Inhibited
Francesca Righetti & Catrin Finkenauer
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present research tested the hypothesis that perception of others' self-control is an indicator of their trustworthiness. The authors investigated whether, in interactions between strangers as well as in established relationships, people detect another person's self-control, and whether this perception of self-control, in turn, affects trust. Results of 4 experiments supported these hypotheses. The first 2 experiments revealed that participants detected another person's trait of self-control. Experiments 3 and 4 revealed that participants also detected the temporary depletion of another person's self-control. Confirming the authors' predictions, perceived trait and state self-control, in turn, influenced people's judgment of the other person's trustworthiness. In line with previous research, these findings support the positive value of self-control for relationships and highlight the role of perceived self-control for the development of a fundamental relationship factor: trust.
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Murat Usta & Gerald Häubl
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Based on the self-regulatory strength model and prior research on self-esteem threats, the authors predict and show that delegating decisions to surrogates - such as financial advisors or physicians - depletes consumers' limited self-regulatory resources more than making the same decisions independently, thus impairing their subsequent ability to exercise self-control. This is the case even though decision delegation actually requires less decision making effort than independent decision making (Study 1). However, the resource depleting effect of decision delegation vanishes when consumers have an opportunity to affirm their belief in free will (Study 2). Moreover, remembering a past decision that one delegated impairs self-control more than remembering a decision that one made independently (Studies 3 and 4). The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
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Acute effects of a glucose energy drink on behavioral control
Meagan Howard & Cecile Marczinski
Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, December 2010, Pages 553-561
Abstract:
There has been a dramatic rise in the consumption of glucose energy drinks (e.g., Amp, Monster, and Red Bull) in the past decade, particularly among high school and college students. However, little laboratory research has examined the acute objective and subjective effects of energy drinks. The purpose of this study was to investigate the acute effects of a glucose energy drink (Red Bull) on cognitive functioning. Participants (N = 80) were randomly assigned to one of five conditions: 1.8 ml/kg energy drink, 3.6 ml/kg energy drink, 5.4 ml/kg energy drink, placebo beverage, or no drink. Participants completed a well-validated behavioral control task (the cued go/no-go task) and subjective measures of stimulation, sedation, and mental fatigue both before and 30 minutes following beverage administration. The results indicated that compared with the placebo and no drink conditions, the energy drink doses decreased reaction times on the behavioral control task, increased subjective ratings of stimulation and decreased ratings of mental fatigue. Greatest improvements in reaction times and subjective measures were observed with the lowest dose and improvements diminished as the dose increased. The findings suggest that energy drink consumption can improve cognitive performance on a behavioral control task, potentially explaining the dramatic rise in popularity of these controversial new beverages.
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Ironic effects of drawing attention to story errors
Andrea Eslick, Lisa Fazio & Elizabeth Marsh
Memory, February 2011, Pages 184-191
Abstract:
Readers learn errors embedded in fictional stories and use them to answer later general knowledge questions (Marsh, Meade, & Roediger, 2003). Suggestibility is robust and occurs even when story errors contradict well-known facts. The current study evaluated whether suggestibility is linked to participants' inability to judge story content as correct versus incorrect. Specifically, participants read stories containing correct and misleading information about the world; some information was familiar (making error discovery possible), while some was more obscure. To improve participants' monitoring ability, we highlighted (in red font) a subset of story phrases requiring evaluation; readers no longer needed to find factual information. Rather, they simply needed to evaluate its correctness. Readers were more likely to answer questions with story errors if they were highlighted in red font, even if they contradicted well-known facts. Although highlighting to-be-evaluated information freed cognitive resources for monitoring, an ironic effect occurred: Drawing attention to specific errors increased rather than decreased later suggestibility. Failure to monitor for errors, not failure to identify the information requiring evaluation, leads to suggestibility.
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Temptation and Productivity: A Field Experiment with Children
Alessandro Bucciol, Daniel Houser & Marco Piovesan
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Substantial evidence from psychology suggests that resisting temptation (exercising self-control) in one domain subsequently reduces one's capacity to regulate behavior in other domains. A reason is that people have limited self-regulatory resources, and self-regulatory failure occurs when these resources become overwhelmed. This paper provides evidence that this same mechanism can lead to reduced economic productivity subsequent to exposure to temptation. Using a design inspired by the classic "Marshmallow Test", we report data from a field experiment in which children between the ages of 6 and 13 were exposed (or not) to a consumption temptation. We use these ages to take advantage of the well-established fact that the self-regulatory resources of younger children are more easily depleted than those of older children. We find that, subsequent to exposure to temptation, productivity of younger children is significantly detrimentally impacted, while that of older children remains essentially unchanged. To our knowledge, this is the first rigorous demonstration that one need not succumb to temptation in order for it to detrimentally impact one's economic productivity.
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Atsunori Ariga & Alejandro Lleras
Cognition, March 2011, Pages 439-443
Abstract:
We newly propose that the vigilance decrement occurs because the cognitive control system fails to maintain active the goal of the vigilance task over prolonged periods of time (goal habituation). Further, we hypothesized that momentarily deactivating this goal (via a switch in tasks) would prevent the activation level of the vigilance goal from ever habituating. We asked observers to perform a visual vigilance task while maintaining digits in-memory. When observers retrieved the digits at the end of the vigilance task, their vigilance performance steeply declined over time. However, when observers were asked to sporadically recollect the digits during the vigilance task, the vigilance decrement was averted. Our results present a direct challenge to the pervasive view that vigilance decrements are due to a depletion of attentional resources and provide a tractable mechanism to prevent this insidious phenomenon in everyday life.
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Looking Up: Mindfulness Increases Positive Judgments and Reduces Negativity Bias
Laura Kiken & Natalie Shook
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present research examined the relation between mindfulness and negativity bias, or the tendency to weigh negative information more heavily than positive. A randomized experiment compared a brief mindfulness induction to an unfocused attention control condition. Negativity bias was assessed with a subjective measure of optimism and pessimism and an objective measure of negativity bias in attitude formation, BeanFest, which required associating novel stimuli with positive or negative outcomes. Participants in the mindfulness condition demonstrated less negativity bias in attitude formation. That is, they correctly classified positive and negative stimuli more equally than those in the control condition. Interestingly, the difference in negativity bias stemmed from better categorization of positives. Furthermore, those in the mindfulness condition reported higher levels of optimism compared to the control condition. Together, these results suggest that mindfulness increases positive judgments and reduces negativity bias.
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Edward Roberts, Elaine Anderson & Masud Husain
Journal of Neuroscience, 15 December 2010, Pages 17063-17067
Abstract:
Although many functional imaging studies have reported frontal activity associated with "cognitive control" tasks, little is understood about factors underlying individual differences in performance. Here we compared the behavior and brain structure of healthy controls with fighter pilots, an expert group trained to make precision choices at speed in the presence of conflicting cues. Two different behavioral paradigms - Eriksen Flanker and change of plan tasks - were used to assess the influence of distractors and the ability to update ongoing action plans. Fighter pilots demonstrated superior cognitive control as indexed by accuracy and postconflict adaptation on the Flanker task, but also showed increased sensitivity to irrelevant, distracting choices. By contrast, when pilots were examined on their ability to inhibit a current action plan in favor of an alternative response, their performance was no better than the control group. Diffusion weighted imaging revealed differences in white matter radial diffusivity between pilots and controls not only in the right dorsomedial frontal region but also in the right parietal lobe. Moreover, analysis of individual differences in reaction time costs for conflict trials on the Flanker task demonstrated significant correlations with radial diffusivity at these locations, but in different directions. Postconflict adaptation effects, however, were confined to the dorsomedial frontal locus. The findings demonstrate that in humans expert cognitive control may surprisingly be mediated by enhanced response gain to both relevant and irrelevant stimuli, and is accompanied by structural alterations in the white matter of the frontal and parietal lobe.
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Gráinne Fitzsimons & Eli Finkel
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three studies demonstrate a novel phenomenon - self-regulatory outsourcing - in which thinking about how other people can be instrumental (i.e., helpful) for a given goal undermines motivation to expend effort on that goal. In Experiment 1, participants who thought about how their partner helped them with health goals (as opposed to career goals) planned to spend less time and effort on health goals in the upcoming week. This pattern was stronger for depleted participants than for nondepleted participants. In Experiment 2, participants who thought about how their partner helped them with academic-achievement goals procrastinated more, leaving themselves less time for an academic task, than did participants in two control conditions. This pattern was stronger for participants who were told that procrastinating would drain their resources for the academic task than for participants who were told that procrastinating would not drain their resources for that task. In Experiment 3, participants who decreased their effort after thinking of an instrumental significant other reported higher relationship commitment to that individual than did participants who did not decrease their effort. The possibility for shared (or transactive) self-regulation is discussed.
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Ego-depletion and risk behavior: Too exhausted to take a risk
Alexander Unger & Dagmar Stahlberg
Social Psychology, Winter 2011, Pages 28-38
Abstract:
Ego-depletion theory postulates the existence of a mental resource that is necessary for self-regulation. If the resource is diminished by a task involving self-control, achievement in subsequent self-control tasks will be impaired. Three experiments examined whether ego-depletion limits people's intentionality regarding risk behavior (i.e., choosing an option that has a certain probability of resulting in an adverse outcome). It is assumed that people operating under ego-depletion lack the self-control to deal with these possibly negative outcomes and will, therefore, be prone to avoid risky alternatives, if the decision requires certain levels of responsibility and information processing (i.e., people will choose safe options in an investment scenario with actual pay-offs according to expected values). Results support the assumption that people become risk averse under ego-depletion even when controlling for the alternate assumption that ego-depletion strengthens an existing individual disposition toward risk taking.
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Self-control Training Decreases Aggression in Response to Provocation in Aggressive Individuals
Thomas Denson et al.
Journal of Research in Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
One common cause of aggression is self-control failure, yet research suggests that practicing self-control over time can improve subsequent self-control. This experiment tested whether self-control training over a two-week period could decrease anger and aggression in response to provocation. Seventy undergraduates completed two weeks of self-control training or a control task. At the end of the two weeks, participants were insulted and given the opportunity to retaliate by delivering a blast of loud white noise. Self-control training reduced aggression among those high in trait aggression. Participants who received the training also reported less anger than those in the control condition. These results provide initial support that self-control training might prove beneficial for assisting aggressive individuals to overcome aggressive impulses.
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Field and Online Experiments on Self-Control
Nicholas Burger, Gary Charness & John Lynham
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Self-control problems have recently received considerable attention from economic theorists. We conducted two studies involving behavioral interventions expected to affect performance, providing some of the first experimental data in this area. In the first we investigate whether evenly-spaced interim deadlines lead to higher completion rates for a lengthy task, where procrastination could be a factor. We found that these interim deadlines in fact led to lower completion rates in our set-up; we also found no evidence in the aggregate data (although there was considerable heterogeneity) of an increasing profile of the number of hours spent at the task over time, suggesting that the degree of present-bias in the participant population is not that high. In the second, we examine how willpower depletion affects behavior. Our second study isolates the effect of direct willpower depletion on the first day of a two-day period, thus exploring procrastination over a shorter time horizon. We found that depleting willpower did indeed lead to less work (and poorer quality) on the first day, but that this intervention surprisingly led to a higher completion rate overall. Our results help to inform ongoing efforts to understand and model self-control, willpower, and commitment mechanisms.
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Being of two minds: Switching mindsets exhausts self-regulatory resources
Ryan Hamilton, Kathleen Vohs, Anne-Laure Sellier & Tom Meyvis
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
The human psyche is equipped with the capacity to solve problems using different mental states or mindsets. Different mindsets can lead to different judgment and decision making styles, each associated with its own perspective and biases. To change perspective, people can, and often do, switch mindsets. We argue, however, that mindset switching can be costly for subsequent decisions. We propose that mindset switching is an executive function that relies on the same psychological resource that governs other acts of executive functioning, including self-regulation. This implies that there are psychic costs to switching mindsets that are borne out in depleted executive resources. One implication of this framework is that switching mindsets should render people more likely to fail at subsequent self-regulation than they would if maintaining a consistent mindset. The findings from experiments that manipulated mindset switching in five domains support this model.
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If-then planning helps school-aged children to ignore attractive distractions
Frank Wieber et al.
Social Psychology, Winter 2011, Pages 39-47
Abstract:
Can children improve shielding an ongoing task from distractions by if-then planning (i.e., by forming implementation intentions)? In an experimental study, the situational and personal limits of action control by distraction-inhibiting implementation intentions ("If a distraction comes up, then I will ignore it!") were tested by comparing them to simple goal intentions ("I will ignore distractions!"). Goal intentions were sufficient to successfully ignore distractions of low attractiveness. In the presence of moderately and highly attractive distractions, as well as a distraction presented out of the children's sight, however, only implementation intentions improved children's task shielding, as indicated by faster response times in an ongoing categorization task and shorter periods of looking at highly attractive distractions presented out of their field of vision. These findings held true regardless of the children's temperament and language competency. Implications for research on planning and developmental research on self-control are discussed.
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Sex differences in impulsivity: A meta-analysis
Catharine Cross, Lee Copping & Anne Campbell
Psychological Bulletin, January 2011, Pages 97-130
Abstract:
Men are overrepresented in socially problematic behaviors, such as aggression and criminal behavior, which have been linked to impulsivity. Our review of impulsivity is organized around the tripartite theoretical distinction between reward hypersensitivity, punishment hyposensitivity, and inadequate effortful control. Drawing on evolutionary, criminological, developmental, and personality theories, we predicted that sex differences would be most pronounced in risky activities with men demonstrating greater sensation seeking, greater reward sensitivity, and lower punishment sensitivity. We predicted a small female advantage in effortful control. We analyzed 741 effect sizes from 277 studies, including psychometric and behavioral measures. Women were consistently more punishment sensitive (d = -0.33), but men did not show greater reward sensitivity (d = 0.01). Men showed significantly higher sensation seeking on questionnaire measures (d = 0.41) and on a behavioral risk-taking task (d = 0.36). Questionnaire measures of deficits in effortful control showed a very modest effect size in the male direction (d = 0.08). Sex differences were not found on delay discounting or executive function tasks. The results indicate a stronger sex difference in motivational rather than effortful or executive forms of behavior control. Specifically, they support evolutionary and biological theories of risk taking predicated on sex differences in punishment sensitivity. A clearer understanding of sex differences in impulsivity depends upon recognizing important distinctions between sensation seeking and impulsivity, between executive and effortful forms of control, and between impulsivity as a deficit and as a trait.
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Think the thought, walk the walk - Social priming reduces the Stroop effect
Liat Goldfarb, Daniela Aisenberg & Avishai Henik
Cognition, February 2011, Pages 193-200
Abstract:
In the Stroop task, participants name the color of the ink that a color word is written in and ignore the meaning of the word. Naming the color of an incongruent color word (e.g., RED printed in blue) is slower than naming the color of a congruent color word (e.g., RED printed in red). This robust effect is known as the Stroop effect and it suggests that the intentional instruction - "do not read the word" - has limited influence on one's behavior, as word reading is being executed via an automatic path. Herein is examined the influence of a non-intentional instruction - "do not read the word" - on the Stroop effect. Social concept priming tends to trigger automatic behavior that is in line with the primed concept. Here participants were primed with the social concept "dyslexia" before performing the Stroop task. Because dyslectic people are perceived as having reading difficulties, the Stroop effect was reduced and even failed to reach significance after the dyslectic person priming. A similar effect was replicated in a further experiment, and overall it suggests that the human cognitive system has more success in decreasing the influence of another automatic process via an automatic path rather than via an intentional path.
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Earworms (stuck song syndrome): Towards a natural history of intrusive thoughts
Philip Beaman & Tim Williams
British Journal of Psychology, November 2010, Pages 637-653
Abstract:
Two studies examine the experience of ‘earworms', unwanted catchy tunes that repeat. Survey data show that the experience is widespread but earworms are not generally considered problematic, although those who consider music to be important to them report earworms as longer, and harder to control, than those who consider music as less important. The tunes which produce these experiences vary considerably between individuals but are always familiar to those who experience them. A diary study confirms these findings and also indicates that, although earworm recurrence is relatively uncommon and unlikely to persist for longer than 24 h, the length of both the earworm and the earworm experience frequently exceed standard estimates of auditory memory capacity. Active attempts to block or eliminate the earworm are less successful than passive acceptance, consistent with Wegner's theory of ironic mental control.
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Rude and Inappropriate: The Role of Self-Control in Following Social Norms
Amber DeBono, Dikla Shmueli & Mark Muraven
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, January 2011, Pages 136-146
Abstract:
Following social norms to avoid deviant or socially inappropriate behavior may require self-control. This was tested in two experiments that experimentally manipulated individuals' level of self-control strength. In the first experiment, individuals whose self-control capacity was depleted were more likely to misrepresent how many problems they solved and work after being told to stop while working on a timed test. These same results were found in individuals low in trait self-control. This was especially true when the certainty of getting caught was low. In the second experiment, depleted individuals were ruder to the experimenter than nondepleted participants. The results have implications for understanding how self-control contributes to normative behavior.