Getting it done
Purpose in Life as a Predictor of Mortality Across Adulthood
Patrick Hill & Nicholas Turiano
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Having a purpose in life has been cited consistently as an indicator of healthy aging for several reasons, including its potential for reducing mortality risk. In the current study, we sought to extend previous findings by examining whether purpose in life promotes longevity across the adult years, using data from the longitudinal Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) sample. Proportional-hazards models demonstrated that purposeful individuals lived longer than their counterparts did during the 14 years after the baseline assessment, even when controlling for other markers of psychological and affective well-being. Moreover, these longevity benefits did not appear to be conditional on the participants’ age, how long they lived during the follow-up period, or whether they had retired from the workforce. In other words, having a purpose in life appears to widely buffer against mortality risk across the adult years.
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Like Mike: Ability contagion through touched objects increases confidence and improves performance
Thomas Kramer & Lauren Block
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, July 2014, Pages 215–228
Abstract:
Magical thinking refers to irrational peculiar beliefs, including those that conform to the laws of contagion. We propose that touching an object that was previously touched by a high performer increases confidence via magical thinking (ability contagion) and improves actual performance among individuals high in experiential processing. A series of studies provides support for this main proposition. Our results cast doubt on an alternative explanation based on priming, and are obtained controlling for participants’ level of rational processing, motivation, and affect.
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Small Victories: Creating Intrinsic Motivation in Savings and Debt Reduction
Alexander Brown & Joanna Lahey
NBER Working Paper, May 2014
Abstract:
Saving when faced with the immediate option to spend is an unpleasant but not conceptually difficult task. One popular approach contradicts traditional economic theory by suggesting that people in debt should pay off their debts from smallest size to largest regardless of interest rate, to realize quick motivational gains from eliminating debts. We more broadly define this idea as “small victories” and discuss, model, and empirically examine alternative behavioral theories that might explain it. Using a laboratory computer task, we test the validity of these predictions by breaking down this approach into component parts and examining their efficacy. Consistent with the idea of small victories, we find that when a mildly unpleasant task is broken down into parts of unequal size, subjects complete these parts faster when they are arranged in ascending order (i.e, from smallest to largest) rather than descending order (i.e., from largest to smallest). Yet when subjects are given the choice over three different orderings, subjects choose the ascending ordering least often. Given the magnitude of our results, we briefly discuss the possible efficacy of these alternative methods in actual debt repayment scenarios.
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Julie Huang & John Bargh
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, April 2014, Pages 121-135
Abstract:
We propose the Selfish Goal model, which holds that a person's behavior is driven by psychological processes called goals that guide his or her behavior, at times in contradictory directions. Goals can operate both consciously and unconsciously, and when activated they can trigger downstream effects on a person's information processing and behavioral possibilities that promote only the attainment of goal end-states (and not necessarily the overall interests of the individual). Hence, goals influence a person as if the goals themselves were selfish and interested only in their own completion. We argue that there is an evolutionary basis to believe that conscious goals evolved from unconscious and selfish forms of pursuit. This theoretical framework predicts the existence of unconscious goal processes capable of guiding behavior in the absence of conscious awareness and control (the automaticity principle), the ability of the most motivating or active goal to constrain a person's information processing and behavior toward successful completion of that goal (the reconfiguration principle), structural similarities between conscious and unconscious goal pursuit (the similarity principle), and goal influences that produce apparent inconsistencies or counterintuitive behaviors in a person's behavior extended over time (the inconsistency principle). Thus, we argue that a person's behaviors are indirectly selected at the goal level but expressed (and comprehended) at the individual level.
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Feeling Good at the Right Time: Why People Value Predictability in Goal Attainment
Nadav Klein & Ayelet Fishbach
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, November 2014, Pages 21–30
Abstract:
We investigate whether information on upcoming goal attainment spoils some of the benefits of attaining the goal, because people hold a script suggesting they should feel happy at the “right” time; that is, after the goal is attained. We find that people falsely recall sequences of events in a way that corresponds to a script of feeling happy upon goal attainment rather than upon learning that a goal will be attained (Study 1). The disruption of the goal-attainment script results in mellowed happiness and lower goal evaluation (Studies 2–4). We conclude that because of their expectation to feel happy only upon goal attainment, people experience mellowed positive emotion and goal evaluation when they learn that a goal will be attained. Reawakening positive emotion after having had early knowledge of goal attainment appears to be difficult.
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When Cognitive Control Is Not Adaptive
Bruno Bocanegra & Bernhard Hommel
Psychological Science, June 2014, Pages 1249-1255
Abstract:
In order to engage in goal-directed behavior, cognitive agents have to control the processing of task-relevant features in their environments. Although cognitive control is critical for performance in unpredictable task environments, it is currently unknown how it affects performance in highly structured and predictable environments. In the present study, we showed that, counterintuitively, top-down control can impair and interfere with the otherwise automatic integration of statistical information in a predictable task environment, and it can render behavior less efficient than it would have been without the attempt to control the flow of information. In other words, less can sometimes be more (in terms of cognitive control), especially if the environment provides sufficient information for the cognitive system to behave on autopilot based on automatic processes alone.
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Ali Besharat, François Carrillat & Daniel Ladik
Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, forthcoming
Abstract:
The authors explore the illusion of goal progress by consumers who own multiple credit cards and pay off their debt balances in order to facilitate the achievement of their subgoal rather than the superordinate goal of being debt free. The first experiment shows that debtors use their savings toward the credit card debt they can pay off entirely or substantially, even if it is associated with the smallest balance and the lowest APR, rather than toward the highest APR debt. The second experiment reveals that when the income available to pay down the debt is in the form of effortless money (i.e., windfall or reward money), as opposed to hard-earned savings, allocating money toward the smallest credit card debt is exacerbated. However, people tend to pay their debt more rationally when the number of debt accounts increases. Finally, the third experiment shows that credit card debt repayment decisions depend on the nature of the debt (hedonic vs. utilitarian) and the timing of consumption benefits (past vs. future). Managerial and public policy implications are also discussed.
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Give Up or Get Going? Productive Uncertainty in Uncertain Times
George Smith et al.
Self and Identity, forthcoming
Abstract:
We live in uncertain times; the path toward attaining important goals is best thought of as probabilistic, not certain. Three studies test the prediction that this “world uncertainty,” uncertainty about the path, is motivating if accompanied by certainty that one can have the skills needed to work on one's goals. Self- and world-certainty were separately manipulated in college students, and effect on salience of academic and career possible identities and behaviors was assessed. For students, self-uncertainty reduces salience of academic–career possible identities (Study 1), but self-certainty does not help unless combined with some world-uncertainty (Study 2). This combination also increases planned study hours (Study 2) and actual goal-focused action, working on a resume builder instead of playing games (Study 3).
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Know who you’re up against: Counterpart identifiability enhances competitive behavior
Uriel Haran & Ilana Ritov
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, September 2014, Pages 115–121
Abstract:
Research on pro-social behavior reports greater generosity and helping behavior toward merely identifiable persons, whose identities have been determined but not revealed, than toward unspecified, “statistical” targets. This work investigates whether identifiability can have a similar effect on behavior in competitive contexts. Data from three experiments show that providing arbitrary, non-identifying information about one’s competition enhances one’s goal-driven behavior: in competitive tasks, participants competing vs. merely identifiable counterparts displayed greater perseverance and performed better than participants whose counterparts were undetermined; in a dyadic bid setting, participants offered more money to outbid an identifiable counterpart for an auctioned product than an unspecified counterpart. In addition, we found that the effects of identifiability on competitors’ behavior were associated more strongly with the motivation not to lose than with the desire to win.
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Kimberly Rios et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Building on findings that self-uncertainty motivates attempts to restore certainty about the self, particularly in ways that highlight one’s distinctiveness from others, we show that self-uncertainty, relative to uncertainty in general, increases creative generation among individualists. In Studies 1 to 3, high (but not low) individualists performed better on a creative generation task after being primed with self-uncertainty as opposed to general uncertainty. In Study 4, this effect emerged only among those who were told that the task measured creative as opposed to analytical thinking, suggesting that the positive effects of self-uncertainty on performance are specific to tasks that bolster perceptions of uniqueness. In Study 5, self-uncertain individualists experienced a restoration of self-clarity after being induced to think about themselves as more (vs. less) creative. Implications for compensatory responses to self-uncertainty and factors that influence creativity are discussed.
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Pre-Crastination: Hastening Subgoal Completion at the Expense of Extra Physical Effort
David Rosenbaum, Lanyun Gong & Cory Adam Potts
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article, we describe a phenomenon we discovered while conducting experiments on walking and reaching. We asked university students to pick up either of two buckets, one to the left of an alley and one to the right, and to carry the selected bucket to the alley’s end. In most trials, one of the buckets was closer to the end point. We emphasized choosing the easier task, expecting participants to prefer the bucket that would be carried a shorter distance. Contrary to our expectation, participants chose the bucket that was closer to the start position, carrying it farther than the other bucket. On the basis of results from nine experiments and participants’ reports, we concluded that this seemingly irrational choice reflected a tendency to pre-crastinate, a term we introduce to refer to the hastening of subgoal completion, even at the expense of extra physical effort. Other tasks also reveal this preference, which we ascribe to the desire to reduce working memory loads.
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Lindsey McIntire et al.
Brain Stimulation, forthcoming
Objective: Our objective was to evaluate the efficacy of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) applied to the pre-frontal cortex at 2 mA for 30 minutes to remediate the effects of sleep deprivation and to compare the behavioral effects of tDCS with those of caffeine.
Methods: Three groups of 10 participants each received either active tDCS with placebo gum, caffeine gum with sham tDCS, or sham tDCS with placebo gum during 30 hours of extended wakefulness.
Results: Our results show that tDCS prevented a decrement in vigilance and led to better subjective ratings for fatigue, drowsiness, energy, and composite mood compared to caffeine and control in sleep-deprived individuals. Both the tDCS and caffeine produced similar improvements in latencies on a short-term memory task and faster reaction times in a psychomotor task when compared to the placebo group. Interestingly, changes in accuracy for the tDCS group were not correlated to changes in mood; whereas, there was a relationship for the caffeine and sham groups.
Conclusion: Our data suggests that tDCS could be a useful fatigue countermeasure and may be more beneficial than caffeine since boosts in performance and mood last several hours.
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Deep Brain Stimulation Induces Striatal Dopamine Release in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Martijn Figeeemail et al.
Biological Psychiatry, 15 April 2014, Pages 647–652
Background: Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a chronic psychiatric disorder related to dysfunctional dopaminergic neurotransmission. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) targeted at the nucleus accumbens (NAc) has recently become an effective treatment for therapy-refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder, but its effect on dopaminergic transmission is unknown.
Methods: We measured the effects of NAc DBS in 15 patients on the dopamine D2/3 receptor availability in the striatum with [123I]iodobenzamide ([123I]IBZM) single photon emission computed tomography. We correlated changes in [123I]IBZM binding potential (BP) with plasma levels of homovanillic acid (HVA) and clinical symptoms.
Results: Acute (1-hour) and chronic (1-year) DBS decreased striatal [123I]IBZM BP compared with the nonstimulated condition in the putamen. BP decreases were observed after 1 hour of stimulation, and chronic stimulation was related to concurrent HVA plasma elevations, implying DBS-induced dopamine release. BP decreases in the area directly surrounding the electrodes were significantly correlated with changes in clinical symptoms (45% symptom decrease).
Conclusions: NAc DBS induced striatal dopamine release, which was associated with increased HVA plasma levels and improved clinical symptoms, suggesting that DBS may compensate for a defective dopaminergic system.
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Michael Nicholls et al.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many studies use multi-experiment designs where experiments are carried out at different times of semester. When comparing between experiments, the data may be confounded by between-participants effects related to motivation. Research indicates that course-credit participants who engage in research early in semester have different personality and performance characteristics compared to those tested late in semester. This study examined whether the semester effect is caused by internal (inherent motivation of the participant) or external (looming exams, essays) factors. To do this, sustained attention and intrinsic/extrinsic motivation was measured in groups of course-credit (n=40) and paid (n=40) participants early and late in semester. While there was no difference in sustained attention between the groups early in semester, the course-credit group performed significantly worse late in semester. The course-credit group also showed a significant decrease in intrinsic motivation with time whereas the paid participants showed no change. Because changes were not seen for both groups, the semester difference cannot be due to external factors. Instead, the data demonstrate that course-credit participants who engage early have high sustained attention and intrinsic motivation compared to their late counterparts, who leave their participation to the last minute. Researchers who use multi-experimental designs across semester need to control for these effects – perhaps by using paid participants who do not vary across semester.
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Laura Rennie, Peter Harris & Thomas Webb
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two experiments investigated the effects of perspective and visualization on motivation to engage in health-related behaviors. Participants visualized themselves donating blood (Experiment 1) or quitting smoking (Experiment 2) from either the first-person (own) or third-person (observer's) perspective. Subsequently, motivation to engage in the visualized behavior was assessed. Contrary to previous findings showing the benefits of taking a third-person perspective on behaviors not related to health, visualizing using the first-person perspective had greater effects on motivation than visualizing using the third-person perspective. Indeed, visualizing using the third-person perspective was no more effective than not visualizing anything (Experiment 2). The theoretical implications and potential applications of these findings are discussed.
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How Will “I” Versus “We” Perform? An Investigation of Future Outlooks and Self-Construals
Kristy Dean & Wendi Gardner
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous theory and research suggests that people generate predictions to prepare for an uncertain future, often basing predictions on task-relevant information like prior performance. Four studies test the hypothesis that preparation via prediction occurs more readily when interdependent (vs. independent) self-construals are salient. This hypothesis was supported when examining chronic tendencies to generate negative predictions (Study 1) and spontaneous predictions in response to task-relevant information (Studies 2, 3, and 4), as well as when self-construals were measured (Studies 1, 2, and 4) and primed (Study 3). Moreover, performance prediction occurs in conjunction with increases in task persistence, but only for individuals with interdependent self-construals. Individuals with independent self-construals tend toward preparation via prediction only when preparation is urgent. Discussion centers on the applicability of within-cultural differences in self-construal on cross-cultural investigations, and implications for future research on predictive judgments.