From an early age, children begin to make decisions about buying things they want, or refraining from buying (e.g., to save up for something better). However, it was unclear how these decisions ...affect their feelings about their economic resources: does buying make children feel richer or poorer? This manuscript describes three studies that address this gap, with children ages 4 through 12 in the United Kingdom and United States. Older children thought that a child who bought something was richer than a child who refrained from buying, even if the target child was still able to accomplish their goal (Study 1). And for children as young as 4, imagining buying something (compared to imagining refraining from buying) predicted and led to imagining themselves feeling richer (Studies 2–3). The magnitude of the effect of buying vs. refraining on feeling rich did not change appreciably through age 12. These findings complement previous research which looked at children's judgments of their family's social status, by showing that children's feelings about their economic resources also fluctuate in response to actions (buying vs. refraining) that impact those resources. This work contributes to an understanding of how feelings of wealth emerge in childhood and has useful implications for adults who want to support children in developing financial skills.
Loneliness-perceived social isolation-is defined as a discrepancy between existing social relationships and desired quality of relationships. Whereas most research has focused on existing ...relationships, we consider the standards against which people compare them. Participants who made downward social or temporal comparisons that depicted their contact with others as better (compared to other people's contact or compared to the past) reported less loneliness than participants who made upward comparisons that depicted their contact with others as worse (Study 1-3). Extending these causal results, in a survey of British adults, upward social comparisons predicted current loneliness, even when controlling for loneliness at a previous point in time (Study 4). Finally, content analyses of interviews with American adults who lived alone showed that social and temporal comparisons about contact with others were both prevalent and linked to expressed loneliness (Study 5). These findings contribute to understanding the social cognition of loneliness, extend the effects of comparisons about social connection to the important public health problem of loneliness, and provide a novel tool for acutely manipulating loneliness.
Self-regulation by mentally contrasting a positive future with negative reality leads people to differentiate in their goal commitments: They commit to goals when expectations of success are high and ...let go when expectations of success are low. On the contrary, when indulging in the positive future or dwelling on negative reality, people fail to consider expectations of success and do not form selective goal commitments (Oettingen, Pak, & Schnetter, 2001). Whereas prior research has examined the effects of experimentally induced mental contrasting, we address sad mood as a contextual influence promoting self-initiated mental contrasting. Across various mood inductions, sad moods--which are associated with problem solving strategies--facilitated self-initiated mental contrasting more than neutral moods (Studies 1, 5) or happy moods (Studies 2, 3, 4, 6). Importantly, mood did not affect the relation between mental contrasting and selective formation of goal commitment (Studies 5, 6). The results suggest that sad moods aid in self-regulation by making people self-initiate goal commitments that are sensitive to their expectations of success.
People spend a considerable amount of their time mentally simulating experiences other than the one in which they are presently engaged, as a means of distraction, coping, or preparation for the ...future. In this integrative review, we examine four (non‐exhaustive) cases in which mentally simulating an experience serves a different function, as a substitute for the corresponding experience. In each case, mentally simulating an experience evokes similar cognitive, physiological, and/or behavioral consequences as having the corresponding experience in reality: (i) imagined experiences are attributed evidentiary value like physical evidence, (ii) mental practice instantiates the same performance benefits as physical practice, (iii) imagined consumption of a food reduces its actual consumption, and (iv) imagined goal achievement reduces motivation for actual goal achievement. We organize these cases under a common superordinate category and discuss their different methodological approaches and explanatory accounts. Our integration yields theoretical and practical insights into when and why mentally simulating an experience serves as its substitute.
Positive fantasies allow people to mentally indulge in a desired future. Whereas previous research found that spontaneously generated positive fantasies about the future predict poor achievement, we ...examined the effect of experimentally induced positive fantasies about the future. The present four experiments identify low energy, measured by physiological and behavioral indicators, as a mechanism by which positive fantasies translate into poor achievement. Induced positive fantasies resulted in less energy than fantasies that questioned the desired future (Study 1), negative fantasies (Study 2), or neutral fantasies (Study 3). Additionally, positive fantasies yielded a larger decrease in energy when they pertained to a more rather than a less pressing need (Study 4). Results indicate that one reason positive fantasies predict poor achievement is because they do not generate energy to pursue the desired future.
Beliefs about Whether Spending Implies Wealth Kappes, Heather Barry; Gladstone, Joe J; Hershfield, Hal E
The Journal of consumer research,
06/2021, Volume:
48, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Abstract
Spending is influenced by many factors. One that has received little attention is the meaning that people give to the act of spending. Spending money might imply that someone is relatively ...wealthy—since they have money to spend—or relatively poor—since spending can deplete assets. We show that people differ in the extent to which they believe that spending implies wealth (SIW beliefs). We develop a scale to measure these beliefs and find that people who more strongly believe that SIW spend their own money relatively lavishly and are, on average, more financially vulnerable. We find correlational evidence for these relationships using objective financial-transaction data, including over 2 million transaction records from the bank accounts of over 2,000 users of a money management app, as well as self-reported financial well-being. We also find experimental evidence by manipulating SIW beliefs and observing causal effects on spending intentions. These results show how underlying beliefs about the link between spending and wealth play a role in consumption decisions, and point to beliefs about the meaning of spending as a fruitful direction for further research.
Motivated Reasoning During Recruitment Kappes, Heather Barry; Balcetis, Emily; De Cremer, David
Journal of applied psychology,
03/2018, Volume:
103, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This research shows how job postings can lead job candidates to see themselves as particularly deserving of hiring and high salary. We propose that these entitlement beliefs entail both personal ...motivations to see oneself as deserving and the ability to justify those motivated judgments. Accordingly, we predict that people feel more deserving when qualifications for a job are vague and thus amenable to motivated reasoning, whereby people use information selectively to reach a desired conclusion. We tested this hypothesis with a 2-phase experiment (N = 892) using materials drawn from real online job postings. In the first phase of the experiment, participants believed themselves to be more deserving of hiring and deserving of higher pay after reading postings composed of vaguer types of qualifications. In the second phase, yoked observers believed that participants were less entitled overall, but did not selectively discount endorsement of vaguer qualifications, suggesting they were unaware of this effect. A follow-up preregistered experiment (N = 905) using postings with mixed qualification types replicated the effect of including more vague qualifications on participants' entitlement beliefs. Entitlement beliefs are widely seen as problematic for recruitment and retention, and these results suggest that reducing the inclusion of vague qualifications in job postings would dampen the emergence of these beliefs in applicants, albeit at the cost of decreasing application rates and lowering applicants' confidence.
We test the fundamental assumptions that people experiencing a stronger sense of calling invest more effort in their work tasks, and find those tasks more enjoyable, than people with a weaker sense ...of calling. Both assumptions have been expressed theoretically, yet received limited empirical support. Among 2,839 workers in a crowdsourced marketplace, we found that people with a stronger calling toward their work completed more of a relatively unengaging work task and enjoyed the task more than those with a weaker calling. The calling-effort relationship was particularly strong when there was no financial incentive for effort (i.e., paid a fixed amount), highlighting the risk of exploitation for strong-calling employees. People with stronger callings nonetheless responded to financial incentives—they completed more work when offered additional pay to do so. The relationship between calling and enjoyment of the task was particularly strong when there was a financial incentive for effort (i.e., paid piece-rate), indicating that extrinsic rewards did not “crowd out” intrinsic rewards. Our findings are thus consistent with research about the presence of multiple motives for behavior. Our empirical support for these assumptions using more appropriate, rigorous methods paves the way to further develop novel calling theory.
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