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The headwinds/tailwinds asymmetry: An availability bias in assessments of barriers and blessings
Abstract
Seven studies provide evidence of an availability bias in people’s assessments of the benefits they’ve enjoyed and the barriers they’ve faced. Barriers and hindrances command attention because they have to be overcome; benefits and resources can often be simply enjoyed and largely ignored. As a result of this “headwind/tailwind” asymmetry, Democrats and Republicans both claim that the electoral map works against them (Study 1), football fans take disproportionate note of the challenging games on their team’s schedules (Study 2), people tend to believe that their parents have been harder on them than their siblings are willing to grant (Study 3), and academics think that they have a harder time with journal reviewers, grant panels, and tenure committees than members of other subdisciplines (Study 7). We show that these effects are the result of the enhanced availability of people’s challenges and difficulties (Studies 4 and 5) and are not simply the result of self-serving attribution management (Studies 6 and 7). We also show that the greater salience of a person’s headwinds can lead people to believe they have been treated unfairly and, as a consequence, more inclined to endorse morally questionable behavior (Study 7). Our discussion focuses on the implications of the headwind/tailwind asymmetry for a variety of ill-conceived policy decisions.
... A characteristic is more likely to be salient when it is easily accessible in one's memory (Turner et al., 1987;van Knippenberg & Hogg, 2003). The leader's description of shared disadvantages in an underdog narrative activates the bias people have for attending to and remembering adversity (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016). ...
... Also, people are more inclined to recognize and remember adversity in their own lives than in the lives of others (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016), which enhances the likelihood of judging one's own organization as being disadvantaged when compared to a higher status referent. ...
... Conversely, an underdog organization that shows progress towards or successfully achieves its aspirations also faces an interesting conundrum. Experiencing success may violate 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 the sense of shared disadvantaged, which reduces the affective resonance of past collective hardship (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016;Ellemers et al., 2004;van Knippenberg & Hogg, 2003). ...
Underdog stories are ubiquitous––the disadvantaged and outmatched protagonist overcoming the odds. Leaders across industries, from telecom to sports, employ these narratives to inspire members of their organizations. However, little is understood about how underdog narratives influence the actions and attitudes of members of organizations. To address this gap, we explain how a leader’s communication of an underdog narrative may instill confidence in members of the organization that together they can overcome their shared disadvantage and achieve a clear set of organizational aspirations. In doing so, we introduce a conceptual model that draws on the sensemaking and social identity literatures to explain how a leader’s underdog narrative fosters the adoption of a collective underdog identity by members of an organization. Further, we explain that the specific attributes of the leader’s underdog narrative influence how this unique type of collective identity leads to varied outcomes for members of an organization. As such, this paper aims to contribute to the understanding and utilization of a prevalent but under-examined organizational phenomenon.
... and: 'How likely are you to take investment risks?' As the answers to such questions hold many implications for investment outcomes, this paper explores three potentially significant factors that may impact investment decision-making: (a) the level of confidence in abilities or self-rated performance (Guenther and Alicke [2010]); (b) perceptions of whether life supports success or the 'top dog versus underdog' bias (Davidai and Gilovich [2016]) and (c) the tendency to take risks or personal risk propensity (Hoffmann, Post, and Pennings [2015]). ...
... Over and above investors' views of their own performance, we might also ask whether they believe they have succeeded against all odds, or stated differently, succeeded without that having been likely. Davidai and Gilovich (2016) postulate that people remember the headwinds of their past experiences more poignantly than they do the tailwinds. This refers to a biased view that their lives had had more obstacles than success-enabling factors, also known as headwind-tailwind asymmetry. ...
... The sense that, compared to others, one has faced more salient barriers than enablers, describes underdog bias. Under this bias one remembers the difficulties along one's life path more acutely that the positive events due to the effort to overcome difficulties (Davidai and Gilovich [2016]). Underdog bias aligns closely to availability bias where the most salient information in one's memory gains the greatest importance in decisions. ...
... This idea is related to the shared-circumstance effect (Moore & Kim, 2003;Windschitl, Kruger, & Simms, 2003). Work on the shared-circumstance effect and related phenomena suggests that people in a competition are often egocentric in how they consider salient, shared circumstances when estimating their likelihood of winning (Camerer & Lovallo, 1999;Davidai & Gilovich, 2016;Larrick, Burson, & Soll, 2007;Moore, 2005;Moore & Kim, 2003;Windschitl et al., 2003;Windschitl, Rose, Stalkfleet, & Smith, 2008). Depending on whether the circumstance is a shared benefit (i.e., generally helps performances) or a 5 Preliminary analyses that included the counterbalancing factor for the order of low-and high-stochasticity races did not reveal findings that substantially changed the main conclusions here or in subsequent studies, so we omitted counterbalancing as a factor in the analyses we describe. ...
... The rationale for our prediction was based in the biased-guessing account (Windschitl et al., 2010); we thought stochasticity would allow a person to give an optimistic prediction as a guess, even when their preferred car was viewed as slower than the alternative car. After failing to detect the expected Stochasticity x Desirability interactions in Studies 1 and 1.1, we speculated about a countervailing force related to sharedcircumstance effects (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016;Moore & Kim, 2003;Windschitl et al., 2003). Namely, we posited that a relatively high level of stochasticity (i.e., many bumps and obstacles on the racecourse) was being interpreted as an adversity that some people would view egocentrically, thereby reducing optimism about winning (and mitigating any optimistic boost from stochasticity). ...
The desirability bias (or wishful thinking effect) refers to when a person's desire regarding an event's occurrence has an unwarranted, optimistic influence on expectations about that event. Past experimental tests of this effect have been dominated by paradigms in which uncertainty about the target event is purely stochastic—i.e., involving only aleatory uncertainty. In six studies, we detected desirability biases using two new paradigms in which people made predictions about events for which their uncertainty was both aleatory and epistemic. We tested and meta-analyzed the impact of two potential moderators: the strength of evidence and the level of stochasticity. In support of the first moderator hypothesis, desirability biases were larger when people were making predictions about events for which the evidence for the possible outcomes was of similar strength (vs. not of similar strength). Regarding the second moderator hypothesis, the overall results did not support the notion that the desirability bias would be larger when the target event was higher vs. lower in stochasticity, although there was some significant evidence for moderation in one of the two paradigms. The findings broaden the generalizability of the desirability bias in predictions, yet they also reveal boundaries to an account of how stochasticity might provide affordances for optimistically biased predictions.
... The hypothetical opposite of egocentric impact perception is allocentric impact perception or the perception that others are more impacted than the self. Egocentric impact perception has been measured by eliciting relative or absolute impact judgments or by inviting people to generate reasons for failures in competitions (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016). ...
... Illusory superiority is also general across ages, genders, cultures, and comparison dimensions (Sedikides et al., 2003(Sedikides et al., , 2007, including health behaviour (Hoorens & Harris, 1998). Fewer studies have focused on egocentric impact perception, but it has similarly been demonstrated across genders, ages, contexts, and types of circumstances (Blanton et al., 2001;Chambers et al., 2003a;Davidai & Gilovich, 2016). ...
We examined perceived self-other differences (self-uniqueness) in appraisals of one's risk of an infectious disease (COVID-19), one's adherence to behavioural precautionary measures against the disease, and the impact of these measures on one's life. We also examined the relationship of self-uniqueness with information seeking and trust in sources of information about the disease. We administered an online survey to a community sample (N = 8696) of Dutch-speaking individuals, mainly in Belgium and The Netherlands, during the first lockdown (late April-Mid June 2020). As a group, participants reported that they were less likely to get infected or infect others or to suffer severe outcomes than average (unrealistic optimism) and that they adhered better than average to behavioural precautionary measures (illusory superiority). Except for participants below 25, who reported that they were affected more than average by these measures (egocentric impact bias), participants also generally reported that they were less affected than average (allocentric impact bias). Individual differences in self-uniqueness were associated with differences in the number of information sources being used and trust on these sources. Higher comparative optimism for infection, self-superiority, and allocentric impact perception were associated with information being sought from fewer sources; higher self-superiority and egocentric impact perception were associated with lower trust. We discuss implications for health communication.
... First, people are more psychologically impacted by their losses than their equivalent gains (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979;Ruggeri et al., 2020), pay closer attention to negative than positive information (Baumeister et al., 2001;Rozin & Royzman, 2001), disproportionately focus on the potential downsides of their economic transactions (Kahneman et al., 1991), and compare themselves to better-off rather than worse-off others (Davidai & Deri, 2019;Davidai et al., 2020;Deri et al., 2017;Putnam-Farr & Morewedge, 2021). At the same time, people are sensitive to how well others are doing and are more likely to notice, attend to, and remember others' benefits and advantages than difficulties and disadvantages (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016;Hansson et al., 2021). ...
... In addition, Study 4 examines whether feeling threatened by others' success moderates zero-sum beliefs. As discussed above, people feel threatened when their losses coincide with others' gains and often view others' advantages as their disadvantages (e.g., Crusius & Lange, 2014;Davidai & Gilovich, 2016). Consequently, feeling threatened may lead people to view others' success as coming at their own expense (Esses et al., 2010). ...
Zero-sum beliefs reflect the perception that one party’s gains are necessarily offset by another party’s losses.Although zero-sum relationships are, from a strictly theoretical perspective, symmetrical, we find evidence for asymmetrical zero-sum beliefs: The belief that others gain at one’s own expense, but not vice versa. Across various contexts (international relations, interpersonal negotiations, political partisanship, organizational hierarchies) and research designs (within-and between-participant), we find that people are more prone to believe that others’ success comes at their own expense than they are to believe that their own success comes at others’ expense. Moreover, we find that people exhibit asymmetric zero-sum beliefs only when thinking about how their own party relates to other parties but not when thinking about how other parties relate to each other. Finally, we find that this effect is moderated by how threatened people feel by others’ success and that reassuring people about their party’s strengths eliminates asymmetric zero-sum beliefs. We discuss the theoretical contributions of our findings to research on interpersonal and intergroup zero-sum beliefs and their implications for understanding when and why people view life as zero-sum
... Yet, because people's ability to form positively-biased self-perceptions is constrained by the availability of evidence to support such rosy self-views ( Pyszczynski and Greenberg, 1987 ), they often search for and attend to information in a manner that bolsters such beliefs. As a consequence, people tend to exhibit better memory for the obstacles and disadvantages they have overcome than the advantages and privileges from which they have benefited ( Davidai and Gilovich, 2016 ). In competitive contexts, this may lead people to believe that they have unfairly faced bigger obstacles than their competitors. ...
... Participants received a point if they were able to complete each of the two tasks within the allotted 30 s. Based on the design of previous studies (which find that people overestimate the number of difficult tasks they encounter; Davidai and Gilovich, 2016 ), all participants were presented with an equal number of easy (12) and difficult (12) tasks. ...
Inaccurate beliefs about procedural fairness often motivate people to act in self-serving and selfish manners. We investigate whether information about a level playing field might mitigate such behaviors. In a pre-registered behavioral experiment (n = 444), using a competitive and real-effort task, we manipulate whether participants are informed about the fairness of a competition or not. Following the competition, participants (who either won or lost the competition) decided how to distribute earnings between themselves and their opponent. We show that informing participants about the fairness of the competition reduces selfish behavior among losers, while behavior among winners remains unaffected. Moreover, we show that losers who were not informed about the fairness of the competition incorrectly viewed it as having been unfairly stacked against them (i.e., believing that they encountered significantly more difficult tasks than their opponents). Our findings suggest that information about a level playing field reduces selfish behavior and is important for understanding when and why motivated reasoning about procedural fairness helps people uphold a positive self-image.
... People in general attend to the barriers that they have to overcome more than the blessings they enjoy. In other words, headwinds are more salient than tailwinds (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016). This headwind/tailwind asymmetry has been documented in various contexts: Democrats and Republicans both see the electoral map working more against them than for them; academics think they face more hurdles than their colleagues in other subdisciplines; people believe they have faced harsher parental treatment than their siblings. ...
... Notably, it is not that people are merely self-serving. In a trivia contest, people actually remembered more difficulties stacked against them than their opponents instead of just claiming them (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016). Barriers require attention to overcome and demand effort and cognitive resources. ...
... Firstly, there is more agreement between sources on factors that lead to failure than on factors that lead to success (which is evident when comparing Supplementary Tables S1 and S2 in the Supplemental data); and, secondly, there is more research focused on failure factors than success factors. This is likely due to a known cognitive bias whereby positive outcomes (tailwinds) attract little attention after the fact, while negative circumstances (headwinds) demand attention (Davidai and Gilovich 2016). Davidai and Gilovich (2016) label this phenomenon the headwind/tailwind asymmetry. ...
... This is likely due to a known cognitive bias whereby positive outcomes (tailwinds) attract little attention after the fact, while negative circumstances (headwinds) demand attention (Davidai and Gilovich 2016). Davidai and Gilovich (2016) label this phenomenon the headwind/tailwind asymmetry. This highlights the need for more detailed discussion of solutions to improve project performance, rather than simply describing failures. ...
Improving the quality of infrastructure is crucial for sustainable development. Providing infrastructure faces many challenges – both financially and in terms of how projects are delivered. This is particularly apparent for developing countries. This research aims to (a) determine the key factors influencing the successful delivery of infrastructure projects, (b) provide an example of these factors as manifested on an important Ecuadorian flood control and irrigation infrastructure project and (c) identify key learnings for future projects in similar contexts. Many of the key failure factors identified in the literature were evident on the example project, validating the literature findings and indicating that the learnings may be relevant to the context of developing countries more widely. These factors included insufficient planning, unrealistic estimates, poor stakeholder communication, bureaucracy, insufficient ground investigation and an inadequate project delivery system. Addressing these issues is an important step towards improving infrastructure delivery in developing countries.
... To the extent that individuals believe that their own idiosyncratic financial constraints are more exceptional than others (cf. Davidai & Gilovich, 2016), they may feel even more justified in donating very little in the present. If so, individuals may maintain the belief that they are generous without actually contributing much to charity, continually "passing the buck" to wealthier others or to their future, wealthier selves. ...
... Research shows that people tend to be more sensitive to the barriers they have faced than the blessings they have received, and furthermore believe that they have confronted greater barriers than others have. For example, both Democrats and Republicans are more likely to believe that the Electoral College harms their party more than it helps them, and individuals are more likely to feel that their parents were harsher on them than on their siblings (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016). Just as people believe their contributions to joint efforts are greater than others (Ross & Sicoly, 1979), individuals may feel that their personal sacrifices in support of organizations are more burdensome than those made by others. ...
... People in general attend to the barriers that they have to overcome more than the blessings they enjoy. In other words, headwinds are more salient than tailwinds (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016). This headwind/tailwind asymmetry has been documented in various contexts: Democrats and Republicans both see the electoral map working more against them than for them; academics think they face more hurdles than their colleagues in other subdisciplines; people believe they have faced harsher parental treatment than their siblings. ...
... Notably, it is not that people are merely self-serving. In a trivia contest, people actually remembered more difficulties stacked against them than their opponents instead of just claiming them (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016). Barriers require attention to overcome and demand effort and cognitive resources. ...
Are members of socially dominant groups aware of the privileges they enjoy? We address this question by applying the notion of hypocognition to social privilege. Hypocognition is defined as lacking a rich cognitive or linguistic representation (i.e., a schema) of a concept in question. By social privilege, we refer to advantages that members of dominant social groups enjoy because of their group membership. We argue that such group members are hypocognitive of the privilege they enjoy. They have little cognitive representation of it. As a consequence, their social advantage is invisible to them.
... This is done by shifting attention to what is good and what is working well in people's lives. Furthermore, gratitude can help overcome the tendency of individuals to downplay the experience of blessings relative to others, which can lead to resentment and envy of others' good fortune (Davidai and Gilovich 2016). ...
Mindsets brought to the marketplace by consumers determine the decisions they make and, ultimately, their well‐being. Mindsets based on a comprehensive set of mindfulness skills can provide a broader lens to understanding life's varied situations to make better choices. Considering research on mindfulness and Buddhist psychology, this study introduced an expanded mindful mindset comprising nine mindfulness skills: awareness, compassion for others, self‐compassion, curiosity, energy, gratitude, inner calm, focus, and discernment. A national online survey, along with structural equation modeling, was conducted to examine differences in the narrower and expanded mindful mindsets and the relative contribution of the nine mindfulness skills to address stress and life satisfaction. The study found that a different set of mindfulness skills was required for life satisfaction and stress‐reduction. Energy had the greatest impact on life satisfaction, and self‐compassion had the greatest impact on stress reduction. Finally, the implications of an expanded mindful mindset were discussed. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
... Participants reported that the precautions had generally affected them more than average, and that getting COVID-19 would affect their lives more than average. These findings are novel for COVID-19, but are consistent with the egocentric impact bias found in other contexts (Blanton et al., 2001;Davidai and Gilovich, 2016). Yet, we also found evidence for an allocentric impact bias. ...
Rationale
Research on health-related self-uniqueness beliefs suggested that these beliefs might predict adherence to precautions against COVID-19.
Objective
We examined if comparative optimism (believing that one is less at less than others), self-superiority (believing that one already adheres better to precautions than others), and egocentric impact perception (believing that adverse events affect oneself more than others) predicted intended adherence to precautions.
Method
We measured self-reported intentions, optimism for self and others, perceived past adherence by self and others, and perceived impact of the measures and the disease on self and others in a 5-wave longitudinal study in December 2020–May 2021 (N ≈ 5000/wave). The sample was in key respects representative for the Belgian population. We used joint models to examine the relationship between self-uniqueness beliefs and intended adherence to the precautions.
Results
Believing that COVID-19 would affect one's own life more than average (egocentric impact perception) was associated with higher intentions to adhere to precautions, as was believing that the precautions affected one's life less than average (allocentric impact perception). Self-superiority concerning past adherence to precautions and comparative optimism concerning infection with COVID-19 were associated with higher intended adherence, regardless of whether their non-comparative counterparts (descriptive norm, i.e., perceived adherence to precautions by others, and personal optimism, respectively) were controlled for. Comparative optimism for severe disease and for good outcome were associated with lower intended adherence if personal optimism was not controlled for, but with higher intended adherence if it was controlled for.
Conclusion
Self-uniqueness beliefs predict intended adherence to precautions against COVID-19, but do so in different directions.
... Our prediction is consistent with research on the disproportionate attentional pull of negative stimuli (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001;Pratto & John, 1991;Yechiam & Hochman, 2013). People are attuned to the disadvantages they face rather than the advantages from which they benefit (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016;Hansson, Persson, Davidai, & Tinghög, 2021) and notice others who are better-off than themselves rather than those who are worse-off (Davidai & Deri, 2019;Morewedge, Zhu, & Buechel, 2019). Since people may see higherranked competitors as a threat to their ranking, they may view those competitors as a source of negative information that merits special attention (Ledgerwood & Boydstun, 2014;Pettit, Yong, & Spataro, 2010;Sparks & Ledgerwood, 2017). ...
Rankings, hierarchies, and competitions are an integral part of peoples' personal and professional lives and knowing one's standing vis-à-vis others helps employees decide how to outdo higher-ranked colleagues and how to refrain from being outdone by lower-ranked others. But whom do people attend to when considering these rankings? In seven studies (and five supplementary studies; N = 4496) we document a robust asymmetry in attention to higher-ranked versus lower-ranked competitors. First, using unobtrusive measures, we show that people attend more to and exhibit better memory for their higher-ranked (vs. lower-ranked) peers. Second, we demonstrate that this asymmetry is reduced when attention is shifted to lower-ranked competitors, and is moderated by participants' own standing. Finally, we find that asymmetrically attending to higher-ranked others leads people to overestimate minority representation in rankings and to make suboptimal financial decisions. We discuss implications for social comparison theory, workplace rankings, and the psychology of competition.
... Longitudinal analysis has shown that gratitude is associated with a number of positive traits such as increases in self-esteem, satisfaction with life and fewer symptoms of depression [21,22], suggesting that as well as positive physical change, modulator therapy may also enhance an individual's mental well-being. As in Davidai and Gilovich [23], CF forced individuals to focus on the obstacles and difficulties in life, given that they demanded immediate action. Kaftrio represented a metaphorical tailwind, in which individuals were given a reprieve [24] and a chance to focus on the things in life that bring them positive emotions. ...
Background:
Modulator therapy represents a significant step forward in CF care and is expected to have a significant impact on the health and mortality of many individuals with CF. Studies have predominantly explored the physiological effects of modulator therapy on clinical outcomes, with little consideration of the individual lived experience of modulator therapy among adults with Cystic Fibrosis.
Methods:
To explore this, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 individuals currently taking Kaftrio, which were subsequently thematically analysed.
Results:
Three overarching themes were identified: (i) positive perception of Kaftrio, (ii) negative perception of Kaftrio, and (iii) the relationships with the clinical team. The experience of modulator therapy should be recognised as being unique to the individual, with perceptions of illness, self-identity, and outcomes strongly dictating the lived experience.
Conclusions:
There is a consensus that, while for many, the quality of life is evidently increased through the use of Kaftrio, this is not without its own challenges. This highlights the need for both individuals with CF and their clinical teams to learn to navigate this new disease landscape.
... As it pertains to charitable giving, that heuristic might look like substituting the question ''do I like this cause'' for the harder question of whether we want do donate to the cause. Alternatively, Davidai and Gilovich (2016) propose a headwinds/tailwinds hypothesis wherein a cognitive bias towards focusing on challenges and impediments (i.e. headwinds) crowds out the acknowledgment of benefits and external support (i.e. ...
Many important social and political goals are at least partially funded by charitable donations (e.g. environmental, public health, and educational). Recently a number of laboratory experiments have shown that a potential donor’s incidental emotions—those felt at the time of the decision but unrelated to the decision itself—are important factors. We extend these findings by examining the effect of incidental emotions on charitable giving using a natural field experiment, where the potential donors are unaware of the intervention. In partnership with a pledge drive at a small national liberal arts college, we demonstrate that participants who were asked to recall a person or event that has benefited them since graduating, pledged larger amounts (an increase of 92%) compared to the control group, although the probability of making a pledge was statistically no different.
... but it has similarly been demonstrated across genders, ages, contexts, and types of circumstances (Blanton et al., 2001;Chambers et al., 2003a;Davidai & Gilovich, 2016). ...
This is the manuscript of the paper "Comparative Optimism, Self-Superiority, Egocentric Impact Perception and Health Information Seeking: A COVID-19 Study", which was accepted for publication in Psychologica Belgica on 21 March 2022. It has not been copy-edited and may differ from the published version. Thus, it is not the version of reference.
... Men eftersom förmågan att skapa en positiv själv uppfattning är begränsad av de tillgängliga bevis man har för att upprätt hålla sådana förskönande självbilder (Pyszczynski och Greenberg 1987), söker individer efter och tar till sig information som upprätthåller sådana övertygelser. Som en konsekvens har människor bättre minne av sina nack delar och de motgångar som har övervunnits, än de fördelar och privilegier som de har dragit nytta av (Davidai och Gilovich 2016). I konkurrensutsatta kontexter kan detta leda till att människor tror att de har stött på större hin der än deras konkurrenter. ...
Att felaktigt uppfatta en tävling som orättvis kan få människor att agera själviskt.
I ett experiment undersökte vi hur information om att en tävling var rättvis
påverkar själviskt beteende. Försöksdeltagarna tävlade i par och hälften av
deltagarna fick information om att tävlingen var rättvis. Efter tävlingen avgjorts
kunde förloraren ta pengar från vinnaren och vinnaren kunde ge pengar till förloraren.
Resultaten visar att informationen om tävlingens rättvisa minskade själviskt
beteende bland de som förlorade tävlingen (förlorarna tog mindre), medan
vinnarnas beteende inte påverkades. Studien visar på vikten av att stärka människors
övertygelser om rättvisa för att förhindra själviskt och oetiskt beteende.
... First, the inconsistency between seeing others as better-off yet seeing oneself as more intelligent, competent, and hardworking (Alicke & Govorun, 2005;Dunning et al., 2004) can create a cognitive dissonance that people seek to resolve. To do so, people may focus on difficulties that have held them back (i.e., resolving the dissonance by seeing themselves as having faced more hardships than others; e.g., Davidai & Gilovich, 2016;Hansson et al., 2021) as well as on how the social system is rigged against them (i.e., resolving the dissonance by seeing the entire system as unjust). Consequently, by focusing people on the difficulties they face and the lack of justice in society, relative deprivation may foster the belief that success is zero-sum, giving people an explanation for how seemingly intelligent and hardworking individuals like them can still be deprived of better outcomes. ...
Why do people view economic success as zero-sum? In seven studies (including a large, nationally representative sample of more than 90,000 respondents from 60 countries), we explore how personal relative deprivation influences zero-sum thinking-the belief that one person's gains can only be obtained at other people's expense. We find that personal relative deprivation fosters a belief that economic success is zero-sum, and that this is true regardless of participants' household income, political ideology, or subjective social class. Moreover, in a large and preregistered study, we find that the effect of personal relative deprivation on zero-sum thinking is mediated by lay perceptions of society. The more people see themselves as having been unfairly disadvantaged relative to others, the more they view the world as unjust and economic success as determined by external forces beyond one's control. In turn, these cynical views of society lead people to believe that economic success is zero-sum. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on social comparisons, the distribution of resources, and the psychological consequences of feeling personally deprived. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
... Can they change attitudes about inequality and redistribution? Alternatively, would the pandemic's economic fallout amplify people's focus on their own personal hardships (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016;Sanchez & Gilovich, 2020), even when these hardships are commonly shared by others? Protests against racial inequality have also been prevalent during the pandemic-will these movements yield an enduring shift in perceptions of inequality, racial or otherwise? ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic’s wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon—an event that hinges on human-to-human contact—we focus on socially relevant subfields of psychology. We highlight specific psychological phenomena that have likely shifted as a result of the pandemic and discuss theoretical, methodological, and practical considerations of conducting research on these phenomena. After this discussion, we evaluate metascientific issues that have been amplified by the pandemic. We aim to demonstrate how theoretically grounded views on the COVID-19 pandemic can help make psychological science stronger—not weaker—in its wake.
... This viewpoint would seem to be partially driven by the news media, which by its nature focuses on unusual events, such as war, famine, disasters, and extreme suffering as opposed to more common events which have positive results, such as seeing more people finding and holding steady jobs and having the ability to provide more formal education for their children (Rönnlund & Rosling, 2018). Psychological research shows individuals when making decisions and forming opinions tend to place more emphasis on easy accessible information, such as information one has been exposed to by the news media (Tversky & Kahneman,1973), negative information (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016), and examples of extreme and unusual events (Lieder, Griffiths, & Hsu, 2017). These naturally occurring biases could help explain some of the negative viewpoints many individuals and scholars have of current global economic conditions and trends. ...
The paper explores and compares the perceptions of workers in the tourism industry in Thailand in foreign-owned and locally-owned firms in order to provide an underrepresented perspective to be used in the debate over whether international trade and tourism primarily exploits workers or provides valuable opportunities. A matched-pairs comparative analysis was used, and it was found that employees in both locally-owned and foreign-owned firms generally expressed high levels of job satisfaction, although employees in foreign-owned firms expressed statistically significant higher levels of job satisfaction than did employees in locally owned firms. In debates over whether exploitation or opportunities are created by international trade, foreign investment, and tourism, the viewpoints and perspectives of the workers are often overlooked. The paper intends to help bring into the debate the perspectives of individuals who are most directly affected by these activities.
... When asked to assess one's susceptibility to a particular illness, a stereotypical image of a high risk-group may come to mind (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016;Weinstein, 1980;Weinstein & Klein, 1995). This sets a process of social comparison in motion, assessing how similar or dissimilar this stereotype is to oneself (Wood, 1995). ...
People's perceived susceptibility to illnesses plays a key role in determining whether or not to take protective measures. However, self-enhancing biases hinder accurate susceptibility perceptions, leaving some individuals to feel invulnerable in the face of acute health risks. Since such biases are prominent characteristics of individuals with narcissistic personality traits, this article empirically examined whether low perceived susceptibility of infection with COVID-19 is related to subclinical narcissism, as measured with the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI-16) and the Narcissism Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (NARQ). We report the findings from a worldwide sample (N = 244), a UK sample before governmental pandemic restrictions (N = 261), a UK sample after restrictions (N = 261) and a pooled data analysis (N = 766). Overall, grandiose narcissism as measured with the NPI-16 predicted lower perceived susceptibility of infection, also after controlling for age and gender, whereas the NARQ Admiration subscale predicted higher perceived susceptibility. The findings are discussed in the light of theoretical and policy implications.
... The existence of the availability bias in individual judgments is not unique to auditors. The pattern of relationship between the availability heuristic and bias has also been documented in previous studies examining judgments and decisions in various contexts (Davidai and Gilovich, 2016). ...
Professional judgement is inherent in financial statement audits because various methods, techniques, or approaches prescribed in auditing standards do not provide auditors with detailed guidance or specific audit criteria. While auditors are expected to exercise their judgements based on careful reasoning, there is a possibility that they do not always follow such an approach and instead make their judgements using heuristics. This study aims to penetrate and reveal whether there are cognitive biases in the judgements of auditors and what heuristics lead to these biases. This study employs a qualitative research design and uses ethnomethodology as a research approach. Data were collected using in-depth semi-structured interviews with 15 auditors who were either partners, managers, seniors, or juniors at a public accounting firm. Using the heuristic-bias framework as a theoretical lens and based on an analysis involving data condensation, data display, and conclusion drawing and verification, this study identifies five types of biases that auditors can experience: jumping to conclusions, groupthink, representativeness, availability, and anchoring biases. The results of this study present practical implications for auditors, accounting professional associations, public accounting firms, and academic institutions. That is, the findings provide insights for formulating strategies aimed at raising auditors’ awareness about possible systematic errors, or biases, in professional judgements when auditors rely on heuristics as a simplifying judgement-making strategy.
... Second, people may be particularly committed to the role of dispositional factors (for example, merit) in determining economic outcomes, rendering them resistant to intervention. Situational factors, however, may be more malleable, particularly given humans' sensitivity to situational obstacles to success 54 . Raising awareness of situational barriers may thus be an effective and non-threatening route to highlight economic unfairness and increase opposition to economic inequality. ...
The novel Coronavirus that spread around the world in early 2020 triggered a global pandemic and economic downturn that affected nearly everyone. Yet the crisis had a disproportionate impact on the poor and revealed how easily working-class individuals' financial security can be destabilised by factors beyond personal control. In a pre-registered longitudinal study of Americans (N = 233) spanning April 2019 to May 2020, we tested whether the pandemic altered beliefs about the extent to which poverty is caused by external forces and internal dispositions and support for economic inequality. Over this timespan, participants revealed a shift in their attributions for poverty, reporting that poverty is more strongly impacted by external-situational causes and less by internal-dispositional causes. However, we did not detect an overall mean-level change in opposition to inequality or support for government intervention. Instead, only for those who most strongly recognized the negative impact of COVID-19 did changes in poverty attributions translate to decreased support for inequality, and increased support for government intervention to help the poor.
... Nor do I suggest that subordinate groups are immune to hypocognition. Each social group has its blind spot of what barriers other groups encounter (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016). However, the social dominance literature has documented that part of having social privilege as a member of the dominant group is to have their identity viewed as normative standard (Pratto & Stewart, 2012) and to hold more power in society (Fiske, 2001). ...
This dissertation examines hypocognition, a phenomenon in which people lack cognitive or linguistic representations of concepts to describe ideas or interpret experiences. Chapter 1 presents a theoretical review of hypocognition and its implications for perception, affect, and behavior. Drawing from the cross-cultural and expertise literatures, I describe how hypocognition impoverishes one’s mental world, leaving cognitive deficits in recognition, explanation, and remembering while fueling cultural chauvinism and social conflict. Chapter 2 empirically demonstrates the cognitive consequences of hypocognition. In six studies, I show how hypocognition degrades identification, recognition, and memory of fundamental information in one’s living environment. Chapter 3 explores the social implications of hypocognition. Eight studies point to hypocognition as a cognitive blind spot underlying the invisibility of one’s social privilege and denial of discrimination. Chapter 4 discusses future directions and explores whether hypocognition can be motivated, where it originates, and its implications with regard to public health and sustainability. I end with a caution against going too far to reduce hypocognition and risking its opposite, hypercognition––overapplying a familiar concept to circumstances where it does not belong.
... This was supported in Studies 2A and 2B, where participants' free (Study 2A) and scale responses (Study 2A and 2B) indicated they believed poor targets had better (i.e., more exculpatory) reasons than wealthy targets to keep money a coworker had lost. In Study 2B, consistent with recent work showing that perceiving difficulties ("headwinds") for the self leads to greater moral self-licensing (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016), when participants learned a transgressor was poor, they also discounted their moral judgments (e.g., Kelley, 1972), suggesting that poverty exculpated financial crimes. Importantly, this judgment gap persisted even when financial need was equated to some extent (i.e., in Study 2B; see also the online supplemental material) and was similar in magnitude whether or not targets were compensated for beating up a stranger (Study 3), also emerging for nonfinancial transgressions (Studies 4A, 5, and 6). ...
Poor people are punished more frequently and more severely than are wealthy people for their transgressions, suggesting that an agent’s wealth affects how they are morally evaluated. To our knowledge, this has not been tested empirically. An initial study found that people expect the poor to be judged more harshly than the wealthy. Several other experiments consistently found that the reverse was true: Poor targets were judged as less immoral than wealthy targets for the same moral violations. Explanations of this wealth-based moral judgment gap were explored, including differences in descriptive/
prescriptive expectations, global anti-wealthy or pro-poor biases, and differences in how people understand and explain the behavior of wealthy and poor moral transgressors. Although the moral judgment gap is likely multiply determined, poor targets were consistently viewed as having better reasons than the wealthy to act badly. Thus, the immoral behavior of poor targets was attributed to situational factors and was discounted, whereas wealthy targets’ behavior was perceived as less excusable
and was attributed primarily to bad moral character. A final study extended our findings to the domain of prosocial behavior. Consistent with a reasons-based explanation, poor targets were viewed as having better moral character than wealthy targets when their behavior benefited others, and wealthy targets were viewed as having more extrinsic reasons to behave prosocially.
... Second, people may be particularly committed to the role of dispositional factors (for example, merit) in determining economic outcomes, rendering them resistant to intervention. Situational factors, however, may be more malleable, particularly given humans' sensitivity to situational obstacles to success 54 . Raising awareness of situational barriers may thus be an effective and non-threatening route to highlight economic unfairness and increase opposition to economic inequality. ...
... Simply stated, extreme exemplars tend to be highly accessible precisely because they are extreme (Morewedge et al., 2005). Their extremity not only makes them more likely to command initial attention, but also more likely to elicit deeper processing because it demands more of us (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016). An extremely talkative person can "take all of the air out of the room" (leaving us struggling with how to fit in), an exceptionally talented athlete gets most of the coach's attention (leaving us struggling to make a favorable impression), and, as many researchers are quick to point out, highly published colleagues attract more job offers, speaking invitations, and funding opportunities (leaving us to worry about our own career prospects). ...
We examine how self-assessments are influenced by readily-accessible extreme exemplars that embody specific traits, skills, or behavioral tendencies. Because individuals who live especially active and adventurous lives are so noticeable, they tend to spring to mind and serve as benchmarks for self-evaluation, and thereby encourage people to feel that they aren’t getting as much out of life as they should. This is part of a more general psychological phenomena whereby highly accessible extreme benchmarks negatively influence self-assessments. In four studies, we find that when such extreme exemplars are likely to spring to mind, people tend to see themselves as lagging behind others. In contrast, when extreme exemplars are not readily available, self-assessments tend to be more positive.
... Researchers call this headwinds/tailwinds asymmetry. Tailwinds are things that help businesses thrive and which are difficult to notice, and headwinds that are challenges, such as taxes and regulations, are more visible and memorable (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016). Many economic success stories stem from team efforts, so people taking full responsibility for their own success are taking more credit than they deserve (Frank, 2016). ...
Discourses about people who are rich and those who are poor are pervasive in our society. Online news media is one of the ways in which these power dominated messages are disseminated. Forty online news articles from four major news outlets in Canada were examined using Critical Discourse Analysis. Questions about how the language used in these news articles perpetuates stigma for people who are poor
were explored. The findings show that most news articles use some form of stigmatizing language that has a detrimental impact on how people living in poverty are perceived. Negative stereotypes were pervasive, especially in the more conservative leaning news organizations. Ways of changing this language, and methods for reducing stigma are investigated.
... Second, people may be particularly committed to the role of dispositional factors (for example, merit) in determining economic outcomes, rendering them resistant to intervention. Situational factors, however, may be more malleable, particularly given humans' sensitivity to situational obstacles to success 54 . Raising awareness of situational barriers may thus be an effective and non-threatening route to highlight economic unfairness and increase opposition to economic inequality. ...
Amidst rising economic inequality and mounting evidence of its pernicious social effects, what motivates opposition to inequality? Five studies (n = 34,442) show that attributing poverty to situational forces is associated with greater concern about inequality, preference for egalitarian policies and inequality-reducing behaviour. In Study 1, situational attributions for poverty were associated with reduced support for inequality across 34 countries. Study 2 replicated these findings with a nationally representative sample of Americans. Three experiments then tested whether situational attributions for poverty are malleable and motivate egalitarianism. Bolstering situational attributions for poverty through a writing exercise (Study 3) and a computer-based poverty simulation (Studies 4a and b) increased egalitarian action and reduced support for inequality immediately (Studies 3 and 4b), 1 d later and 155 d post-intervention (Study 4b). Causal attributions for poverty offer one accessible means of shaping inequality-reducing attitudes and actions. Situational attributions may be a potent psychological lever for lessening societal inequality. Piff and Wiwad et al. find that attributing poverty to situational forces is associated with greater concern for inequality, and three experiments reveal that increasing situational attributions for poverty motivates egalitarianism up to 5 months later.
... Roads that are full of potholes, long lines at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and incompetent, lazy, or corrupt public officials command citizens' attention more than smooth roads, efficient lines, or effective public servants. The former constitute barriers to what one wants to achieve and can't be ignored; the latter require no action and may never penetrate conscious attention (Davidai & Gilovich, 2016;Savitsky, Gilovich, Berger, & Medvec, 2003). ...
People believe that shared events, events that impact everyone to the same degree, will nonetheless impact them more than others. Across four studies we examined whether this impacts people's reactions to proposed changes to tax and regulatory policies. We found that participants thought that tax (Study 1a and 1b) and regulatory (Study 2) changes would have more of an impact on their own lives than on the lives of people in their same financial situation. We then examined whether these findings are the product of a broad focalism bias or its narrower relative, egocentrism. Because we observed the bias both when participants were asked about their own financial situation or that of someone else, the former appears to be the better explanation (Study 3). We discuss the implications of this bias for people's willingness to embrace policy proposals designed to advance the common good.
Reviews research on second-language self-assessment and gives recommendations for practices such as:
• Self-assessments should NOT be used as the sole proxy for language proficiency in SLA studies.
• Self-assessments should be used when SLA researchers are interested in someone’s perception
of their ability or when they need low-stakes proficiency information.
• Self-assessment items should describe tasks learners have experience attempting.
• Use difficulty levels rather than confidence levels for scales to increase accuracy.
• Train learners to use the instrument and give calibrative feedback to improve accuracy (see the
online DIALANG system for an example of how this might be done automatically: https://di
alangweb.lancaster.ac.uk/setals).
• To produce more reliable results, include sufficient items using Can-Do statements spanning a
range of difficulties.
• When determining how many categories to use in a self-assessment rating scale, it is safer to
include more categories than fewer.
• When deciding to administer self-assessments, remember that timing and experience can affect
learners' interpretations and ratings—the closer to one's actual attempt, the more accurate the
rating is likely to be.
• Have learners view their attempts at tasks and listen to or view their own performance and
justify ratings to increase accuracy. Observing others attempt tasks can also help.
• As with any measurement instrument, use statistics (test, item, factor analysis, reliability, etc.) to
verify the instrument is functioning as intended and make revisions as necessary.
A long history in economics going back to Adam Smith has argued that people give primacy to merit – rather than luck – in distributive choices. We provide a theoretical framework formalizing the merit primacy effect, and study it in a novel experiment where third-party spectators redistribute from high-earners to low-earners in situations where both merit and luck determine earnings. We identify a strong and consistent merit primacy effect in the spectator behaviour. The results shed new light on inequality acceptance in society, by showing how just a little bit of merit can make people significantly more inequality accepting.
People evaluate their own wealth differently from how they evaluate the wealth of others. Across six experiments, we find evidence that people focus disproportionately on debt when thinking about their own (vs. another person's) wealth. In Experiments 1–3, participants predicted how wealthy they or someone else would be in one year, assuming they had the same amount in assets and debt today. While participants were generally optimistic about the future, they believed debt would shrink faster for themselves than for others. Participants focused more on paying down debt than growing assets when thinking about their own wealth. Further, when asked to consider what they would do with a windfall, they allocated more towards repaying debt than they believed others would. In Experiments 4 and 5, participants assessed their own wealth or that of another person after purchasing a car or a house and borrowing to do so. In every case, participants considered others (vs. oneself) as better off financially when holding the price and amount borrowed constant. As debt increased, the gap between self and others widened. In Experiment 6, a separate group of participants also reported their beliefs about how others might see them. When actively considering another person's perspective, people saw themselves as wealthier. We conclude by discussing the role that different evaluations of wealth might play in patterns of conspicuous consumption.
People tend to be unable to evaluate themselves accurately in many areas. One such area is their own and others’ morality. The current research explores the self–other moral valuation difference in the context of moral foundation theory. We propose that people generally have a moral positive illusion. Specifically, people overestimate their own morality and underestimate the morality of others. Two studies provide converging evidence that individuals underestimate the average moral valuations of others on the five dimensions of moral foundation theory. In particular, we demonstrate three moderators for moral positive illusion: moral foundation type, gender, and political identity. Specifically, compared with the binding foundations, people have greater moral positive illusions based on the individualizing foundations; compared to men, women have greater moral positive illusions; and compared with liberals, conservatives have greater moral positive illusions based on the binding foundations.
Eight experiments reveal that observing success wields adverse effects on how people judge others' failures. We find that repeated exposure to successful performances leads people to perceive a task as not so difficult or complicated after all—and so they more harshly evaluate those who struggle to do it. Across various tasks—from completing a motor-skills test, to doing a dance move, to sketching a drawing—repeated exposure to success led people to expect others to perform better on their first-time attempts (Experiments 1–2) and criticize others for failing (Experiments 3–4), even when the performer was unequipped to succeed (and when harsh critics themselves were mistakenly overconfident). This effect was not explained by incidentally negative effects of repeated exposure (e.g., annoyance, tiredness: Experiment 5); instead, it indeed depended on people's (mis)perceptions of learning from mere watching, such that it was moderated by the observability of successful execution (Experiment 6) and whether one judged another person's poor attempt (which entails mere watching) vs. one's own poor attempt (which entails watching plus doing: Experiment 7). Accordingly, harsh critics became kinder to others after attempting the task themselves (Experiment 8). These findings reveal when and why observing success risks callousing people toward failure. This blinding effect is especially consequential in today's information age, which offers unprecedented access to success and skilled performances (e.g., via social media): Such access may not only be inflating people's confidence for recreating what they see, but also deflating people's empathy and understanding of those who try (and fail).
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When comparing themselves with others, people often perceive their own actions and behaviour favourably. This phenomenon is often categorised as a bias of attribution, with favourable self-evaluation resulting from differing explanations of one's own behaviour and that of others. However, studies on availability biases offer an alternative explanation, ascribing egocentric biases to the inherent sensory asymmetries between performing an action and merely observing it. In this study, we used a paradigm that allowed us to directly compare these two distinct sources of bias. Participants perceived the tasks they performed to be harder than the tasks they observed, but demonstrated no bias driven by favourable self-evaluation. Furthermore, the degree of overestimation of the difficulty of performed tasks was magnified as overall task difficulty increased. These findings suggest that egocentric biases are in part derived from sensory asymmetries inherent to the first-person perspective.
We survey the literature on preferences for redistribution. We discuss different ways the literature has measured these preferences and review literature on the different determinants of preferences for redistribution. These range from institutions and demographic factors to fairness views and social preferences. Income inequality is, perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the most important determinants of preferences for redistribution. While our survey is largely focused on the economics literature, we also review some work from political science, sociology, and psychology.
Behavioral science is increasingly used in public policy to understand and address various manifestations of inequalities. Yet evidence from effective population-level interventions is limited. One framework, known as positive deviance, emphasizes individuals from disadvantaged circumstances who have significantly better outcomes than are typical for their group. Studying their behaviors and outcomes helps to understand what might explain their overall success. These insights could also be used to help others from these circumstances experience positive outcomes. Because positive deviance has been markedly understudied, we present a framework for doing so specifically within behavioral science for public policies aimed at reducing inequalities. Using examples from real-world and experimental insights on choices and outcomes of positive deviants, we encourage further study of their choices and trajectories over time to produce valuable insights. We propose that leveraging those findings would inform public policy by introducing interventions that are more ecologically sound and population-relevant and thus have a better chance at benefiting those who start off under adverse circumstances.
FoMO is often used to test behavioural tendencies, individuals who tend to be more involved, encourage individual behaviour caused by fear, anxiety that arises in it, especially for the millennial group. Currently, the commercial industry has also succeeded in exploiting FoMO-based concepts in marketing and advertising approaches, including involving consumers in disseminating product information to the public. Previous research revealed that there is a significant influence on how FoMO can influence consumer behaviour on online shopping considerations, showing a relationship between FoMO on social media and the tendency to spread word-of-mouth in the online realm (eWOM). This study uses an approach with an interview method to get views from the experiences of social media users actively using the Marketplace platform in online shopping needs regarding the relationship between FoMO, eWOM and online shopping considerations on Marketplace from both the recipient and the sender of eWOM messages. All informants stated that FoMO and eWOM on social media have a tendency to encourage active responses to find out, share information with those closest to them so that they can determine shopping considerations both for merchants or Marketplaces.
Political debates over how to address economic inequality are often rooted in rhetoric about whether or not success is self-made. Attributions for personal successes invoke self-relevant motivational processes and may pose barriers to ideological consensus on economic policy. This research examined the relationship between attributions for personal successes and social justice orientation (an ideological orientation toward providing for the economic welfare of others) as well as the impact of two contextual factors: past/future-framing and thinking about political discourse about inequality. Temporal framing was expected to shift the motivational incentives available for acknowledging the role of external factors; although it may feel good to take personal credit for past successes already achieved, there may be stronger incentives to acknowledge the situational factors that shape uncertain future successes. Studies 1–4 found that individuals low in social justice orientation were reluctant to make external attributions for their past achievements, but that thinking about poverty and successes they hoped to achieve in the future increased their external attributions to levels observed among people high in social justice orientation. The willingness to make greater external attributions for future successes appeared to be motivationally-driven: it yielded affective benefits (Study 5), was seen as desirable (Study 6), and emerged when personal financial vulnerability was primed (Study 7). Attributional shifts were in turn associated with greater support for social justice. These findings suggest that thinking about successes not yet attained may establish a sort of Rawlsian “veil of ignorance” that can encourage individuals to recognize the power of situations and the needs of others.
In my family, a Thanksgiving tradition is to leave the turkey and fixings waiting in the kitchen while we hold hands and, one by one, say a few words about what we're grateful for that year. I usually give thanks for my husband and our two girls, their doting grandparents, and work I genuinely love. I've noticed remarkable consistency in what others say, too. And yet, this ritual never disappoints. All of us are moved, some to tears. Giving thanks calls attention to the tailwinds in our lives—the blessings that have in one way or another made our journeys better, easier, or more meaningful. Why do we need a national holiday dedicated to giving thanks? In fact, why do so many religions and cultures around the world ritualize appreciation? My guess is that, like many rituals, Thanksgiving reminds us of what we'd otherwise overlook.
Visual information often quickly dominates people’s judgments of others’ competence and performance, including in the selection of leaders and decision makers. Reviewing recent research on static and dynamic visual cues, we discuss how people extrapolate judgments of competence and performance from visual information. We highlight how these two streams of research contribute to our understanding of performance perceptions and offer future avenues for research integrating the consideration of both static and dynamic visual cues.
The City of St. Louis, Missouri, received a Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Planning and Implementation Grant in 2015 to support place-based and person-focused strategies intended to enhance safety in two neighborhoods, Carr Square and Columbus Square. This chapter focuses on our work as the research partner in this grant. We begin by providing an overview of the site and grant activities, describing its progression from planning through implementation. We then outline our understanding of the role of research partner and how this evolved over the duration of the grant. As part of this discussion, the ways in which the reality of our work sometimes diverged from expectations are highlighted. Next, we describe some of the challenges we faced while serving in an unfamiliar, nontraditional research role and working in a deindustrialized city struggling to transform itself. While lengthy bureaucratic processes, issues with resident engagement, and problems sustaining a relationship with the police made implementation difficult, our position as researchers, external to city government, positioned us to assist our partners with addressing some of these issues. At the same time, the assistance of our partners was critical for carrying out our activities. It is our hope that the ideas presented here can help future research partners navigate, what may be for them, unfamiliar waters.
‘Fear of missing out’ (FOMO) is a recent but widely recognized phenomenon. Some emotional antecedents of FOMO, such as anticipated elation and anticipated envy from other people, can boost FOMO. Other emotional antecedents, such as comforting rationalizations, can decrease FOMO. Because FOMO can influence consumers’ experience-related attitudes and behaviors meaningfully, it behooves marketing scholars and practitioners to understand FOMO and the potential of FOMO-laden appeals to increase sales. Although social scientists generally treat FOMO as a personality trait, FOMO-laden appeals that extol the future experiences of close friends or family members can induce a FOMO spike.
An examination of mental frameworks which are used to process information and mental obstacles preventing the more widespread adaptation of the Wealth Creation Approach to poverty reduction is presented. The chapter starts out examining mental models as well as biases and heuristics from a psychological or sociological standpoint. Next, the influences of religious, philosophical, and political values which shape the debates on poverty reduction and international trade are examined. The chapter rounds off with an examination of effects various cultural influences may have on our worldviews and values, often subconsciously, as related to approaches toward reducing poverty and creating wealth.
Beliefs about how effective a cause will be at achieving possible outcomes are critical inputs into a range of decisions, from how to treat an illness to which products to purchase. We identify scope—the number of distinct outcomes a cause is known to achieve—as an important input into judgments of efficacy. We compare causes that lead to worse outcomes (i.e., banes) to those leading to improvements (i.e., boons). People believe that banes with broader scope (i.e., those that lead to more possible outcomes) are more effective and lead to stronger outcomes. In contrast, people believe that boons with narrower scope (i.e., those that lead to fewer possible outcomes) are more effective and lead to stronger outcomes. We document this pattern across four experiments, finding support for differences in mental models for boons and banes.
Using different versions of a vignette, this study examines how preferences for redistributive healthcare change as luck plays a progressively stronger role in contributing to wealth and poverty. Participants saw one version of a vignette that describes why someone is wealthy or poor, with wealth and poverty stemming from effort, various mixtures of effort and luck, one dimension of luck, or two dimensions of luck. Results show that support for redistributive healthcare increases as bad luck becomes marginally more important in causing poverty but is unaffected as good luck becomes marginally more important in causing wealth. These results imply that preferences for redistributive healthcare may be sensitive to information that points to the unlucky barriers (headwinds) that affect the poor but insensitive to information that points to the lucky blessings (tailwinds) that affect the wealthy.
Logically, group members cannot be responsible for more than 100% of the group’s output, yet claims of responsibility routinely sum to more than 100%. This “over-claiming” occurs partly because of egocentrism: People focus on their own contributions, as focal members of the group, more than on others’ contributions. Therefore, we predicted that over-claiming would increase with group size because larger groups leave more contributions from others to overlook. In 2 field studies, participants claimed more responsibility as the number of academic authors per article and the number of MBA students per study group increased. As predicted by our theoretical account, this over-claiming bias was reduced when group members considered others’ contributions explicitly. Two experiments that directly manipulated group size replicated these results. Members of larger groups may be particularly well advised to consider other members’ contributions before considering their own.
Confirmation bias, as the term is typically used in the psychological literature, connotes the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis in hand. The author reviews evidence of such a bias in a variety of guises and gives examples of its operation in several practical contexts. Possible explanations are considered, and the question of its utility or disutility is discussed.
Most people judge themselves to be content with their lives. However, they also judge themselves to be more content than the others in their group, which is a logical impossibility. In line with previous speculations, the authors found in two studies that comparative contentment judgments were highly related to judgments of one’s own contentment but entirely unrelated to judgments of comparison of others’ contentment. That is, comparative contentment judgments are predominantly self-focused. Researchers asking the question, “How content are you relative to your peers?” should be aware that the response might well be to the question “How content are you?”
In shadowing one of two simultaneous messages presented dichotically, subjects are unable to report any of the content of the rejected message. Even if the rejected message consists of a short list of simple words repeated many times, a recognition test fails to reveal any trace of the list. If numbers are interpolated in prose passages presented for dichotic shadowing, no more are recalled from the rejected messages if the instructions are specifically to remember numbers than if the instructions are general: a specific set for numbers will not break through the attentional barrier set up in this task. The only stimulus so far found that will break through this barrier is the subject's own name. It is probably only material “important” to the subject that will break through the barrier.
Tested the 2-process theory of detection, search, and attention presented by the current authors (1977) in a series of experiments. The studies (a) demonstrate the qualitative difference between 2 modes of information processing: automatic detection and controlled search; (b) trace the course of the learning of automatic detection, of categories, and of automatic-attention responses; and (c) show the dependence of automatic detection on attending responses and demonstrate how such responses interrupt controlled processing and interfere with the focusing of attention. The learning of categories is shown to improve controlled search performance. A general framework for human information processing is proposed. The framework emphasizes the roles of automatic and controlled processing. The theory is compared to and contrasted with extant models of search and attention. (31/2 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Tested 3 hypotheses concerning people's predictions of task completion times: (1) people underestimate their own but not others' completion times, (2) people focus on plan-based scenarios rather than on relevant past experiences while generating their predictions, and (3) people's attributions diminish the relevance of past experiences. Five studies were conducted with a total of 465 undergraduates. Results support each hypothesis. Ss' predictions of their completion times were too optimistic for a variety of academic and nonacademic tasks. Think-aloud procedures revealed that Ss focused primarily on future scenarios when predicting their completion times. The optimistic bias was eliminated for Ss instructed to connect relevant past experiences with their predictions. Ss attributed their past prediction failures to external, transient, and specific factors. Observer Ss overestimated others' completion times and made greater use of relevant past experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Conducted 5 experiments to assess biases in availability of information in memory and attributions of responsibility for the actions and decisions that occurred during a previous group interaction. The S populations sampled included naturally occurring discussion groups (of undergraduates), 37 married couples, 74 female and 84 male players on intercollegiate basketball teams, and groups of undergraduates assembled in the laboratory. Data provide consistent evidence for egocentric biases in availability and attribution: The S's own contributions to a joint product were more readily available, i.e., more frequently and easily recalled, and Ss accepted more responsibility for a group product than other participants attributed to them. In addition, statements attributed to the self were recalled more accurately and the availability bias was attenuated, though not eliminated, when the group product was negatively evaluated. When another S's contributions were made more available to the S via a selective retrieval process, this S allocated correspondingly more responsibility for the group decisions to the coparticipant. The determinants and pervasiveness of the egocentric biases are considered. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A number of philosophers and psychologists stress the importance of disconfirmation in reasoning and suggest that people are instead prone to a general deleterious "confirmation bias." In particular, it is suggested that people tend to test those cases that have the best chance of verifying current beliefs rather than those that have the best chance of falsifying them. We show, however, that many phenomena labeled "confirmation bias" are better understood in terms of a general
positive test strategy. With this strategy, there is a tendency to test cases that are expected (or known) to have the property of interest rather than those expected (or known) to lack that property. We show that the positive test strategy can be a very good heuristic for determining the truth or falsity of a hypothesis under realistic conditions. It can, however, lead to systematic errors or inefficiencies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
When people are asked to compare their abilities to those of their peers, they predominantly provide self-serving assessments that appear objectively indefensible. This article proposes that such assessments occur because the meaning of most characteristics is ambiguous, which allows people to use self-serving trail definitions when providing self-evaluations. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that people provide self-serving assessments to the extent that the trait is ambiguous, that is, to the extent that it can describe a wide variety of behaviors. Study 3 more directly implicated ambiguity in these apraisals. As the number of criteria that Ss could use in their evaluations increased, Ss endorsed both positive and negative characteristics as self-descriptive to a greater degree. Study 4 demonstrated that the evidence and criteria that people use in self-evaluations is idiosyncratic. Asking Ss explicitly to list the evidence and criteria they considered before providing self-evaluations did not influence their self-appraisals. However, requiring Ss to evaluate themselves using a list generated by another individual caused them to lower their self-appraisals. Discussion centers on the normative status of these self-serving appraisals, and on potential consequences for social judgment in general.
The optimistic bias is defined as judging one's own risk as less than the risk of others. Researchers have identified numerous personal and situational factors that moderate the extent to which people display the bias. It is unclear, however, whether these moderators affect the bias by influencing people's personal risk estimates or their risk estimates for a target. A review of moderators of the optimistic bias reveals evidence for both influences. Moderators associated with negative affect (negative mood, dysphoria, trait and state anxiety, event severity, and proximity of feedback) and control related moderators (perceived control and prior experience) appear primarily to affect personal risk estimates. Positive mood affects target risk estimates. Finally, moderators that surround the comparison process appear to have different effects. Specifically, the type of comparison target appears to affect target risk estimates, whereas attention to personal risk-related behaviors affects personal risk estimates.
We hypothesize that there is a general bias, based on both innate predispositions and experience, in animals and humans, to give greater weight to negative entities (e.g., events, objects, personal traits). This is manifested in 4 ways: (a) negative potency (negative entities are stronger than the equivalent positive entities), (b) steeper negative gradients (the negativity of negative events grows more rapidly with approach to them in space or time than does the positivity of positive events, (c) negativity dominance (combinations of negative and positive entities yield evaluations that are more negative than the algebraic sum of individual subjective valences would predict), and (d) negative differentiation (negative entities are more varied, yield more complex conceptual representations, and engage a wider response repertoire). We review evidence for this taxonomy, with emphasis on negativity dominance, including literary, historical, religious, and cultural sources, as well as the psychological literatures on learning, attention, impression formation, contagion, moral judgment, development, and memory. We then consider a variety of theoretical accounts for negativity bias. We suggest that I feature of negative events that make them dominant is that negative entities are more contagious than positive entities.
Previous research has suggested that narcissism can be conceptualized as a multidimensional construct consisting of the related, but unique, dimensions of grandiosity and entitlement. The current studies examined the divergent associations of grandiosity and entitlement with respect to different types of self-serving strategies. In Study 1, we found that narcissistic grandiosity, but not entitlement, was positively associated with a self-enhancing strategy of unrealistic optimism. This association was not mediated by self-esteem. In Study 2, narcissistic entitlement, but not grandiosity, was predictive of unethical decision-making, an interpersonal self-promotional strategy that advances the self at the expense of others. Together, both studies support a model of narcissism consisting of a relatively intrapersonal dimension of grandiosity and a relatively interpersonal dimension of entitlement.
The greater power of bad events over good ones is found in everyday events, major life events (e.g., trauma), close relationship outcomes, social network patterns, interpersonal interactions, and learning processes. Bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. The self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones. Various explanations such as diagnosticity and salience help explain some findings, but the greater power of bad events is still found when such variables are controlled. Hardly any exceptions (indicating greater power of good) can be found. Taken together, these findings suggest that bad is stronger than good, as a general principle across a broad range of psychological phenomena.
This paper presents a new model of gratitude incorporating not only the gratitude that arises following help from others but also a habitual focusing on and appreciating the positive aspects of life", incorporating not only the gratitude that arises following help from others, but also a habitual focusing on and appreciating the positive aspects of life. Research into individual differences in gratitude and well-being is reviewed, including gratitude and psychopathology, personality, relationships, health, subjective and eudemonic well-being, and humanistically orientated functioning. Gratitude is strongly related to well-being, however defined, and this link may be unique and causal. Interventions to clinically increase gratitude are critically reviewed, and concluded to be promising, although the positive psychology literature may have neglected current limitations, and a distinct research strategy is suggested. Finally, mechanisms whereby gratitude may relate to well-being are discussed, including schematic biases, coping, positive affect, and broaden-and-build principles. Gratitude is relevant to clinical psychology due to (a) strong explanatory power in understanding well-being, and (b) the potential of improving well-being through fostering gratitude with simple exercises.
People are typically overly optimistic when evaluating the quality of their performance on social and intellectual tasks. In particular, poor performers grossly overestimate their performances because their incompetence deprives them of the skills needed to recognize their deficits. Five studies demonstrated that poor performers lack insight into their shortcomings even in real world settings and when given incentives to be accurate. An additional meta-analysis showed that it was lack of insight into their own errors (and not mistaken assessments of their peers) that led to overly optimistic estimates among poor performers. Along the way, these studies ruled out recent alternative accounts that have been proposed to explain why poor performers hold such positive impressions of their performance.
The effect of a grateful outlook on psychological and physical well-being was examined. In Studies 1 and 2, participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 experimental conditions (hassles, gratitude listing, and either neutral life events or social comparison); they then kept weekly (Study 1) or daily (Study 2) records of their moods, coping behaviors, health behaviors, physical symptoms, and overall life appraisals. In a 3rd study, persons with neuromuscular disease were randomly assigned to either the gratitude condition or to a control condition. The gratitude-outlook groups exhibited heightened well-being across several, though not all, of the outcome measures across the 3 studies, relative to the comparison groups. The effect on positive affect appeared to be the most robust finding. Results suggest that a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and interpersonal benefits.
Gratitude promotes well-being and prompts prosocial behavior. Here, we examine a novel way to cultivate this beneficial emotion. We demonstrate that 2 different types of consumption-material consumption (buying for the sake of having) and experiential consumption (buying for the sake of doing)-differentially foster gratitude and giving. In 6 studies we show that reflecting on experiential purchases (e.g., travel, meals out, tickets to events) inspires more gratitude than reflecting on material purchases (e.g., clothing, jewelry, furniture), and that thinking about experiences leads to more subsequent altruistic behavior than thinking about possessions. In Studies 1-2b, we use within-subject and between-subjects designs to test our main hypothesis: that people are more grateful for what they've done than what they have. Study 3 finds evidence for this effect in the real-world setting of online customer reviews: Consumers are more likely to spontaneously mention feeling grateful for experiences they have bought than for material goods they have bought. In our final 2 studies, we show that experiential consumption also makes people more likely to be generous to others. Participants who contemplated a significant experiential purchase behaved more generously toward anonymous others in an economic game than those who contemplated a significant material purchase. It thus appears that shifting spending toward experiential consumption can improve people's everyday lives as well as the lives of those around them. (PsycINFO Database Record
The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s seemed to mark a historical turning point in advancing the American dream of equal opportunity for all citizens, regardless of race. Yet 50 years on, racial inequality remains a troubling fact of life in American society and its causes are highly contested. In The American Non-dilemma, sociologist Nancy DiTomaso convincingly argues that America's enduring racial divide is sustained more by whites' preferential treatment of members of their own social networks than by overt racial discrimination. Drawing on research from sociology, political science, history, and psychology, as well as her own interviews with a cross-section of non-Hispanic whites, DiTomaso provides a comprehensive examination of the persistence of racial inequality in the post-Civil Rights era. DiTomaso sets out to answer a fundamental question: if overt institutionalized racism has largely receded in the United States, why does racial inequality remain a national problem? Taking Gunnar Myrdal's classic work on America's racial divide, The American Dilemma, as her departure point, DiTomaso focuses on "the white side of the race line." To do so, she interviewed a sample of working-class whites about their life histories, political views, and general outlook on racial inequality in America. She finds that while the vast majority of whites profess strong support for civil rights and equal opportunity regardless of race, they continue to pursue their own group-based advantage, especially in the labor market. This "opportunity hoarding," as DiTomaso calls it, leads to substantially improved life outcomes for whites due to their greater access to social resources from family, neighborhoods, schools, churches, and other institutions with which they are engaged. At the same time, the subjects of her study continue to harbor strong reservations about public policies"such as affirmative action"intended to ameliorate racial inequality. In effect, they accept the principles of civil rights but not the implementation of policies that would bring about greater racial equality. DiTomaso also examines how whites understand the persistence of racial inequality in a society where whites are, on average, the advantaged racial group. Most whites see themselves as part of the solution rather than part of the problem with regard to racial inequality, but, due to the unacknowledged favoritism they demonstrate toward other whites, DiTomaso finds that they are at best uncertain allies in the fight for racial inequality. Weaving together research on both race and class, along with the life experiences of DiTomaso's interview subjects, The American Non-dilemma provides a compelling exploration of how racial inequality is reproduced in today's society, how people come to terms with the issue in their day-to-day experiences, and what these trends may signify in the contemporary political landscape.
Greed is an important motive: it is seen as both productive (a source of ambition; the motor of the economy) and destructive (undermining social relationships; the cause of the late 2000s financial crisis). However, relatively little is known about what greed is and does. This article reports on 5 studies that develop and test the 7-item Dispositional Greed Scale (DGS). Study 1 (including 4 separate samples from 2 different countries, total N = 6092) provides evidence for the construct and discriminant validity of the DGS in terms of positive correlations with maximization, self-interest, envy, materialism, and impulsiveness, and negative correlations with self-control and life satisfaction. Study 2 (N = 290) presents further evidence for discriminant validity, finding that the DGS predicts greedy behavioral tendencies over and above materialism. Furthermore, the DGS predicts economic behavior: greedy people allocate more money to themselves in dictator games (Study 3, N = 300) and ultimatum games (Study 4, N = 603), and take more in a resource dilemma (Study 5, N = 305). These findings shed light on what greed is and does, how people differ in greed, and how greed can be measured. In addition, they show the importance of greed in economic behavior and provide directions for future studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
The manner in which the concept of reciprocity is implicated in functional theory is explored, enabling a reanalysis of the concepts of "survival" and "exploitation." The need to distinguish between the concepts of complementarity and reciprocity is stressed. Distinctions are also drawn between (1) reciprocity as a pattern of mutually contingent exchange of gratifications, (2) the existential or folk belief in reciprocity, and (3) the generalized moral norm of reciprocity. Reciprocity as a moral norm is analyzed; it is hypothesized that it is one of the universal "principal components" of moral codes. As Westermarck states, "To requite a benefit, or to be grateful to him who bestows it, is probably everywhere, at least under certain circumstances, regarded as a duty. This is a subject which in the present connection calls for special consideration." Ways in which the norm of reciprocity is implicated in the maintenance of stable social systems are examined.
Extant research on greed has focused on situational determinants of greedy behavior, ignoring individual differences in greed. Defining greed as insatiability, the present paper introduces a six item Dispositional Greed Scale. Two studies demonstrate convergent and discriminant validity and test–retest reliability. Specifically, they demonstrate that greed is related to but different from materialism. It is also positively related to entitlement, egoism, social comparison, envy, competition and productivity orientation and negatively related to impression management and satisfaction with life. The Dispositional Greed Scale enables researchers to disentangle the impact of personality from that of the situation on greedy behavior.
Explored the impression-management underpinnings of the self-handicapping strategy of S. Berglas and E. E. Jones (see record 1979-05889-001). 64 male undergraduates were given success feedback after completing soluble or insoluble analogies. While anticipating a 2nd test, Ss were allowed to choose between drugs that would enhance or encumber their performance. Ss who had worked on insoluble problems chose the debilitating drug, but only when the experimenter (E) witnessed the choice. They were most likely to choose the debilitating drug when the E was present and when they believed that the E would have access to their score on the anticipated 2nd test. The data are cautiously interpreted as consistent with an impression management view of self-handicapping. The authors suggest that although it appears that self-handicapping is an impression management strategy at least under some circumstances, the exact nature of the strategy needs further specification. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This article reviews the research relevant to negativity and extremity biases in impression formation and discusses that research as it relates to the major theories that explain these biases. We also describe a model for these biases that draws on principles of natural object categorization. This model explains negativity and extremity biases in terms of the perceived diagnosticity of different kinds of cues for alternative categorizations of the stimulus. The model not only accounts for existing evidence regarding negativity and extremity biases but also suggests circumstances (a) in which positivity biases should occur and (b) in which single cues might be sufficient to prompt categorizations resistant to counterevidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Gratitude and indebtedness are differently valenced emotional responses to benefits provided, which have implications for interpersonal processes. Drawing on a social functional model of emotions, we tested the roles of gratitude and indebtedness in romantic relationships with a daily-experience sampling of both members of cohabiting couples. As hypothesized, the receipt of thoughtful benefits predicted both gratitude and indebtedness. Men had more mixed emotional responses to benefit receipt than women. However, for both men and women, gratitude from interactions predicted increases in relationship connection and satisfaction the following day, for both recipient and benefactor. Although indebtedness may maintain external signals of relationship engagement, gratitude had uniquely predictive power in relationship promotion, perhaps acting as a booster shot for the relationship.
This article asks whether there are lessons that can be drawn from the democratization of Iraq for the possible democratization of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the wake of the 2010–2011 Arab uprisings. The paper draws on the democratization program in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 to demonstrate that focusing on the promotion of a liberal democratic model in Iraq translated into a lack of operational flexibility, which let democracy assistance unable to cope with socio-economic demands, local realities and reactions to democratization. Taking into account a variation in the intensity of interventionism between Iraq and MENA, the article argues that there is sufficient similarities between both cases to point Western democracy promoters in the direction of models of democracy that offer a more comprehensive response to the current political transition in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya than the traditional focus on the promotion of liberal democracy does.
We examine whether people call to mind different manifestations of various traits when considering what they are like than when considering what others are like. Specifically, do people think that peak manifestations of their traits and abilities best capture who they are themselves, but that other people are better captured by their average performances or trait expressions? In Studies 1a and 1b, participants were more likely to believe that their own most attractive photographs best represent their typical appearance than others' do. In Study 2, participants' estimates of where they stand on various trait dimensions coincided with their highest possible standing, whereas their estimates of an acquaintance's standing coincided with the midpoint between the latter's highest and lowest possible standing. In Study 3, regression analyses revealed that students' predictions of their own final exam score were based most heavily on their highest score received to that point, but their predictions of someone else's final exam score was based most heavily on that student's average score. We discuss how this tendency fits in the broader literature on self-other differences in evaluation and how it contributes to above-average effect.
Explores the hypothesis that alcohol use and underachievement may serve as strategies to externalize the causation of poor performance and to internalize the causation of good performance. Such a strategy may be prominently used especially by those who have a precarious but not entirely negative sense of self-competence. The etiology of this strategic preference may follow either of two scenarios. The child may attach desperate importance to this competence image because competence is the condition for deserving parental love. Or the child may have been rewarded for accidental attributes or performances that do not predict future success, thus leaving him in a position of one who has reached a status he fears he cannot maintain through his own control. The linkage of alcohol appeal to underachievement strategies is stressed; both are seen as expressions of the same overconcern with competence.
This paper describes a number of objective experiments on recognition, concerning particularly the relation between the messages received by the two ears. Rather than use steady tones or clicks (frequency or time‐point signals) continuous speech is used, and the results interpreted in the main statistically.
Two types of test are reported: (a) the behavior of a listener when presented with two speech signals simultaneously (statistical filtering problem) and (b) behavior when different speech signals are presented to his two ears.
People feel grateful when they have benefited from someone's costly, intentional, voluntary effort on their behalf. Experiencing gratitude motivates beneficiaries to repay their benefactors and to extend generosity to third parties. Expressions of gratitude also reinforce benefactors for their generosity. These social features distinguish gratitude from related emotions such as happiness and feelings of indebtedness. Evolutionary theories propose that gratitude is an adaptation for reciprocal altruism (the sequential exchange of costly benefits between nonrelatives) and, perhaps, upstream reciprocity (a pay-it-forward style distribution of an unearned benefit to a third party after one has received a benefit from another benefactor). Gratitude therefore may have played a unique role in human social evolution.
Previous research investigating the change in meaning interpretation of context effects in impression formation was critically evaluated and found to provide only indirect tests of this hypothesis. An experiment with 24 undergraduates is reported which provides a direct test of the meaning change position. Ss were presented with 3-word descriptions of stimulus persons and rated their liking for the person, their liking for one of the attributes, and the connotative meaning of that attribute. The desirability of the nontest attributes (the context) was varied. Consistent with the meaning change hypothesis, results show highly significant decreases in evaluative connotation of the test attribute as the desirability of the context words decreased.
A question that has plagued self-enhancement research is whether participants truly believe the overly positive self-assessments they report, or whether better-than-average effects reflect mere hopes or self-presentation. In a test of people’s belief in the accuracy of their self-enhancing trait ratings, participants made a series of bets, each time choosing between betting that they had scored at least as high on a personality test as a random other participant, or betting on a random drawing in which the probability of success was matched to their self-assigned percentile rank on the test. They also reported the point at which they would switch their bet from their self-rating to the drawing, or vice versa. Participants were indifferent between betting on themselves or on the drawing, and it took only a slight change in the drawing’s probability for them to switch their bet, indicating that people truly believe their self-enhancing self-assessments.
The current study examined whether dispositional gratitude predicts physical health among adults, and if so, whether this relationship occurs because grateful individuals lead healthier lives, either psychologically or physically. Specifically, we examined whether psychological health, healthy activities, and willingness to seek help for health concerns mediated the link between gratitude and self-reported physical health, as well as if these mediational pathways are moderated by age, in a broad sample of Swiss adults (N = 962, M(age) = 52 years, age range: 19 to 84). Dispositional gratitude correlated positively with self-reported physical health, and this link was mediated by psychological health, healthy activities, and willingness to seek help for health concerns. However, the indirect effects for psychological health and healthy activities were stronger for older than younger adults. In other words, the mechanisms explaining why gratitude predicts health appear to differ across adulthood.
Explores the relevance of the concept of adaptation level to a number of areas of psychology, with special reference to motivation, where it has been incorporated into a number of current theories. Harvard Book List (edited) 1971 #364 (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In Study 1, over 200 college students estimated how much their own chance of experiencing 42 events differed from the chances of their classmates. Overall, Ss rated their own chances to be significantly above average for positive events and below average for negative events. Cognitive and motivational considerations led to predictions that degree of desirability, perceived probability, personal experience, perceived controllability, and stereotype salience would influence the amount of optimistic bias evoked by different events. All predictions were supported, although the pattern of effects differed for positive and negative events. Study 2 with 120 female undergraduates from Study 1 tested the idea that people are unrealistically optimistic because they focus on factors that improve their own chances of achieving desirable outcomes and fail to realize that others may have just as many factors in their favor. Ss listed the factors that they thought influenced their own chances of experiencing 8 future events. When such lists were read by a 2nd group of Ss, the amount of unrealistic optimism shown by this 2nd group for the same 8 events decreased significantly, although it was not eliminated. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Two studies examined the effects of self-handicapping on ability attributions and self-esteem. Study 1 revealed that high-self-esteem (HSE) and low-self-esteem (LSE) high self-handicapping (HSH) Ss discounted ability attributions in response to failure feedback. After success feedback, only HSE-HSH Ss augmented ability attributions. When the handicap was made explicit, HSE-low-self-handicapping (LSH) Ss also discounted failure and augmented success. LSE-LSH Ss did not handicap in any condition. Study 2 indicated that Ss who handicapped and received failure feedback displayed significantly higher self-esteem and more positive mood than did Ss who received failure feedback without handicapping. Success-feedback Ss were equally positive regardless of handicap condition. Discussion focuses on individual differences in motives to engage in self-protective or self-enhancing behavior and on attributional models of achievement and affect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Hedonic adaptation refers to a reduction in the affective intensity of favorable and unfavorable circumstances. This chapter discusses the purposes, underlying mechanisms, and most common functional representations of hedonic adaptation. The authors then examine some of the methodological problems that hamper research in this area and review the literature on adaptation in 4 negative domains (noise, imprisonment, bereavement, and disability), and 4 positive domains (foods, erotic images, increases in wealth, and improvements in appearance produced by cosmetic surgery). Following this review, the authors discuss several circumstances that promote or impede hedonic adaptation. They conclude by discussing the dark side of hedonic adaptation—the negative consequences for individuals and society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The pursuit of happiness is an important goal for many people. However, surprisingly little scientific research has focused on the question of how happiness can be increased and then sustained, probably because of pessimism engendered by the concepts of genetic determinism and hedonic adaptation. Nevertheless, emerging sources of optimism exist regarding the possibility of permanent increases in happiness. Drawing on the past well-being literature, the authors propose that a person's chronic happiness level is governed by 3 major factors: a genetically determined set point for happiness, happiness-relevant circumstantial factors, and happiness-relevant activities and practices. The authors then consider adaptation and dynamic processes to show why the activity category offers the best opportunities for sustainably increasing happiness. Finally, existing research is discussed in support of the model, including 2 preliminary happiness-increasing interventions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A 4-week experimental study (N = 67) examined the motivational predictors and positive emotion outcomes of regularly practicing two mental exercises: counting one's blessings (“gratitude”) and visualizing best possible selves (“BPS”). In a control exercise, participants attended to the details of their day. Undergraduates performed one of the three exercises during Session I and were asked to continue performing it at home until Session II (in 2 weeks) and again until Session III (in a further 2 weeks). Following previous theory and research, the practices of gratitude and BPS were expected to boost immediate positive affect, relative to the control condition. In addition, we hypothesized that continuing effortful performance of these exercises would be necessary to maintain the boosts (Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005a22.
Lyubomirsky , S ,
Sheldon , KM and
Schkade , D . 2005a. Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9: 111–131. [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]View all references). Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9, 111–131). Finally, initial self-concordant motivation to perform the exercise was expected to predict actual performance and to moderate the effects of performance on increased mood. Results generally supported these hypotheses, and suggested that the BPS exercise may be most beneficial for raising and maintaining positive mood. Implications of the results for understanding the critical factors involved in increasing and sustaining positive affect are discussed.
This paper explores a judgmental heuristic in which a person evaluates the frequency of classes or the probability of events by availability, i.e., by the ease with which relevant instances come to mind. In general, availability is correlated with ecological frequency, but it is also affected by other factors. Consequently, the reliance on the availability heuristic leads to systematic biases. Such biases are demonstrated in the judged frequency of classes of words, of combinatorial outcomes, and of repeated events. The phenomenon of illusory correlation is explained as an availability bias. The effects of the availability of incidents and scenarios on subjective probability are discussed.
Five studies tested hypotheses derived from the sociometer model of self-esteem according to which the self-esteem system monitors others' reactions and alerts the individual to the possibility of social exclusion. Study 1 showed that the effects of events on participants' state self-esteem paralleled their assumptions about whether such events would lead others to accept or reject them. In Study 2, participants' ratings of how included they felt in a real social situation correlated highly with their self-esteem feelings. In Studies 3 and 4, social exclusion caused decreases in self-esteem when respondents were excluded from a group for personal reasons, but not when exclusion was random, but this effect was not mediated by self-presentation. Study 5 showed that trait self-esteem correlated highly with the degree to which respondents generally felt included versus excluded by other people. Overall, results provided converging evidence for the sociometer model.
Although people assume that they see the surrounding environment as it truly is, we suggest that perception of the natural environment is dependent upon the internal goal states of perceivers. Five experiments demonstrated that perceivers tend to see desirable objects (i.e., those that can fulfill immediate goals-a water bottle to assuage their thirst, money they can win, a personality test providing favorable feedback) as physically closer to them than less desirable objects. Biased distance perception was revealed through verbal reports and through actions toward the object (e.g., underthrowing a beanbag at a desirable object). We suggest that seeing desirable objects as closer than less desirable objects serves the self-regulatory function of energizing the perceiver to approach objects that fulfill needs and goals.
Prior research has found that people tend to overestimate their relative contribution to joint tasks [e.g., Ross, M., & Sicoly, F. (1979). Egocentric biases in availability and attribution. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 322-336]. The present research investigates one source of this bias, and in doing so, identifies an important moderator of the effect. Three studies demonstrate that when people estimate their relative contribution to collective endeavors they focus on their own contribution and give less consideration to the contribution of their collaborators. This can cause overestimation for tasks in which total contributions are plentiful, but underestimation for tasks in which total contributions are few--despite the fact that both tasks reflect positively on the person who performs them. These results extend Ross and Sicoly's (1979) original analysis of bias in responsibility judgments, but also suggest that the tendency to overestimate one's relative contribution to collaborations is not as ubiquitous as once thought.
Negative (adverse or threatening) events evoke strong and rapid physiological, cognitive, emotional, and social responses. This mobilization of the organism is followed by physiological, cognitive, and behavioral responses that damp down, minimize, and even erase the impact of that event. This pattern of mobilization-minimization appears to be greater for negative events than for neutral or positive events. Theoretical accounts of this response pattern are reviewed. It is concluded that no single theoretical mechanism can explain the mobilization-minimization pattern, but that a family of integrated process models, encompassing different classes of responses, may account for this pattern of parallel but disparately caused effects.