Imagining the future improves saving in preschoolers.

Preschoolers are notoriously poor at delaying gratification and saving limited resources, yet evidence-based methods of improving these behaviors are lacking. Using the marble game saving paradigm, we examined whether young children's saving behavior would increase as a result of engaging in future-oriented imagination using a storyboard. Participants were 115 typically developing 4-year-olds from a midwestern U.S. metropolitan area (Mage = 53.48 months, SD = 4.14, range = 47-60; 54.8% female; 84.5% White; 7.3% Hispanic/Latino ethnicity; median annual household income = $150,000-$174,999). Children were randomly assigned to one of four storyboard conditions prior to the marble game: Positive Future Simulation, Negative Future Simulation, Positive Routine, or Negative Routine. In each condition, children were asked to imagine how they would feel in the future situation using a smiley face rating scale. Results showed that children were significantly more likely to save (and to save more marbles) in the experimental conditions compared with the control conditions (medium effect sizes). Moreover, imagining saving for the future (and how good that would feel) was more effective at increasing saving behaviors than imagining not saving (and how bad that would feel). Emotion ratings were consistent with the assigned condition, but positive emotion alone did not account for these effects. Results held after accounting for game order and verbal IQ. Implications of temporal psychological distancing and emotion anticipation for children's future-oriented decision making are discussed.

Feeling good without doing good: Comment on Orth and Robins (2022).

Reviewing the literature of the past two decades, Orth and Robins (2022) conclude that high self-esteem yields reliable benefits. In this commentary, we caution that for objective outcome measures, these effects are variable- and domain-dependent. The allure of high self-esteem remains largely a matter of mind and memory, not behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Baseline associations between biomarkers, cognitive function, and self-regulation indices in the Cognitive and Self-regulatory Mechanisms of Obesity Study.

OBJECTIVE: Understanding how biological, cognitive, and self-regulatory factors are related to obesity, and weight regulation is clearly needed to optimize obesity prevention and treatment. The objective of this investigation was to understand how baseline biological, cognitive, and self-regulatory factors are related to adiposity at the initiation of a behavioral weight loss intervention among treatment-seeking adults with overweight/obesity. METHODS: Participants (N = 107) in the Cognitive and Self-regulatory Mechanisms of Obesity Study (Identifier-NCT02786238) completed a baseline assessment with anthropometric, cardiometabolic, inflammatory, cognitive function, and self-regulation measures as part of a larger on-going trial. Data were analyzed with linear regression. RESULTS: At baseline, body mass index, body fat percentage, and waist circumference (WC) were positively associated with fasting insulin and insulin resistance. Higher WC was related to higher fasting glucose and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c). Higher glucose and insulin resistance levels were related to lower list sorting working memory. Higher glucose and HbA1c levels were negatively associated with reading scores. Cognitive function and self-regulation indices were unrelated. CONCLUSIONS: In adults with overweight/obesity entering a weight loss treatment study: (1) elevated WC and associated glycemic impairment were negatively associated with cognition, (2) poorer executive function and reading abilities were associated with poorer glycemic control, and (3) objectively measured cognitive functions were unrelated to self-reported/behavioral measures of self-regulation. Such findings increase understanding of the relationships between adiposity, biomarkers, cognition, and self-regulation at treatment initiation and may ultimately inform barriers to successful obesity treatment response.

A Multisite Preregistered Paradigmatic Test of the Ego-Depletion Effect.

We conducted a preregistered multilaboratory project (k = 36; N = 3,531) to assess the size and robustness of ego-depletion effects using a novel replication method, termed the paradigmatic replication approach. Each laboratory implemented one of two procedures that was intended to manipulate self-control and tested performance on a subsequent measure of self-control. Confirmatory tests found a nonsignificant result (d = 0.06). Confirmatory Bayesian meta-analyses using an informed-prior hypothesis (δ = 0.30, SD = 0.15) found that the data were 4 times more likely under the null than the alternative hypothesis. Hence, preregistered analyses did not find evidence for a depletion effect. Exploratory analyses on the full sample (i.e., ignoring exclusion criteria) found a statistically significant effect (d = 0.08); Bayesian analyses showed that the data were about equally likely under the null and informed-prior hypotheses. Exploratory moderator tests suggested that the depletion effect was larger for participants who reported more fatigue but was not moderated by trait self-control, willpower beliefs, or action orientation.

Training for Wisdom: The Distanced-Self-Reflection Diary Method.

How can people wisely navigate social conflict? Two preregistered longitudinal experiments (Study 1: Canadian adults; Study 2: American and Canadian adults; total N = 555) tested whether encouraging distanced (i.e., third-person) self-reflection would help promote wisdom. Both experiments measured wise reasoning (i.e., intellectual humility, open-mindedness about how situations could unfold, consideration of and attempts to integrate diverse viewpoints) about challenging interpersonal events. In a month-long experiment (Study 1), participants used either a third- or first-person perspective in diary reflections on each day's most significant experience. Compared with preintervention assessments, assessments made after the intervention revealed that participants reflecting in the third person showed a significant increase in wise reasoning about interpersonal challenges. These effects were statistically accounted for by shifts in diary-based reflections toward a broader self-focus. A week-long experiment (Study 2) replicated the third-person self-reflection effect on wise reasoning (vs. first-person and no-pronoun control conditions). These findings suggest an efficient and evidence-based method for fostering wise reasoning.

Personal economic anxiety in response to COVID-19.

The economic effects of COVID-19 have been far-reaching. Using a sample of adults from the United States (n = 513), the present study examined demographic and individual correlates of anxiety about financial hardship on March 17th, 2020, the day after historic stock market drops in response to the emerging COVID-19 crisis. Confirmatory factor analysis models determined that a unidimensional approach best accounted for covariation among types of economic anxiety. Zero-order and semi-partial correlations with economic anxiety were estimated. Younger adults tended to report greater anxiety than older adults. Black respondents reported significantly more anxiety, whereas respondents without children living at home reported less anxiety. Low collective self-esteem, low conscientiousness, and low openness to experience were associated with greater economic anxiety. High neuroticism, perceived vulnerability to disease, and belongingness stemming from large group activities also were associated with greater anxiety. The current study provides a first glance at individual differences in understanding who may experience economic anxiety due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The sense of moral obligation facilitates information agency and culture.

Tomasello argues that humans' sense of moral obligation emerges early in development, relies on a shared "we," and serves as the foundation of cooperation. This perspective complements our theoretical view of the human self as information agent. The shared "we" promotes not only proximal cooperative goals but also distal ones via the construction of shared understanding - it promotes culture.

Everyday Thoughts in Time: Experience Sampling Studies of Mental Time Travel.

Time is among the most important yet mysterious aspects of experience. We investigated everyday mental time travel, especially into the future. Two community samples, contacted at random points for 3 (Study 1; 6,686 reports) and 14 days (Study 2; 2,361 reports), reported on their most recent thought. Both studies found that thoughts about the present were frequent, thoughts about the future also were common, whereas thoughts about the past were rare. Thoughts about the present were on average highly happy and pleasant but low in meaningfulness. Pragmatic prospection (thoughts preparing for action) was evident in thoughts about planning and goals. Thoughts with no time aspect were lower in sociality and experiential richness. Thoughts about the past were relatively unpleasant and involuntary. Subjective experiences of thinking about past and future often were similar-while both differed from present focus, consistent with views that memory and prospection use similar mental structures.

Victims, perpetrators, or both? The vicious cycle of disrespect and cynical beliefs about human nature.

We tested how cynicism emerges and what maintains it. Cynicism is the tendency to believe that people are morally bankrupt and behave treacherously to maximize self-interest. Drawing on literatures on norms of respectful treatment, we proposed that being the target of disrespect gives rise to cynical views, which predisposes people to further disrespect. The end result is a vicious cycle: cynicism and disrespect fuel one another. Study 1's nationally representative survey showed that disrespect and cynicism are positively related to each other in 28 of 29 countries studied, and that cynicism's associations with disrespect were independent of (and stronger than) associations with lacking social support. Study 2 used a nationally representative longitudinal dataset, spanning 4 years. In line with the vicious cycle hypothesis, feeling disrespected and holding cynical views gave rise to each other over time. Five preregistered experiments (including 2 in the online supplemental materials) provided causal evidence. Study 3 showed that bringing to mind previous experiences of being disrespected heightened cynical beliefs subsequently. Studies 4 and 5 showed that to the extent that people endorsed cynical beliefs, others were inclined to treat them disrespectfully. Study 6's weeklong daily diary study replicated the vicious cycle pattern. Everyday experiences of disrespect elevated cynical beliefs and vice versa. Moreover, cynical individuals tended to treat others with disrespect, which in turn predicted more disrespectful treatment by others. In short, experiencing disrespect gives rise to cynicism and cynicism elicits disrespect from others, thereby reinforcing the worldview that caused these negative reactions in the first place. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Self-other asymmetries in the perceived validity of the Implicit Association Test.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the most popular instrument in implicit social cognition, with some scholars and practitioners calling for its use in applied settings. Yet, little is known about how people perceive the test's validity as a measure of their true attitudes toward members of other groups. Four experiments manipulated the desirability of the IAT's result and whether that result referred to one's own attitudes or other people's. Results showed a self-other asymmetry, such that people perceived a desirable IAT result to be more valid when it applied to themselves than to others, whereas the opposite held for undesirable IAT results. A fifth experiment demonstrated that these self-other differences influence how people react to the idea of using the IAT as a personnel selection tool. Experiment 6 tested whether the self-other effect was driven by motivation or expectations, finding evidence for motivated reasoning. All told, the current findings suggest potential barriers to implementing the IAT in applied settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

It's not going to be that fun: negative experiences can add meaning to life.

People seek to spend time in positive experiences, enjoying and savoring. Yet there is no escaping negative experiences, from the mundane (e.g. arguing) to the massive (e.g. death of a child). Might negative experiences confer a hidden benefit to well-being? We propose that they do, in the form of enhanced meaning in life. Research suggests that negative experiences can serve to boost meaning because they stimulate comprehension (understanding how the event fits into a broader narrative of the self, relationships, and the world), a known pillar of meaning in life. Findings on counterfactual thinking, reflecting on events' implications, and encompassing experiences into broad-based accounts of one's identity support the role of comprehension in contributing to life's meaning from unwanted, unwelcome experiences.

Power increases the socially toxic component of narcissism among individuals with high baseline testosterone.

The corrosive effects of power have been noted for centuries, but the self-related changes responsible for those effects have remained somewhat elusive. Narcissists tend to rise to-and abuse-positions of power, so we considered the possibility that positions of power may corrupt because they inflate narcissism. Two pathways were considered: Powerholders abuse their power because having power over others makes them feel superior (grandiosity pathway) or deserving of special treatment (entitlement pathway). Supporting the entitlement pathway, assigning participants to a position of power (vs. equal control) over a group task increased scores on the Exploitative/Entitlement component of narcissism among those with high baseline testosterone. What is more, heightened Exploitative/Entitlement scores among high-testosterone participants endowed with power (vs. equal control) statistically explained amplified self-reported willingness to misuse their power (e.g., taking fringe benefits as extra compensation). The grandiosity pathway was not well supported. The Superiority/Arrogance, Self-Absorption/Self-Admiration, and Leadership/Authority facets of narcissism did not change as a function of the power manipulation and testosterone levels. Taken together, these results suggest that people with high (but not low) testosterone may be inclined to misuse their power because having power over others makes them feel entitled to special treatment. This work identifies testosterone as a characteristic that contributes to the development of the socially toxic component of narcissism (Exploitative/Entitlement). It points to the possibility that structural positions of power and individual differences in narcissism may be mutually reinforcing, suggesting a vicious cycle with personal, relational, and societal implications. (PsycINFO Database Record

Revisiting Our Reappraisal of the (Surprisingly Few) Benefits of High Self-Esteem.

Our 2003 article clashed with conventional wisdom by concluding that high self-esteem has only a couple of benefits, notably high initiative (based on trusting one's own judgment) and feeling good. Its high citation rate reflects not only the novel conclusions but also widespread interest in self-esteem both among researchers and in the broader society. Psychology may have lost some credibility by advocating efforts to raise self-esteem that were based on correlational evidence, which may be a salutary lesson for the field. There is still much to learn about self-esteem, but future work can improve by noting weaknesses in self-report data and correcting for confounds.

The Strength Model of Self-Regulation: Conclusions From the Second Decade of Willpower Research.

The strength model of self-regulation uses a muscle analogy to explain patterns of ego depletion, conservation of willpower, and improved performance after frequent exercise. Our 2007 overview of the literature has been well cited, presumably because of the phenomenon's importance to theories of selfhood and a wide assortment of applied contexts, including problem behaviors. Some researchers have put forward rival theoretical accounts, and others have questioned the existence of the phenomenon. The weight of evidence continues to support the usefulness of the strength model, albeit amid continuing updates and revisions.

Too much of a good thing? Exploring the inverted-U relationship between self-control and happiness.

OBJECTIVE: Can having too much self-control make people unhappy? Researchers have increasingly questioned the unilateral goodness of self-control and proposed that it is beneficial only up to a certain point, after which it becomes detrimental. The little empirical research on the issue shows mixed results. Hence, we tested whether a curvilinear relationship between self-control and subjective well-being exists. METHOD: We used multiple metrics (questionnaires, behavioral ratings), sources (self-report, other-report), and methods (cross-sectional measurement, dayreconstruction method, experience sampling method) across six studies (Ntotal = 5,318). RESULTS: We found that self-control positively predicted subjective well-being (cognitive and affective), but there was little evidence for an inverted U-shaped curve. The results held after statistically controlling for demographics and other psychological confounds. CONCLUSION: Our main finding is that self-control enhances subjective well-being with little to no apparent downside of too much self-control.

Cognitive and Self-regulatory Mechanisms of Obesity Study (COSMOS): Study protocol for a randomized controlled weight loss trial examining change in biomarkers, cognition, and self-regulation across two behavioral treatments.

Obesity is a global epidemic, yet successful interventions are rare. Up to 60% of people fail to achieve clinically meaningful, short-term weight loss (5-10% of start weight), whereas up to 72% are unsuccessful at achieving long-term weight loss (5-10% loss for ≥5years). Understanding how biological, cognitive, and self-regulatory factors work together to promote or to impede weight loss is clearly needed to optimize obesity treatment. This paper describes the methodology of the Cognitive and Self-regulatory Mechanisms of Obesity Study (the COSMOS trial). COSMOS is the first randomized controlled trial to investigate how changes in multiple biopsychosocial and cognitive factors relate to weight loss and one another across two weight loss treatments. The specific aims are to: 1) Confirm that baseline obesity-related physiological dysregulation is linked to cognitive deficits and poorer self-regulation, 2) Evaluate pre- to post-treatment change across time to assess individual differences in biomarkers, cognition, and self-regulation, and 3) Evaluate whether the acceptance-based treatment (ABT) group has greater improvements in outcomes (e.g., greater weight loss and less weight regain, improvements in biomarkers, cognition, and self-regulation), than the standard behavioral treatment group (SBT) from pre- to post-treatment and 1-year follow-up. The results of COSMOS will provide critical information about how dysregulation in biomarkers, cognition, and/or self-regulation is related to weight loss and whether weight loss treatments are differentially associated with these factors. This information will be used to identify promising treatment targets that are informed by biological, cognitive, and self-regulatory factors in order to advance obesity treatment.

Free will beliefs predict attitudes toward unethical behavior and criminal punishment.

Do free will beliefs influence moral judgments? Answers to this question from theoretical and empirical perspectives are controversial. This study attempted to replicate past research and offer theoretical insights by analyzing World Values Survey data from residents of 46 countries (n = 65,111 persons). Corroborating experimental findings, free will beliefs predicted intolerance of unethical behaviors and support for severe criminal punishment. Further, the link between free will beliefs and intolerance of unethical behavior was moderated by variations in countries' institutional integrity, defined as the degree to which countries had accountable, corruption-free public sectors. Free will beliefs predicted intolerance of unethical behaviors for residents of countries with high and moderate institutional integrity, but this correlation was not seen for countries with low institutional integrity. Free will beliefs predicted support for criminal punishment regardless of countries' institutional integrity. Results were robust across different operationalizations of institutional integrity and with or without statistical control variables.

Ordinary people associate addiction with loss of free will.

INTRODUCTION: It is widely believed that addiction entails a loss of free will, even though this point is controversial among scholars. There is arguably a downside to this belief, in that addicts who believe they lack the free will to quit an addiction might therefore fail to quit an addiction. METHODS: A correlational study tested the relationship between belief in free will and addiction. Follow-up studies tested steps of a potential mechanism: 1) people think drugs undermine free will 2) people believe addiction undermines free will more when doing so serves the self 3) disbelief in free will leads people to perceive various temptations as more addictive. RESULTS: People with lower belief in free will were more likely to have a history of addiction to alcohol and other drugs, and also less likely to have successfully quit alcohol. People believe that drugs undermine free will, and they use this belief to self-servingly attribute less free will to their bad actions than to good ones. Low belief in free will also increases perceptions that things are addictive. CONCLUSIONS: Addiction is widely seen as loss of free will. The belief can be used in self-serving ways that may undermine people's efforts to quit.

Art enhances meaning by stimulating integrative complexity and aesthetic interest.

Menninghaus et al. portrayed meaning in art as a vehicle for transforming negative emotions into pleasure. Although it is intuitively appealing that meaningful experiences should feel good, meaningfulness does not necessarily entail pleasure or positive emotions. Whereas easily comprehended art may elicit pleasure, meaningfulness is more closely tied to challenge and interest than to pleasure.