Malte Friese

Saarland University | UKS · Fachbereich Psychologie

Self-control is positively associated with a host of beneficial outcomes. Therefore, psychological interventions that reliably improve self-control are of great societal value. A prominent idea suggests that training self-control by repeatedly overriding dominant responses should lead to broad improvements in self-control over time. Here, we conduc...

An influential line of research suggests that initial bouts of self-control increase the susceptibility to self-control failure (ego depletion effect). Despite seemingly abundant evidence, some researchers have suggested that evidence for ego depletion was the sole result of publication bias and p-hacking, with the true effect being indistinguishab...

Psychological researchers often use powerful experimental manipulations to temporarily reduce participants' well-being. Postexperimental debriefings are intended to eliminate such detrimental effects. However, experimentally induced beliefs can persevere even when the underlying information is explicitly discredited. The present research investigat...

In recent years, the trustworthiness of psychological science has been questioned. A major concern is that many research findings are less robust than the published evidence suggests. Several reasons may contribute to this state of affairs. Two prominently discussed reasons are that (a) researchers use questionable research practices (so called p-h...

In the seminal Libet experiment (Libet et al., 1983), unconscious brain activity preceded the self-reported, conscious intention to move. This was repeatedly interpreted as challenging the view that (conscious) mental states cause behavior and, prominently, as challenging the existence of free will. Extensive discussions in philosophy, psychology,...

Climate change is currently one of humanity’s greatest threats. To help scholars understand the psychology of climate change, we conducted an online quasi-experimental survey on 59,508 participants from 63 countries (collected between July 2022 and July 2023). In a between-subjects design, we tested 11 interventions designed to promote climate chan...

Our meta-analysis on gender differences in sex drive found a stronger sex drive in men compared to women (Frankenbach et al., 2022). Conley and Yang (2024) criticized how we interpreted the findings and provided suggestions regarding the origins of these gender differences, an undertaking that we had refrained from doing in our original work. We co...

Recovering from work is essential for maintaining occupational well-being, health, motivation, and performance, but recovery is often difficult to achieve. In this study, we evaluated and compared the effectiveness of two (parallel) interventions aimed at promoting recovery: one based on mindfulness and one involving applying cognitive–behavioral s...

Our meta-analysis on gender differences in sex drive found a stronger sex drive in men compared to women (Frankenbach et al., 2022). Conley and Yang (2024) criticized how we interpreted the findings and provided suggestions regarding the origins of these gender differences, an undertaking that we had refrained from doing in our original work. We co...

Recovery from work–a multifaceted construct comprising detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control– is essential for maintaining well-being. Hence, it is crucial to investigate whether training programs could successfully promote recovery experiences. Due to the multifaceted nature of the construct, research and practitioners would benefit from a...

Recovering from work is essential for maintaining occupational well-being, health, motivation, and performance, but recovery is often difficult to achieve. In this study, we evaluated and compared the effectiveness of two (parallel) interventions aimed at promoting recovery: one based on mindfulness and one involving applying cognitive-behavioral s...

Throughout the 21st century, economic inequality is predicted to increase as we face new challenges, from changes in the technological landscape to the growing climate crisis. It is crucial we understand how these changes in inequality may affect how people think and behave. We propose that economic inequality threatens the social fabric of society...

In daily life, individuals compare their environmental behavior with specific others (e.g., friends, coworkers). We hypothesized that these moment-to-moment environmental social comparisons tend to be predominantly downward due to the moral nature of this domain. Three studies, including an experience sampling study, supported this hypothesis. Part...

Past research has been inconclusive regarding the continued existence of the sexual double standard (SDS)—that is, differential expectations and evaluations of sexual activity for men (rewarded for sexual activity) and women (punished for sexual activity). Here, we present the similarities and differences (S&D) model of sexual standards, which sign...

Past research has been inconclusive regarding the continued existence of the sexual double standard (SDS)—that is, differential expectations and evaluations of sexual activity for men (rewarded for sexual activity) and women (punished for sexual activity). Here, we present the similarities and differences (S&D) model of sexual standards, which sign...

Scientific information is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in science can help decision-makers act based on the best available evidence, especially during crises such as climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic 1,2. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low pub...

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and a...

Science is integral to society because it can inform individual, government, corporate, and civil society decision-making on issues such as climate change. Yet, public distrust and populist sentiment may challenge the relationship between science and society. To help researchers analyse the science society nexus across different cultural contexts,...

Scientific information is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in science can help decision-makers act based on the best available evidence, especially during crises such as climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public...

Throughout the 21st century, economic inequality is predicted to increase as we face new challenges, from changes in the technological landscape to the growing climate crisis. It is crucial we understand how these changes in inequality may affect how people think and behave. We propose that economic inequality threatens the social fabric of society...

In a preregistered ecological momentary intervention study, we alternately instructed participants to adopt an upward and downward comparison focus. In all, 349 participants reported 8,137 social comparison situations across 6 days and three comparison conditions (baseline, upward, downward). For each comparison, participants reported social compar...

For research purposes, it is generally accepted that experimental ostracism manipulations can lead to a reduction of participants’ well-being. To eventually restore participants’ well-being, researchers rely on post-experimental debriefings that discredit prior deception. However, evidence suggests that discredited beliefs can persevere. The presen...

Reproducible research and open science practices have the potential to accelerate scientific progress by allowing others to reuse research outputs, and by promoting rigorous research that is more likely to yield trustworthy results. However, these practices are uncommon in many fields, so there is a clear need for training that helps and encourages...

We examined whether mimicking an interaction partner is universally advantageous or, provided the mimicry is particularly strong, whether it has detrimental impacts on interpersonal and negotiation outcomes. Participants interacted with a confederate who engaged in no, subtle, or strong mimicry and then negotiated. In laboratory Experiment 1 (N = 7...

Effectively reducing climate change requires dramatic, global behavior change. Yet it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an e...

People are highly motivated to change their behavior. Unfortunately, many people have difficulty doing so. Building on recent theorizing, we propose that having access to a wide range of strategies – that is, a larger strategy repertoire – can help people achieve their goals. In eight samples across a variety of domains, participants (Ntotal = 2,34...

Despite a rich literature on goals, the notion of successful goal pursuit remains somewhat unclear. Most research on personal goal pursuit relies on subjective measures of goal progress and research that uses objective measures (e.g., grade point average) often ignores individuals’ idiosyncratic goals. The present research investigated the relation...

Several theoretical models describe two pathways linking self-control demands with subsequent goal violations. The volitional pathway suggests that these goal violations should be interpreted as failures, while the motivational pathway suggests an interpretation as decisions. In this article, we examined (a) which psychological processes may explai...

Across disciplines, researchers increasingly recognize that open science and reproducible research practices may accelerate scientific progress by allowing others to reuse research outputs and by promoting rigorous research that is more likely to yield trustworthy results. While initiatives, training programs, and funder policies encourage research...

Sexual motivation, the interest in sexual activity, affects people's thinking, feeling, and behavior. Common scales used to assess sexual motivation suffer from drawbacks that limit their validity and applicability. We therefore developed and validated the Trait Sexual Motivation Scale (TSMS), a brief, theory-driven self-report scale, over the cour...

Marketers' proclivity for just‐below prices (e.g., $9.99) is rooted in an expected higher demand than for round prices ($10.00). The literature, however, lacks a comprehensive assessment of when and how price endings matter. Three mechanisms might explain price‐ending effects on consumers' purchase decisions: just‐below prices (1) improve price per...

What are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles.' There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national explor...

People cooperate every day in ways that range from largescale contributions that mitigate climate change to simple actions such as leaving another individual with choice – known as social mindfulness. It is not yet clear whether and how these complex and more simple forms of cooperation relate. Prior work has found that countries with individuals w...

Self‐control is widely believed to be a valuable characteristic that contributes to leading a healthy, happy, and successful life through the effective pursuit of long‐term goals. Yet, despite a prolific literature spanning decades, essential questions about the conceptual nature of trait self‐control remain unanswered. Substantially different pers...

Exerting effort in a first task can impair self‐control performance in a subsequent task. Hundreds of studies have examined this ego depletion effect, but the underlying mechanisms are still unknown. By contrasting the two most prominent models, the strength model and the process model, the following question takes centre stage: Do participants fai...

While a great deal is known about the individual difference factors associated with conspiracy beliefs, much less is known about the country-level factors that shape people’s willingness to believe conspiracy theories. In the current article we discuss the possibility that willingness to believe conspiracy theories might be shaped by the perception...

Few spheres in life are as universally relevant for (almost) all individuals past puberty as sexuality. One important aspect of sexuality concerns individuals' sex drive-their dispositional sexual motivation. A vigorous scientific (and popular) debate revolves around the question of whether or not there is a gender difference in sex drive. Several...

Zusammenfassung. Das Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung möchte in Zukunft Wissenschaftskommunikation gezielter fördern. Dies passt zu einer kürzlich veröffentlichten Forderung des Wissenschaftsrats, der sich von wissenschaftlich arbeitenden Psycholog_innen mehr Wissenschaftskommunikation wünscht. Um Wissenschaftskommunikation gezielt förde...

While physical activity provides substantial health benefits, cardiac rehabilitation patients do not reach the recommended physical activity levels after discharge from clinics (1, 2). Traditional interventions providing knowledge about theses expected health benefits do not appear to be sufficient (3). Recent research on automatically activated pr...

The COVID‐19 pandemic constitutes a prolonged global crisis, but its effects on mental health seem inconsistent. This inconsistency highlights the importance of considering the differential impact of the pandemic on individuals. There is some evidence that mental health trajectories are heterogeneous and that both sociodemographic and personal char...

What are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles’. There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national explor...

Few spheres in life are as universally relevant for (almost) all individuals past puberty as sexuality. One important aspect of sexuality concerns individuals’ sex drive—their dispositional sexual motivation. A vigorous scientific (and popular) debate revolves around the question of whether or not there is a gender difference in sex drive. Several...

System justification is a widely researched topic in social and political psychology. One major measurement instrument in system justification research is the General System Justification Scale (G-SJS). This scale has been used, among others, for comparisons across social groups in different countries. Such comparisons rely on the assumption that t...

Self-control has predominantly been characterized as a domain-general individual difference, assuming that highly self-controlled individuals are generally, that is, irrespective of domain, better at resisting their desires. However, qualitative differences in the domains in which these desires emerge and how individuals interact with these domains...

Objective: Self-control is a meaningful predictor of crucial life outcomes. Knowingly, genes contribute substantially to differences in self-control, but behavioral genetic findings are often misinterpreted regarding environmental influences. Therefore, we reinvestigate the heritability of self-control as well as potential environmental influences...

Happiness is a valuable experience, and societies want their citizens to be happy. Although this societal commitment seems laudable, overly emphasizing positivity (versus negativity) may create an unattainable emotion norm that ironically compromises individual well-being. In this multi-national study (40 countries; 7443 participants), we investiga...

Overweight individuals often struggle to lose weight. While previous studies established goal setting as an effective strategy for weight loss, little is known about the effects of numeric goal precision. The present research investigated whether and how the precision of weight loss goals—the number of trailing zeros—impacts a goal’s effectiveness....

The COVID-19 lockdowns represent a major life event with an immense impact on university students' lives. Findings prior to the pandemic suggest that changes in personality and subjective well-being (SWB) can occur after critical life events or psychological interventions. The present study examined how university students' extraversion, neuroticis...

In the present chapter, we are going to discuss several p-hacking practices as part of the broader category of questionable research practices. It has become clear that p-hacking can have detrimental consequences—particularly an increase in false-positive rates—that ultimately damage the trustworthiness and robustness of psychological science. What...

Dieses Kapitel beschäftigt sich mit Verfahren, mit denen sich der statistische Zusammenhang von Merkmalen ausdrücken und statistisch bewerten lässt. Im ersten Hauptteil des Kapitels werden verschiedene Korrelationstechniken je nach Skalenniveau der untersuchten Variablen vorgestellt (z. B. Produkt-Moment-Korrelation, punktbiseriale Korrelation, Ran...

Dieses Kapitel geht näher auf die Verteilungseigenschaften gemessener Merkmale ein und legt damit den Grundstein für die sogenannte „schließende Statistik“. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Normalverteilung, die bei vielen statistischen Verfahren vorausgesetzt wird. Zunächst werden die Verteilungseigenschaften der Normalverteilung und die damit mögliche Be...

Dieser Kapitel behandelt den t-Test, ein zentrales statistisches Auswertungsverfahren für den Vergleich zweier Gruppenmittelwerte. Dabei wird zunächst ausführlich auf alle dem t-Test für unabhängige Stichproben zugrunde liegenden Annahmen (z. B. Nullhypothese versus Alternativhypothese), statistischen Konzepte (z. B. t-Verteilung, Freiheitsgrade) u...

Dieses Kapitel führt zunächst ein in die Organisation von Daten in einer Datenmatrix und die Darstellung von Daten mithilfe einfacher Diagrammtypen. Anschließend werden die verschiedenen Skalentypen (Nominalskala, Ordinalskala, Intervallskala, Verhältnisskala) vorgestellt und die ihnen zugrunde liegenden Annahmen diskutiert und verglichen. Der drit...

Dieses Kapitel behandelt die einfaktorielle Varianzanalyse (ANOVA), die sich zur statistischen Analyse der Mittelwertsunterschiede mehrerer Gruppen eignet. Zunächst wird das Grundprinzip der ANOVA verdeutlicht, die Zerlegung der Gesamtvarianz in systematische (Zwischenvarianz) und unsystematische Einflüsse (Residualvarianz). Daraus wird die statist...

Sogenannte nichtparametrische Verfahren werden verwendet, wenn die Intervallskalenqualität der Messwerte nicht gegeben ist. Dieses Kapitel stellt drei statistische Auswertungsverfahren vor, die sich auf die Analyse von Daten auf Ordinalskalenniveau beziehen: den U-Test für unabhängige Stichproben von Mann-Whitney (das Pendant zum t-Test für unabhän...

Dieses Kapitel führt ein in die Varianzanalyse mit Messwiederholung, einer Erweiterung des t-Tests für abhängige Stichproben (Kap. 3, Band 1). Dabei wird sowohl auf die einfaktorielle Varianzanalyse mit Messwiederholung als auch auf zweifaktorielle Versuchspläne mit Messwiederholung auf einem Faktor oder beiden Faktoren eingegangen. Für jeden diese...

Dieses Kapitel behandelt die Chi-Quadrat-Verfahren (χ²-Verfahren), eine Familie nichtparametrischer statistischer Verfahren, die sich zur Analyse (nominalskalierter) Häufigkeitsdaten eignen. Das gemeinsame Prinzip dieser Familie ist der Vergleich beobachteter und theoretisch erwarteter Häufigkeiten. Für drei typisch anzutreffende Verfahren (der ein...

Dieses Kapitel setzt sich mit der zweifaktoriellen Varianzanalyse auseinander, einer Erweiterung der einfaktoriellen Varianzanalyse um einen zusätzlichen Faktor. Zunächst werden die drei Arten von Effekten (Haupteffekt A, Haupteffekt B, Wechselwirkung A×B) und deren Prüfung auf Signifikanz erläutert sowie Effektstärke, Teststärkeanalyse und Stichpr...

A central Buddhist claim is that having desires causes suffering. While this tenet draws from the belief that an acute desire state is more momentarily aversive than a no-desire state, the efficacy of this belief has yet to be comprehensively examined. To empirically investigate this claim, we furnished data from two experience sampling studies acr...

Mindfulness is a hot topic in psychological research and the popular media. One central claim in the literature is that enhanced mindfulness fosters prosocial behavior. This article recapitulates what is currently known about this widespread claim. We first review theoretical perspectives on why enhanced mindfulness should foster prosocial behavior...

Interest in unintended discrimination that can result from implicit attitudes and stereotypes (implicit biases) has stimulated many research investigations. Much of this research has used the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure association strengths that are presumed to underlie implicit biases. It had been more than a decade since the last...

Mindfulness is a hot topic in psychological research and the popular media. One central claim in the literature is that enhanced mindfulness fosters prosocial behavior. This article recapitulates what is currently known about this widespread claim. We first review theoretical perspectives on why enhanced mindfulness should foster prosocial behavior...

Introduction Being physically active is associated with a wide range of health benefits in patients. However, many patients do not engage in the recommended levels of physical activity (PA). To date, interventions promoting PA in patients mainly rely on providing knowledge about the benefits associated with PA to develop their motivation to be acti...

Background Work-related stress shows steadily increasing prevalence rates and has tangible consequences for individual workers, their organizations, and society as a whole. One mechanism that may help offset the negative outcomes of work-related stress on employees’ well-being is recovery. Recovery refers to the experience of unwinding from one's j...

Any analysis of self-regulation that focuses solely on willpower in conflict-laden situations is insufficient. Research makes clear that the best way to reach one's goal is not to resist temptations but to avoid temptations before they arrive; it further suggests that willpower is fragile and not to be relied on; and that the best self-regulators e...

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) aims at promoting science communication in a more targeted way. This fits to a recently published demand by the German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat), which would like to see more science communication from psychologists working in science. To be able to promote science communication,...

Dieses Lehrbuch macht Dich fit für die Statistik-Prüfung – hier geht es um die Deskriptive Statistik sowie um die ersten Schritte in Inferenzstatistik, z.B. den t-Test. Also Dinge, die in vielen sozialwissenschaftlichen Studiengängen, wie z.B. Psychologie, Soziologie oder Erziehungswissenschaften, auf dem Lehrplan stehen. Vielen macht die Statistik...

Dieses Lehrbuch macht Dich fit für die Statistik-Prüfung – hier geht es u.a. um Varianzanalysen und Verfahren für Rang- und Nominaldaten. Also Dinge, die in vielen sozialwissenschaftlichen Studiengängen, wie z.B. Psychologie, Soziologie oder Erziehungswissenschaften, auf dem Lehrplan stehen. Mit diesem Buch wirst Du die Prüfung meistern, weil Dir h...

Any analysis of self-regulation that focuses solely on willpower in conflict-laden situations is insufficient. Research makes clear that the best way to reach one’s goal is not to resist temptations but to avoid temptations before they arrive; it further suggests that willpower is fragile and not to be relied on; and that the best self-regulators e...

We conducted a preregistered multi-laboratory project (k = 36; N = 3531) to assess the size and robustness of ego depletion effects using a novel replication method, termed the paradigmatic replication approach. Laboratories implemented one of two procedures that intended to manipulate self control and tested performance on a subsequent measure of...

Smartphones cause self-control challenges in people’s everyday lives. Supporting this notion, our studies corroborate that trait self-control is negatively associated (1) with students’ distraction (via smartphones) during their learning endeavors (Study 1, N = 446) and (2) with several aspects of problematic smartphone-use (Study 2, N = 421). Stud...

Smartphones cause self-control challenges in people’s everyday lives. Supporting this notion, our studies corroborate that trait self-control is negatively associated (1) with students’ distraction (via smartphones) during their learning endeavors (Study 1, N = 446) and (2) with several aspects of problematic smartphone-use (Study 2, N = 421). Stud...

Ego depletion effects are usually examined in a sequential task paradigm in which exerting mental effort in a first task is thought to affect performance on a subsequent self-control task. A so-called ego depletion effect is observed if performance on the second task is impaired for the high demand relative to the low demand group. The present stud...

A prominent, hotly debated idea—the “ego depletion” phenomenon—suggests that engaging in effortful, demanding tasks leads to poorer subsequent self-control performance. Several theories seek to explain the emergence of ego depletion effects. The two most prominent ones are the strength model of self-control (Baumeister & Vohs, 2016) and the process...

Moral vitalism refers to a tendency to view good and evil as actual forces that can influence people and events. The Moral Vitalism Scale had been designed to assess moral vitalism in a brief survey form. Previous studies established the reliability and validity of the scale in US-American and Australian samples. In this study, the cross-cultural c...

A prominent, hotly debated idea—the ‘ego depletion’ phenomenon—suggests that engaging in effortful, demanding tasks leads to poorer subsequent self-control performance. Several theories seek to explain the emergence of ego depletion effects. The two most prominent ones are the strength model of self-control (Baumeister & Vohs, 2016) and the process...

Ego depletion effects are usually examined in a sequential task paradigm in which exerting mental effort in a first task is thought to affect performance on a subsequent self-control task. A so-called ego depletion effect is observed if performance on the second task is impaired for the high demand relative to the low demand group. The present stud...

People feel tired or depleted after exerting mental effort. But even preregistered studies often fail to find effects of exerting effort on behavioral performance in the laboratory or elucidate the underlying psychology. We tested a new paradigm in four preregistered within-subjects studies (N = 686). An initial high-demand task reliably elicited v...