Will do
Petra Schmid & Marianne Schmid Mast
European Journal of Social Psychology, April 2013, Pages 201-211
Abstract:
We tested whether power reduces responses related to social stress and thus increases performance evaluation in social evaluation situations. We hypothesized and found that thinking about having power reduced fear of negative evaluation and physiological arousal during a self-presentation task (Studies 1 and 2). In Study 2, we also showed that simply thinking about having power made individuals perform better in a social evaluation situation. Our results confirmed our hypotheses that the mechanism explaining this power-performance link was that high power participants felt less fear of negative evaluation. The reduced fear of negative evaluation generated fewer signs of behavioral nervousness, which caused their performance to be evaluated more positively (serial mediation). Simply thinking of having power can therefore have important positive consequences for a person in an evaluation situation in terms of how he or she feels and how he or she is evaluated.
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Money and the fear of death: The symbolic power of money as an existential anxiety buffer
Tomasz Zaleskiewicz et al.
Journal of Economic Psychology, June 2013, Pages 55-67
Abstract:
According to terror management theory, people deal with the potential for anxiety that results from their knowledge of the inevitability of death by holding on to sources of value that exist within their cultural worldview. We propose that money is one such source capable of soothing existential anxiety. We hypothesize that death anxiety would amplify the value attributed to money, and that the presence of money would alleviate death anxiety. Study 1 indicated that individuals reminded of their mortality overestimated the size of coins and monetary notes. In Study 2, participants induced to think about their mortality used higher monetary standards to define a person or family as rich than those in the control condition. Study 3 revealed that people reminded of death desired higher compensation for waiving the immediate payment of money. Finally, Study 4 showed that priming participants with the concept of money reduced self-reported fear of death. We conclude that, beyond its pragmatic utility, money possesses a strong psychological meaning that helps to buffer existential anxiety.
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Priming motivation through unattended speech
Rémi Radel et al.
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines whether motivation can be primed through unattended speech. Study 1 used a dichotic-listening paradigm and repeated strength measures. In comparison to the baseline condition, in which the unattended channel was only composed by neutral words, the presence of words related to high (low) intensity of motivation led participants to exert more (less) strength when squeezing a hand dynamometer. In a second study, a barely audible conversation was played while participants' attention was mobilized on a demanding task. Participants who were exposed to a conversation depicting intrinsic motivation performed better and persevered longer in a subsequent word-fragment completion task than those exposed to the same conversation made unintelligible. These findings suggest that motivation can be primed without attention.
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Your Right Arm for a Publication in AER?
Arthur Attema, Werner Brouwer & Job Van Exel
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
The time tradeoff (TTO) method is popular in medical decision making for valuing health states. We use it to elicit economists' preferences for publishing in top economic journals and for living without limbs. The economists value journal publications highly and have a clear preference among them, with the American Economic Review (AER) the most preferred. Their responses imply they would sacrifice more than half a thumb for an AER publication. These TTO results are consistent with ranking and willingness to pay results, and indicate that journal preferences are not entirely determined by impact factors or by expectations of a salary increase following a publication in a prestigious journal.
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Children with autism can track others' beliefs in a competitive game
Candida Peterson et al.
Developmental Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Theory of mind (ToM) development, assessed via ‘litmus' false belief tests, is severely delayed in autism, but the standard testing procedure may underestimate these children's genuine understanding. To explore this, we developed a novel test involving competition to win a reward as the motive for tracking other players' beliefs (the ‘Dot-Midge task'). Ninety-six children, including 23 with autism (mean age: 10.36 years), 50 typically developing 4-year-olds (mean age: 4.40) and 23 typically developing 3-year-olds (mean age: 3.59) took a standard ‘Sally-Ann' false belief test, the Dot-Midge task (which was closely matched to the Sally-Ann task procedure) and a norm-referenced verbal ability test. Results revealed that, of the children with autism, 74% passed the Dot-Midge task, yet only 13% passed the standard Sally-Ann procedure. A similar pattern of performance was observed in the older, but not the younger, typically developing control groups. This finding demonstrates that many children with autism who fail motivationally barren standard false belief tests can spontaneously use ToM to track their social partners' beliefs in the context of a competitive game.
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A psychological predictor of elders' driving performance: Social-comparisons on the road
Becca Levy et al.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, March 2013, Pages 556-561
Abstract:
Older individuals often believe they can drive better than their contemporaries. This belief is an example of downward social-comparisons; they can be self-enhancing tools that lead to beneficial outcomes. As predicted, we found that drivers who engaged in downward social-comparisons were significantly less likely to have adverse driving events over time, after controlling for relevant factors (p = .02). This effect was particularly strong among women, who tend to experience more negative driving stereotypes (p = .01). The study was based on 897 interviews of 117 elder drivers, aged 70-89 years, over 2 years. Our findings suggest that interventions to reduce adverse driving events among elders could benefit from including a psychological component.
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To pay or not to pay? Do extrinsic incentives alter the Köhler group motivation gain?
Norbert Kerr, Deborah Feltz & Brandon Irwin
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, March 2013, Pages 257-268
Abstract:
The Köhler effect is an increase in task motivation that occurs in performance groups when one is (a) less capable than one's fellow group members, and (b) one's efforts are particularly indispensible for group success. Recently, it has been shown that the Köhler effect can dramatically increase one's motivation to exercise. The present study examines the potential moderating effect of the provision of extrinsic incentives on such Köhler motivation gains. When participants were offered such an extrinsic incentive for persisting at an exercise task, a robust Köhler effect was observed - participants who thought they were the less capable member of a dyad working at a conjunctive-group exercise task persisted 26% longer than comparable individual exercisers. But an even stronger effect (a 43% improvement) was observed when no such incentive was on offer. Possible explanations and boundary conditions for this moderating effect are discussed.
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Breaking Monotony with Meaning: Motivation in Crowdsourcing Markets
Dana Chandler & Adam Kapelner
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
We conduct the first natural field experiment to explore the relationship between the "meaningfulness" of a task and worker effort. We employed about 2,500 workers from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online labor market, to label medical images. Although given an identical task, we experimentally manipulated how the task was framed. Subjects in the meaningful treatment were told that they were labeling tumor cells in order to assist medical researchers, subjects in the zero-context condition (the control group) were not told the purpose of the task, and, in stark contrast, subjects in the shredded treatment were not given context and were additionally told that their work would be discarded. We found that when a task was framed more meaningfully, workers were more likely to participate. We also found that the meaningful treatment increased the quantity of output (with an insignificant change in quality) while the shredded treatment decreased the quality of output (with no change in quantity). We believe these results will generalize to other short-term labor markets. Our study also discusses MTurk as an exciting platform for running natural field experiments in economics.
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Keeping it real: Self-control depletion increases accuracy, but decreases confidence for performance
Amber DeBono & Mark Muraven
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We propose that egotism about one's abilities may be related to good self-regulation and a lack of self-control may reduce estimations of aptitudes. Self-control depletion should lead to more accurate and therefore less lofty predictions of future performances. In two experiments, self-control depletion was manipulated by having participants either resist tempting cookies or by inhibiting thoughts about a white bear. In both cases, nondepleted participants made bolder predictions about their future performance on a video game than their depleted counterparts. Instead, depleted participants were more modest in their predictions and more accurate in their predictions than nondepleted participants. These findings suggest that depletion undermines self-assurance in oneself, which may have implications for theories of depressive realism, accuracy, confidence, and goal setting.
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Mental Contrasting Changes the Meaning of Reality
Andreas Kappes et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Mental contrasting of a desired future with the present reality strengthens goal pursuit when expectations of success are high, and weakens goal pursuit when expectations of success are low. We hypothesized that mental contrasting effects on selective goal pursuit are mediated by a change in the meaning of the present reality as an obstacle towards reaching the desired future. Using explicit evaluation of reality (Study 1), implicit categorization of reality as obstacle (Study 2), and detection of obstacle (Study 3) as indicators, we found that mental contrasting (versus relevant control groups) fostered the meaning of reality as obstacle when expectations of success were high, but weakened it when expectations of success were low. Importantly, the meaning of reality as obstacle mediated mental contrasting effects on goal pursuit (Study 1, 2). The findings suggest that mental contrasting produces selective goal pursuit by changing the meaning of a person's reality.
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Time Pressure Undermines Performance More Under Avoidance Than Approach Motivation
Marieke Roskes et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Four experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that performance is particularly undermined by time pressure when people are avoidance motivated. The results supported this hypothesis across three different types of tasks, including those well suited and those ill suited to the type of information processing evoked by avoidance motivation. We did not find evidence that stress-related emotions were responsible for the observed effect. Avoidance motivation is certainly necessary and valuable in the self-regulation of everyday behavior. However, our results suggest that given its nature and implications, it seems best that avoidance motivation is avoided in situations that involve (time) pressure.
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Mario Wenzel, Tamlin Conner & Thomas Kubiak
European Journal of Social Psychology, April 2013, Pages 175-184
Abstract:
Performing consecutive self-control tasks typically leads to deterioration in self-control performance. This effect can be explained within the strength model of self-control or within a cognitive control perspective. Both theoretical frameworks differ in their predictions with regard to the impact of affect and task characteristics on self-control deterioration within a two-task paradigm. Whereas the strength model predicts decrements in self-control performance whenever both tasks require a limited resource, under a cognitive control perspective, decrements should only occur when people switch to a different response conflict in the second task. Moreover, only the cognitive control model predicts an interaction between task switching and positive affect. In the present research, we investigated this interaction within a two-task paradigm and found evidence that favored a cognitive control interpretation of the results. Positive affect only benefitted consecutive self-control performance if response conflicts in the two tasks were different (resisting sweets followed by a Stroop task). If they were the same (two consecutive Stroop tasks), positive affect impaired self-control performance. These effects were partially replicated in the second study that also examined negative affect, which did not affect self-control performance. We conclude that drawing on cognitive control models could add substantially to research on self-control.
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Implicit Attitudes Toward the Self Over Time
Johanna Peetz, Christian Jordan & Anne Wilson
Self and Identity, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three studies examined whether people hold meaningful implicit attitudes toward future selves. Two approaches to measuring implicit future self-esteem were developed (individualized and generic Implicit Association Tests) and attitudes toward the self in ten (Studies 1 and 2) or one years' time (Study 3) were assessed. We predicted that implicit future self-esteem would be less strongly influenced by self-enhancement and wishful thinking than explicit future self-esteem. Consistent with this expectation, people's explicit self-esteem was more positive toward their future than their current self, whereas implicit future self-esteem was not enhanced relative to the present. As expected, implicit (but not explicit) future self-esteem predicted academic and health motivation, as well as greater elaboration of, and more structure in, future goals. In contrast, explicit (but not implicit) future self-esteem predicted future-oriented measures more linked to wishful thinking: positive fantasies and general optimism. These results suggest that implicit future self-esteem is meaningfully distinct from explicit future self-esteem and has implications for motivation and goals.