Giving in
Taking a fresh perspective: Vicarious restoration as a means of recovering self-control
Patrick Egan, Edward Hirt & Samuel Karpen
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the realm of self-regulation, recent work shows that the state of ego depletion can be vicariously transmitted from a target to a perceiver simply by imagining the perspective of a depleted target (i.e., vicarious depletion; Ackerman et al., 2009). The present study asked whether such vicarious effects can extend to the domain of self-regulatory recovery. In Experiment 1, depleted participants who took the perspective of someone engaging in a restorative activity showed recovered self-control on a later task. Experiments 2 and 3 expanded upon this effect by illustrating that such vicarious self-regulatory processes only emerge if the target is similar to the participant. Taken together, the present studies offer a powerful method by which mental resources can be replenished, and identify one critical boundary condition of its effectiveness.
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Christopher Beedie & Andrew Lane
Personality and Social Psychology Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
The strength model suggests that self-control relies on a limited resource. One candidate for this resource is glucose. Counter to the proposals of the glucose hypothesis, this study argues that the resource issue is one of allocation, not of limited supply. It addresses the argument from three perspectives: the evolution of mental processes at the species level, the adaptation of these same processes at the individual level, and the physiology of glucose transport. It is argued here that the brain has both sufficient resources and resource delivery mechanisms with which to support self-control but that these resources are allocated in accordance with personal priorities. As an alternative to the limited resource model, the current study proposes a resource-allocation model of self-control and presents several testable hypotheses.
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Economic Decision-Making in Poverty Depletes Behavioral Control
Dean Spears
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, December 2011
Abstract:
Economic theory and conventional wisdom suggest that time preference can cause or perpetuate poverty. Might poverty also or instead cause impatient or impulsive behavior? This paper reports a randomized lab experiment and a partially randomized field experiment, both in India, and analysis of the American Time Use Survey. In all three studies, poverty is associated with diminished behavioral control. The primary contribution of this empirical paper is to isolate the direction of causality from poverty to behavior. Three similar possible theoretical mechanisms, found in the psychology and behavioral economics literatures, cannot be definitively separated. One supported theoretical explanation is that poverty, by making economic decision-making more difficult, depletes cognitive control.
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Meir Meshulam et al.
Social Neuroscience, January/February 2012, Pages 11-17
Abstract:
We present here the concept of rational emotions: Emotions may be directly controlled and utilized in a conscious, analytic fashion, enabling an individual to size up a situation, to determine that a certain "mental state" is strategically advantageous and adjust accordingly. Building on the growing body of literature recognizing the vital role of emotions in determining decisions, we explore the complementary role of rational choice in choosing emotional states. Participants played the role of "recipient" in the dictator game, in which an anonymous "dictator" decides how to split an amount of money between himself and the recipient. A subset of recipients was given a monetary incentive to be angry at low-split offers. That subset demonstrated increased physiological arousal at low offers relative to high offers as well as more anger than other participants. These results provide a fresh outlook on human decision-making and contribute to the continuing effort to build more complete models of rational behavior.
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Intertemporal Choice and Legal Constraints
Keith Chen & Alan Schwartz
American Law and Economics Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the effect of legal constraints in an environment in which agents face demand shocks they would like to smooth but also have weakness of will: agents' long and short run preferences are misaligned. Some agents are sophisticated - they know they will make inconsistent intertemporal choices-while other agents are naive. The consequent public policy problem is complex. The state should facilitate consumer borrowing to help agents' smooth consumption and cushion the effect of shocks, but should also facilitate precommitment, to help agents control excessive present-biased preferences. We show that in many simple settings, naive and sophisticated agents make similar consumption/savings choices, which simplifies the policy problem. We also show that all agents borrow when they experience consumption shocks and that agents with relatively strong present-biased preferences who face relatively mild consumption shocks will borrow to finance excessive current consumption. Other agents save appropriately. Legal constraints that severely restrict agents' access to credit thus would be over-inclusive. Offering agents access to both a liquid and an illiquid savings vehicle appears to be welfare improving relative to either allowing agents complete freedom to borrow or strongly restricting their access to the credit market. Creating and regulating such vehicles are public goods that the market will not supply.
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The Push and Pull of Temptation: The Bidirectional Influence of Temptation on Self-Control
Loran Nordgren & Eileen Chou
Psychological Science, November 2011, Pages 1386-1390
Abstract:
This article examines how people respond to the emergence of temptation in their environment. Three studies demonstrated that how people respond to temptation depends critically on their visceral state - whether or not they are actively experiencing visceral drives such as hunger, drug craving, or sexual arousal. We found that when people were in a "cold," nonvisceral state, the presence of temptation prompted cognition to support self-control. However, when people were in a "hot," visceral state, temptation prompted the same cognitive processes to support impulsive behavior. Study 1 examined how heterosexual men's level of sexual arousal influences their attention to attractive women. Study 2 examined whether satiated and craving smokers would engage in motivated reasoning in order to dampen (or enhance) the appeal of smoking when confronted with the temptation to smoke. Study 3 tested the boundaries of the interaction between visceral state and temptation.
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Now for Me, Later for Us? Effects of Group Context on Temporal Discounting
Shawn Charlton et al.
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, forthcoming
Abstract:
Delayed rewards are less valuable than immediate rewards. This well-established finding has focused almost entirely on individual outcomes. However, are delayed rewards similarly discounted if they are shared by a group? The current article reports on three experiments exploring the effect of group context on delay discounting. Results indicate that discount rates of individual and group rewards were highly correlated, but that respondents were more willing to wait (decreased discounting) for shared outcomes than for individual outcomes. An explanatory model is proposed suggesting that decreased discount rates in group contexts may be due to the way the effects of both delay and social discounting are combined. That is, in a group context, a person values both a future reward (discounted by delay) and a present reward to another person (discounted by the social distance between them). The results are explained by a combined discount function containing a delay factor and a factor representing the social distance between the decision maker and group members. Practical implications of the fact that shared consequences can increase individual self-control are also discussed.
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Mood and the Attitude-Behavior Link: The Happy Act on Impulse, the Sad Think Twice
Rob Holland et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Attitude-behavior relations can be based on belief-based or associative processes. Understanding the basic regulatory mechanisms that determine which type of process guides behavior in a specific situation is of crucial importance for predicting behavior. In this article, the authors tested mood states as a moderator. In two studies, associative and belief-based measures for attitudes were administered in a preliminary session. In a second session, mood was manipulated and behavior toward the attitude object involved was observed. Consistent with predictions, the results showed that in happy mood states, associative, but not belief-based measures of attitudes predicted behavior, whereas in sad mood states belief-based, but not associative measures of attitudes predicted behavior. The authors conclude that mood moderates which evaluative process, belief-based or associative, regulates behavior.
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Dana Smith, Lin Xiao & Antoine Bechara
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Disadvantageous decision making is cited as one of the premier problems in childhood development, underlying risky behavior and causing adolescents to make poor choices that could prove detrimental later in life. However, there are relatively few studies looking at the development of decision making in children and adolescents, and fewer still comparing it with the performance trajectories of more typically developing cognitive functions. In the current study, we measured the affective decision-making abilities of children and adolescents 8- to 17-years-old using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara, 2007) in conjunction with a battery of established cognitive neuropsychological assessments. In contrast to the typical linear development of executive functions, affective decision-making abilities progressed in a J-shaped curve. Younger, more developmentally naive children performed better on the IGT than older, early-adolescent individuals, with performance becoming advantageous again toward the end of the teenage years. This trajectory is thought to coincide with asymmetric neural development in early adolescents, with relatively overactive striatal regions creating impulsive reward-driven responses that may go unchecked by the slower developing inhibitive frontal cortex. This trajectory is in stark contrast with the linear development of memory, speed of processing, and other cognitive abilities over the ages.
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What a Feeling: The Role of Immediate and Anticipated Emotions in Risky Decisions
Thomas Schlösser, David Dunning & Detlef Fetchenhauer
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, forthcoming
Abstract:
The risk-as-feelings hypothesis argues that many risky decisions are not only predicted by anticipated emotions, as most consequentialistic decision making theories would presume, but also by immediate emotions. Immediate emotions refer to the "hot" visceral feelings people feel as they contemplate a specific decision option at the cusp of making a decision, whereas anticipated emotions are those emotions that people forecast that they will feel once they experience possible consequences of that decision. Four studies focused on the role of both types of emotions in decisions under risk and uncertainty. Decisions were substantively predicted by immediate emotional states beyond anticipated emotions or the subjective probability attached to outcomes. Thus, risky choices may be prompted, in part, by how people feel about the "riskless" portion of the decision - specifically, the various decision options they are contemplating - rather than the potential outcomes those options may produce.
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Hans Marien, Henk Aarts & Ruud Custers
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, January 2012, Pages 277-283
Abstract:
Building on previous research on the role of positive affect as implicit motivator we investigated both flexibility and rigidity in goal-directed behavior. Given that goal-directed behavior can be represented in terms of goals or means, we suggest that goal-directed behavior is more flexible in switching means when positive affect implicitly motivates a person to reach the goal, but is more rigid in switching means when positive affect implicitly motivates a person to perform a specific means. Three experiments corroborated this idea: the speed of switching from a learned goal-directed means to a new means was facilitated when positive affect was attached to the representation of the goal, whereas this switching was slowed down when positive affect was attached to the representation of the learned means. Together, these findings provide new insights into the occurrence of flexibility and rigidity in implicitly motivated goal-directed behavior.
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Age-independent effects of pubertal status on behavioral constraint in healthy adolescents
Ann Schissel et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, December 2011, Pages 975-980
Abstract:
Studies have examined age-related changes in personality traits from adolescence through young adulthood, finding that aspects of negative emotionality decrease while conscientiousness increases over time. Varied mechanisms may underlie these transitions, including puberty-driven hormonal changes. Here, healthy adolescents completed the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire-Brief Form and self-report measures of pubertal status at baseline and after two years. Independent of age, pubertal status impacted primary trait scales of the MPQ-BF Constraint factor in a sex-specific manner. Females decreased in Constraint, and particularly Control, while males increased in Constraint, and particularly Harm Avoidance, with advancing puberty. Longitudinal analyses validated these findings for Control. Findings are discussed relative to males' versus females' achievement of optimal levels of behavioral control in adolescence.
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Inhibition of eye blinking reveals subjective perceptions of stimulus salience
Sarah Shultz, Ami Klin & Warren Jones
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 27 December 2011, Pages 21270-21275
Abstract:
Spontaneous eye blinking serves a critical physiological function, but it also interrupts incoming visual information. This tradeoff suggests that the inhibition of eye blinks might constitute an adaptive reaction to minimize the loss of visual information, particularly information that a viewer perceives to be important. To test this hypothesis, we examined whether the timing of blink inhibition, during natural viewing, is modulated between as well as within tasks, and also whether the timing of blink inhibition varies as a function of viewer engagement and stimulus event type. While viewing video scenes, we measured the timing of blinks and blink inhibition, as well as visual scanning, in a group of typical two-year-olds, and in a group of two-year-olds known for attenuated reactivity to affective stimuli: toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Although both groups dynamically adjusted the timing of their blink inhibition at levels greater than expected by chance, they inhibited their blinking and shifted visual fixation differentially with respect to salient onscreen events. Moreover, typical toddlers inhibited their blinking earlier than toddlers with ASD, indicating active anticipation of the unfolding of those events. These findings indicate that measures of blink inhibition can serve as temporally precise markers of perceived stimulus salience and are useful quantifiers of atypical processing of social affective signals in toddlers with ASD.