Kathleen D Vohs
Biographic Data
| ID | 75802 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kathleen D Vohs |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kathleen D |
| FAMILY NAME | Vohs |
| SIGNATURE | VOHS K D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Minnesota |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5858-2603 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 73 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1853 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 73 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
Subjective Well-Being Enhances Experiential Perceptions
The experiential advantage refers to the well-being people derive from experiences over material goods. This research took a psychological needs approach and tested whether well-being predicts seeing purchases and products as being able to offer experiences. Five studies, using trait and state measures of well-being and sampling people in Asia and North America, supported this hypothesis. Controlled studies found that people higher in trait well-…
Trajectories of Psychological Outcomes During the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election
The 2024 U.S. presidential election seemed to have the potential to profoundly impact the national economy, financial markets, and geopolitics. Did Donald Trump’s re-election influence Americans’ psychology as well? We conducted a 7-wave longitudinal survey tracking N = 623 Americans (36% male, M age = 45.05 years ( SD age = 22.97) from 3 weeks before the election to 16 weeks after. As the election results came in, Democratic supporters reported …
Psychological Forecasting in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election
Can people accurately predict how major political events will affect their views of themselves and the world? We assessed people’s accuracy in forecasting their affective reactions and changes in enduring psychological traits to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. In a three-wave longitudinal study, people made forecasts of their affective states and traits encompassing well-being (life satisfaction, meaning in life), views of the self (self-est…
Do voting and election outcomes predict changes in conspiracy beliefs? Evidence from two high-profile U.S. elections
Despite widespread recognition that conspiracy theories carry the potential for serious harm, relatively little research has investigated possible antidotes to conspiracy beliefs. Previous theorizing posits that belief in conspiracy theories is driven in part by existential motives related to a sense of control and social motives aimed at maintaining a positive image of oneself and one's ingroup. Using electoral contests as the context, we invest…
Everyday Thoughts in Time
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 r…
The Strength Model of Self-Regulation
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…
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 (qu…
The Sticky Anchor Hypothesis
Self‐control depletion has been linked both to increased selfish behavior and increased susceptibility to situational cues. The present research tested two competing hypotheses about the consequence of depletion by measuring how people allocate rewards between themselves and another person. Seven experiments analyzed behavior in standard dictator games and reverse dictator games, settings in which participants could take money from another person…
Competing for love
Sexual economics theory analyzes sexual relationships in economic and market terms. • Women can offer sex or exclusive sexual access to men in exchange for resources. • Women compete by enhancing physical appearance and denigrating rivals’ reputations. • Men compete both individually and in groups to amass resources to exchange for sex. • Because men can compete as groups, male competition is less zero sum than women’s. Sexual economics theory an…
Pragmatic Prospection
In the present, the past is more knowable than the future—but people think far more about the future than the past. Both facts derive from the principle that the future can be changed whereas the past cannot. Our theory of pragmatic prospection holds that people think about the future so as to guide actions to bring about desirable outcomes. It proposes that thoughts about the future begin by imagining what one wants to happen, which is thus init…
Social Class and Social Worlds
Does access to money predict social behavior? Past work has shown that money fosters self-sufficiency and reduces interest in others. Building on this work, we tested whether income predicts the frequency and type of social interactions. Two studies using large, nationally representative samples of Americans ( N = 118,026) and different measures of social contact showed that higher household income was associated with less time spent socializing …
Decision Fatigue, Choosing for Others, and Self-Construal
Past research has shown that people tend to feel depleted by their decisions. In contrast, we found people report that making decisions for others (vs. the self) is less depleting because it is more enjoyable. Our investigation thus replicated a prior finding (that decision-making is depleting), moderated it by target of decision (self vs. other), and demonstrated mediation (enjoyment). We further measured chronic focus on self or others (self-co…
No match for money
The present research tested two competing hypotheses: (1) as money cues activate an exchange orientation to social relations, money cues harm prosocial responses in communal and collectivistic settings; (2) as money can be used to help close others, money cues increase helping in communal or collectivistic settings. In a culture, characterized by strong helping norms, money cues reduced the quality of help given (Experiment 1), and lowered percei…
Money priming can change people’s thoughts, feelings, motivations, and behaviors
Caruso, Vohs, Baxter, and Waytz (2013) posited that because money is used in free market exchanges, cues of money would lead people to justify and support the systems that allow those exchanges to take place. Hence, the authors predicted that money primes would boost system justification, social dominance, belief in a just world, and free market ideology, and found supportive evidence. Rohrer, Pashler, and Harris (2015) failed to replicate those …
Free Will and Punishment
If free-will beliefs support attributions of moral responsibility, then reducing these beliefs should make people less retributive in their attitudes about punishment. Four studies tested this prediction using both measured and manipulated free-will beliefs. Study 1 found that people with weaker free-will beliefs endorsed less retributive, but not consequentialist, attitudes regarding punishment of criminals. Subsequent studies showed that learni…
Yes, But Are They Happy? Effects of Trait Self‐Control on Affective Well‐Being and Life Satisfaction
Does trait self‐control ( TSC ) predict affective well‐being and life satisfaction—positively, negatively, or not? We conducted three studies (Study 1: N = 414, 64% female, M age = 35.0 years; Study 2: N = 208, 66% female, M age = 25.24 years; Study 3: N = 234, 61% female, M age = 34.53 years). The key predictor was TSC , with affective well‐being and life satisfaction ratings as key outcomes. Potential explanatory constructs including goal confl…
Illusions of Learning
People use assessments of how much they have learned to choose and recommend instructors, seminars, and weekend trips. How do people assess how much they have learned? Recent theorizing has depicted emotion as a cue for learning, and so people may be misled by recent emotional states to infer that they have learned more than they actually have. Four studies showed that people associated emotion with learning and believed, often falsely, that they…
Ego depletion decreases trust in economic decision making
Loss of control stimulates approach motivation
Nostalgia Weakens the Desire for Money
Nostalgia has a strong presence in the marketing of goods and services. The current research asked whether its effectiveness is driven by its weakening of the desire for money. Six experiments demonstrated that feeling nostalgic decreased people's desire for money. Using multiple operationalizations of desire for money, nostalgia (vs. neutral) condition participants were willing to pay more for products (experiment 1), parted with more money but …
We'll Be Honest, This Won't Be the Best Article You'll Ever Read
Consumers value word-of-mouth communications in large part because customer reviews are more likely to include negative information about a product or service than are communications originating from the marketer. Despite the fact that negative information is frequently valued by those receiving it, baldly declaring negative information may come with social costs to both communicator and receiver. For this reason, communicators sometimes soften p…
Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life
Diverging effects of clean versus dirty money on attitudes, values, and interpersonal behavior
Does the cue of money lead to selfish, greedy, exploitative behaviors or to fairness, exchange, and reciprocity? We found evidence for both, suggesting that people have both sets of meaningful associations, which can be differentially activated by exposure to clean versus dirty money. In a field experiment at a farmers' market, vendors who handled dirty money subsequently cheated customers, whereas those who handled clean money gave fair value (E…
What People Desire, Feel Conflicted About, and Try to Resist in Everyday Life
In the present study, we used experience sampling to measure desires and desire regulation in everyday life. Our analysis included data from 205 adults, who furnished a total of 7,827 reports of their desires over the course of a week. Across various desire domains, results revealed substantial differences in desire frequency and strength, the degree of conflict between desires and other goals, and the likelihood of resisting desire and the succe…
Hindsight Bias
Hindsight bias occurs when people feel that they “knew it all along,” that is, when they believe that an event is more predictable after it becomes known than it was before it became known. Hindsight bias embodies any combination of three aspects: memory distortion, beliefs about events’ objective likelihoods, or subjective beliefs about one’s own prediction abilities. Hindsight bias stems from (a) cognitive inputs (people selectively recall info…
Bad is Stronger than Good
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 impression…
Gossip as Cultural Learning
To complement views of gossip as essentially a means of gaining information about individuals, cementing social bonds, and engaging in indirect aggression, the authors propose that gossip serves to help people learn about how to live in their cultural society. Gossip anecdotes communicate rules in narrative form, such as by describing how someone else came to grief by violating social norms. Gossip is thus an extension of observational learning, …
Everyday temptations
How often and how strongly do people experience desires, to what extent do their desires conflict with other goals, and how often and successfully do people exercise self-control to resist their desires? To investigate desire and attempts to control desire in everyday life, we conducted a large-scale experience sampling study based on a conceptual framework integrating desire strength, conflict, resistance (use of self-control), and behavior enac…
Spent Resources
This research investigated impulse buying as resulting from the depletion of a common—but limited—resource that governs self-control. In three investigations, participants' self-regulatory resources were depleted or not; later, impulsive spending responses were measured. Participants whose resources were depleted, relative to participants whose resources were not depleted, felt stronger urges to buy, were willing to spend more, and actually did s…
Self-affirmation and self-control
Research has established that acts of self-control deplete a resource required for subsequent self-control tasks. The present investigation revealed that a psychological intervention-self-affirmation-facilitates self-control when the resource has been depleted. Experiments 1 and 2 found beneficial effects of self-affirmation on self-control in a depleted state. Experiments 3 and 4 suggested that self-affirmation improves self-control by promoting…
Self-Regulation and Self-Presentation
Self-presentation may require self-regulation, especially when familiar or dispositional tendencies must be overridden in service of the desired impression. Studies 1-4 showed that self-presentation under challenging conditions or according to counter-normative patterns (presenting oneself modestly to strangers, boastfully to friends, contrary to gender norms, to a skeptical audience, or while being a racial token) led to impaired self-regulation…
Nonprofits Are Seen as Warm and For-Profits as Competent
Consumers use warmth and competence, two fundamental dimensions that govern social judgments of people, to form perceptions of firms. Three experiments showed that consumers perceive nonprofits as being warmer than for-profits but as less competent. Further, consumers are less willing to buy a product made by a nonprofit than a for-profit because of their perception that the firm lacks competence. Consequently, when perceived competence of a nonp…
Making choices impairs subsequent self-control
The current research tested the hypothesis that making many choices impairs subsequent self-control. Drawing from a limited-resource model of self-regulation and executive function, the authors hypothesized that decision making depletes the same resource used for self-control and active responding. In 4 laboratory studies, some participants made choices among consumer goods or college course options, whereas others thought about the same options …
Intellectual performance and ego depletion
Some complex thinking requires active guidance by the self, but simpler mental activities do not. Depletion of the self's regulatory resources should therefore impair the former and not the latter. Resource depletion was manipulated by having some participants initially regulate attention (Studies 1 and 3) or emotion (Study 2). As compared with no-regulation participants who did not perform such exercises, depleted participants performed worse at…
Social Exclusion Causes People to Spend and Consume Strategically in the Service of Affiliation
When people's deeply ingrained need for social connection is thwarted by social exclusion, profound psychological consequences ensue. Despite the fact that social connections and consumption are central facets of daily life, little empirical attention has been devoted to understanding how belongingness threats affect consumer behavior. In four experiments, we tested the hypothesis that social exclusion causes people to spend and consume strategic…
Merely Activating the Concept of Money Changes Personal and Interpersonal Behavior
Money plays a significant role in people's lives, and yet little experimental attention has been given to the psychological underpinnings of money. We systematically varied whether and to what extent the concept of money was activated in participants' minds using methods that minimized participants' conscious awareness of the money cues. On the one hand, participants reminded of money were less helpful than were participants not reminded of money…
Peacocks, Porsches, and Thorstein Veblen
Conspicuous consumption is a form of economic behavior in which self-presentational concerns override desires to obtain goods at bargain prices. Showy spending may be a social signal directed at potential mates. We investigated such signals by examining (a) which individuals send them, (b) which contexts trigger them, and (c) how observers interpret them. Three experiments demonstrated that conspicuous consumption is driven by men who are followi…
Self-regulation and extended now
These studies investigated self-regulation and subjective experience of time from the perspective of the regulatory resource model. Studies 1-2 showed that participants who were instructed to regulate their emotions while viewing a film clip perceived that the film lasted longer than participants who did not regulate their emotions. In Study 3, participants provided time estimates during a resource-depleting or nondepleting task. Subsequent task …
Self-esteem and threats to self
In 4 studies, the authors examined interpersonal perceptions as a function of self-construals and ego threats for those with high and low self-esteem. Previous research (T. F. Heatherton & K. D. Vohs, 2000a) found that after threat, high self-esteem people were rated as less likable by an unacquainted dyad partner, whereas low self-esteem people were rated as more likable. Study I showed that after threat, high self-esteem people seek competency …
Acts of Benevolence
Across six field and lab experiments, we found that impaired self-control fosters compliance with charitable requests. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that self-regulatory resource depletion was induced when participants yielded to the initial requests of a foot-in-the-door script aimed at procuring volunteer behavior. Experiment 3 demonstrated that self-regulatory resource depletion mediated the effects of yielding to the initial requests of a foot-i…
Motivation, personal beliefs, and limited resources all contribute to self-control
Interpersonal evaluations following threats to self
In 2 studies, the authors used dyadic interactions to assess the influence of ego threat on likability as a function of self-esteem. In both studies, 2 naive participants engaged in a structured conversation; in half of the dyads, 1 participant received an ego threat prior to the interaction. In the 1st study, threatened high self-esteem participants were rated as less likable than were threatened low self-esteem participants. The 2nd study confi…
Nostalgia Weakens the Desire for Money
Nostalgia has a strong presence in the marketing of goods and services. The current research asked whether its effectiveness is driven by its weakening of the desire for money. Six experiments demonstrated that feeling nostalgic decreased people's desire for money. Using multiple operationalizations of desire for money, nostalgia (vs. neutral) condition participants were willing to pay more for products (experiment 1), parted with more money but …
How leaders self-regulate their task performance
When leaders perform solitary tasks, do they self-regulate to maximize their effort, or do they reduce effort and conserve their resources? Our model suggests that power motivates self-regulation toward effective performance-unless the task is perceived as unworthy of leaders. Our 1st studies showed that power improves self-regulation and performance, even when resources for self-regulation are low (ego depletion). Additional studies showed that …
Satiated with belongingness? Effects of acceptance, rejection, and task framing on self-regulatory performance
Seven experiments showed that the effects of social acceptance and social exclusion on self-regulatory performance depend on the prospect of future acceptance. Excluded participants showed decrements in self-regulation, but these decrements were eliminated if the self-regulation task was ostensibly a diagnostic indicator of the ability to get along with others. No such improvement was found when the task was presented as diagnostic of good health…
Stereotype Threat in the Marketplace
How do consumers react when they believe that a transaction partner will view them through the lens of a stereotype? We predicted and found that being aware of a negative stereotype about a group to which one belongs (e.g., gender) made consumers sensitive to whether service providers were in-group versus out-group members and lowered purchase intentions when the provider was an out-group member. We observed stereotype threat effects across diver…
Self-affirmation can enable goal disengagement
Much research has shown that after being self-affirmed, people respond to challenges in healthy, productive ways, including better task performance. The current research demonstrates that self-affirmation can also deflate motivation and performance, a pattern consistent with goal disengagement. We posited that being self-affirmed and then attempting but failing at a task would lead people to retreat from the goal. In support of this hypothesis, 4…
Sex in Advertising
This study draws on differences between men and women’s attitudes about sex, either as an end in itself (men) or as inextricably linked to relationship commitment (women) to understand attitudes toward the gratuitous use of sex in advertising. In line with predictions, four experiments showed that women’s spontaneous dislike of sexual ads softened when the ad could be interpreted in terms of commitment-related resources being offered by men to wo…
Do voting and election outcomes predict changes in conspiracy beliefs? Evidence from two high-profile U.S. elections
Despite widespread recognition that conspiracy theories carry the potential for serious harm, relatively little research has investigated possible antidotes to conspiracy beliefs. Previous theorizing posits that belief in conspiracy theories is driven in part by existential motives related to a sense of control and social motives aimed at maintaining a positive image of oneself and one's ingroup. Using electoral contests as the context, we invest…
Loss of control stimulates approach motivation
Self-Regulatory Failure
Three studies were conducted to test the behavioral consequences of effortful self-regulation. Individuals with chronic inhibitions about eating were exposed to situations varying in level of self-regulatory demand. Subsequently, participants' ability to self-regulate was measured. Two studies manipulated self-regulatory demand by exposing participants to good-tasting snack foods, whereas a third study required participants to control their emoti…
Interpersonal evaluations following threats to self
In 2 studies, the authors used dyadic interactions to assess the influence of ego threat on likability as a function of self-esteem. In both studies, 2 naive participants engaged in a structured conversation; in half of the dyads, 1 participant received an ego threat prior to the interaction. In the 1st study, threatened high self-esteem participants were rated as less likable than were threatened low self-esteem participants. The 2nd study confi…
Is There a Gender Difference in Strength of Sex Drive? Theoretical Views, Conceptual Distinctions, and a Review of Relevant Evidence
The sex drive refers to the strength of sexual motivation. Across many different studies and measures, men have been shown to have more frequent and more intense sexual desires than women, as reflected in spontaneous thoughts about sex, frequency and variety of sexual fantasies, desired frequency of intercourse, desired number of partners, masturbation, liking for various sexual practices, willingness to forego sex, initiating versus refusing sex…
Self-esteem and threats to self
In 4 studies, the authors examined interpersonal perceptions as a function of self-construals and ego threats for those with high and low self-esteem. Previous research (T. F. Heatherton & K. D. Vohs, 2000a) found that after threat, high self-esteem people were rated as less likable by an unacquainted dyad partner, whereas low self-esteem people were rated as more likable. Study I showed that after threat, high self-esteem people seek competency …
Bad is Stronger than Good
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 impression…
Does High Self-Esteem Cause Better Performance, Interpersonal Success, Happiness, or Healthier Lifestyles?
Self-esteem has become a household word. Teachers, parents, therapists, and others have focused efforts on boosting self-esteem, on the assumption that high self-esteem will cause many positive outcomes and benefits—an assumption that is critically evaluated in this review. Appraisal of the effects of self-esteem is complicated by several factors. Because many people with high self-esteem exaggerate their successes and good traits, we emphasize o…
Excessive Self-Enhancement and Interpersonal Functioning in Roommate Relationships
The current paper assesses gender differences in the effects of excessive self-enhancement on interpersonal perceptions. Based on gender-related differences in interpersonal functioning, we predicted that overly favorable self-enhancement would differentially affect interpersonal relationships among women versus men. This possibility was assessed in a study of 105 undergraduates and their same-sex roommates. Target participants completed a measur…
Self-regulation and extended now
These studies investigated self-regulation and subjective experience of time from the perspective of the regulatory resource model. Studies 1-2 showed that participants who were instructed to regulate their emotions while viewing a film clip perceived that the film lasted longer than participants who did not regulate their emotions. In Study 3, participants provided time estimates during a resource-depleting or nondepleting task. Subsequent task …
Intellectual performance and ego depletion
Some complex thinking requires active guidance by the self, but simpler mental activities do not. Depletion of the self's regulatory resources should therefore impair the former and not the latter. Resource depletion was manipulated by having some participants initially regulate attention (Studies 1 and 3) or emotion (Study 2). As compared with no-regulation participants who did not perform such exercises, depleted participants performed worse at…
Sexual Economics
A heterosexual community can be analyzed as a marketplace in which men seek to acquire sex from women by offering other resources in exchange. Societies will therefore define gender roles as if women are sellers and men buyers of sex. Societies will endow female sexuality, but not male sexuality, with value (as in virginity, fidelity, chastity). The sexual activities of different couples are loosely interrelated by a marketplace, instead of being…
Gossip as Cultural Learning
To complement views of gossip as essentially a means of gaining information about individuals, cementing social bonds, and engaging in indirect aggression, the authors propose that gossip serves to help people learn about how to live in their cultural society. Gossip anecdotes communicate rules in narrative form, such as by describing how someone else came to grief by violating social norms. Gossip is thus an extension of observational learning, …
Self-Regulation and Self-Presentation
Self-presentation may require self-regulation, especially when familiar or dispositional tendencies must be overridden in service of the desired impression. Studies 1-4 showed that self-presentation under challenging conditions or according to counter-normative patterns (presenting oneself modestly to strangers, boastfully to friends, contrary to gender norms, to a skeptical audience, or while being a racial token) led to impaired self-regulation…
The Psychological Consequences of Money
Money has been said to change people's motivation (mainly for the better) and their behavior toward others (mainly for the worse). The results of nine experiments suggest that money brings about a self-sufficient orientation in which people prefer to be free of dependency and dependents. Reminders of money, relative to nonmoney reminders, led to reduced requests for help and reduced helpfulness toward others. Relative to participants primed with …
The Meaning Maintenance Model
The meaning maintenance model (MMM) proposes that people have a needfor meaning; that is, a need to perceive events through a prism of mental representations of expected relations that organizes their perceptions of the world. When people's sense of meaning is threatened, they reaffirm alternative representations as a way to regain meaning-a process termedfluid compensation. According to the model, people can reaffirm meaning in domains that are …
Psychology as the Science of Self-Reports and Finger Movements
Psychology calls itself the science of behavior, and the American Psychological Association's current “Decade of Behavior” was intended to increase awareness and appreciation of this aspect of the science. Yet some psychological subdisciplines have never directly studied behavior, and studies on behavior are dwindling rapidly in other subdisciplines. We discuss the eclipse of behavior in personality and social psychology, in which direct observat…
Self‐Regulation, Ego Depletion, and Motivation
Motivation is underappreciated in self‐regulation theories (as is true in social personality psychology at large). This paper reviews the role of motivation in the context of the strength, or limited‐resource, model of self‐control in several domains. Sacrificing one desire in order to pursue another is more difficult when the incipient response is strongly motivated, a notion that highlights the struggle between urges and restraints. A reduction…
How Emotion Shapes Behavior
Fear causes fleeing and thereby saves lives: this exemplifies a popular and common sense but increasingly untenable view that the direct causation of behavior is the primary function of emotion. Instead, the authors develop a theory of emotion as a feedback system whose influence on behavior is typically indirect. By providing feedback and stimulating retrospective appraisal of actions, conscious emotional states can promote learning and alter gu…
The Strength Model of Self-Control
Self-control is a central function of the self and an important key to success in life. The exertion of self-control appears to depend on a limited resource. Just as a muscle gets tired from exertion, acts of self-control cause short-term impairments (ego depletion) in subsequent self-control, even on unrelated tasks. Research has supported the strength model in the domains of eating, drinking, spending, sexuality, intelligent thought, making cho…
Encyclopedia of Social Psychology
Spent Resources
This research investigated impulse buying as resulting from the depletion of a common—but limited—resource that governs self-control. In three investigations, participants' self-regulatory resources were depleted or not; later, impulsive spending responses were measured. Participants whose resources were depleted, relative to participants whose resources were not depleted, felt stronger urges to buy, were willing to spend more, and actually did s…
The Value of Believing in Free Will
Does moral behavior draw on a belief in free will? Two experiments examined whether inducing participants to believe that human behavior is predetermined would encourage cheating. In Experiment 1, participants read either text that encouraged a belief in determinism (i.e., that portrayed behavior as the consequence of environmental and genetic factors) or neutral text. Exposure to the deterministic message increased cheating on a task in which pa…
Satiated with belongingness? Effects of acceptance, rejection, and task framing on self-regulatory performance
Seven experiments showed that the effects of social acceptance and social exclusion on self-regulatory performance depend on the prospect of future acceptance. Excluded participants showed decrements in self-regulation, but these decrements were eliminated if the self-regulation task was ostensibly a diagnostic indicator of the ability to get along with others. No such improvement was found when the task was presented as diagnostic of good health…
Making choices impairs subsequent self-control
The current research tested the hypothesis that making many choices impairs subsequent self-control. Drawing from a limited-resource model of self-regulation and executive function, the authors hypothesized that decision making depletes the same resource used for self-control and active responding. In 4 laboratory studies, some participants made choices among consumer goods or college course options, whereas others thought about the same options …
Merely Activating the Concept of Money Changes Personal and Interpersonal Behavior
Money plays a significant role in people's lives, and yet little experimental attention has been given to the psychological underpinnings of money. We systematically varied whether and to what extent the concept of money was activated in participants' minds using methods that minimized participants' conscious awareness of the money cues. On the one hand, participants reminded of money were less helpful than were participants not reminded of money…
The Symbolic Power of Money
People often get what they want from the social system, and that process is aided by social popularity or by having money. Money can thus possibly substitute for social acceptance in conferring the ability to obtain benefits from the social system. Moreover, past work has suggested that responses to physical pain and social distress share common underlying mechanisms. Six studies tested relationships among reminders of money, social exclusion, an…
Psychology (68 works) · Social Psychology (65 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (36 works) · Self-control (21 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (19 works) · Developmental psychology (18 works) · Cognitive psychology (17 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion (16 works) · Ego Depletion (16 works)