Emotional consequences of social debt sharing in communal relationships.

Whereas previous research has often struggled to disentangle the behavioral effects of gratitude and indebtedness felt in response to favors received by individuals, the present article clearly manifests their unique functions by investigating what happens if not just the individual but also their romantic partner is involved in a mutual exchange of favors. We propose that people in communal relationships share each other's social debt toward others that are not part of the dyad, and the emotion of indebtedness plays a vital role in that process. Three preregistered experiments revealed that people's emotions (gratitude and indebtedness) toward favors that their partners receive from others, or extend to them, are similar to when they receive or extend these favors themselves. Study 1 (N = 470) revealed that participants experienced vicarious gratitude and indebtedness to favors extended to their partners by others. Additional studies suggested that social debt between participants and third parties could be repaid by (Study 2; N = 507) and repaid to (Study 3; N = 304) their partners. These effects did not exist for exchanges in noncommunal relationships, indicating that these could not be simply attributed to indirect reciprocity. Rather, we believe that social debt sharing is a core feature of communal relationships in social exchange, and the emotion of indebtedness forms the psychological mechanism underlying this process. Crucially, indebtedness but not gratitude drove people's responses to shared debts, suggesting a unique function of indebtedness in mediating the social exchange of communal dyads. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Why do people (not) share guilt with others?

ABSTRACTDo people share their feelings of guilt with others and, if so, what are the reasons for doing this or not doing this? Even though the social sharing of negative emotional experiences, such as regret, has been extensively studied, not much is known about whether people share feelings of guilt and why. We report three studies exploring these questions. In Study 1, we re-analysed data about sharing guilt experiences posted on a social website called "Yahoo Answers", and found that people share intrapersonal as well as interpersonal guilt experiences with others online. Study 2 found that the main motivations of sharing guilt (compared with the sharing of regret) were "venting", "clarification and meaning", and "gaining advice". Study 3 found that people were more likely to share experiences of interpersonal guilt and more likely to keep experiences of intrapersonal guilt to themselves. Together, these studies contribute to a further understanding of the social sharing of the emotion guilt.

Lottery incentives for smoking cessation at the workplace: design and protocol of the smoke-free lottery - a cluster randomized trial.

BACKGROUND: Smoking is the leading behavioral risk factor for the loss of healthy life years. Many smokers want to quit, but have trouble doing so. Financial incentives in workplace settings have shown promising results in supporting smokers and their design influences their impact. Lotteries that leverage behavioral economic insights might improve the effectiveness of workplace cessation support. METHODS AND DESIGN: We examine in a cluster randomized trial if a workplace cessation group training paired with lottery deadlines will increase continuous abstinence rates over and above the cessation training alone. Organizations are randomized to either the control arm or lottery arm. The lotteries capitalize regret aversion by always informing winners at the deadline, but withholding prizes if they smoked. In the lottery-arm, winners are drawn out of all participants within a training group, regardless of their smoking status. In weeks 1-13 there are weekly lotteries. Winners are informed about their prize (€50), but can only claim it if they did not smoke that week, validated biochemically. After 26 weeks, there is a long-term lottery where the winners are informed about their prize (vacation voucher worth €400), but can only claim it if they were abstinent between weeks 13 and 26. The primary outcome is continuous abstinence 52 weeks after the quit date. DISCUSSION: There is a quest for incentives to support smoking cessation that are considered fair, affordable and effective across different socioeconomic groups. Previous use of behavioral economics in the design of lotteries have shown promising results in changing health behavior. This cluster randomized trial aims to demonstrate if these lotteries are also effective for supporting smoking cessation. Therefore the study design and protocol are described in detail in this paper. Findings might contribute to the application and development of effective cessation support at the workplace. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Netherlands Trial Register Identifier: NL8463 . Date of registration: 17-03-2020.

Not every dissatisfaction is the same: The impact of electoral regret, disappointment, and anger on subsequent electoral behavior.

We investigate varieties of dissatisfaction by examining how the similar, yet distinct emotions of regret, disappointment, and anger are related to electoral behavior. In a 2-wave longitudinal study conducted around the UK General Election of 2017 (N1 = 817, N2 = 768), we measured these emotions in response to 3 levels of electoral decision-making (individual party preference, individual electoral participation, and election results) and tested the relationship between these emotions and electoral behaviors. We find that party switching in 2017 is associated with regret about the party preference in 2015 and the regret about those election results, but not with other emotions. Similarly, we also find that the regret about party preference in 2017 is associated with future party switching intentions. Disappointment with the decision to vote in the 2015 General Election is negatively associated with voting in 2017; and the same is true for the anger about participants' party choice. These results suggest that distinct dissatisfaction-related emotions might have distinct consequences for electoral behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Greed: What Is It Good for?

What is greed good for? Greed is ubiquitous, suggesting that it must have some benefits, but it is also often condemned. In a representative sample of the Dutch population (N = 2,367, 51.3% female, Mage = 54.06, SD = 17.90), we examined two questions. First, inspired by Eriksson et al., we studied whether greedy people generate more personal and household income (economic outcomes), have more sexual partners, longer relationships, and more offspring (evolutionary outcomes), and are more satisfied in life (psychological outcomes). We found that greedy individuals had higher economic outcomes, mixed evolutionary outcomes, and lower psychological outcomes. Second, we compared greed and self-interest. We found that they differed in terms of economic outcomes, and partly in terms of evolutionary outcomes, but that they were similar in terms of psychological outcomes. This research provides insights into what greed is and does. Directions for further research are discussed.

The Relative Importance of Joke and Audience Characteristics in Eliciting Amusement.

The current work estimated the relative importance of joke and audience characteristics for the occurrence of amusement. Much psychological research has focused on stimulus characteristics when searching for sources of funniness. Some researchers have instead highlighted the importance of perceiver characteristics, such as dispositional cheerfulness. Across five preregistered studies (Ns = 118-54,905) with varied stimuli and perceiver samples (website visitors, students, Mechanical Turk and Prolific users), variance-decomposition analyses found that perceiver characteristics account for more variance in funniness ratings than stimulus characteristics. Thus, psychological theories focusing on between-persons differences have a relatively high potential for explaining and predicting humor appreciation (here, funniness ratings). Crucially, perceiver-by-stimulus interactions explained the largest amount of variance, highlighting the importance of fit between joke and audience characteristics when predicting amusement. Implications for humor-appreciation theories and applications are discussed.

The good, bad and ugly of dispositional greed.

Greed is the insatiable desire for more. It is an important economic motive with numerous implications for consumer behavior and decision processes. We describe research showcasing the good, the bad and the ugly of dispositional greed. The good of greed refers to the potential advantageous consequences for society as a whole and for greedy people themselves. The bad of greed refers to the potential harm that it causes to others, and the ugliness of greed refers to the disadvantageous consequences of being greedy for the people themselves.

What we talk about when we talk about hope: A prototype analysis.

Although hope is a well-studied topic, there is no consensus on its definition. Using a prototype analysis (a bottom-up approach collecting laypeople's views on hope), the present research defines hope and provides insights into its associations with other related constructs. Study 1 identified a list of features of hope derived from characteristics generated by laypeople in the Netherlands and the United States when asked to think about hope. Study 2 determined the centrality of each of these features of hope, where the most frequently mentioned features were classified as "central features," whereas the less frequently as "peripheral features." Studies 3-5 then tested the validity of this classification and showed that central features (compared with peripheral ones) were more often recalled and recognized (Study 3), were classified as a feature of hope more quickly (Study 4), and were more representative in autobiographical situations involving hope (Study 5). Our findings are in part consistent with the definitions of hope reported in previous literature, and suggest in addition that some features deserve more attention than before. Based on our findings and previous literature, we propose the following core elements of hope: belief, positive, future, desire, and possibility. Accordingly, we propose the working definition that hope is a belief that a positive future outcome is possible combined with a desire for that outcome. As our research provides a more nuanced understanding of hope and its associations with other related constructs, we hope the current findings will contribute to future research on this important topic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Using semantic similarity to understand the psychological constructs related to prosociality.

Prosociality (measured with economic games) is correlated with individual differences in psychological constructs (measured with self-report scales). We review how methods from natural language processing, a subfield of computer science focused on processing natural text, can be applied to understand the semantic content of scales measuring psychological constructs correlated with prosociality. Methods for clustering language and assessing similarity between text documents can be used to assess the novelty (or redundancy) of new scales, to understand the overlap among different psychological constructs, and to compare different measures of the same construct. These examples illustrate how natural language processing methods can augment traditional survey- and game-based approaches to studying individual differences in prosociality.

Anticipated guilt and going against one's self-interest.

To lend money to someone and to later ask this same person to pay the money back should be relatively unproblematic in modern, monetized societies. Still, some people find it difficult to ask for lent money to be paid back, even though it is in their own interest that this happen and they have the legitimate right to ask their money back. In this article, we examine 1 reason why people might experience such difficulties: the anticipation of guilt. In Study 1, the majority of participants from 3 different countries indicated that they sometimes did not ask money back because doing so would make them feel guilty. Study 2 found that the more people anticipated guilt about asking their money back, the less willing they were to do this. Study 3 found that the effect of guilt became less strong when more money was at stake. Study 4 found that people anticipated more guilt and were less likely to ask money back when the other person was poor compared to rich. Studies 5 and 6 found that the amount of harm people anticipated by asking the money back mediated the effect. Taken together, we interpret these studies (Ntotal = 2988) to showcase the social nature of guilt, in that it can motivate people to sacrifice their (financial) self-interest in order to protect relationships with others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Increasing saving intentions through leaderboards: A gamification approach.

Saving money is important but challenging. To spur financial saving intentions, we propose a new strategy-gamification. Specifically, we investigate the effectiveness of competitive leaderboards in increasing individuals' saving intentions. The results of two studies (total N = 618) show consistently that people's saving intentions are higher when presented with a leaderboard than when not. Further, as leaderboards elicit social comparison, we explore whether the height of the comparison standard and individuals' social comparison orientation moderate the effect. We find that the effect of leaderboards on saving intentions is more pronounced when people compare with a higher (as compared to a lower) standard (Study 1), but that the effect is not influenced by individuals' social comparison orientation (Study 2). Taken together, this research provides a new and simple-to-implement strategy to facilitate saving intentions in order to help improve people's financial well-being.

Development and validation of the Inventory of Emotional and Reasoned Purchases Decision-Making Styles (PDMI) / Desarrollo y validación del Inventario de Estilos de Toma de Decisiones de Compras Emocionales y Razonadas (ITDC)

Abstract Consumer decision-making is part of the purchase process. Therefore, as a relevant element for the evaluation of the purchase process, it is essential to have valid, reliable and culturally relevant measurements. For that reason, in this study the development and validation of the Purchases Decision-Making Inventory (PDMI) are presented. The general sample consisted of 518 Mexican participants, which were randomly divided into two groups, 300 for exploratory analysis, and 218 for confirmatory analysis. The results show that PDMI evaluated from its general components of emotional and reasoned decisions in purchases, present high internal consistency. The confirmatory factor analysis shows a good fit to dimensions extracted from the exploratory analyses. In terms of convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity, relations according to the nomological network were found, and the factors showed independency. Finally, from the confirmed structures of the inventory, spending per week was modelled, finding that emotional decisions turned out to be a positive significant predictor. PDMI is an evaluation tool with cultural relevance and appropriate psychometric indexes that can be used to integrate into consumer behavior models.

Resumen La toma de decisiones del consumidor es parte del proceso de compra. Por tanto, al ser un elemento relevante para la evaluación del proceso de compra, es esencial contar con mediciones válidas, confiables y culturalmente relevantes. Por esta razón, en este artículo se presenta el desarrollo y validación del inventario de toma de decisiones de compras (ITDC). La muestra general estuvo conformada por 518 participantes mexicanos, la cual se dividió aleatoriamente en dos, 300 para análisis exploratorios y 218 para análisis confirmatorios. Los resultados muestran que el ITDC, evaluado a partir de sus componentes generales de decisiones emocionales y razonadas en las compras, presenta altos índices de consistencia interna. El análisis factorial confirmatorio muestra buen ajuste a las dimensiones extraídas en los análisis exploratorios. En términos de validez convergente, divergente y discriminante, se encontraron relaciones según la red nomológica, y los factores mostraron independencia. Por último, a partir de las estructuras confirmadas del inventario, se modeló el gasto por semana. Encontrando que las decisiones emocionales resultan ser un predictor significativo positivo. ITDC es una herramienta de evaluación con relevancia cultural e índices psicométricos apropiados, que se pueden utilizar para integrar en modelos de comportamiento del consumidor.

The Role of Mindful Parenting in Individual and Social Decision-Making in Children.

Children are confronted with an increasing amount of choices every day, which can be stressful. Decision-making skills may be one of the most important "21st century skills" that children need to master to ensure success. Many aspects of decision-making, such as emotion regulation during stressful situations, develop in the context of caregiver-child interactions. This study examined whether mindful parenting predicts children's individual and social decision-making. The current study included 63 mother-child dyads from The Netherlands (Child Mage  = 5.11, SD = 0.88, 50.8% girls). Mothers completed the Dutch version of the Interpersonal Mindfulness in Parenting Scale (IM-P). A "Choice Task" was developed to measure individual decision-making skills, and a "Sharing Task" was created to measure social decision-making in young children. Higher maternal mindful parenting significantly predicted more sharing after controlling for covariates (child age, sex, SES, maternal education level; Wald = 4.505, p = 0.034). No main effect of maternal mindful parenting was found for any of the individual decision-making measures. These findings suggest that mindful parenting supports children's social decision-making. Future research should investigate if the combination of mindful parenting and children's early decision-making skills predict key developmental outcomes.

Show or hide pride? Selective inhibition of pride expressions as a function of relevance of achievement domain.

Pride expressions draw positive attention to one's achievements. There is also evidence that expressing pride can result in negative outcomes, such as being envied and negatively evaluated. We investigated whether people anticipate such negative outcomes and regulate their pride expressions accordingly. Five experiments (total N = 953) suggest that people selectively inhibit their expressions of pride when their achievements are relevant to the audience, and that failing to do so could result in social costs. Pride expressions were reported to be less intense when the achievement was relevant to the observer of those expressions, both in hypothetical (Experiments 1a, b, c, 2a, b, and 3) and actual pride experiences (Experiment 4; first four experiments Hedge's g = 0.50). This effect was independent of the experienced intensity of pride. In Experiment 5, we recorded actual pride expressions of people expressing pride to relevant and nonrelevant audiences and found that raters also perceived pride expressions to be less intense toward relevant than nonrelevant audiences. The results illustrate the importance of social context in understanding the intensity of pride expressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Commitment Lotteries Promote Physical Activity Among Overweight Adults-A Cluster Randomized Trial.

Background: The World Health Organization has identified physical inactivity as the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality. People often intend to engage in physical activity on a regular basis, but have trouble doing so. To realize their health goals, people can voluntarily accept deadlines with consequences that restrict undesired future behaviors (i.e., commitment devices). Purpose: We examined if lottery-based deadlines that leverage regret aversion would help overweight individuals in attaining their goal of attending their gym twice per week. At each deadline a lottery winner was drawn from all participants. The winners were only eligible for their prize if they attained their gym-attendance goals. Importantly, nonattending lottery winners were informed about their forgone prize. The promise of this counterfactual feedback was designed to evoke anticipated regret and emphasize the deadlines. Methods: Six corporate gyms with a total of 163 overweight participants were randomized to one of three arms. We compared (i) weekly short-term lotteries for 13 weeks; (ii) the same short-term lotteries in combination with an additional long-term lottery after 26 weeks; and (iii) a control arm without lotteries. Results: After 13 weeks, participants in the lottery arms attained their attendance goals more often than participants in the control arm. After 26 weeks, we observe a decline in goal attainment in the short-term lottery arm and the highest goal attainment in the long-term lottery arm. Conclusions: With novel applications, the current research adds to a growing body of research that demonstrates the effectiveness of commitment devices in closing the gap between health goals and behavior. Clinical Trial information: This trial is registered in the Dutch Trial Register. Identifier: NTR5559.

Emotional responses to behavioral economic incentives for health behavior change.

Many people aim to change their lifestyle, but have trouble acting on their intentions. Behavioral economic incentives and related emotions can support commitment to personal health goals, but the related emotions remain unexplored. In a regret lottery, winners who do not attain their health goals do not get their prize but receive feedback on what their forgone earnings would have been. This counterfactual feedback should provoke anticipated regret and increase commitment to health goals. We explored which emotions were actually expected upon missing out on a prize due to unsuccessful weight loss and which incentive-characteristics influence their likelihood and intensity. Participants reported their expected emotional response after missing out on a prize in one of 12 randomly presented incentive-scenarios, which varied in incentive type, incentive size and deadline distance. Participants primarily reported feeling disappointment, followed by regret. Regret was expected most when losing a lottery prize (vs. a fixed incentive) and intensified with prize size. Multiple features of the participant and the lottery incentive increase the occurrence and intensity of regret. As such, our findings can be helpful in designing behavioral economic incentives that leverage emotions to support health behavior change.

Physical activity after commitment lotteries: examining long-term results in a cluster randomized trial.

To overcome self-control difficulties, people can commit to their health goals by voluntarily accepting deadlines with consequences. In a commitment lottery, the winners are drawn from all participants, but can only claim their prize if they also attained their gym-attendance goals. In a 52-week, three-arm trial across six company gyms, we tested if commitment lotteries with behavioral economic underpinnings would promote physical activity among overweight adults. In previous work, we presented an effective 26-week intervention. In the present paper we analyzed maintenance of goal attainment at 52-week follow-up and the development of weight over time. We compared weight and goal attainment (gym attendance ≥ 2 per week) between three arms that-in the intervention period- consisted of (I) weekly short-term lotteries for 13 weeks; (II) the same short-term lotteries in combination with an additional long-term lottery after 26 weeks; and (III) a control arm without lottery-deadlines. After a successful 26-week intervention, goal attainment declined between weeks 27 and 52 in the long-term lottery arm, but remained higher than in the control group. Goal attainment did not differ between the short-term lottery arm and control arm. Weight declined slightly in all arms in the first 13 weeks of the trial and remained stable from there on. Commitment lotteries can support regular gym attendance up to 52 weeks, but more research is needed to achieve higher levels of maintenance and weight loss.

Evidence for Opportunity Cost Neglect in the Poor.

People often neglect opportunity costs: They do not fully take into account forgone alternatives outside of a particular choice set. Several scholars have suggested that poor people should be more likely to spontaneously consider opportunity costs, because budget constraints should lead to an increased focus on trade-offs. We did not find support for this hypothesis in five high-powered experiments (total N = 2325). The experiments used different products (both material and experiential) with both high and low prices (from $8.50 to $249.99) and different methods of reminding participants of opportunity costs. High-income and low-income participants showed an equally strong decrease in willingness to buy when reminded of opportunity costs, implying that both the rich and the poor neglect opportunity costs.

The social side of shame: approach versus withdrawal.

At present, the consequences and functions of experiences of shame are not yet well understood. Whereas psychology literature typically portrays shame as being bad for social relations, motivating social avoidance and withdrawal, there are recent indications that shame can be reinterpreted as having clear social tendencies in the form of motivating approach and social affiliation. Yet, until now, no research has ever put these alternative interpretations of shame-motivated behaviours directly to the test. The present paper presents such a test by studying the extent to which shame motivates a preference for social withdrawal versus a preference for social approach. Two studies (N = 148 and N = 133) using different shame inductions both showed people experiencing shame to prefer to be together with others (social approach) over being alone (social withdrawal). In addition, the preference for a social situation was found to be unique for shame; it was not found for the closely related emotion of guilt. Taken together, these findings provide direct empirical support for the idea that shame can have positive interpersonal consequences.

Disgust sensitivity is primarily associated with purity-based moral judgments.

Individual differences in disgust sensitivity are associated with a range of judgments and attitudes related to the moral domain. Some perspectives suggest that the association between disgust sensitivity and moral judgments will be equally strong across all moral domains (i.e., purity, authority, loyalty, care, fairness, and liberty). Other perspectives predict that disgust sensitivity is primarily associated with judgments of specific moral domains (e.g., primarily purity). However, no study has systematically tested if disgust sensitivity is associated with moral judgments of the purity domain specifically, more generally to moral judgments of the binding moral domains, or to moral judgments of all of the moral domains equally. Across 5 studies (total N = 1,104), we find consistent evidence for the notion that disgust sensitivity relates more strongly to moral condemnation of purity-based transgressions (meta-analytic r = .40) than to moral condemnation of transgressions of any of the other domains (range meta-analytic rs: .07-.27). Our findings are in line with predictions from Moral Foundations Theory, which predicts that personality characteristics like disgust sensitivity make people more sensitive to a certain set of moral issues. (PsycINFO Database Record