Malte Friese
Biographic Data
| ID | 176835 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Malte Friese |
| GIVEN NAMES | Malte |
| FAMILY NAME | Friese |
| SIGNATURE | FRIESE M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Saarland University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0055-513X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 55 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 238 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 54 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Who Achieves Long‐Term Goals? Development and Validation of the DPR Conceptualization of Trait Self‐Control and the DPR Self‐Control Scale
Effects of Psychological Distance on Mental Abstraction: A Registered Report of Four Tests of Construal-Level Theory
Construal-level theory (CLT) proposes that psychological distance influences the level of abstraction at which something is mentally construed: Things perceived as less probable (likelihood) or further away from the here (spatial distance), now (temporal distance), or self (social distance) are thought about more abstractly. In this international multilab study, we tested four basic hypotheses derived from core assumptions of CLT and explore pote…
A Kick to Desire: National Teams’ Performance During the Uefa Euro 2024 Affected the Frequency With Which Europeans Experienced Sexual Events
Major sporting events exert manifold influences on people’s intra- and interpersonal experiences. Preliminary findings suggest that they affect sexuality, but the evidence has been limited to population-level outcomes such as birth rates. Direct, individual-level evidence and research on underlying processes are missing. In this preregistered study, we investigated the relationship between the success of national men’s soccer teams during the UEF…
Beyond Resistance: Understanding Trait Self-Control Through Strategic Indulgence
Trait self-control is often equated with resistance, leaving open whether it also involves domain-general conflict minimization and the strategic indulgence of low-conflict desires. We reanalyzed four ambulatory assessment datasets ( N = 559 participants with 32,049 measurement occasions) to test whether these mechanisms explain the well-being benefits of trait self-control. Results showed that individuals high in self-control experienced fewer d…
Prepare to Compare: Effects of an Intervention Involving Upward and Downward Social Comparisons on Goal Pursuit in Daily Life
In a preregistered ecological momentary intervention study, we alternately instructed participants to adopt an upward and downward comparison focus. In all, 349 participants reported 8,137 social comparison situations across 6 days and three comparison conditions (baseline, upward, downward). For each comparison, participants reported social comparison direction, motivation, effort intentions, and emotions in five daily reports and one daily end-…
Sexual (Double) Standards Revisited: Similarities and Differences in the Societal Evaluation of Male and Female Sexuality
Past research has been inconclusive regarding the continued existence of the sexual double standard (SDS)—that is, differential expectations and evaluations of sexual activity for men (rewarded for sexual activity) and women (punished for sexual activity). Here, we present the similarities and differences (S&D) model of sexual standards, which significantly qualifies the traditional SDS by highlighting both similarities and differences between st…
Public Communication about Science in 68 Countries: Global Evidence on How People Encounter and Engage with Information about Science
This 68-country survey ( n = 71,922) examines science information diets and communication behavior, identifies cross-country differences, and tests how such differences are associated with sociopolitical and economic conditions. We find that social media are the most used sources of science information in most countries, except those with democratic-corporatist media systems where news media tend to be used more widely. People in collectivist soc…
Victims of Conspiracies? An Examination of the Relationship Between Conspiracy Beliefs and Dispositional Individual Victimhood
Conspiracy beliefs have been linked to perceptions of collective victimhood. We adopt an individual perspective on victimhood by investigating the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and the individual disposition to perceive and react to injustice as a victim, i.e., victim justice sensitivity (VJS). Data from two German samples (Ns = 370, 373) indicated a positive association between VJS and conspiracy mentality beyond conceptually related c…
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries
Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interve…
The Too-Much-Mimicry Effect: Strong (vs. Subtle) Mimicry Impairs Liking and Trust in Distributive Negotiations
We examined whether mimicking an interaction partner is universally advantageous or, provided the mimicry is particularly strong, whether it has detrimental impacts on interpersonal and negotiation outcomes. Participants interacted with a confederate who engaged in no, subtle, or strong mimicry and then negotiated. In laboratory Experiment 1 ( N = 71) and Experiment 2 ( N = 149), subtly (vs. not) mimicked participants liked the confederate more, …
Development and Validation of the Trait Sexual Motivation Scale (TSMS)
Sexual motivation, the interest in sexual activity, affects people’s thinking, feeling, and behavior. Common scales used to assess sexual motivation suffer from drawbacks that limit their validity and applicability. We therefore developed and validated the Trait Sexual Motivation Scale (TSMS), a brief, theory-driven self-report scale, over the course of four preregistered studies (Ntotal = 2,083). Results indicated good model fit, high internal c…
Gender differences in sex drive: Reply to Conley and Yang (2024)
Our meta-analysis on gender differences in sex drive found a stronger sex drive in men compared to women (Frankenbach et al., 2022). Conley and Yang (2024) criticized how we interpreted the findings and provided suggestions regarding the origins of these gender differences, an undertaking that we had refrained from doing in our original work. We concur with several important points made by Conley and Yang (2024): (a) women's sexual experiences ar…
When a Negative Experience Sticks With You: Does the Revised Outcome Debriefing Counteract the Consequences of Experimental Ostracism in Psychological Research
For research purposes, it is generally accepted that experimental ostracism manipulations can lead to a reduction of participants' well-being. To eventually restore participants' well-being, researchers rely on post-experimental debriefings that discredit prior deception. However, evidence suggests that discredited beliefs can persevere. The present research investigates whether a potent debriefing procedure restores participants' well-being afte…
Moral Expansiveness Around the World: The Role of Societal Factors Across 36 Countries
What are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles.' There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national exploration of moral expansiveness—that is, the size of people’s moral circles across countries. We found …
Genetics, parenting, and family functioning—What drives the development of self‐control from adolescence to adulthood
OBJECTIVE: Self-control is a meaningful predictor of crucial life outcomes. Knowingly, genes contribute substantially to differences in self-control, but behavioral genetic findings are often misinterpreted regarding environmental influences. Therefore, we reinvestigate the heritability of self-control as well as potential environmental influences, namely parenting and a chaotic home environment. METHOD: We used cross-sectional and longitudinal d…
Multinational data show that conspiracy beliefs are associated with the perception (and reality) of poor national economic performance
While a great deal is known about the individual difference factors associated with conspiracy beliefs, much less is known about the country‐level factors that shape people's willingness to believe conspiracy theories. In the current article we discuss the possibility that willingness to believe conspiracy theories might be shaped by the perception (and reality) of poor economic performance at the national level. To test this notion, we surveyed …
Sex drive: Theoretical conceptualization and meta-analytic review of gender differences
0.54). Moderation analyses suggest that the effect is robust and largely invariant to contextual factors. There was no evidence of publication bias. The discussion focuses on validity considerations, limitations, and implications for psychological theory and people's everyday lives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
Testing Buddha: Is Acute Desire Associated with Lower Momentary Happiness
A central Buddhist claim is that having desires causes suffering. While this tenet draws from the belief that an acute desire state is more momentarily aversive than a no-desire state, the efficacy of this belief has yet to be comprehensively examined. To empirically investigate this claim, we furnished data from two experience sampling studies across USA/Canadian ( N = 101; 3224 observations) and Japanese cultures ( N = 237; 8497 observations). …
How students’ self-control and smartphone-use explain their academic performance
Promoting recovery in daily life: Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial
In the present study, we will investigate mechanisms underlying assumed changes in work-related PT in great detail. Besides evaluating the overall effectiveness of the two interventions in terms of pre-post-follow-up changes, we will look at the underlying processes at different levels-that is, within days, within weeks, across weeks, and between individuals. Accordingly, our study will offer a fine-grained approach to investigating potential det…
Do people avoid mental effort after facing a highly demanding task
Is Ego Depletion Real? An Analysis of Arguments
An influential line of research suggests that initial bouts of self-control increase the susceptibility to self-control failure (ego depletion effect). Despite seemingly abundant evidence, some researchers have suggested that evidence for ego depletion was the sole result of publication bias and p-hacking, with the true effect being indistinguishable from zero. Here, we examine (a) whether the evidence brought forward against ego depletion will c…
Anger rumination partly accounts for the association between trait self-control and aggression
Debriefed but still troubled? About the (in)effectiveness of postexperimental debriefings after ego threat
Psychological researchers often use powerful experimental manipulations to temporarily reduce participants' well-being. Postexperimental debriefings are intended to eliminate such detrimental effects. However, experimentally induced beliefs can persevere even when the underlying information is explicitly discredited. The present research investigates, in the context of ego-threatening manipulations, whether postexperimental debriefings reestablis…
Working memory capacity and self-regulatory behavior: Toward an individual differences perspective on behavior determination by automatic versus controlled processes
In the present research, the authors investigated how individual differences in working memory capacity moderate the relative influence of automatic versus controlled precursors on self-regulatory behavior. In 2 studies, on sexual interest behavior (Study 1) and the consumption of tempting food (Study 2), automatic attitudes toward the temptation of interest had a stronger influence on behavior for individuals who scored low rather than high in w…
Three ways to resist temptation: The independent contributions of executive attention, inhibitory control, and affect regulation to the impulse control of eating behavior
It is generally assumed that impulse control plays a major role in many areas of self-regulation such as eating behavior. However, the exact mechanisms that enable the control of impulsive determinants such as automatic affective reactions toward tempting stimuli are not well understood. “The present research investigated the separate moderator effects of three factors of impulse control, executive attention, inhibitory control, and affect regula…
Self-control training decreases aggression in response to provocation in aggressive individuals
Reliability and validity of the Single‐Target IAT (ST‐IAT): Assessing automatic affect towards multiple attitude objects
In contrast to the original Implicit Association Test (IAT), the Single‐Target Implicit Association Test (ST‐IAT) measures the evaluation of a target object without the need to simultaneously evaluate a counter‐category. The present research investigates (a) whether position within a series of several ST‐IATs affects reliability and validity, and (b) whether the ST‐IAT exhibits adequate construct validity if the target objects are closely interre…
Control me or I will control you: Impulses, trait self-control, and the guidance of behavior
The Past, Present, and Future of Ego Depletion
At the center of social psychology just a few years ago, ego depletion is now widely seen as a controversial topic, one of the chief victims of the replication crisis. Despite over 600 studies of apparent support, many are now asking if ego depletion is even real. Here, we comment on the articles included in this Special Issue: Ego Depletion and Self-Control: Conceptual and Empirical Advances. Specifically, we delineate the contributions and limi…
Do features of stimuli influence IAT effects
What would you have as a last supper? Thoughts about death influence evaluation and consumption of food products
Multinational data show that conspiracy beliefs are associated with the perception (and reality) of poor national economic performance
While a great deal is known about the individual difference factors associated with conspiracy beliefs, much less is known about the country‐level factors that shape people's willingness to believe conspiracy theories. In the current article we discuss the possibility that willingness to believe conspiracy theories might be shaped by the perception (and reality) of poor economic performance at the national level. To test this notion, we surveyed …
Personal prayer buffers self-control depletion
Anger rumination partly accounts for the association between trait self-control and aggression
Implicit theories about willpower predict the activation of a rest goal following self-control exertion
Past research indicates that peoples' implicit theories about the nature of willpower moderate the ego-depletion effect. Only people who believe or were led to believe that willpower is a limited resource (limited-resource theory) showed lower self-control performance after an initial demanding task. As of yet, the underlying processes explaining this moderating effect by theories about willpower remain unknown. Here, we propose that the exertion…
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
On the different uses of linguistic abstractness: From LIB to LEB and beyond
Linguistic abstractness has been shown to mediate persuasive and attributional effects of communication. The linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) refers to the tendency to describe positive ingroup and negative outgroup behaviors more abstractly than negative ingroup and positive outgroup behavior. Recently, the LIB was shown to reflect to a large extent a linguistic expectancy bias (LEB). Abstract language need not have an ingroup‐serving function, …
How and why precise anchors distinctly affect anchor recipients and senders
The moderating role of regulatory focus on the social modeling of food intake
"Men on the "Pull: Automatic Approach-Avoidance Tendencies and Sexual Interest Behavior
In the present study, we adapted and validated a measure of automatic approach-avoidance tendencies toward sexual stimuli in a male heterosexual sample (N = 29). As expected, automatic approach-avoidance tendencies, as measured via push and pull reactions in a joystick task, primarily predicted an unobtrusive measure of the time participants viewed erotic slides but not a more deliberate measure of forced-choice between an erotic and an art calen…
Debriefed but still troubled? About the (in)effectiveness of postexperimental debriefings after ego threat
Psychological researchers often use powerful experimental manipulations to temporarily reduce participants' well-being. Postexperimental debriefings are intended to eliminate such detrimental effects. However, experimentally induced beliefs can persevere even when the underlying information is explicitly discredited. The present research investigates, in the context of ego-threatening manipulations, whether postexperimental debriefings reestablis…
Thou Shalt Kill”: Practicing self-control supports adherence to personal values when asked to aggress
Victims of Conspiracies? An Examination of the Relationship Between Conspiracy Beliefs and Dispositional Individual Victimhood
Conspiracy beliefs have been linked to perceptions of collective victimhood. We adopt an individual perspective on victimhood by investigating the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and the individual disposition to perceive and react to injustice as a victim, i.e., victim justice sensitivity (VJS). Data from two German samples (Ns = 370, 373) indicated a positive association between VJS and conspiracy mentality beyond conceptually related c…
Do people avoid mental effort after facing a highly demanding task
Using self-regulation to overcome the detrimental effects of anger in negotiations
On the different uses of linguistic abstractness: From LIB to LEB and beyond
Linguistic abstractness has been shown to mediate persuasive and attributional effects of communication. The linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) refers to the tendency to describe positive ingroup and negative outgroup behaviors more abstractly than negative ingroup and positive outgroup behavior. Recently, the LIB was shown to reflect to a large extent a linguistic expectancy bias (LEB). Abstract language need not have an ingroup‐serving function, …
Do features of stimuli influence IAT effects
When impulses take over: Moderated predictive validity of explicit and implicit attitude measures in predicting food choice and consumption behaviour
Recent theories in social psychology suggest that explicitly measured attitudes are particularly valuable for the prediction of deliberate, controlled behaviour. In contrast, implicitly measured attitudes are assumed to be more important for the prediction of less controlled, more impulsive behaviour. Yet, conclusive evidence for the differential predictive validity of both measures is scarce. We hypothesized that limitations of different control…
Impulsive versus reflective influences on health behavior: A theoretical framework and empirical review
Often, health behavior seems to be governed not only by reasoned attitudes and goal-directed behavior but also by impulsive influences. The notion of a conflict between reflective and impulsive processing which is incorporated in prominent dual-system accounts (e.g., Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999 Metcalfe, J. and Mischel, W. 1999. A hot/cool system analysis of delay of gratification: Dynamics of willpower. Psychological Review, 106: 3–19. [Crossref], …
When and why do implicit measures predict behaviour? Empirical evidence for the moderating role of opportunity, motivation, and process reliance
The ability of implicit measures to predict behaviour varies greatly across studies, emphasising the need for accounts of this variability. In order to organise and review the literature on moderators that influence individuals' information processing, we suggest a classification system of moderators with two dimensions. One dimension distinguishes moderators according to their influence on the opportunity to control, the motivation to control, o…
Reliability and validity of the Single‐Target IAT (ST‐IAT): Assessing automatic affect towards multiple attitude objects
In contrast to the original Implicit Association Test (IAT), the Single‐Target Implicit Association Test (ST‐IAT) measures the evaluation of a target object without the need to simultaneously evaluate a counter‐category. The present research investigates (a) whether position within a series of several ST‐IATs affects reliability and validity, and (b) whether the ST‐IAT exhibits adequate construct validity if the target objects are closely interre…
What would you have as a last supper? Thoughts about death influence evaluation and consumption of food products
Three ways to resist temptation: The independent contributions of executive attention, inhibitory control, and affect regulation to the impulse control of eating behavior
It is generally assumed that impulse control plays a major role in many areas of self-regulation such as eating behavior. However, the exact mechanisms that enable the control of impulsive determinants such as automatic affective reactions toward tempting stimuli are not well understood. “The present research investigated the separate moderator effects of three factors of impulse control, executive attention, inhibitory control, and affect regula…
Working memory capacity and self-regulatory behavior: Toward an individual differences perspective on behavior determination by automatic versus controlled processes
In the present research, the authors investigated how individual differences in working memory capacity moderate the relative influence of automatic versus controlled precursors on self-regulatory behavior. In 2 studies, on sexual interest behavior (Study 1) and the consumption of tempting food (Study 2), automatic attitudes toward the temptation of interest had a stronger influence on behavior for individuals who scored low rather than high in w…
Impulse and Self-Control From a Dual-Systems Perspective
Though human beings embody a unique ability for planned behavior, they also often act impulsively. This insight may be important for the study of self-control situations in which people are torn between their long-term goals to restrain behavior and their immediate impulses that promise hedonic fulfillment. In the present article, we outline a dual-systems perspective of impulse and self-control and suggest a framework for the prediction of self-…
Control me or I will control you: Impulses, trait self-control, and the guidance of behavior
"Men on the "Pull: Automatic Approach-Avoidance Tendencies and Sexual Interest Behavior
In the present study, we adapted and validated a measure of automatic approach-avoidance tendencies toward sexual stimuli in a male heterosexual sample (N = 29). As expected, automatic approach-avoidance tendencies, as measured via push and pull reactions in a joystick task, primarily predicted an unobtrusive measure of the time participants viewed erotic slides but not a more deliberate measure of forced-choice between an erotic and an art calen…
Whose Fault Is it Anyway? Political Orientation, Attributions of Responsibility, and Support for the War in Iraq
Here’s Looking at You, Bud: Alcohol-Related Memory Structures Predict Eye Movements for Social Drinkers With Low Executive Control
This research investigated the role of individual differences for the control of attention in the early stages of self-regulation. Theories on the development of addiction posit that repeated substance use alters memory structures referring to the substance through classical conditioning processes, leading to the attention-grabbing properties of the substance. The authors predicted that such memory structures influence attentional processes towar…
Quantitative Methoden: Einfu hrung in die Statistik fu r Psychologen und Sozialwissenschaftler
Understanding Impulsive Aggression: Angry Rumination and Reduced Self-Control Capacity Are Mechanisms Underlying the Provocation-Aggression Relationship
Interpersonal provocation is a common and robust antecedent to aggression. Four studies identified angry rumination and reduced self-control as mechanisms underlying the provocation—aggression relationship. Following provocation, participants demonstrated decreased self-control on an unpleasant task relative to a control condition (Study 1). When provoked, rumination reduced self-control and increased aggression. This effect was mediated by reduc…
On taming horses and strengthening riders: Recent developments in research on interventions to improve self-control in health behaviors
This article reviews recent developments in the design of interventions to improve health behavior. Based on dual-system models we classify intervention strategies according to whether they aim at: (i) changing impulsive structures; (ii) improving the ability to self-control; or (iii) changing reflective structures. We review recent work on re-training of automatic associations, attentional biases, and automatic approach-avoidance tendencies, tra…
Self-control training decreases aggression in response to provocation in aggressive individuals
Mindfulness meditation counteracts self-control depletion
The moderating role of regulatory focus on the social modeling of food intake
Personal prayer buffers self-control depletion
Personal prayer counteracts self-control depletion
Connections with Nature and Environmental Behaviors
The influence of environmental attitudes on environmental behaviors has long been discussed. However, few studies have addressed the foundation of such attitudes. In the present study, we explored primitive belief underlying environmental attitudes, i.e., connections with nature, and its relationship with pro-environmental behaviors. Specifically, we used scales, a computerized Implicit Association Test, and a situational simulation experiment to…
How self-regulation helps to master negotiation challenges: An overview, integration, and outlook
En route to crafting profitable deals, negotiators face abundant challenges—from overcoming anger, to dealing with low power, to seeking hidden integrative opportunities. Here, we argue that self-regulation can help to master these negotiation challenges and improve negotiation outcomes. To this end, we provide a review of the literature on negotiation challenges and integrate it with self-regulation research. Based on the cybernetic feedback mod…
Implicit theories about willpower predict the activation of a rest goal following self-control exertion
Past research indicates that peoples' implicit theories about the nature of willpower moderate the ego-depletion effect. Only people who believe or were led to believe that willpower is a limited resource (limited-resource theory) showed lower self-control performance after an initial demanding task. As of yet, the underlying processes explaining this moderating effect by theories about willpower remain unknown. Here, we propose that the exertion…
Psychology (47 works) · Social Psychology (38 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (31 works) · Developmental psychology (21 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (20 works) · Cognitive psychology (17 works) · Self-control (16 works) · Mental Health Research Topics (13 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Cognition (11 works)