Feeling better about it
People Are Slow to Adapt to the Warm Glow of Giving
Ed O'Brien & Samantha Kassirer
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
People adapt to repeated getting. The happiness we feel from eating the same food, from earning the same income, and from many other experiences quickly decreases as repeated exposure to an identical source of happiness increases. In two preregistered experiments (N = 615), we examined whether people also adapt to repeated giving - the happiness we feel from helping other people rather than ourselves. In Experiment 1, participants spent a windfall for 5 days ($5.00 per day on the same item) on themselves or another person (the same one each day). In Experiment 2, participants won money in 10 rounds of a game ($0.05 per round) for themselves or a charity of their choice (the same one each round). Although getting elicited standard adaptation (happiness significantly declined), giving did not grow old (happiness did not significantly decline; Experiment 1) and grew old more slowly than equivalent getting (happiness declined at about half the rate; Experiment 2). Past research suggests that people are inevitably quick to adapt in the absence of change. These findings suggest otherwise: The happiness we get from giving appears to sustain itself.
Nature contact and mood benefits: Contact duration and mood type
Calum Neill, Janelle Gerard & Katherine Arbuthnott
Journal of Positive Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is robust evidence that contact with the natural world improves human health, including emotional well-being. However, the specific conditions of emotional benefits of nature contact are sparsely understood. Two studies were conducted with university students to examine whether the duration of nature contact influences the magnitude of benefits for both hedonic (positive and negative affect) and self-transcendent emotions. Study 1 investigated whether 5 minutes of sedentary nature contact influenced both emotion types, and Study 2 examined whether mood improvements are sensitive to the duration of nature contact (5 vs. 15 minutes). Results indicate that brief nature contact reliably improved both hedonic and self-transcendent emotions, and that the duration of contact in the range tested had no impact on this improvement.
When chatting about negative experiences helps - and when it hurts: Distinguishing adaptive versus maladaptive social support in computer-mediated communication
David Lee et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does talking to others about negative experiences improve the way people feel? Although some work suggests that the answer to this question is "yes," other work reveals the opposite. Here we attempt to shed light on this puzzle by examining how people can talk to others about their negative experiences constructively via computer-mediated communication, a platform that people increasingly use to provide and receive social support. Drawing from prior research on meaning-making and self-reflection, we predicted that cueing participants to reconstrue their experience in ways that lead them to focus on it from a broader perspective during a conversation would buffer them against negative affect and enhance their sense of closure compared with cueing them to recount the emotionally arousing details concerning what happened. Results supported this prediction. Content analyses additionally revealed that participants in the reconstrue condition used the word "you" generically (e.g., you cannot always get what you want) more than participants in the recount condition, identifying a linguistic mechanism that supports reconstrual. These findings highlight the psychological processes that distinguish adaptive versus maladaptive ways of talking about negative experiences, particularly in the context of computer-mediated support interactions.
Social exclusion and perceived vulnerability to physical harm
Kristy Dean, Grace Wentworth & Nikole LeCompte
Self and Identity, January/February 2019, Pages 87-102
Abstract:
The social exclusion literature has long emphasized the evolutionary basis of belonging and its inherent association with physical safety. We further elucidate this link by examining how social vulnerability shapes subjective experiences of physical vulnerability. We hypothesized that social exclusion would heighten sensitivity to physical vulnerability concerns. Across 3 studies, social exclusion, relative to control conditions, increased the accessibility of physical vulnerability-related cognitions (Study 1), feelings of physical vulnerability in familiar environments (Study 2), and predictions of negative physical harm in the future (Study 3). Discussion centers on the benefits of adopting an evolutionary approach to understanding when social exclusion facilitates vs. dampens perceptions of harm, and remaining questions regarding the corresponding vs. conflicting effects of belonging and safety needs.
When there's a will, there's a way: Disentangling the effects of goals and means in emotion regulation
Maya Tamir et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Emotion regulation involves activating an emotion goal (e.g., decrease negative emotions) and using an emotion regulation strategy (e.g., cognitive reappraisal) to pursue it. We propose that activating emotion goals and implementing means can independently affect emotion regulation. People are not always motivated to regulate emotions or to regulate them in a prohedonic manner. Therefore, activating prohedonic emotion goals is consequential. Furthermore, merely activating an emotion goal may trigger accessible means, leading to emotional changes. We tested these ideas by disentangling effects of pursuing prohedonic emotion goals and implementing cognitive reappraisal. First, we show that individuals perceive measures and manipulations of cognitive reappraisal as signaling the activation of specific emotion goals (i.e., decrease unpleasant or increase pleasant emotions) and the implementation of specific means (i.e., think differently about emotion-eliciting events). Second, we decomposed a classic measure of cognitive reappraisal to show that previously documented benefits of reappraisal might be because of the frequency of either pursuing prohedonic goals or using cognitive reappraisal. Third, in 2 empirical studies, we separately manipulated prohedonic goals (without specifying the means), cognitive reappraisal (without specifying the goal), and gave classic reappraisal instructions (specifying both the goal and the means). In both studies, activating prohedonic goals was as effective in decreasing negative emotions as was activating prohedonic goals with reappraisal instructions. Thus, activating emotion goals is essential, and sometimes even sufficient, for successful regulation. Finally, we demonstrate that the confound between goals and means is pervasive in the cognitive reappraisal literature, and offer recommendations for avoiding it.
No evidence of a curvilinear relation between conscientiousness and relationship, work, and health outcomes
Lauren Nickel, Brent Roberts & Oleksandr Chernyshenko
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, February 2019, Pages 296-312
Abstract:
Across 2 studies and 4 samples (Ns = 8,332, 2,136, 4,963, and 753, respectively), we tested whether the relation between conscientiousness and variables associated with important aspects of individuals' lives were curvilinear such that being high on conscientiousness was manifestly negative. Across multiple outcomes including measures of health, well-being, relationship satisfaction, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship, we found no evidence for a systematic curvilinear relation between conscientiousness and these outcomes. Furthermore, heeding the call to use more sophisticated psychometric modeling of the conscientiousness spectrum, we used different types of scale construction and scoring methods (i.e., dominance and ideal point) and again found no evidence of curvilinear relationships between conscientiousness and the aforementioned variables. We discuss the potential reasons for the inconsistency with past research.