Trying
Working When No One Is Watching: Motivation, Test Scores, and Economic Success
Carmit Segal
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper provides evidence that scores on simple, low-stakes tests are associated with future economic success because the scores also reflect test takers' personality traits associated with their level of intrinsic motivation. To establish this, I use the coding speed test that was administered without incentives to participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). I show that, controlling for cognitive ability, the coding speed scores are correlated with future earnings of male NLSY participants. I provide evidence that the coding speed scores relate to intrinsic motivation. I show that the scores of a highly motivated, though less educated, group (potential recruits to the U.S. military) are higher than the NLSY participants' scores. I use controlled experiments to show directly that intrinsic motivation is an important component of the unincentivized coding speed scores and that it relates to test takers' personality traits.
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Who Is Good at This Game? Linking an Activity to a Social Category Undermines Children's Achievement
Andrei Cimpian, Yan Mu & Lucy Erickson
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Children's achievement-related theories have a profound impact on their academic success. Children who adopt entity theories believe that their ability to perform a task is dictated by the amount of natural talent they possess for that task - a belief that has well-documented adverse consequences for their achievement (e.g., lowered persistence, impaired performance). It is thus important to understand what leads children to adopt entity theories. In the experiments reported here, we hypothesized that the mere act of linking success at an unfamiliar, challenging activity to a social group gives rise to entity beliefs that are so powerful as to interfere with children's ability to perform the activity. Two experiments showed that, as predicted, the performance of 4- to 7-year-olds (N = 192) was impaired by exposure to information that associated success in the task at hand with membership in a certain social group (e.g., "boys are good at this game"), regardless of whether the children themselves belonged to that group.
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Washing One's Hands After Failure Enhances Optimism but Hampers Future Performance
Kai Kaspar
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous studies showed that washing one's hand not only removes dirt from the body, it also weakens one's guilt after immoral behavior, makes moral judgment of others' misdeeds less severe, reduces post-decisional dissonance effects, and can help wash off bad luck. The present study broadens this scope by investigating the psychological impact of physical cleansing in a performance setting. The results show that physical cleansing enhances optimism after failure, but it hampers future performance in the same task domain. Hence, the influence of physical cleansing is neither limited to the moral domain nor to the decision-making processes which are metaphorically linked to the concept of cleanliness. Moreover, the impact of physical cleansing on higher cognitive processes does not seem to be always positive, but it helps close a matter. Starting points for future research are discussed.
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Illusory Power Transference: The Vicarious Experience of Power
Noah Goldstein & Nicholas Hays
Administrative Science Quarterly, December 2011, Pages 593-621
Abstract:
We use two experiments to investigate "illusory power transference," in which individuals minimally associated with powerful others act as if they themselves are powerful outside the boundaries of the association. The experiments elicit this phenomenon through social comparison processes that result in individuals' perceptions of their own power assimilating toward the power of the powerful other, which is driven by the motivation to characterize oneself as powerful. We demonstrate that men who have a tenuous association with a powerful other (versus a powerless or equal-power other) felt more powerful and were more optimistic, confident, and risk seeking, even though they could not leverage the associate's power. Consistent with research suggesting that women are less motivated to characterize themselves as powerful, however, this effect did not emerge among women. A third experiment suggests that, besides underlying motivations, whether the association is cooperative or competitive determines if one's sense of power is likely to assimilate to, or contrast away from, the associate's level of power.
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Evidence of Choking Under Pressure on the PGA Tour
Brett Wells & John Skowronski
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, March/April 2012, Pages 175-182
Abstract:
The authors examined whether there was evidence of choking under pressure (CUP) among professional golfers on the 2009 PGA Tour. Following the suggestion of Beilock and Gray (2007), choking was determined via within-golfer comparisons. Analyses yielded strong evidence of CUP in that evidence of performance decline was greatest when pressure was greatest. That is, across a span of 28 years, 4th-round tournament scores were significantly worse than 3rd-round tournament scores. Moreover, the magnitude of the choking effect was related to a player's position on the leaderboard: The closer a player was to a tournament lead, the larger his choking score. Finally, the nature of the analyses conducted makes it unlikely that the obtained effects can be solely attributed to statistical phenomena such as regression to the mean.
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Searching for Momentum in the NFL
Michael Fry & Alan Shukairy
Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, January 2012, Pages 1-18
Abstract:
We examine the question of whether or not momentum exists in an NFL football game. The concept of momentum is often cited by coaches, players, commentators and fans as a major factor in determining the outcome of the game and, consequently, in-game decision making. To examine the existence of momentum, we analyze particular game situations tied to what we consider to be "momentum-changing plays" (MCPs). These MCPs include fourth down conversions/stops, turnovers and scores allowed. We hypothesize that evidence of positive (negative) momentum would be characterized by increases (decreases) in yards gained, higher (lower) probability of converting a first down and greater (lesser) likelihood of scoring after a positive (negative) MCP. Our data set includes all plays from the 2002 to 2007 NFL seasons. We limit our analysis to game situations where the outcome of the game is still in doubt by removing plays that occur when a team is facing an insurmountable score differential. We use a pairwise matching comparison where we control for the game situations of home/away team, field position, time of game and score differential. We find little evidence for the existence of momentum in these events. Our results are in line with previous papers that find little empirical evidence of momentum in sports. While our findings cannot conclusively disprove the existence of momentum in the NFL, they further support the argument that momentum should not be a guiding factor for in-game decision making.
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When thinking about goals undermines goal pursuit
Ayelet Fishbach & Jinhee Choi
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
We explore how attending to the goals an activity achieves (i.e., its instrumentality) impacts the motivation to pursue the activity. We propose that the focus on the activity's instrumentality renders the activity more valuable yet its experience less positive. Because experience is mainly salient while pursuing (vs. planning) an activity, attending to the activity's instrumentality increases the intention to pursue the activity but decreases how persistently individuals pursue it. We document this impact of attending to goals on increased intentions but decreased persistence on various activities, from a exercising on a treadmill (Study 1) and creating origami (Study 2) to dental flossing (Study 3) and practicing yoga (Study 4).
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Talking loudly but lazing at work - Behavioral effects of stereotypes are context dependent
Florian Müller & Klaus Rothermund
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent research suggests that stereotype activation is context dependent. In the current research, we tested whether this context-dependence also generalizes to behavioral effects of stereotypes. Extending previous findings, we could show that activation of the category "Italians" in a work context (but not in an interaction context) resulted in slow behavior (Experiment 1), whereas it increased the loudness of speech in an interaction context (but not in a work context; Experiment 2). Our results further strengthen the notion of context-specific mental representations of stereotypes. Stereotypic attributes become activated and exert their influence on behavior in close correspondence with the current situation.
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Motivation, Personal Beliefs, and Limited Resources All Contribute to Self-Control
Kathleen Vohs, Roy Baumeister & Brandon Schmeichel
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
What effects do motivation and beliefs have on self-control? We tested this question using a limited resource paradigm, which generally has found that people show poor self-control after prior exertions of self-control. Recent findings have suggested that motivation and even belief in unlimited willpower can render persons immune to ego depletion. We replicated those findings, but also showed they are limited to cases of mild depletion. When depletion is extensive, the effects of motivation and subjective belief vanished and in one case reversed. After performing only one self-control task, the typical pattern of self-regulation impairment was ameliorated among people who were encouraged to regard willpower as unlimited (Experiment 1) or motivated by task importance (Experiment 2). Those manipulations failed to improve performance among severely depleted persons who had done multiple self-control tasks. These findings integrate ideas of limited resources, motivation, and beliefs in understanding the nature of self-control over time.
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"Shift-and-Persist" Strategies: Why Low Socioeconomic Status Isn't Always Bad for Health
Edith Chen & Gregory Miller
Perspectives on Psychological Science, March 2012, Pages 135-158
Abstract:
Some individuals, despite facing recurrent, severe adversities in life such as low socioeconomic status (SES), are nonetheless able to maintain good physical health. This article explores why these individuals deviate from the expected association of low SES and poor health and outlines a "shift-and-persist" model to explain the psychobiological mechanisms involved. This model proposes that, in the midst of adversity, some children find role models who teach them to trust others, better regulate their emotions, and focus on their futures. Over a lifetime, these low-SES children develop an approach to life that prioritizes shifting oneself (accepting stress for what it is and adapting the self through reappraisals) in combination with persisting (enduring life with strength by holding on to meaning and optimism). This combination of shift-and-persist strategies mitigates sympathetic-nervous-system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical responses to the barrage of stressors that low-SES individuals confront. This tendency vectors individuals off the trajectory to chronic disease by forestalling pathogenic sequelae of stress reactivity, like insulin resistance, high blood pressure, and systemic inflammation. We outline evidence for the model and argue that efforts to identify resilience-promoting processes are important in this economic climate, given limited resources for improving the financial circumstances of disadvantaged individuals.
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When Death is Good for Life: Considering the Positive Trajectories of Terror Management
Kenneth Vail et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research derived from terror management theory (TMT) has shown that people's efforts to manage the awareness of death often have deleterious consequences for the individual and society. The present article takes a closer look at the conceptual foundations of TMT and considers some of the more beneficial trajectories of the terror management process. The awareness of mortality can motivate people to enhance their physical health and prioritize growth-oriented goals; live up to positive standards and beliefs; build supportive relationships and encourage the development of peaceful, charitable communities; and foster open-minded and growth-oriented behaviors. The article also tentatively explores the potential enriching impact of direct encounters with death. Overall, the present analysis suggests that although death awareness can, at times, generate negative outcomes, it can also function to move people along more positive trajectories and contribute to the good life.
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Piers Steel & Joseph Ferrari
European Journal of Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
Procrastination is a common form of self-regulatory failure with substantive connections to lower levels of health, wealth and well-being. Conducting an epidemiological study, we determined the characteristics of prototypical procrastinators from a global sample based on several relevant self-reported demographic variables. Using an internet sampling strategy, we surveyed 16 413 English-speaking adults (58.3% women; 41.7% men: M age = 38.3 years, SD = 14), specifically on the variables of sex, age, marital status, family size, education, community location, and national origin. Almost all the results were statistically significant because of our large sample size. However, procrastination tendencies were most prominently associated with sex, age, marital status, education and nationality. Procrastinators tended to be young, single men with less education, residing in countries with lower levels of self-discipline. Notably, procrastination mediated the relationship between sex and education, providing further support that men are lagging behind women academically because of lower self-regulatory skills. Given procrastination's connection with a variety of societal ailments (e.g. excessive debt, delayed medical treatment), identifying risk factors and at risk populations should be helpful for directing preventative public policy.
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Value From Adversity: How We Deal With Adversity Matters
Tory Higgins, Janina Marguc & Abigail Scholer
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Participants in our study worked on an anagram task to win a prize while aversive noise played in the background. They were instructed to deal with the noise either by "opposing" it as an interference or by "coping" with the unpleasant feelings it created. The strength of attention to the opposing or coping response to adversity was measured by poorer recognition of the content of the background noise. For the "opposing" participants, it was predicted that the more they attended to opposing the interference, they stronger they would engage in solving the anagrams to win the prize, which would increase the prize's value. For the "coping" participants, it was predicted that the more they attended to coping with their unpleasant feelings, the weaker they would engage in solving the anagrams to win the prize, which would decrease the prize's value. The results supported both predictions.
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Expressed Likelihood as Motivator: Creating Value through Engaging What's Real
Tory Higgins et al.
Journal of Economic Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Our research tested two predictions regarding how likelihood can have motivational effects as a function of how a probability is expressed. We predicted that describing the probability of a future event that could be either A or B using the language of high likelihood ("80% A") rather than low likelihood ("20% B"), i.e., high rather than low expressed likelihood, would make a present activity more real and engaging, as long as the future event had properties relevant to the present activity. We also predicted that strengthening engagement from the high (vs. low) expressed likelihood of a future event would intensify the value of present positive and negative objects (in opposite directions). Both predictions were supported. There was also evidence that this intensification effect from expressed likelihood was independent of the actual probability or valence of the future event. What mattered was whether high versus low likelihood language was used to describe the future event.
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Learning from My Success and From Others' Failure: Evidence from Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery
Diwas KC, Bradley Staats & Francesca Gino
Harvard Working Paper, January 2012
Abstract:
Learning from past experience is central to an organization's adaptation and survival. A key dimension of prior experience is whether the outcome was successful or unsuccessful. While empirical studies have investigated the effects of success and failure in organizational learning, to date the phenomenon has received little attention at the individual level. Drawing on attribution theory in psychology, we investigate how individuals learn from both failure and success from their own past experience as well as the experience of others. For our empirical analyses we use ten years of data from 71 cardiothoracic surgeons who completed over 6,500 procedures using a new technology for cardiac surgery. We find that individuals learn more from their own successes than from their own failures, while they learn more from the failures of others than they do from others' successes. We also find that individuals' prior successes and others' failures can help individuals to overcome their inability to learn from their own failures. Together, these findings offer both theoretical and practical insights into how individuals learn directly from their prior experience and indirectly from the experience of others.
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Christina Sue-Chan, Robert Wood & Gary Latham
Journal of Management, May 2012, Pages 809-835
Abstract:
Consistent with the arguments of regulatory focus theory, an experiment revealed that a promotion coaching orientation relative to a prevention coaching orientation had a more positive effect on the performance of recipients following coaching. Moreover, in support of regulatory fit theory, a prevention coaching orientation had a more positive effect on the performance of recipients with implicit fixed beliefs about ability than for those with implicit incremental beliefs. The robustness of these results was supported through replication in a lagged, correlation field study of employees in the production facility of a global company. In addition, in the field study, there was a significant additive component in the effects for promotion-oriented coaching, due to better regulatory fit for employees with incremental beliefs.
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Does Power Magnify the Expression of Dispositions?
Ana Guinote, Mario Weick & Alice Cai
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Conventional wisdom holds that power holders act more in line with their dispositions than do people who lack power. Drawing on principles of construct accessibility, we propose that this is the case only when no alternative constructs are activated. In three experiments, we assessed participants' chronic dispositions and subsequently manipulated participants' degree of power. Participants then either were or were not primed with alternative (i.e., inaccessible or counterdispositional) constructs. When no alternatives were activated, the responses of power holders - perceptions of other people (Experiment 1), preferences for charitable donations (Experiment 2), and strategies in an economic game (Experiment 3) - were more in line with their chronically accessible constructs than were the responses of low-power participants. However, when alternatives had been activated, power holders' responses were no longer more congruent with their dispositions than were the responses of low-power participants. We propose a single mechanism according to which power increases reliance on accessible constructs - that is, constructs that easily come to mind - regardless of whether these constructs are chronically or temporarily accessible.
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Michelle vanDellen, Rick Hoyle & Rebecca Miller
Personality and Individual Differences, June 2012, Pages 898-902
Abstract:
We present and test a theory in which self-control is distinguished from broader acts of self-regulation when it is both effortful and conscious. In two studies, we examined whether acts of behavioral management that do not require effort are exempt from resource depletion. In Study 1, we found that a self-regulation task only reduced subsequent self-control for participants who had previously indicated that completing the task would require effort. In Study 2, we found that participants who completed a self-regulation task for 2 min did not evidence the subsequent impairment in self-control evident for participants who had completed the task for 4 or more minutes. Our results support the notion that self-regulation without effort falls below the self-control threshold and has different downstream consequences than self-control.
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Mental Contrasting Turns Positive Feedback on Creative Potential into Successful Performance
Gabriele Oettingen, Michael Marquardt & Peter Gollwitzer
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In two studies employing a creativity test (i.e., solving insight problems), we hypothesized and observed that mental contrasting of a desired future with present reality (Oettingen, Pak, & Schnetter, 2001) transforms positive feedback into strong performance. Participants received positive or moderate bogus feedback on their creative potential and then engaged either in mental contrasting, indulging in the desired future, dwelling on present reality, or irrelevant contrasting with respect to taking a creativity test. Mental contrasting participants who received positive feedback performed better than those who received moderate feedback. They also performed better than indulging, dwelling, and irrelevant contrasting participants, regardless of the feedback received. By manipulating expectations of success through bogus feedback, the present research adjusts for confounding variables and validates previous findings showing that mental contrasting produces expectancy-dependent goal commitments and performance. Implications for designing interventions to enhance people's creativity are discussed.
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Business ownership and attitudes towards risk
Sarah Brown et al.
Applied Economics, Spring 2012, Pages 1731-1740
Abstract:
We explore the relationship between business ownership and attitudes towards financial risk using individual level data drawn from the US Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). The SCF includes a measure of individuals' attitudes towards risk allowing us to explore the implications of interpersonal differences in risk attitudes for the probability and success of business ownership. Our empirical findings suggest that willingness to take financial risk is positively associated with both the incidence and success of business ownership. We find that this relationship is particularly pronounced in cases where the individual actually started the business.
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Benjamin Nagengast & Herbert Marsh
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Being schooled with other high-achieving peers has a detrimental influence on students' self-perceptions: School-average and class-average achievement have a negative effect on academic self-concept and career aspirations - the big-fish-little-pond effect. Individual achievement, on the other hand, predicts academic self-concept and career aspirations positively. Research from Western and developed countries implies that the negative contextual effect on career aspirations is mediated by academic self-concept. Using data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 (a total of 398,750 15-year-old students from 57 countries), we test the generalizability of this mediation model in science using a general multilevel structural equation modeling framework. Individual achievement was positively related to academic self-concept (52 countries) and career aspirations (42 countries). The positive effect on career aspirations was mediated by self-concept in 54 countries. The negative effects of school-average achievement on self-concept (50 countries) and career aspirations (31 countries) also generalized well. After controlling for self-concept at both the individual and the school level, there were significant indirect contextual effects in 34 countries - evidence for mediation of the contextual effect of school-average achievement on career intentions by academic self-concept.
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Shane Sanders & Bhavneet Walia
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
Significant empirical evidence exists within psychology and economics that greater incentives under pressure can lead to lower performance outcomes. However, standard economic theory does not account for this possibility. Efficiency wage models, for example, conclude a positive relationship between wage incentives and productivity. While efficiency wage models are shown to describe productivity behavior in numerous settings, said models do not describe labor markets featuring (counterproductive) performance pressure. We put forth a theoretical model of performance production in which performance incentives induce productive effects and counterproductive effects. The model treats explicit monitoring and distraction as distinct, counterproductive processes within a cohesive theory of performance production. In settings featuring performance pressure, we find that higher levels of performance-contingent compensation may decrease not only labor output (i.e., likelihood of task success) but also labor input (i.e., effort) if counterproductive processes decrease the marginal effectiveness of effort sufficiently. The latter finding challenges a common view that performance decrements under pressure occur despite greater effort levels.
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Self-directed speech affects visual search performance
Gary Lupyan & Daniel Swingley
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People often talk to themselves, yet very little is known about the functions of this self-directed speech. We explore effects of self-directed speech on visual processing by using a visual search task. According to the label feedback hypothesis (Lupyan, 2007a), verbal labels can change ongoing perceptual processing - for example, actually hearing "chair" compared to simply thinking about a chair can temporarily make the visual system a better "chair detector". Participants searched for common objects, while being sometimes asked to speak the target's name aloud. Speaking facilitated search, particularly when there was a strong association between the name and the visual target. As the discrepancy between the name and the target increased, speaking began to impair performance. Together, these results speak to the power of words to modulate ongoing visual processing.