psychology, I find that goals increase output. This is due to improved speed and accuracy. Men are more responsive to goals than women.
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Jennifer Belding, Karen Naufel & Kentaro Fujita
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, June 2015, Pages 822-838
Abstract:
Diagnostic negative information presents people with a motivational dilemma. Although negative feedback can provide useful information with which to guide future self-improvement efforts, it also presents short-term affective costs. We propose that construal level, jointly with the perceived changeability of the feedback domain, determines whether people choose to accept or dismiss such information. Whereas low-level construal promotes short-term self-protection motivation (promoting dismissal), high-level construal promotes long-term self-change motivation (promoting acceptance) - to the extent that change is perceived as possible. Four studies support this hypothesis and examine underlying cognitive and motivational mechanisms. The present work may provide an integrative theoretical framework for understanding when people will be open to and accept negative diagnostic information, and has important practical implications for promoting self-change efforts.
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Marina Milyavskaya et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Self-regulation has been conceptualized as the interplay between controlled and impulsive processes; however, most research has focused on the controlled side (i.e., effortful self-control). The present studies focus on the effects of motivation on impulsive processes, including automatic preferences for goal-disruptive stimuli and subjective reports of temptations and obstacles, contrasting them with effects on controlled processes. This is done by examining people's implicit affective reactions in the face of goal-disruptive "temptations" (Studies 1 and 2), subjective reports of obstacles (Studies 2 and 3) and expended effort (Study 3), as well as experiences of desires and self-control in real-time using experience sampling (Study 4). Across these multiple methods, results show that want-to motivation results in decreased impulsive attraction to goal-disruptive temptations and is related to encountering fewer obstacles in the process of goal pursuit. This, in turn, explains why want-to goals are more likely to be attained. Have-to motivation, on the other hand, was unrelated to people's automatic reactions to temptation cues but related to greater subjective perceptions of obstacles and tempting desires. The discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for self-regulation and motivation.
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Power Effects on Cognitive Control: Turning Conflict into Action
Petra Schmid, Tali Kleiman & David Amodio
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Power is known to promote effective goal pursuit, especially when it requires one to overcome distractions or bias. We proposed that this effect involves the ability to engage and implement cognitive control. In Study 1, we demonstrated that power enhances behavioral performance on a response conflict task and that it does so by enhancing controlled processing rather than by reducing automatic processing. In Study 2, we used an event-related potential index of anterior cingulate activity to test whether power effects on control were due to enhanced conflict sensitivity or action implementation. Power did not significantly affect neural sensitivity to conflict; rather, high power was associated with a stronger link between conflict processing and intended action, relative to low power. These findings suggest a new perspective on how social factors can affect controlled processing and offer new evidence regarding the transition between conflict detection and the implementation of action control.
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When Does the Future Begin? Time Metrics Matter, Connecting Present and Future Selves
Neil Lewis & Daphna Oyserman
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
People assume they should attend to the present; their future self can handle the future. This seemingly plausible rule of thumb can lead people astray, in part because some future events require current action. In order for the future to energize and motivate current action, it must feel imminent. To create this sense of imminence, we manipulated time metric - the units (e.g., days, years) in which time is considered. People interpret accessible time metrics in two ways: If preparation for the future is under way (Studies 1 and 2), people interpret metrics as implying when a future event will occur. If preparation is not under way (Studies 3-5), they interpret metrics as implying when preparation should start (e.g., planning to start saving 4 times sooner for a retirement in 10,950 days instead of 30 years). Time metrics mattered not because they changed how distal or important future events felt (Study 6), but because they changed how connected and congruent their current and future selves felt (Study 7).