Positive fantasies and negative emotions in soccer fans.

Positive thinking is often assumed to foster effort and success. Research has shown, however, that positive thinking in the form of fantasies about achieving an idealised future predicts less (not more) effort and success and more (not less) depressive symptoms over time. This relationship was mediated by people having invested little effort and achieved little success. Here, we ask a different question. We investigate the emotional consequences of positive fantasies about futures that people cannot act on. Specifically, we analyse these consequences when the future fantasies fail to come true (one's favourite soccer team loses). Study 1 provided correlational evidence. The more positively soccer fans fantasised about their favourite team winning an upcoming match, the stronger were their negative emotions when their team lost. That is, the more sad, disappointed, and frustrated they felt. Study 2 provided experimental evidence. Soccer fans who were led to fantasise positively about their team winning an upcoming match reported feeling stronger negative emotions after their team lost than those who were led to fantasise negatively. Positive fantasies were not related to how positive participants felt after their team won (joy, happiness, relief). We discuss theoretical and applied implications for emotion regulation in everyday life.

Positive thinking about the future in newspaper reports and presidential addresses predicts economic downturn.

Previous research has shown that positive thinking, in the form of fantasies about an idealized future, predicts low effort and poor performance. In the studies reported here, we used computerized content analysis of historical documents to investigate the relation between positive thinking about the future and economic development. During the financial crisis from 2007 to 2009, the more weekly newspaper articles in the economy page of USA Today contained positive thinking about the future, the more the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined in the subsequent week and 1 month later. In addition, between the New Deal era and the present time, the more presidential inaugural addresses contained positive thinking about the future, the more the gross domestic product and the employment rate declined in the presidents' subsequent tenures. These counterintuitive findings may help reveal the psychological processes that contribute to an economic crisis.

A Multilab Replication of the Ego Depletion Effect.

There is an active debate regarding whether the ego depletion effect is real. A recent preregistered experiment with the Stroop task as the depleting task and the antisaccade task as the outcome task found a medium-level effect size. In the current research, we conducted a preregistered multilab replication of that experiment. Data from 12 labs across the globe (N = 1,775) revealed a small and significant ego depletion effect, d = 0.10. After excluding participants who might have responded randomly during the outcome task, the effect size increased to d = 0.16. By adding an informative, unbiased data point to the literature, our findings contribute to clarifying the existence, size, and generality of ego depletion.

Taking Responsibility for Others and Use of Mental Contrasting.

Mentally contrasting a desired future with present reality fosters selective goal pursuit: People pursue feasible desired futures and let go from unfeasible ones. We investigated whether people are more inclined to spontaneously use mental contrasting when they feel responsibility. Studies 1 and 2 provided correlational evidence: Employees who felt responsible for completing an important team project (Study 1) and MTurk users who felt and actively took social responsibility (Study 2) were more inclined to use mental contrasting. Studies 3 and 4 added experimental evidence: Students who were instructed to imagine responsibility for giving an excellent class presentation in a group or alone (Study 3) and participants who elaborated on an idiosyncratic wish that involved responsibility for others or themselves tended to use mental contrasting (Study 4). Apparently, people who feel or take responsibility for others, the society, or themselves are more likely to use mental contrasting as a self-regulation tool.

Family Matters: Rethinking the Psychology of Human Social Motivation.

What motives do people prioritize in their social lives? Historically, social psychologists, especially those adopting an evolutionary perspective, have devoted a great deal of research attention to sexual attraction and romantic-partner choice (mate seeking). Research on long-term familial bonds (mate retention and kin care) has been less thoroughly connected to relevant comparative and evolutionary work on other species, and in the case of kin care, these bonds have been less well researched. Examining varied sources of data from 27 societies around the world, we found that people generally view familial motives as primary in importance and mate-seeking motives as relatively low in importance. Compared with other groups, college students, single people, and men place relatively higher emphasis on mate seeking, but even those samples rated kin-care motives as more important. Furthermore, motives linked to long-term familial bonds are positively associated with psychological well-being, but mate-seeking motives are associated with anxiety and depression. We address theoretical and empirical reasons why there has been extensive research on mate seeking and why people prioritize goals related to long-term familial bonds over mating goals. Reallocating relatively greater research effort toward long-term familial relationships would likely yield many interesting new findings relevant to everyday people's highest social priorities.

A cultural task analysis of implicit independence: comparing North America, Western Europe, and East Asia.

Informed by a new theoretical framework that assigns a key role to cultural tasks (culturally prescribed means to achieve cultural mandates such as independence and interdependence) in mediating the mutual influences between culture and psychological processes, the authors predicted and found that North Americans are more likely than Western Europeans (British and Germans) to (a) exhibit focused (vs. holistic) attention, (b) experience emotions associated with independence (vs. interdependence), (c) associate happiness with personal achievement (vs. communal harmony), and (d) show an inflated symbolic self. In no cases were the 2 Western European groups significantly different from one another. All Western groups showed (e) an equally strong dispositional bias in attribution. Across all of the implicit indicators of independence, Japanese were substantially less independent (or more interdependent) than the three Western groups. An explicit self-belief measure of independence and interdependence showed an anomalous pattern. These data were interpreted to suggest that the contemporary American ethos has a significant root in both Western cultural heritage and a history of voluntary settlement. Further analysis offered unique support for the cultural task analysis.

Women outperform men in distinguishing between authentic and nonauthentic smiles.

Women tend to be more accurate in decoding facial expressions than men. We hypothesized that women's better performance in decoding facial expressions extends to distinguishing between authentic and nonauthentic smiles. We showed participants portrait photos of persons who smiled because either they saw a pleasant picture (authentic smile) or were instructed to smile by the experimenter (nonauthentic smile) and asked them to identify the smiles. Participants judged single photos of persons depicting either an authentic or a nonauthentic smile, and they judged adjacent photos of the same person depicting an authentic smile and a nonauthentic smile. Women outperformed men in identifying the smiles when judging the adjacent photos. We discuss implications for judging smile authenticity in real life and limitations for the observed sex difference.

Alcohol intake can reduce gambling behavior.

Prolonged and risky gambling can have negative consequences financially and in health (e.g., developing an addiction). As gambling frequently occurs together with alcohol intake, we investigated whether we could reduce persistent and risky gambling under the influence of alcohol. Specifically, following alcohol myopia theory (Steele & Josephs, 1990), stating that intoxicated people's behavior is disproportionally guided by salient cues, we propose that making low chances of winning salient in a gambling situation should reduce persistent and risky gambling in alcohol intoxicated participants. In 3 laboratory studies, participants either consumed alcohol or a placebo. We made low chances of winning salient (vs. not) by explicitly displaying the low chances in large letters. Making low chances salient led intoxicated participants to gamble less persistently on a computerized slot machine (Study 1 and 2) and with less risk in a lottery game (Study 3) compared with sober participants and compared with sober and intoxicated participants in a control condition in which low chances were not salient. Moreover, using eye-tracking in Study 3, we found that the effect of alcohol on less risky gambling was mediated by intoxicated participants' greater attention to the salient low chances. Finally, we replicated the findings from our laboratory studies in the field: When low chances were made salient, the more alcohol bar patrons had consumed, the less persistently they gambled on a slot machine (Study 4). The findings have applied implications for reducing excessive gambling under the influence of alcohol by making low chances salient on games of chance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Cosmopolitan cities: the frontier in the twenty-first century?

People with independent (vs. interdependent) social orientation place greater priority on personal success, autonomy, and novel experiences over maintaining ties to their communities of origin. Accordingly, an independent orientation should be linked to a motivational proclivity to move to places that offer economic opportunities, freedom, and diversity. Such places are cities that can be called "cosmopolitan." In support of this hypothesis, Study 1 found that independently oriented young adults showed a preference to move to cosmopolitan rather than noncosmopolitan cities. Study 2 used a priming manipulation and demonstrated a causal impact of independence on residential preferences for cosmopolitan cities. Study 3 established ecological validity by showing that students who actually moved to a cosmopolitan city were more independent than those who either moved to a noncosmopolitan city or never moved. Taken together, the findings illuminate the role of cosmopolitan settlement in the contemporary cultural change toward independence and have implications for urban development and economic growth.

Alcohol myopia and goal commitment.

According to alcohol myopia theory, acute alcohol consumption leads people to disproportionally focus on the salient rather than the peripheral aspects of a situation. We summarize various studies exploring how myopic processes resulting from acute alcohol intake affect goal commitment. After consuming alcohol student participants felt strongly committed to an important personal goal even though they had low expectations of successfully attaining the goal. However, once intoxicated participants were sober again (i.e., not myopic anymore) they failed to act on their goal commitment. In line with alcohol myopia theory, strong goal commitment as a result of alcohol intake was mediated by intoxicated (vs. sober) participants disproportionally focusing on the desirability rather than the feasibility of their goal. Further supporting alcohol myopia theory, when the low feasibility of attaining a particular goal was experimentally made salient (either explicitly or implicitly by subliminal priming), intoxicated participants felt less committed than those who consumed a placebo. We discuss these effects of acute alcohol intake in the context of research on the effects of chronic alcohol consumption on goal commitment.

Mental contrasting and transfer of energization.

Mental contrasting a desired future with present reality is a self-regulation strategy that fosters energization in line with a person's expectations of successfully attaining the desired future. We investigated whether physiological energization (measured by systolic blood pressure) elicited by mental contrasting a desired future of solving a given task transfers to effort in an unrelated task. As predicted, mental contrasting a desired future of excelling in an intelligence test (Study 1) and of writing an excellent essay (Study 2) triggered changes in energization that translated into physical effort in squeezing a handgrip (Study 1) and translated into mental effort in writing a get-well letter (Study 2). Results suggest that mental contrasting of solving one task triggers energization that may fuel effort for performing an unrelated task. Implications for intervention research are discussed.

Spontaneous mental contrasting and selective goal pursuit.

Mental contrasting a desired future with reality is a self-regulation strategy that fosters selective goal pursuit; people pursue goals for which they have high expectations of success, and let go of those for which they have low expectations. Indulging in the future, dwelling on the reality, or contrasting the reality with the future lead to indiscriminate goal pursuit. We developed a content analytic measure to observe spontaneous mental contrasting in people writing about an important wish (Study 1). Just like induced mental contrasting, spontaneous mental contrasting predicted selective goal pursuit measured by self-reported performance (Study 2) and observed performance (Study 3). The developed coding scheme opens the way to investigating situation, person, and cultural predictors of spontaneous mental contrasting.

Alcohol affects goal commitment by explicitly and implicitly induced myopia.

Alcohol commits people to personally important goals even if expectations of reaching the goals are low. To illuminate this effect, we used alcohol myopia theory, stating that alcohol intoxicated people disproportionally attend to the most salient aspects of a situation and ignore peripheral aspects. When low expectations of reaching an important goal were activated students who consumed alcohol were less committed than students who consumed a placebo. We observed less commitment regardless of whether low expectations were explicitly activated in a questionnaire (Study 1) or implicitly activated through subliminal priming (Study 2). The results imply that, intoxicated people commit to goals according to what aspects of a goal are activated either explicitly or implicitly.

Alcohol breeds empty goal commitments.

According to alcohol-myopia theory (C. M. Steele & R. A. Josephs, 1990), alcohol leads individuals to disproportionally focus on the most salient aspects of a situation and to ignore peripheral information. The authors hypothesized that alcohol leads individuals to strongly commit to their goals without considering information about the probability of goal attainment. In Study 1, participants named their most important interpersonal goal, indicated their expectations of successfully attaining it, and then consumed either alcohol or a placebo. In contrast to participants who consumed a placebo, intoxicated participants felt strongly committed to their goals despite low expectations of attaining them. In Study 2, goal-directed actions were measured over time. Once sober again, intoxicated participants with low expectations did not follow up on their strong commitments. Apparently, when prospects are bleak, alcohol produces empty goal commitments, as commitments are not based on individuals' expectations of attaining their goals and do not foster goal striving over time.