Marret K. Noordewier’s research while affiliated with Leiden University and other places

When having less money than needed, people experience financial scarcity. Here, we conducted a laboratory experiment to investigate whether financial scarcity increases financial avoidance – the tendency to avoid dealing with ones finances. Participants completed an incentivized task where they managed the finances of a household by earning income and paying expenses across multiple rounds. We manipulated participants’ financial situation such that they either had sufficient (financial abundance) or insufficient (financial scarcity) financial resources. At the end of each round, participants received an additional expense in the form of a letter. To measure financial avoidance in the form of attentional disengagement, we used an eye-tracker and assessed whether participants in the financial scarcity condition avoided looking at the expense letters. As a behavioral measure of financial avoidance, participants had the option to delay the payment of these expenses until the end of the experiment at no additional cost. Results showed no effect of financial scarcity on the eye-tracking measure, but there was an effect on the behavioral measure: Participants that experienced financial scarcity were more likely to delay payments. The behavioral finding corroborates the notion that financial scarcity can lead to financial avoidance. We explore potential reasons for the null-effect on the eye-tracking measure and discuss how future research can build upon our findings.

The complexity of societal risks such as pandemics, artificial intelligence, and climate change may lead laypeople to rely on experts and authorities when evaluating these threats. While Siegrist and Cvetkovich showed that competence-based trust in authorities correlates with perceived societal risks and benefits only when people feel unknowledgeable, recent research has yielded mixed support for this foundational work. To address this discrepancy, we conducted a direct-replication study (preregistered; 1,070 participants, 33 risks, 35,310 observations). The results contradict the original findings. However, additional non-preregistered analyses indicate an alternative perspective aligning with compensatory control theory and the description-experience framework: experiences with insufficient personal control over a threat may amplify individuals’ dependency on powerful others for risk mitigation. These findings highlight the need to reevaluate how trust shapes risk perceptions. Recent societal and technological shifts might have heightened the desire for control compared to subjective knowledge in why people resort to trust.

Epistemic emotions are hardly ever studied together, making it difficult to predict what features are shared versus unique to each emotion. To address this, we conducted two autobiographical recall experiments. We compared awe, surprise, curiosity, interest, confusion, and boredom in terms of elicitors, subjective experience components, and action tendencies. Ratings were analyzed using network analyses, to describe the central features for the whole group of epistemic emotions. In addition, ratings were compared per emotion, to identify key features for each individual emotion. Results showed that valence, arousal, coping potential, and avoidance are central features of all epistemic emotions. Awe, surprise, and interest were relatively positive emotions, which together with curiosity, were associated with arousal, high coping potential, and approach. Confusion and boredom were relatively negative emotions, which were associated with low arousal, low coping potential, and avoidance. Further analyses revealed unique features of (groups of) emotions. For example, awe was associated with exceeded expectancies, while surprise was associated with both exceeded and disconfirmed expectancies. Moreover, curiosity and confusion were associated with having (too) little information, while awe and interest were associated with having sufficient information. All emotions except boredom were associated with exploration, but this was particularly high for curiosity and interest.

Past work suggests that emotion deception in negotiations – communicating a different emotion than experienced – is perceived negatively. We, however, argue that this depends on the type of emotion deception. We compared two emotion deception types – communicating anger while actually being happy, and communicating happiness while being angry – to genuine communications of happiness and anger. In three preregistered experiments (N = 500), participants played the role of employee or supervisor and negotiated with an opponent about salary raises. After their initial offer, participants learned their opponent’s experienced (happiness vs. anger) and communicated emotion (happiness vs. anger). Then, participants made their final demand and reported perceptions of their opponent’s limits and sacrifice. Results showed that participants perceived opponents who communicated genuine anger as having stricter limits and conceded more to them than to opponents using the other emotion communication types. Moreover, opponents who communicated happiness but experienced anger were perceived as making more of a sacrifice than opponents who communicated anger but experienced happiness. In Experiment 3, we also examined effects of emotion deception on non-negotiated outcomes, by assessing the likelihood to hand the opponent a year-end bonus. Participants were most likely to allocate the bonus to opponents that truthfully communicated happiness. Moreover, participants were more likely to allocate the bonus to opponents who communicated happiness but experienced anger than to opponents who communicated anger but experienced happiness. These findings extend social functional accounts of emotion communication, by showing that effects of emotion deception depend on the type of experienced and/or communicated emotions.

People experience financial scarcity when they have insufficient financial resources to meet demands, and this experience can affect decision-making in various ways. One proposed consequence of financial scarcity is increased temporal discounting, which is a tendency to value immediate outcomes more strongly than delayed outcomes. To test whether financial scarcity indeed increases temporal discounting, we developed the Household Task—an experimental paradigm during which participants have to manage the finances of a household. In a pilot, we found that manipulating participants’ financial situation in the Household Task (debts vs. savings and control) induced an experience of financial scarcity. Next, Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed that this experience increased temporal discounting of gains and losses. In Experiments 3 and 4, we tested whether experienced scarcity also increases discounting when financial resources were equal between conditions. However, in these experiments, there was no evidence of such an effect. In Experiment 5, we found that discounting increased when available financial resources were constant while expectations about future financial problems might have differed between conditions. In sum, the current research suggests that when experiencing scarcity, discounting increases as a response to a current or anticipated future shortcoming of available financial resources. Yet, there was no evidence suggesting that discounting increases when a scarcity mindset is induced in isolation.

The current research investigates the effects of exposure to information about the prevalence of sexism in society on women's perceptions, needs, expectations, and career motivation. We propose that such exposure to sexism prevalence may threaten women's fundamental need to belong, and induces perceptions of social exclusion. Study 1 provided correlational evidence that perceiving society as sexist relates to increased perceptions of being excluded. Three experimental studies demonstrated that exposure to information about sexism in the form of fictional research results (Study 2), or actual newspaper articles (Studies 3 and 4), increased women's experiences of social exclusion. Exposure to such information also lowered women's gender-related expectations of achieving their preferred position in society, and reduced career motivation. Together, the article provides insight in the experiential and motivational reactions to sexism in society. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

The current study investigated the prospective associations between financial scarcity and financial avoidance. We hypothesized that over time, financial scarcity––the experience of lacking needed financial resources––is associated with an increase of financial avoidance––the tendency to avoid dealing with one’s finances––, and vice versa. In a longitudinal panel study, including a large and representative adult sample of Dutch citizens (initial N = 1,122, final N = 837), we measured experienced financial scarcity and financial avoidance twice over a period of 22 months. Data were analyzed using a cross-lagged panel model, which allows to test for prospective effects of one variable on the other, while controlling for autoregressive effects. Confirming our preregistered hypotheses, results showed that experienced financial scarcity was positively related with an increase in subsequent financial avoidance, whereas financial avoidance was positively related with an increase in subsequent experienced financial scarcity. While these longitudinal findings are not causal, they are in line with the concept of a poverty trap, where financial scarcity and financial avoidance form a temporally dynamic and increasing relationship.