J. Lukas Thürmer

University of Salzburg · Department of Psychology

The United States is highly divided along party lines, and this partisan divide has a tremendous impact on social relationships and even health-related behavior. Although group members frequently reject criticism from individuals outside their own group relative to criticism from within the group (intergroup sensitivity effect), it remains unclear...

Although vaccination provides substantial protection against COVID, many people reject the vaccine despite the opportunity to receive it. Recent research on potential causes of such vaccine hesitancy showed that those unvaccinated rejected calls to get vaccinated when they stemmed from a vaccinated source (i.e., a vaccination rift). To mend this va...

Communication of criticism between groups is important to productive societal discourse, but may serve to inflame conflict. The defensive rejection of intergroup, relative to intragroup, criticism (intergroup sensitivity effect [ISE]) may contribute to such divides. The ISE has been observed in self‐report measures, but such measures are weak and b...

COVID vaccination protects individuals and helps end the pandemic, but a sizable minority in Western countries rejects the vaccine. Vaccination status should serve as a group membership, critical communication between groups undermines trust, and we accordingly suggest that calls to get vaccinated by vaccinated sources lead to defensive rejection i...

How do task groups react to poor performers? We integrate attribution theory with individual motivation theories in a novel, parsimonious model that makes nuanced predictions. Our model asserts that group members assess the poor performer's intent to help the group (i.e., pro-group intent) by first considering the poor performer's characteristics s...

Reducing meat consumption can make immediate contributions to fighting the climate crisis. A growing minority adheres to meat-free diets and could convince others to follow suit. We argue, however, that recipients’ social identification as meat eaters may impede the effectiveness of such calls (i.e., an intergroup sensitivity effect based on dietar...

First-generation students (FGS) are more likely to feel misplaced and struggle at university than students with university-educated parents (continuous-generation students; CGS). We assumed that the shutdowns during the Coronavirus-pandemic would particularly threaten FGS due to obstructed coping mechanisms. Specifically, FGS may show lower identif...

Group members are more likely to punish criticism of the ingroup when it is provided by outgroup members than by fellow ingroup members. Although this effect could reflect a response to threats to social identity, there may be a general conversational norm proscribing intergroup criticism of any kind. In this case, uninvolved bystanders should also...

Mastering global challenges such as the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic requires implementing effective responses at various social levels. Leadership teams (governmental, industrial) need to integrate available information to introduce effective regulation and update their decisions as new information becomes available. Groups (families, peers, teams) n...

Group members reject threatening outgroup criticism compared to the same criticism from the ingroup (intergroup sensitivity effect [ISE]). Uninvolved bystanders (i.e., members of third groups) also view intergroup criticism as inappropriate. Classic ISE studies were largely underpowered, used inconsequential self‐reports, and no study has observed...

Groups need contributions that are personally costly to their members. Such cooperation is only adaptive when others cooperate as well, as unconditional cooperation may incur high costs to the individual. We argue that individuals can use We-if-then plans (collective implementation intentions, cIIs) to regulate their group-directed behavior strateg...

Purpose Crises such as the Coronavirus pandemic pose extraordinary challenges to the decision making in management teams. Teams need to integrate available information quickly to make informed decisions on the spot and update their decisions as new information becomes available. Moreover, making good decisions is hard as it requires sacrifices for...

Purpose This study aims to take a dual-process perspective and argues that peer influence on increasing impulse buying may also operate automatically. If-then plans, which can automate action control, may, thus, help regulate peer influence. This research extends existing literature explicating the deliberate influence of social norms. Design/meth...

Carver and Scheier’s (1990) account of goal striving predicts that unexpectedly fast goal progress leads to reduced effort at that goal (coasting) and to shifting focus toward other goals (shifting). Although these hypotheses are key to this goal-striving account, empirical evidence of coasting and shifting is scarce. Here we demonstrate coasting a...

Objectives: Successful sprint starts require self-control: Athletes need to avoid a false start (impulse control) and at the same time need to start as fast as possible (action initiation). Research from cognitive neuroscience shows that such self-control acts hinge on activity in areas in the lateral Prefrontal Cortex (lPFC). We are harnessing the...

Group members defensively reject out-group criticism in self-reports because they perceive it as more threatening than the same criticism from the in-group (intergroup sensitivity effect). But does this effect motivate action? In five experiments, group members exhibited behavior patterns characteristic of motivated goal pursuit: They prioritized d...

The rule/plan motor cognition (RPMC) paradigm elicits visually indistinguishable motor outputs, resulting from either plan-or rule-based action-selection, using a combination of essentially interchangeable stimuli. Previous implementations of the RPMC paradigm have used pantomimed movements to compare plan-vs. rule-based action-selection. In the pr...

People are motivated to process threatening information in a defensive manner. For instance, in self-reports, group members consistently reject threatening outgroup criticism compared with the same criticism from the ingroup (intergroup sensitivity effect). Because self-reports are a poor proxy for actual behavior, it remains unknown whether this d...

An aged and shrinking workforce represents one of the major challenges for companies in the next decades. Capitalising on and developing older workers’ potential will therefore be key for organisational success. Research shows, however, that older workers in companies are less likely to receive training than their younger colleagues and that knowle...

There are two key motivators to perform well in a group: making a contribution that (a) is crucial for the group (indispensability) and that (b) the other group members recognize (identifiability). We argue that indispensability promotes setting collective (" We ") goals whereas identifiability induces individual (" I ") goals. Although both goals...

Man hat sich fest vorgenommen, mehr Sport zu treiben; trotzdem sitzt man vor dem Fernseher, anstatt im Park zu joggen. Warum setzen wir dieses und andere wichtige Ziele nicht in die Tat um? Und was kann man tun, um seine Ziele besser zu erreichen? In diesem Artikel diskutieren wir drei Hindernisse auf dem Weg zum Ziel und stellen einen einfachen, g...

The present review addresses the physiological correlates of planning effects on behavior. Although intentions to act qualify as predictors of behavior, accumulated evidence indicates that there is a substantial gap between even strong intentions and subsequent action. One effective strategy to reduce this intention–behavior gap is the formation of...

When groups receive negative feedback on their progress toward a set goal, they often escalate rather than temper their commitment. To attenuate such escalation, we suggest initiating a self-distancing response (i.e., taking the perspective of a neutral observer) by forming implementation intentions when, where, and how to act (i.e., making if-then...

At the individual level, research shows that if-then planning (i.e., forming implementation intentions) is an effective behavior-change strategy that facilitates goal-attainment. Drawing on a framework of group-level combination of contributions, we argue that groups and teams should also benefit from forming implementation intentions, and that the...

In hidden-profile (HP) problems, groups squander their potential to make superior decisions because members fail to capitalize on each other's unique knowledge (unshared information). A new self-regulation perspective suggests that hindrances in goal striving (e.g., failing to seize action opportunities) contribute to this problem. Implementation i...

Claiming or creating obstacles before performing important tasks (i.e., self-handicapping) is a costly strategy to protect the self from implications of poor outcomes. We predicted that forming an if–then plan (implementation intention) helps individuals overcome their performance-related worries and thus prevents self-handicapping behavior. In two...

In celebration of the 125th anniversary of The American Journal of Psychology, this article discusses a seminal publication by Marjorie Shaw (1932) on small group performance in the rational solution of complex problems. We then propose an approach for the effective regulation of group goal striving based on the collective action control perspectiv...