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64
Ego depletion: is the active self a limited resource
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
, 1998
"... Choice, active response, self-regulation, and other volition may all draw on a common inner resource. In Experiment 1, people who forced themselves to eat radishes instead of tempting chocolates subsequently quit faster on unsolvable puzzles than people who had not had to exert self-control over eat ..."
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Cited by 410 (13 self)
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Choice, active response, self-regulation, and other volition may all draw on a common inner resource. In Experiment 1, people who forced themselves to eat radishes instead of tempting chocolates subsequently quit faster on unsolvable puzzles than people who had not had to exert self-control over eating. In Experiment 2, making a meaningful personal choice to perform attitude-relevant behavior caused a similar decrement in persistence. In Experiment 3, suppressing emotion led to a subsequent drop in performance of solvable anagrams. In Experiment 4, an initial task requiring high self-regulation made people more passive (i.e., more prone to favor the passive-response option). These results suggest that the self's capacity for active volition is limited and that a range of seemingly different, unrelated acts share a common resource. Many crucial functions of the self involve volition: making choices and decisions, taking responsibility, initiating and inhibiting behavior, and making plans of action and carrying out those plans. The self exerts control over itself and over the external world. To be sure, not all human behavior involves planful or deliberate control by the self, and, in fact, recent work
Accounting for the effects of accountability
- Psychological Bulletin
, 1999
"... This article reviews the now extensive research literature addressing the impact of accountability on a wide range of social judgments and choices. It focuses on 4 issues: (a) What impact do various accountability ground rules have on thoughts, feelings, and action? (b) Under what conditions will ac ..."
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Cited by 237 (6 self)
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This article reviews the now extensive research literature addressing the impact of accountability on a wide range of social judgments and choices. It focuses on 4 issues: (a) What impact do various accountability ground rules have on thoughts, feelings, and action? (b) Under what conditions will accountability attenuate, have no effect on, or amplify cognitive biases? (c) Does accountability alter how people think or merely what people say they think? and (d) What goals do accountable decision makers seek to achieve? In addition, this review explores the broader implications of accountability research. It highlights the utility of treating thought as a process of internalized dialogue; the importance of documenting social and institutional boundary conditions on putative cognitive biases; and the potential to craft empirical answers to such applied problems as how to structure accountability relationships in organizations. Accountability is a modern buzzword. In education (Fairchild &
Social and cognitive strategies for coping with accountability: conformity, complexity, and bolstering
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
, 1989
"... This experiment tested predictions derived from a social contingency model of judgment and choice that identifies 3 distinctive strategies that people rely on in dealing with demands for accountability from important interpersonal or institutional audiences. The model predicts that (a) when people k ..."
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Cited by 115 (3 self)
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This experiment tested predictions derived from a social contingency model of judgment and choice that identifies 3 distinctive strategies that people rely on in dealing with demands for accountability from important interpersonal or institutional audiences. The model predicts that (a) when people know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commitments, they will rely on the low-effort acceptability heuristic and simply shift their views toward those of the prospective audi-ence, (b) when people do not know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commit-ments, they will be motivated to think in relatively flexible, multidimensional ways (preemptive self-criticism), and (c) when people are accountable for positions to which they feel committed, they will devote the majority of their mental effort to justifying those positions (defensive bolstering). The experiment yielded results supportive of these 3 predictions. The study also revealed some evidence of individual differences in social and cognitive strategies for coping with accountability. Many writers have criticized cognitive social psychology for its apparent indifference to the interpersonal and institutional settings within which people make judgments and choices (e.g., Gergen, 1982; Sampson, 1981). Although these critiques make
Social-functionalist frameworks for judgment and choice: The intuitive politician, theologian, and prosecutor
- Psychological Review
, 2002
"... Research on judgment and choice has been dominated by functionalist assumptions that depict people as either intuitive scientists animated by epistemic goals or intuitive economists animated by utilitarian ones. This article identifies 3 alternative social functionalist starting points for inquiry: ..."
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Cited by 69 (2 self)
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Research on judgment and choice has been dominated by functionalist assumptions that depict people as either intuitive scientists animated by epistemic goals or intuitive economists animated by utilitarian ones. This article identifies 3 alternative social functionalist starting points for inquiry: people as pragmatic politicians trying to cope with accountability demands from key constituencies in their lives, principled theologians trying to protect sacred values from secular encroachments, and prudent prosecutors trying to enforce social norms. Each functionalist framework stimulates middle-range theories that specify (a) cognitive–affective–behavioral strategies of coping with adaptive challenges and (b) the implications of these coping strategies for identifying empirical and normative boundary conditions on judgmental tendencies classified as errors or biases within the dominant research programs. Once an esoteric specialty of a small cadre of cognitive psychologists, experimental research on judgment and choice has—to judge just by citation counts—become psychology’s leading intellectual export to the social sciences as well as to a host of applied fields. The influence of this research program has spread (critics might say “metastasized”) into such diverse domains as
Effect of Temporal Perspective on Subjective Confidence
"... Four studies examined whether people tend to lose confidence in their prospects for success the closer they are to the "moment of truth. " Study 1 found that students think they will do better on their midterm exams when asked on the 1st day of class than when asked on the day of the exam. ..."
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Cited by 61 (3 self)
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Four studies examined whether people tend to lose confidence in their prospects for success the closer they are to the "moment of truth. " Study 1 found that students think they will do better on their midterm exams when asked on the 1st day of class than when asked on the day of the exam. Studies 2 and 4 replicated this finding under controlled conditions. Study 3 demonstrated that the same effect holds retrospectively: People are more confident that they would have performed well at a task long after the time to perform has passed. Data are presented indicating that these results stem from a tendency for people to feel more "accountable " for their assessments, and thus focus less on the causes of success and more on the causes of failure, as the time to perform approaches. Implications for the experience of regret are discussed. As those who spend time in academic environments know too well, many students routinely excel on exams and yet, just before taking a test, are convinced they will do poorly. Similarly, the sports world is full of boastful fans who generally view their teams as infallible and yet, as play begins, are filled with worries about how their heroes might lose. Furthermore, there
Human resources management: some new directions.
- Journal of Management,
, 1999
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THE IMPACT OF “NO OPINION” RESPONSE OPTIONS ON DATA QUALITY NON-ATTITUDE REDUCTION OR AN INVITATION TO SATISFICE?
"... Abstract According to many seasoned survey researchers, offering a no-opinion option should reduce the pressure to give substantive responses felt by respondents who have no true opinions. By contrast, the survey satisficing perspective suggests that no-opinion options may discourage some respondent ..."
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Cited by 36 (5 self)
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Abstract According to many seasoned survey researchers, offering a no-opinion option should reduce the pressure to give substantive responses felt by respondents who have no true opinions. By contrast, the survey satisficing perspective suggests that no-opinion options may discourage some respondents from doing the cognitive work necessary to report the true opinions they do have. We address these arguments using data from nine experiments carried out in three household surveys. Attraction to no-opinion options was found to be greatest among respondents lowest in cognitive skills (as measured by educational attainment), among respondents answering secretly instead of orally, for questions asked later in a survey, and among respondents who devoted little effort to the reporting process. The quality of attitude reports obtained (as measured by over-time consistency and responsiveness to a question manipulation) was not compromised by the omission of noopinion options. These results suggest that inclusion of no-opinion options in attitude measures may not enhance data quality and instead may preclude measurement of some meaningful opinions. jon a. krosnick is professor of psychology and political science at Ohio State University and
Counterfactuals as behavioral primes: priming the simulation heuristic and consideration of alternatives
- Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
, 2000
"... We demonstrate that counterfactuals prime a mental simulation mind-set in which relevant but potentially converse alternatives are considered and that this mind-set activation has behavioral consequences. This mind-set is closely related to the simulation heuristic (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982). Pa ..."
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Cited by 33 (6 self)
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We demonstrate that counterfactuals prime a mental simulation mind-set in which relevant but potentially converse alternatives are considered and that this mind-set activation has behavioral consequences. This mind-set is closely related to the simulation heuristic (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982). Participants primed with a counterfactual were more likely to solve the Duncker candle problem (Experiment 1), suggesting that they noticed an alternative function for one of the objects, an awareness that is critical to solving the problem. Participants primed with a counterfactual were more likely to simultaneously affirm the consequent and select the potentially falsifying card, but without selecting the irrelevant card, in the Wason card selection task, suggesting that they were testing both the stated conditional and its reverse (Experiment 2). The increased affirmations of the consequent decreased correct solutions on the task—thus, the primed mind-set can bias or debias thought and action. Finally, Experiment 3 provides further evidence that counterfactual primes increase the accessibility of relevant alternatives. Counterfactual primes attenuated the confirmation bias in a trait hypothesis testing context by increasing the selection of questions designed to elicit hypothesis-disconfirming answers, but without increasing the selection of neutral questions. The nature of priming effects and the role of counterfactual thinking in biasing and debiasing thought and action are
Consumers’ beliefs about product benefits: The effect of obviously irrelevant product information
- Journal of Consumer Research
, 2002
"... When consumers try to assess the performance of a product on a key benefit, their information search often reveals both diagnostic information and irrelevant information. Although one would expect irrelevant information to have little impact on predictions of product performance, we present evidence ..."
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Cited by 26 (1 self)
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When consumers try to assess the performance of a product on a key benefit, their information search often reveals both diagnostic information and irrelevant information. Although one would expect irrelevant information to have little impact on predictions of product performance, we present evidence that the irrelevant information systematically weakens consumers ’ beliefs that the product will provide the benefit. We show that this dilution effect persists after subjects have acknowledged the irrelevance of the additional information but that it does depend on whether the product information is processed with the desired benefit in mind. We conclude that consumers are selectively looking for information that suggests the product will deliver the desired benefit and that they categorize any additional evidence, be it irrelevant or disconfirming, as not confirming. As a consequence, irrelevant information weakens consumers ’ beliefs in the product’s ability to deliver the benefit. When consumers evaluate products or services, they often search for diagnostic information on specific product benefits. A natural consequence of this search for diagnostic information is exposure to obviously irrelevant information—information that consumers perceive as clearly uninformative about the desired benefit. Normatively, the presence of irrelevant information should not change consumers ’ assessment of the product’s ability to deliver the desired benefit. Yet, studies on social judgment have demonstrated that adding obviously irrelevant information to diagnostic information may lead to less extreme
