For the Reward
Give a dog a bone: Spending money on pets promotes happiness
Michael White et al.
Journal of Positive Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Pet owners routinely spend money on services, accessories, and gifts for their pets. The present research investigates the affective consequences of pet spending. Specifically, we propose that spending money on pets promotes happiness. As predicted, a lab study demonstrated that pet owners who were randomly assigned to recall a time they spent money on their pet reported greater happiness than those who recalled spending money on themselves. Likewise, a field study demonstrated that pet owners who were randomly assigned to spend $5 on their pet reported greater happiness than those who were assigned to spend on themselves or another person – an effect specific to feelings of happiness rather than to mood more generally. This research offers pet owners an evidence-based strategy for boosting happiness, representing an additional intentional activity that can be used to improve well-being.
Optimistic expectations have benefits for effort and emotion with little cost
Heather Lench et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present investigation examined the potential benefits and costs of optimistic expectations about future events through the lens of error management theory (EMT). Decades of evidence have shown that optimism about the likelihood of future events is pervasive and difficult to correct. From an EMT perspective, this perpetuation of inaccurate beliefs is possible because optimism offers benefits greater than the costs. The present investigation examined this possibility for controllable important life events with a known time at which they would occur. College students taking their first exam (n = 1,061) and medical students being matched with residency placements (n = 182) reported their expectations and emotions weeks before the event and their responses after they knew the outcome of the event. Optimistic expectations predicted the quality of effort investment before an event occurred — students were more satisfied with their studying, medical students were more satisfied with their decision making, and optimism predicted better performance. Optimistic expectations also predicted less emotional distress before the event. There was no evidence that optimistic expectations related to longer-term greater distress when participants experienced an unexpected negative outcome; the valence of the outcome itself predicted distress. These results are consistent with the EMT-derived hypothesis that optimistic expectations have benefits for effort and emotion before an event occurs, with little cost after the outcome occurs.
A computational reward learning account of social media engagement
Björn Lindström et al.
Nature Communications, February 2021
Abstract:
Social media has become a modern arena for human life, with billions of daily users worldwide. The intense popularity of social media is often attributed to a psychological need for social rewards (likes), portraying the online world as a Skinner Box for the modern human. Yet despite such portrayals, empirical evidence for social media engagement as reward-based behavior remains scant. Here, we apply a computational approach to directly test whether reward learning mechanisms contribute to social media behavior. We analyze over one million posts from over 4000 individuals on multiple social media platforms, using computational models based on reinforcement learning theory. Our results consistently show that human behavior on social media conforms qualitatively and quantitatively to the principles of reward learning. Specifically, social media users spaced their posts to maximize the average rate of accrued social rewards, in a manner subject to both the effort cost of posting and the opportunity cost of inaction. Results further reveal meaningful individual difference profiles in social reward learning on social media. Finally, an online experiment (n = 176), mimicking key aspects of social media, verifies that social rewards causally influence behavior as posited by our computational account. Together, these findings support a reward learning account of social media engagement and offer new insights into this emergent mode of modern human behavior.
Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience
Matthew Rocklage, Derek Rucker & Loran Nordgren
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Expertise provides numerous benefits. Experts process information more efficiently, remember information better, and often make better decisions. Consumers pursue expertise in domains they love and chase experiences that make them feel something. Yet, might becoming an expert carry a cost for these very feelings? Across more than 700,000 consumers and 6 million observations, developing expertise in a hedonic domain predicts consumers becoming more emotionally numb – i.e., having less intense emotion in response to their experiences. This numbness occurs across a range of domains – movies, photography, wine, and beer – and across diverse measures of emotion and expertise. It occurs in cross-sectional real-world data with certified experts, and in longitudinal real-world data that follows consumers over time and traces their emotional trajectories as they accrue expertise. Further, this numbness can be explained by the cognitive structure experts develop and apply within a domain. Experimentally inducing cognitive structure led novice consumers to experience greater numbness. However, shifting experts away from using their cognitive structure restored their experience of emotion. Thus, although consumers actively pursue expertise in domains that bring them pleasure, the present work is the first to show that this pursuit can come with a hedonic cost.
Anticipating Peer Ranking Causes Hormonal Adaptations That Benefit Cognitive Performance
Carsten De Dreu, Klarita Gërxhani & Arthur Schram
American Behavioral Scientist, forthcoming
Abstract:
Performance ranking is common across a range of professional and recreational domains. Even when it has no economic consequences but does order people in terms of their social standing, anticipating such performance ranking may affect how people feel and perform. We examined this possibility by asking human subjects to execute a simple cognitive task while anticipating their performance being ranked by an outside evaluator. We measured baseline and postperformance levels of testosterone and cortisol. We find that (1) anticipating performance ranking reduces testosterone and increases cortisol, (2) both these hormonal responses benefit cognitive performance, which explains why (3) anticipation of being ranked by a peer increases cognitive performance.