Mental States
Time capsule: Nostalgia shields psychological wellbeing from limited time horizons
Erica Hepper et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Nostalgia is a bittersweet — albeit predominantly positive — self-relevant and social emotion that arises from reflecting on fond and meaningful autobiographical memories. Nostalgia might facilitate successful aging by serving as a socioemotional selectivity strategy in the face of limited time horizons. Four studies tested the role of nostalgia in maintaining psychological wellbeing across the adult life span and across differing time perspectives. In Study 1, community adults (N = 443, age 18–91) completed measures of nostalgia proneness and 6 psychological wellbeing dimensions. Age was more positively related to wellbeing for those high than low on nostalgia proneness: High-nostalgic individuals showed a maintenance or increase in psychological wellbeing with age, whereas low-nostalgic individuals did not. In Study 2 (N = 35, age 18–25), experimentally inducing a limited time perspective — a core trigger of socioemotional selectivity — in young adults prompted greater nostalgia. In Study 3 (N = 93, age 18–33) and Study 4 (N = 376, age 18–55), experimentally inducing a limited time perspective reduced some aspects of wellbeing among those who recalled an ordinary (Study 3) or lucky (Study 4) autobiographical memory, but this effect was eliminated among those who recalled a nostalgic memory. Nostalgia buffers perceptions of limited time and facilitates the maintenance of psychological wellbeing across the adult life span.
Delayed negative effects of prosocial spending on happiness
Armin Falk & Thomas Graeber
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 24 March 2020, Pages 6463-6468
Abstract:
Does prosocial behavior promote happiness? We test this longstanding hypothesis in a behavioral experiment that extends the scope of previous research. In our Saving a Life paradigm, every participant either saved one human life in expectation by triggering a targeted donation of 350 euros or received an amount of 100 euros. Using a choice paradigm between two binary lotteries with different chances of saving a life, we observed subjects’ intentions at the same time as creating random variation in prosocial outcomes. We repeatedly measured happiness at various delays. Our data weakly replicate the positive effect identified in previous research but only for the very short run. One month later, the sign of the effect reversed, and prosocial behavior led to significantly lower happiness than obtaining the money. Notably, even those subjects who chose prosocially were ultimately happier if they ended up getting the money for themselves. Our findings revealed a more nuanced causal relationship than previously suggested, providing an explanation for the apparent absence of universal prosocial behavior.
Spending on doing promotes more moment-to-moment happiness than spending on having
Amit Kumar, Matthew Killingsworth & Thomas Gilovich
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People derive more satisfaction from experiential purchases (e.g., travel, entertainment, outdoor activities, meals out) than material purchases (e.g., clothing, jewelry, furniture, gadgets), both in prospect and retrospect. Because different types of well-being can have different determinants, we examined whether experiences have the same advantage over possessions in the here-and-now of consumption as they do in anticipation or remembrance. Participants in two large-scale experience-sampling studies were contacted in the midst of consuming an experiential or material purchase and asked about their momentary happiness. Experiential consumption was consistently associated with significantly greater happiness than either non-consumption or the consumption of material goods. In-the-moment happiness, furthermore, was greater for all subcategories of experiential purchases than for any category of material goods. Experiences thus appear to be a more promising route to enhancing well-being than possessions, irrespective of when happiness is measured.
Brain freeze: Outdoor cold and indoor cognitive performance
Nikolai Cook & Anthony Heyes
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
We present first evidence that outdoor cold temperatures negatively impact indoor cognitive performance. We use a within-subject design and a large-scale dataset of adults in an incentivized setting. The performance decrement is large despite the subjects working in a fully climate-controlled environment. Using secondary data, we find evidence of partial adaptation at the organizational, individual and biological levels. The results are interpreted in the context of climate models that observe and predict an increase in the frequency of very cold days in some locations (e.g. Chicago) and a decrease in others (e.g. Beijing).
Inequality in socio-emotional skills: A cross-cohort comparison
Orazio Attanasio et al.
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine changes in inequality in socio-emotional skills very early in life in two British cohorts born 30 years apart. We construct comparable scales using two validated instruments for the measurement of child behaviour and identify two dimensions of socio-emotional skills: ‘internalising’ and ‘externalising’. Using recent methodological advances in factor analysis, we establish comparability in the inequality of these early skills across cohorts, but not in their average level. We document for the first time that inequality in socio-emotional skills has increased across cohorts, especially for boys and at the bottom of the distribution. We also formally decompose the sources of the increase in inequality and find that compositional changes explain half of the rise in inequality in externalising skills. On the other hand, the increase in inequality in internalising skills seems entirely driven by changes in returns to background characteristics. Lastly, we document that socio-emotional skills measured at an earlier age than in most of the existing literature are significant predictors of health and health behaviours. Our results show the importance of formally testing comparability of measurements to study skills differences across groups, and in general point to the role of inequalities in the early years for the accumulation of health and human capital across the life course.
Dopamine promotes cognitive effort by biasing the benefits versus costs of cognitive work
Andrew Westbrook et al.
Science, 20 March 2020, Pages 1362-1366
Abstract:
Stimulants such as methylphenidate are increasingly used for cognitive enhancement but precise mechanisms are unknown. We found that methylphenidate boosts willingness to expend cognitive effort by altering the benefit-to-cost ratio of cognitive work. Willingness to expend effort was greater for participants with higher striatal dopamine synthesis capacity, whereas methylphenidate and sulpiride, a selective D2 receptor antagonist, increased cognitive motivation more for participants with lower synthesis capacity. A sequential sampling model informed by momentary gaze revealed that decisions to expend effort are related to amplification of benefit-versus-cost information attended early in the decision process, whereas the effect of benefits is strengthened with higher synthesis capacity and by methylphenidate. These findings demonstrate that methylphenidate boosts the perceived benefits versus costs of cognitive effort by modulating striatal dopamine signaling.
Greener grass or sour grapes? How people value future goals after initial failure
Hallgeir Sjåstad, Roy Baumeister & Michael Ent
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across six experiments (N = 1304), people dealt with failure by dismissing the value of future goals. Participants were randomly assigned to receive good or poor feedback on a practice trial of a cognitive test (Studies 1–3, 5–6) or their academic performance (Study 4). Those who received poor (vs. good) feedback predicted that they would feel less happy about a future top performance. However, when all participants received a top score on the actual test they became equally happy, regardless of initial feedback. That is, initial failure made people underestimate how good it would feel to succeed in the future. Inspired by Aesop's fable of the fox and the grapes, we term this phenomenon the “sour-grape effect”: A systematic tendency to downplay the value of unattainable goals and rewards. Mediation analyses suggest that the low happiness predictions were a self-protective maneuver, indicated by apparent denial of the personal and future relevance of their performance. Moderation analysis showed that people high in achievement motivation constituted the main exception, as they predicted (correctly) that a big improvement would bring them joy. In a final and high-powered experiment, the effect generalized from predicted happiness to predicted pride and gratitude. Crucially, the sour-grape effect was found repeatedly across two different countries (USA and Norway) and multiple settings (lab, field, online), including two pre-registered replications. In line with the principle of “adaptive preferences” from philosophy and cognitive dissonance theory from psychology, the results suggest that what people want is restricted by what they can get.