Motivational drivers for serial position effects: Evidence from high-stakes legal decisions.

Experts and employees in many domains make multiple similar but independent decisions in sequence. Often, the serial position of the case in the sequence influences the decision. Explanations for these serial position effects focus on the role of decision-makers' fatigue, but these effects emerge also when fatigue is unlikely. Here, we suggest that serial position effects can emerge due to decision-makers' motivation to be or appear consistent. For example, to avoid having inconsistencies revealed, decisions may become more favorable toward the side that is more likely to put a decision under scrutiny. As a context, we focus on the legal domain in which many high-stakes decisions are made in sequence and in which there are clear institutional processes of decision scrutiny. We analyze two field data sets: 386,109 U.S. immigration judges' decisions on asylum requests and 20,796 jury decisions in 18th century London criminal court. We distinguish between five mechanisms that can drive serial position effects and examine their predictions in these settings. We find that consistent with motivation-based explanations of serial position effects, but inconsistent with fatigue-based explanations, decisions become more lenient as a function of serial position, and the effect persists over breaks. We further find, as is predicted by motivational accounts, that the leniency effect is stronger among more experienced decision-makers. By elucidating the different drivers of serial position effects, our investigation clarifies why they are common, when they are expected, and how to reduce them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid! Motivated Intergroup Emotion Regulation.

Group-based emotions can shape group members' behaviors and intergroup relations. Therefore, we propose that people may try to regulate emotions of outgroup members to attain ingroup goals. We call this phenomenon "motivated intergroup emotion regulation." In four studies, conducted in both hypothetical and real-world contexts, we show that deterrence and reconciliation goals influence how fearful or calm people want outgroup members to feel, respectively. We further show that such motivated intergroup emotion regulation can guide behavior toward the outgroup, influencing how outgroup members feel (Studies 1, 2, and 4) and behave (Study 4). We demonstrate how affiliation with the ingroup, which renders ingroup goals more salient, shapes what ingroup members want outgroup members to feel (Studies 3 and 4) and subsequently how outgroup members feel and behave (Study 4). Finally, we discuss how motivated intergroup emotion regulation might contribute to understanding motivation in emotion regulation, group-based emotions, and intergroup relations.

What you like is what you try to get: Attitudes toward emotions and situation selection.

Why do people expose themselves to certain emotional stimuli and avoid others? We propose that what people want to feel is linked to attitudes toward emotions. In 3 studies, we show that individuals with more (vs. less) negative attitudes toward an emotion were more (vs. less) likely to avoid stimuli that induce that emotion. People who evaluated disgust (or joy) less favorably than others were less likely to expose themselves to disgusting (or joyful) pictures (Study 1). These links were emotion-specific and could not be explained by differences in state or trait emotion (Study 2) or in emotional reactivity (Study 3). We were further able to show that the choice of emotion-inducing stimuli affected emotional experience in a congruent manner. People with more (vs. less) negative attitudes toward disgust (or sadness) were more likely to avoid disgusting (or sad) stimuli, resulting in more intense experiences of disgust (or sadness; Study 2). Finally, people with more negative attitudes toward disgust chose to avoid more disgusting stimuli, whether attitudes were assessed explicitly or implicitly (Study 3). These findings suggest that people avoid stimuli that induce emotions that they evaluate less favorably, even when such evaluations are not consciously accessible. (PsycINFO Database Record

Will you touch a dirty diaper? Attitudes towards disgust and behaviour.

Individuals differ in their willingness to engage with disgusting stimuli (e.g., dirty diapers). We propose that such differences are associated with attitudes towards disgust. Specifically, we predicted that people with less negative attitudes towards disgust (i.e., those who evaluate disgust less negatively) would be more willing to engage with disgusting stimuli. We asked participants to engage with disgusting stimuli in the laboratory and used two measures that assess behavioural and affective or cognitive components of attitudes towards disgust. As predicted, less negative attitudes towards disgust were associated with greater engagement with disgusting stimuli, above and beyond the current experience of disgust and the tendency to experience disgust. These findings stress the importance of attitudes towards emotions in understanding emotion-relevant behaviour.