Scoring goals
It's the journey, not the destination: How metaphor drives growth after goal attainment
Szu-Chi Huang & Jennifer Aaker
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People pursue goals throughout their lives, and many of these attempts end happily - a goal is achieved. However, what facilitates the continuation of behaviors that are aligned with the completed goal, such as continuing to monitor food intake after completing a diet program? The results of 6 studies involving over 1,600 people across cultures and samples (executives in Africa, dieters in a 7-day food diary program, exercisers in a 14-day walking program, and college students) demonstrated that construing an achieved goal as a journey one has completed (compared with an alternative metaphor of having reached a destination, or a no-metaphor control) led to a greater likelihood of people continuing behaviors aligned with this attained goal. These findings demonstrated how shifting people's focus of a metaphor (i.e., focusing on the journey vs. the destination part of a completed path) can lead to consequentially different perceptions and behaviors. We isolated a mechanism for why people would continue goal-aligned behaviors after attaining their specific goals - enhanced perceptions of personal growth.
Paradoxical knowing: A shortcut to knowledge and its antisocial correlates
Anton Gollwitzer & Gabriele Oettingen
Social Psychology, June 2019, Pages 145-161
Abstract:
To avoid uncertainty, people may take a shortcut to knowledge. They recognize something as unknowable, but claim to know it nonetheless (e.g., whether I will find true love is unknowable, but I know I will). In Study-set 1, such paradoxical knowledge was common and spanned across valence and content. Study-set 2 revealed an antecedent of paradoxical knowing. High (vs. low) goal-incentives incited paradoxical knowledge - participants felt certain about attaining important future life goals despite acknowledging such goal attainment as unknowable. As a shortcut to knowledge, however, paradoxical knowing may have its costs. In Study-set 3, paradoxical knowing related to aggression (fight), determined ignorance (flight), and a willingness to join and adhere to extreme groups (befriend).
Video Games can Increase Creativity, but with Caveats
Jorge Blanco-Herrera, Douglas Gentile & Jeffrey Rokkum
Creativity Research Journal, June 2019, Pages 119-131
Abstract:
Although many studies have focused on aggression or visual-spatial cognition effects of video games, the problem-solving aspects have been largely ignored. This study sought to expand the existing literature on video game effects by focusing on a rarely-tested outcome: creative production. As a game with few rules and a high amount of player freedom, Minecraft exemplifies a game that fosters players' abilities for creative expression. This experimental study included 352 undergraduates and it compared the effect of playing Minecraft on creativity measures compared to watching a TV show (passive control), a driving game (game control), and playing Minecraft with specific instructions (an instructional control). A within-subjects analysis found a significant correlation between trait creativity and game play habits. Between-groups experimental analyses showed that players randomly assigned to play Minecraft without instruction demonstrated significantly higher scores on post-game creativity measures compared to those who played Minecraft with instructions to "be creative," those who played a driving game, or those who watched a television show. Results indicate that effects are not solely predicted by game mechanics, but also by the way the player plays.
I Am, Therefore I Buy: Low Self-Esteem and the Pursuit of Self-Verifying Consumption
Anika Stuppy, Nicole Mead & Stijn Van Osselaer
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
The idea that consumers use products to feel good about themselves is a basic tenet of marketing. Yet, in addition to the motive to self-enhance, consumers also strive to confirm their self-views (i.e., self-verification). Although self-verification provides self-related benefits, its role in consumer behavior is poorly understood. To redress that gap, we examine a dispositional variable-trait self-esteem-that predicts whether consumers self-verify in the marketplace. We propose that low (vs. high) self-esteem consumers gravitate toward inferior products because those products confirm their pessimistic self-views. Five studies supported our theorizing: Low (vs. high) self-esteem participants gravitated toward inferior products (study 1) because of the motivation to self-verify (study 2). Low self-esteem consumers preferred inferior products only when those products signaled pessimistic (vs. positive) self-views and could therefore be self-verifying (study 3). Even more telling, low self-esteem consumers' propensity to choose inferior products disappeared after they were induced to view themselves as consumers of superior products (study 4) but remained in the wake of negative feedback (study 5). Our investigation thus highlights self-esteem as a boundary condition for compensatory consumption. By pinpointing factors that predict when self-verification guides consumer behavior, this work enriches the field's understanding of how products serve self-motives.
Theories of intelligence influence self-regulated study choices and learning
Yaoping Peng & Jonathan Tullis
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
In student-regulated instruction, guiding one's study effectively and efficiently is crucial for successful learning. Yet, significant variability exists in how effectively learners regulate their own study. Here, we explored whether and how beliefs about the nature of intelligence affect learners' metacognitive control and ultimately the efficacy of their study choices. We manipulated learners' theories of intelligence across two experiments. Learners then studied a list of words for a later memory test, chose half of the words to restudy, and restudied their chosen items. Learners who were persuaded to believe intelligence was malleable chose to restudy more poorly learned items and ultimately learned more than learners who were persuaded to believe intelligence was fixed. Learners' underlying beliefs about the nature of intelligence may affect learners' goals and ultimately their metacognitive control.
Thinking Outside of Functional Fixedness with the Aide of Mental Fatigue
Thomas Davis & Harlan Fichtenholtz
Creativity Research Journal, June 2019, Pages 223-228
Abstract:
This research explored the relationship between mental fatigue and creativity by testing the creative potential of 25 Keene State College students, half of which were subjected to mental fatigue. Little research has been done to look at these 2 variables together, but considerable research has been done on them individually. Using an independent-measures study, it was demonstrated that, although many view mental fatigue as inhibitory and bad for productivity, this inhibitory nature can actually be beneficial to one's creativity by inhibiting the rigidity of one's role assignment for objects. Participants (23 female) were primarily recruited from underclass-level psychology courses. Two forms of a working memory task - one difficult (43% correct) to induce mental fatigue, and the other easy (98% correct) as a control condition - and the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) to measure creativity, revealed that mental fatigue resulted in significantly higher scores across all measurements and forms of creativity within the TTCT.