The psychology of negative-sum competition in strategic interactions.

Many real-life examples-from interpersonal rivalries to international conflicts-suggest that people actively engage in competitive behavior even when it is negative sum (benefiting the self at a greater cost to others). This often leads to loss spirals where everyone-including the winner-ends up losing. Our research seeks to understand the psychology of such negative-sum competition in a controlled setting. To do so, we introduce an experimental paradigm in which paired participants have the option to repeatedly perform a behavior that causes a relatively small gain for the self and a larger loss to the other. Although they have the freedom not to engage in the behavior, most participants actively do so and incur substantial losses. We propose that an important reason behind the phenomena is shallow thinking-focusing on the immediate benefit to the self while overlooking the downstream consequences of how the behavior will influence their counterparts' actions. In support of the proposition, we find that participants are less likely to engage in negative-sum behavior, if they are advised to consider the downstream consequences of their actions, or if they are put in a less frenzied decision environment, which facilitates deeper thinking (acting in discrete vs. continuous time). We discuss how our results differ from prior findings and the implications of our research for mitigating negative-sum competition and loss spirals in real life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

A framing effect in the judgment of discrimination.

Discrimination is not only an objective fact but also a subjective judgment. While extensive research has studied discrimination as an objective fact, we study the judgment of discrimination and show that it is malleable while holding objective discrimination constant. We focus on a common situation in real life: the constituent groups in a candidate pool are unequal (e.g., fewer female candidates than male candidates for tech jobs), and observers (e.g., the public) see only one side of the decision outcome (e.g., only the hired applicants, not the rejected ones). Ten experiments reveal a framing effect: people judge the decision-maker (e.g., the tech firm) as more discriminatory against the minority in the candidate pool if people see the composition of the accepted candidates than if they see the composition of the rejected candidates, even though the information in the two frames is equivalent (i.e., knowing the information in one frame is sufficient to infer the information in the other). The framing effect occurs regardless of whether the decision-maker is objectively discriminatory, replicates across diverse samples (Americans, Asians, and Europeans) and types of discrimination (e.g., gender, race, political orientation), and has significant behavioral consequences. We theorize and show that the framing effect arises because, when judging discrimination, people overlook information that they could infer but is not explicitly given, and they expect equality in the composition of the constituent groups in their given frame. This research highlights the fallibility of judged discrimination and suggests interventions to reduce biases and increase accuracy.

People adapt more slowly to social income changes than to temporal income changes.

People hedonically adapt to most changes, but they adapt more slowly to some changes than to others. This research examines hedonic adaptation to income changes, and asks whether people adapt more slowly to social or temporal income changes. Four experiments, manipulating the actual pay rate of online workers, find that people adapt more slowly to social income changes (e.g., a decrease in others' income but not in one's own income) than to temporal income changes (e.g., an increase in everyone's income). This pattern holds for both negative changes (Experiment 1) and positive changes (Experiments 2, 3, and 4) and can be explained by a differential-consideration account (Experiment 3). These results suggest that in the short run, both temporal and social changes influence one's hedonic experience, but in the long run, what influences one's hedonic experiences is how much one earns relative to how much others earn, and not how much one earns now relative to how much one earned in the past. This research enriches the existing literature on hedonic adaptation, and on social versus temporal changes, and yields practical implications for the impact of income changes on subjective well-being over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Idleness versus busyness.

The elapse of time disregards the human will. Yet different uses of time result in distinct perceptions of time and psychological consequences. In this article, we synthesize the growing research in psychology on the actual and perceived consumption of time, with a focus on idleness and busyness. We propose that the desire to avoid an unproductive use of time and the ceaseless pursuit of meaning in life may underlie many human activities. In particular, while it has been long presumed that people engage in activities in order to pursue goals, we posit a reverse causality: people pursue goals in order to engage in activities.

Hedonic nondurability revisited: A case for two types.

Hedonic durability refers to the extent to which the hedonic impact of a change lasts, that is, how long the unhappiness from a loss (or happiness from a gain) will endure over time. The lesson from previous research on this topic has been that the long-term effect of most changes (e.g., larger incomes, bigger houses, shorter commutes) is negligible. The present research shows something different. Consistent with previous research, we observed a pattern of hedonic nondurability in which the impact of a change did not endure over time. However, we also observed a pattern of hedonic durability in which the impact of a change does endure over time. We demonstrate differential rates of hedonic durability for losses, both across variables (Experiment 1) and within different ranges of the same variable (Experiment 2). We also extend our research to show differential rates for gains (Experiment 3). To explain our results, we propose a distinction between preference types, arguing that comparison-independent (i.e., absolute) preference types are hedonically more durable than comparison-dependent (i.e., relative) preference types. This research offers a method for validating preference-type categorization as well as a novel paradigm for testing hedonic durability in the laboratory. Moreover, it yields theoretical insights for affective forecasting and adaptation as well as practical implications for the hedonic treadmill and the joyless economy. (PsycINFO Database Record

Numerical Nudging: Using an Accelerating Score to Enhance Performance.

People often encounter inherently meaningless numbers, such as scores in health apps or video games, that increase as they take actions. This research explored how the pattern of change in such numbers influences performance. We found that the key factor is acceleration-namely, whether the number increases at an increasing velocity. Six experiments in both the lab and the field showed that people performed better on an ongoing task if they were presented with a number that increased at an increasing velocity than if they were not presented with such a number or if they were presented with a number that increased at a decreasing or constant velocity. This acceleration effect occurred regardless of the absolute magnitude or the absolute velocity of the number, and even when the number was not tied to any specific rewards. This research shows the potential of numerical nudging-using inherently meaningless numbers to strategically alter behaviors-and is especially relevant in the present age of digital devices.

The Role of Hedonic Behavior in Reducing Perceived Risk.

Understanding how human populations naturally respond to and cope with risk is important for fields ranging from psychology to public health. We used geophysical and individual-level mobile-phone data (mobile-apps, telecommunications, and Web usage) of 157,358 victims of the 2013 Ya'an earthquake to diagnose the effects of the disaster and investigate how experiencing real risk (at different levels of intensity) changes behavior. Rather than limiting human activity, higher earthquake intensity resulted in graded increases in usage of communications apps (e.g., social networking, messaging), functional apps (e.g., informational tools), and hedonic apps (e.g., music, videos, games). Combining mobile data with a field survey ( N = 2,000) completed 1 week after the earthquake, we use an instrumental-variable approach to show that only increases in hedonic behavior reduced perceived risk. Thus, hedonic behavior could potentially serve as a population-scale coping and recovery strategy that is often missing in risk management and policy considerations.

The Pandora Effect: The Power and Peril of Curiosity.

Curiosity-the desire for information-underlies many human activities, from reading celebrity gossip to developing nuclear science. Curiosity is well recognized as a human blessing. Is it also a human curse? Tales about such things as Pandora's box suggest that it is, but scientific evidence is lacking. In four controlled experiments, we demonstrated that curiosity could lead humans to expose themselves to aversive stimuli (even electric shocks) for no apparent benefits. The research suggests that humans possess an inherent desire, independent of consequentialist considerations, to resolve uncertainty; when facing something uncertain and feeling curious, they will act to resolve the uncertainty even if they expect negative consequences. This research reveals the potential perverse side of curiosity, and is particularly relevant to the current epoch, the epoch of information, and to the scientific community, a community with high curiosity.

Approach aversion: negative hedonic reactions toward approaching stimuli.

We live in a dynamic world, surrounded by moving stimuli-moving people, moving objects, and moving events. The current research proposes and finds an approach aversion effect-individuals feel less positively (or more negatively) about a stimulus if they perceive it to be approaching rather than receding or static. The effect appears general, occurring whether the stimulus is initially negative or nonnegative and whether it moves in space (toward or away from "here"), in time (toward or away from "now"), or in probability (toward or away from "sure"). This research complements extensive existing research on perceived static distance of stimuli (near vs. far) by exploring perceived dynamic movement of stimuli (approaching vs. receding), showing that the effect of movement is distinct from the effect of distance.

Unit asking: a method to boost donations and beyond.

The solicitation of charitable donations costs billions of dollars annually. Here, we introduce a virtually costless method for boosting charitable donations to a group of needy persons: merely asking donors to indicate a hypothetical amount for helping one of the needy persons before asking donors to decide how much to donate for all of the needy persons. We demonstrated, in both real fund-raisers and scenario-based research, that this simple unit-asking method greatly increases donations for the group of needy persons. Different from phenomena such as the foot-in-the-door and identifiable-victim effects, the unit-asking effect arises because donors are initially scope insensitive and subsequently scope consistent. The method applies to both traditional paper-based fund-raisers and increasingly popular Web-based fund-raisers and has implications for domains other than fund-raisers, such as auctions and budget proposals. Our research suggests that a subtle manipulation based on psychological science can generate a substantial effect in real life.

Overearning.

High productivity and high earning rates brought about by modern technologies make it possible for people to work less and enjoy more, yet many continue to work assiduously to earn more. Do people overearn--forgo leisure to work and earn beyond their needs? This question is understudied, partly because in real life, determining the right amount of earning and defining overearning are difficult. In this research, we introduced a minimalistic paradigm that allows researchers to study overearning in a controlled laboratory setting. Using this paradigm, we found that individuals do overearn, even at the cost of happiness, and that overearning is a result of mindless accumulation--a tendency to work and earn until feeling tired rather than until having enough. Supporting the mindless-accumulation notion, our results show, first, that individuals work about the same amount regardless of earning rates and hence are more likely to overearn when earning rates are high than when they are low, and second, that prompting individuals to consider the consequences of their earnings or denying them excessive earnings can disrupt mindless accumulation and enhance happiness.

The art and science of guessing.

This research examined how one affectively reacts to others' guesses at a value one cares about, such as one's income. Conventional wisdom suggests that people will feel happier upon receiving more favorable guesses (e.g., higher income) than less favorable guesses. We found the opposite pattern. We propose a model to explain the effect and identify its boundaries and report experimental evidence for the model. This research enriches existing literature on self-enhancement and yields practical implications for how to approach guessing in interpersonal communications.

Idleness aversion and the need for justifiable busyness.

There are many apparent reasons why people engage in activity, such as to earn money, to become famous, or to advance science. In this report, however, we suggest a potentially deeper reason: People dread idleness, yet they need a reason to be busy. Accordingly, we show in two experiments that without a justification, people choose to be idle; that even a specious justification can motivate people to be busy; and that people who are busy are happier than people who are idle. Curiously, this last effect is true even if people are forced to be busy. Our research suggests that many purported goals that people pursue may be merely justifications to keep themselves busy.

General Evaluability Theory.

A central question in psychology and economics is the determination of whether individuals react differently to different values of a cared-about attribute (e.g., different income levels, different gas prices, and different ambient temperatures). Building on and significantly extending our earlier work on preference reversals between joint and separate evaluations, we propose a general evaluability theory (GET) that specifies when people are value sensitive and when people mispredict their own or others' value sensitivity. The GET can explain and unify many seemingly unrelated findings, ranging from duration neglect to affective forecasting errors and can generate many new research directions on topics ranging from temporal discounting to subjective well-being.

Duration sensitivity depends on stimulus familiarity.

When people are asked to assess or compare the value of experienced or hypothetical events, one of the most intriguing observations is their apparent insensitivity to event duration. The authors propose that duration insensitivity occurs when stimuli are evaluated in isolation because they typically lack comparison information. People should be able to evaluate the duration of stimuli in isolation, however, when stimuli are familiar and evoke comparison information. The results of 3 experiments support the hypothesis. Participants were insensitive to the duration of hypothetical (Experiment 1) and real (Experiment 2) unfamiliar experiences but sensitive to the duration of familiar experiences. In Experiment 3, participants were insensitive to the duration of an unfamiliar noise when it was unlabeled but sensitive to its duration when it was given a familiar label (i.e., a telephone ring). Rather than being a unique phenomenon, duration neglect (and perhaps other forms of scope insensitivity) appears to be a particular case of insensitivity to unfamiliar attributes.

Hedonomics: Bridging Decision Research With Happiness Research.

One way to increase happiness is to increase the objective levels of external outcomes; another is to improve the presentation and choices among external outcomes without increasing their objective levels. Economists focus on the first method. We advocate the second, which we call hedonomics. Hedonomics studies (a) relationships between presentations (how a given set of out-comes are arranged among themselves or relative to other outcomes) and happiness and (b) relationships between choice (which option among alternative options one chooses) and happiness.

Sun and water: on a modulus-based measurement of happiness.

Most happiness researchers use semantic differential or Likert scales to assess happiness. Such conventionally used scales are susceptible to scale renorming (interpretation of scales differently in different contexts) and can produce a specious relativism effect (e.g., rating a low-income person happier than a high-income person in situations where the low-income person is not happier). Building on related psychophysical measurements, the authors propose a simple, survey-friendly, modulus-based scale of happiness and show that it is less susceptible to specious relativism than conventional rating scales but can still catch genuine relativism (e.g., rating a low-income person to be happier than a high-income person in situations where the low-income person is indeed happier).

Decision and experience: why don't we choose what makes us happy?

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest among psychologists and other social scientists in subjective well-being and happiness. Here we review selected contributions to this development from the literature on behavioral-decision theory. In particular, we examine many, somewhat surprising, findings that show people systematically fail to predict or choose what maximizes their happiness, and we look at reasons why they fail to do so. These findings challenge a fundamental assumption that underlies popular support for consumer sovereignty and other forms of autonomy in decision-making (e.g. marriage choice), namely, the assumption that people are able to make choices in their own best interests.

Distinction bias: misprediction and mischoice due to joint evaluation.

This research identifies a new source of failure to make accurate affective predictions or to make experientially optimal choices. When people make predictions or choices, they are often in the joint evaluation (JE) mode; when people actually experience an event, they are often in the single evaluation (SE) mode. The "utility function" of an attribute can vary systematically between SE and JE. When people in JE make predictions or choices for events to be experienced in SE, they often resort to their JE preferences rather than their SE preferences and overpredict the difference that different values of an attribute (e.g., different salaries) will make to their happiness in SE. This overprediction is referred to as the distinction bias. The present research also specifies when the distinction bias occurs and when it does not. This research contributes to literatures on experienced utility, affective forecasting, and happiness.

Music, pandas, and muggers: on the affective psychology of value.

This research investigated the relationship between the magnitude or scope of a stimulus and its subjective value by contrasting 2 psychological processes that may be used to construct preferences: valuation by feeling and valuation by calculation. The results show that when people rely on feeling, they are sensitive to the presence or absence of a stimulus (i.e., the difference between 0 and some scope) but are largely insensitive to further variations of scope. In contrast, when people rely on calculation, they reveal relatively more constant sensitivity to scope. Thus, value is nearly a step function of scope when feeling predominates and is closer to a linear function when calculation predominates. These findings may allow for a novel interpretation of why most real-world value functions are concave and how the processes responsible for nonlinearity of value may also contribute to nonlinear probability weighting.