Wait For It
Thinking about thinking: People underestimate how enjoyable and engaging just waiting is
Aya Hatano et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
The ability to engage in internal thoughts without external stimulation is a unique characteristic in humans. The current research tested the hypothesis that people metacognitively underestimate their capability to enjoy this process of “just thinking.” Participants (university students; total N = 259) were asked to sit and wait in a quiet room without doing anything. Across six experiments, we consistently found that participants’ predicted enjoyment and engagement for the waiting task were significantly less than what they actually experienced. This underappreciation of just thinking also led participants to proactively avoid the waiting task in favor of an alternative task (i.e., Internet news checking), despite their experiences not being statistically different. These results suggest an inherent difficulty in accurately appreciating how engaging just thinking can be, and could explain why people prefer keeping themselves busy, rather than taking a moment for reflection and imagination in our daily life.
How beliefs about coronavirus disease (COVID) influence COVID-like symptoms? – A longitudinal study
Liron Rozenkrantz et al.
Health Psychology, August 2022, Pages 519–526
Method:
We conducted two studies with over 300 participants, approached at two successive timepoints, 3–4 weeks apart. Participants reported their experienced symptoms, COVID-19-related beliefs, demographics, and state anxiety. To target COVID-like symptoms, participants who reported having contracted COVID-19 or attributed their symptoms to another known cause were excluded. Regression analyses were conducted to test the predictive value of beliefs regarding COVID-19 on experienced symptoms.
Results:
A particular belief regarding one’s estimated symptom severity if infected with coronavirus predicted the experience of symptoms 3–4 weeks later (β = .17, p = .011). This result persisted after controlling for potential confounds, including state anxiety (β = .22, p = .002). Findings were preregistered and replicated in a separate cohort. A novel scale for perception of the body’s ability to fight diseases contributed to mediating the effect of estimated symptom severity on later experienced symptoms.
A Brief Gratitude Writing Intervention Decreased Stress and Negative Affect During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Erin Fekete & Nathan Deichert
Journal of Happiness Studies, August 2022, Pages 2427–2448
Abstract:
Exploring ways to mitigate the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic is important for long-term health. Expressive and gratitude-focused writing are effective methods to help individuals process traumatic or stressful events. Gratitude-focused writing may yield additional benefits because it helps individuals appraise events positively. We hypothesized that an online gratitude writing intervention would yield greater benefits than an expressive writing intervention or control group. Participants were randomized to one of three groups and completed assessments one-week and one-month post-intervention. The gratitude writing group maintained gratitude levels and decreased stress and negative affect at one-month post-intervention. The expressive writing group decreased in gratitude and showed no changes in stress or negative affect at one-month post-intervention. The control group decreased in gratitude and negative affect and showed no changes in stress at one-month post-intervention. Gratitude writing may be a better resource for dealing with stress and negative affect than traditional expressive writing methods under extremely stressful situations with uncertain trajectories.
Self-determined immortality: Testing the role of autonomy in promoting perceptions of symbolic immortality and well-being
Dylan Horner, Alex Sielaff & Jeff Greenberg
Motivation and Emotion, August 2022, Pages 429–446
Abstract:
This pre-registered work was designed to replicate and extend previous research finding that autonomy is associated with greater extent of belief in symbolic immortality (feeling that some aspect of an individual will endure and/or be remembered long after death). Study 1 (n = 1185) replicated this prior work, finding that self-reported autonomy predicted extent of belief in symbolic immortality, which mediated the relationship between autonomy and meaning in life. Study 2 (n = 117) provided an experimental extension of Study 1, finding that reading about an individual with an autonomous (vs. controlled) life increased perceptions of that individual’s symbolic immortality, which mediated the relationship between reading about the autonomous life and perceptions of the individual’s satisfaction with life. Study 3 (n = 175) replicated the results of Study 2 and also showed that the extent to which people viewed the target individual as feeling autonomous predicted perceptions of that individual’s symbolic immortality even after controlling for perceived self-esteem.
Memories people no longer believe in can still affect them in helpful and harmful ways
Ryan Burnell et al.
Memory & Cognition, August 2022, Pages 1319–1335
Abstract:
People can come to “remember” experiences they never had, and these false memories — much like memories for real experiences — can serve a variety of helpful and harmful functions. Sometimes, though, people realize one of their memories is false, and retract their belief in it. These “retracted memories” continue to have many of the same phenomenological characteristics as their believed memories. But can they also continue to serve functions? Across four experiments, we asked subjects to rate the extent to which their retracted memories serve helpful and harmful functions and compared these functions with those served by “genuine” autobiographical memories. People rated their retracted memories as serving both helpful and harmful functions, much like their genuine memories. In addition, we found only weak relationships between people’s belief in their memories and the extent to which those memories served perceived functions. These results suggest memories can serve functions even in the absence of belief and highlight the potential for false memories to affect people’s thinking and behavior even after people have retracted them.
The Social Effects of an Awesome Solar Eclipse
Sean Goldy, Nickolas Jones & Paul Piff
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Astronomical events such as solar eclipses have played a transformative role in human social collectives as sources of collective wonder, inspiration, and reconciliation. Do celestial phenomena systematically shape individuals and their groups? Guided by scientific treatments of awe as an experience that helps individuals form into collectives, we used Twitter data (N = 2,891,611 users) to examine the social impact of a historic, awe-inspiring celestial event: the 2017 solar eclipse. Relative to individuals residing outside the eclipse’s path, individuals inside it exhibited more awe and expressed less self-focused and more prosocial, affiliative, humble, and collective language (Study 1). Further, individuals who exhibited elevated awe surrounding the eclipse used more prosocial, affiliative, humble, and collective language relative to their preeclipse levels and relative to users who exhibited less awe (Study 2). These findings indicate that astronomical events may play a vital collective function by arousing awe and social tendencies that orient individuals toward their collectives.
What happy people do: The behavioral correlates of happiness in everyday situations
Gwendolyn Gardiner et al.
Journal of Research in Personality, August 2022
Abstract:
Happier individuals have a greater tendency to experience positive affect in their day-to-day lives. The present study uses a multi-method approach to assess the observable behaviors correlated with happiness in two video-recorded, experimental social contexts resembling everyday situations: an interview about oneself and a conversation with strangers. The patterns of observed behaviors associated with happiness were highly similar between the two situations. Happier people smiled, acted playful and behaved cheerfully, while unhappy people expressed criticism, displayed guilt, or acted irritated. The behaviors of happier individuals not only reflect their greater positive affect in everyday situations but also highlights what might make them more enjoyable to be around.