How individuals perceive their partner's relationship behaviors when worrying about finances.

What role do financial worries play in close relationship functioning? In this research, we examine how financial worry - negative thoughts and feelings about finances - is associated with perceived relationship behaviors. Participants recalled how their partner acted during a recent disagreement (Study 1, N = 97 couples) or recalled the frequency of positive and negative behaviors enacted by their partner during the previous week (Study 2, N = 99 couples). Feeling more worried about finances was associated with recalling less supportive behavior from one's partner at the disagreement (Study 1) and with perceiving more negative behaviors from one's partner in the last week (Study 2). Truth and Bias Model analyses suggest that part of this link may be attributed to biased perceptions, as the link between financial worry and perceiving more negative behaviors persisted even after controlling for participants' own reported behaviors (i.e., accounting for similarity) and for their partner's own reported behaviors (i.e., accounting for accurate perceptions). In sum, financial worry is linked to how partners notice and interpret a loved one's actions within their relationship.

When couples fight about money, what do they fight about?

Conflicts about money and finances can be destructive for both the quality and longevity of relationships. This paper reports on a descriptive analysis of the contents of financial conflicts in two samples. Study 1 examined severe financial conflicts in social media posts (N = 1014) from reddit (r/relationships). Eight themes were identified via thematic analysis: "unfair relative contributions" "who pays for joint expenses", "job and income", "exceptional expenses", "terms of financial arrangements", "discrepant financial values", "one-sided financial decisions", and "perceived irresponsibility". Study 2 examined reports of more mundane financial disagreements recalled by married individuals (N = 481). Seven themes were identified via thematic analysis: "relative contributions", "job and income", "different values", "exceptional expenses", "mundane expenses", "money management", and "perceived irresponsibility". In both samples, themes could be ordered along the dimensions of "concerns about fairness" and "concerns about responsibility". The association of relationship outcomes (perceived partner responsiveness, couple satisfaction) with each theme and demographic predictors (income, relationship length, shared finances) were explored. Independent t-tests suggested that participants who recalled disagreements fitting the themes at the extreme ends of the two dimensions ("unfair relative contributions" and "perceived irresponsibility") reported worse relationship outcomes. In contrast, participants recalling disagreements fitting the theme of "mundane expenses" reported better relationship outcomes.

Big Money: The Effect of Money Size on Value Perceptions and Saving Motivation.

Motivated perception has been shown to affect people's estimates of money (e.g., perceiving coins as larger than real size). In the present research, we examine whether simply varying the size of a picture of money can affect its perceived value and subsequent decisions. Participants presented with a picture of money enlarged by 15% perceived the depicted money as more valuable compared with those seeing a real-size picture (Study 1). When told to imagine their own cash and banked money in the depicted form, participants presented with a picture enlarged by 15% felt more subjectively wealthy and reported fewer intentions to conserve their money compared with those seeing a real-size picture of the same money (Study 2). Together, these studies suggest that judgments about money and even attitudes toward personal spending can be influenced by manipulating the size of a picture of money.

The Wise Mind Balances the Abstract and the Concrete.

We explored how individuals' mental representations of complex and uncertain situations impact their ability to reason wisely. To this end, we introduce situated methods to capture abstract and concrete mental representations and the switching between them when reflecting on social challenges. Using these methods, we evaluated the alignment of abstractness and concreteness with four integral facets of wisdom: intellectual humility, open-mindedness, perspective-taking, and compromise-seeking. Data from North American and UK participants (N = 1,151) revealed that both abstract and concrete construals significantly contribute to wise reasoning, even when controlling for a host of relevant covariates and potential response bias. Natural language processing of unstructured texts among high (top 25%) and low (bottom 25%) wisdom participants corroborated these results: semantic networks of the high wisdom group reveal greater use of both abstract and concrete themes compared to the low wisdom group. Finally, employing a repeated strategy-choice method as an additional measure, our findings demonstrated that individuals who showed a greater balance and switching between these construal types exhibited higher wisdom. Our findings advance understanding of individual differences in mental representations and how construals shape reasoning across contexts in everyday life.

Expect and you shall perceive: People who expect better in turn perceive better behaviors from their romantic partners.

People who are happy with their romantic relationships report that their partners are particularly effective at meeting their everyday relational needs. However, the literature invites competing predictions about how people arrive at those evaluations. In pilot research, we validated a scale of concrete, specific relationship behaviors that can be performed by a romantic partner day-to-day. In Study 1, cross-lagged panel models examined how expectations of positive behaviors, perceptions of positive behaviors, and relationship quality predict changes in one another from week to week. People who expected more positive behaviors in turn perceived more positive behaviors from their partners 1 week later. Key effects extended to negative relationship behaviors (Study 2). In Study 3, the same pattern emerged in a dyadic sample, with expected behaviors predicting changes in perceived behaviors independent of the partner's own reports. Truth and bias analyses revealed that people with lower expectations had more negatively biased perceptions of their partners' behaviors, whereas high expectations were associated with better accuracy. We obtained these results in the context of specific, verifiable behaviors reported on over relatively short periods, underscoring how powerfully people's everyday relationship perceptions may be shaped by their more global perceptions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

People prefer to diversify across different types of prosocial behaviour.

People have multiple opportunities to act prosocial any given day but only limited resources to do so (e.g. time, effort and money they are willing to invest). We test whether people prefer to diversify their prosocial efforts across different types of help: casual help, direct help, indirect help and emotional support. In two daily diary studies (total N = 711), we examine whether previous prosocial behaviour affects subsequent prosocial behaviour for the same or other types of prosocial behaviour. We found that day-to-day prosocial behaviours reflected a diversified helping pattern. Participants were less likely to help the same way (i.e. the same type of prosocial behaviour) on subsequent days and more likely to help in different ways (i.e. a different type of prosocial behaviour). This tendency did not extend to casual help in Study 2, implying that the next day reduction in doing the same type of prosocial behaviour is limited to prosocial behaviours that are at least somewhat effortful or time consuming.

Balancing Prosocial Effort Across Social Categories: Mental Accounting Heuristics in Helping Decisions.

Three studies examine whether individuals might use mental accounting heuristics in helping decisions, budgeting their prosocial effort in similar ways to how money is budgeted. In a hypothetical scenario study (N = 283), participants who imagined that they previously helped someone of a specific social category (e.g., "family," "colleagues") were less willing to help someone of that category again. Similarly, when reporting actual instances of day-to-day help in a diary study (N = 443), having helped more than usual in a social category yesterday was associated with less effort and less time spent on helping in the same category today. In contrast, helping more than usual in other social categories did not reduce helping today. Finally, a scenario study (N = 489) suggested that the mental accounting effect in helping decisions may, in part, be explained by perceived utility of help (helping others in the same social category is seen as less rewarding).

The Role of Income Volatility and Perceived Locus of Control in Financial Planning Decisions.

Two studies examine whether income volatility might lead to greater personal financial insecurity and might create a decision environment that discourages planning ahead on personal finances. In Study 1 (N = 982), participants who reported more month-to-month variability in their actual income were less likely to have planned for financial contingencies. A lower internal locus of control partially mediated the link between volatility and financial planning decisions in Study 1, and lower internal locus of economic control predicted financial planning decisions independently of volatility. In Study 2 (N = 149), participants who were randomly assigned to receive volatile (vs. stable) payments in a simulated work environment were less likely to save their compensation for this work. Again, lower internal locus of economic control predicted financial planning decisions independently of volatility. This is the first study to demonstrate a causal link between income volatility and financial decisions, specifically a heightened tendency to make short-term financial decisions. Both studies also underlined the importance of internal locus of control for financial planning decisions.

A meta-analysis of financial self-control strategies: Comparing empirical findings with online media and lay person perspectives on what helps individuals curb spending and start saving.

Self-control can be assisted by using self-control strategies rather than relying solely on willpower to resist tempting situations and to make more goal-consistent decisions. To understand how self-control strategies can aid financial goals, we conducted a meta-analysis (Study 1) to aggregate the latest research on self-control strategies in the financial domain and to estimate their overall effectiveness for saving and spending outcomes. Across 29 studies and 12 different self-control strategies, strategies reduced spending and increased saving significantly with a medium effect size (d = 0.57). Proactive and reactive strategies were equally effective. We next examined whether these strategies studied in the academic literature were present in a media sample of websites (N = 104 websites with 852 strategies) and in individuals' personal experiences (N = 939 participants who listed 830 strategies). About half the strategies identified in the meta-analysis were present in the media sample and about half were listed by lay participants as strategies they personally use. In sum, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of the self-control strategies that have been studied in the empirical literature to date and of the strategies promoted in the media and used in daily life, identifying gaps between these perspectives.

Perceiving time through group-based glasses: Collective temporal orientation.

People differ in the extent to which they focus on their personal future, past, or present. Across four studies (using both correlation and experimental designs), we explore whether people also have a temporal orientation when thinking about the social groups to which they belong (i.e., their in-group). In Studies 1-3, participants' personal temporal orientation was moderately linked with, but distinguishable from, their collective temporal orientation for their national self (i.e., 'American'). In Study 2, evidence is provided for the predictive validity of this novel concept. Specifically, greater collective past orientation was positively associated with reported collective guilt (a group-based emotion that reflects the acceptance of culpability for historical harms perpetrated by the in-group), and greater collective future orientation focus on the in-group's future was positively associated with collective angst (a group-based emotion that reflects concern about existential threats the in-group may face). In Study 3, collective temporal orientation was shown to differ across several groups' participants listed as self-relevant. In Study 4, participants randomly assigned to think about a past-oriented social group to which they belong reported more frequent focus on the in-group's past than participants randomly assigned to think about a future-oriented in-group (and vice versa for collective future focus). This research advances the literature on time perspective by showing that temporal cognition extends to the social self.

Correction: Thinking Big or Small: Does Mental Abstraction Affect Social Network Organization?

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0147325.].

Thinking Big or Small: Does Mental Abstraction Affect Social Network Organization?

Four studies examined how mental abstraction affects how people perceive their relationships with other people, specifically, how these relationships may be categorized in social groups. We expected that individuals induced to think abstractly would report fewer more global social groups, compared to those induced to think concretely, who would report more specific groups. However, induced abstract mindset did not affect how people structured their social groups (Study 2-4), despite evidence that the mindset manipulation changed the level of abstraction in their thoughts (Study 3) and evidence that it changed how people structured groups for a control condition (household objects, Study 4). Together, these studies suggest that while the way people organize their relationships into groups is malleable; cognitive abstraction does not seem to affect how people categorize their relationships into social groups.

It's a matter of time: The effect of depletion on communal action in romantic relationships is moderated by relationship length.

Researchers have only begun to turn their attention to the role of self-control in communal action (rather than communal restraint) in relationships. Conflicting results from early studies indicate that the association between self-control and communal action may be quite complex, and potentially moderated by many variables. Here we investigate how relationship length may moderate the extent to which communal actions require self-control resources. In 5 studies, we investigated the role of self-control resources in implementing (Studies 1 and 2) and in choosing (Studies 3-5) communal actions for a romantic partner, as a function of the length of time partners had been together. The data supported the hypothesis that as relationships mature over time, communal actions may require less self-control to implement and may become a decisional default. These findings suggest that communal actions may be a more deliberative response in newer romantic relationships but a more reflexive response in more established relationships.

Marking time: selective use of temporal landmarks as barriers between current and future selves.

Temporal landmarks such as birthdays and significant calendar dates structure our perception of time. People might highlight temporal landmarks spontaneously in an effort to regulate connections between temporal selves. Five studies demonstrated that landmarks are used spontaneously to induce psychological separation from undesirable temporal selves. Participants were more likely to think of events that fell in between the current and the future self if an imagined future self was negative than if it was positive (Studies 1a, 1b, and 2). Furthermore, when a self-enhancement mindset was activated, participants were more likely to call to mind intervening temporal landmarks to protect themselves from a negative future self than when this mindset was not activated (Study 3). Finally, when psychological separations between the current self and a negative future self were introduced through alternate means, participants no longer selectively used landmarks to separate themselves from this future self (Study 4).

Self-regulating the effortful "social dos".

In the current research, we explored differences in the self-regulation of the personal dos (i.e., engaging in active and effortful behaviors that benefit the self) and in the self-regulation of the social dos (engaging in those same effortful behaviors to benefit someone else). In 6 studies, we examined whether the same trait self-control abilities that predict task persistence on personal dos would also predict task persistence on social dos. That is, would the same behavior, such as persisting through a tedious and attentionally demanding task, show different associations with trait self-control when it is framed as benefitting the self versus someone else? In Studies 1-3, we directly compared the personal and social dos and found that trait self-control predicted self-reported and behavioral personal dos but not social dos, even when the behaviors were identical and when the incentives were matched. Instead, trait agreeableness--a trait linked to successful self-regulation within the social domain--predicted the social dos. Trait self-control did not predict the social dos even when task difficulty increased (Study 4), but it did predict the social don'ts, consistent with past research (Studies 5-6). The current studies provide support for the importance of distinguishing different domains of self-regulated behaviors and suggest that social dos can be successfully performed through routes other than traditional self-control abilities.

The post-birthday world: consequences of temporal landmarks for temporal self-appraisal and motivation.

Much as physical landmarks help structure our representation of space, temporal landmarks such as birthdays and significant calendar dates structure our perception of time, such that people may organize or categorize their lives into "chunks" separated by these markers. Categories on the temporal landscape may vary depending on what landmarks are salient at a given time. We suggest these landmarks have implications for identity and motivation. The present research examined consequences of salient temporal landmarks for perceptions of the self across time and motivation to pursue successful future selves. Studies 1 and 2 show that temporally extended selves are perceived as less connected to, and more dissimilar from, the current self when an intervening landmark event has been made salient. Study 3 addresses the proposed mechanism, demonstrating that intervening landmarks lead people to categorize pre- and postlandmark selves into separate categories more often than when the same time period contains no salient landmarks. Finally, we examined whether landmark-induced mental contrasting of present state and future desired state could increase goal-pursuit motivation (in an effort to bridge the gap between inferior present and better future states). Studies 4-6 demonstrate that landmark-induced discrepancies between current health and hoped-for future health increased participants' motivation to exercise and increased the likelihood that they acted in line with their future-oriented goals.

When does feeling moral actually make you a better person? Conceptual abstraction moderates whether past moral deeds motivate consistency or compensatory behavior.

According to the moral licensing literature, moral self-perceptions induce compensatory behavior: People who feel moral act less prosocially than those who feel immoral. Conversely, work on moral identity indicates that moral self-perceptions motivate behavioral consistency: People who feel moral act more prosocially than those who feel less so. In three studies, the authors reconcile these propositions by demonstrating the moderating role of conceptual abstraction. In Study 1, participants who recalled performing recent (concrete) moral or immoral behavior demonstrated compensatory behavior, whereas participants who considered temporally distant (abstract) moral behavior demonstrated behavioral consistency. Study 2 confirmed that this effect was unique to moral self-perceptions. Study 3 manipulated whether participants recalled moral or immoral actions concretely or abstractly, and replicated the moderation pattern with willingness to donate real money to charity. Together, these findings suggest that concrete moral self-perceptions activate self-regulatory behavior, and abstract moral self-perceptions activate identity concerns.

Only because I love you: why people make and why they break promises in romantic relationships.

People make and break promises frequently in interpersonal relationships. In this article, we investigate the processes leading up to making promises and the processes involved in keeping them. Across 4 studies, we demonstrate that people who had the most positive relationship feelings and who were most motivated to be responsive to the partner's needs made bigger promises than did other people but were not any better at keeping them. Instead, promisers' self-regulation skills, such as trait conscientiousness, predicted the extent to which promises were kept or broken. In a causal test of our hypotheses, participants who were focused on their feelings for their partner promised more, whereas participants who generated a plan of self-regulation followed through more on their promises. Thus, people were making promises for very different reasons (positive relationship feelings, responsiveness motivation) than what made them keep these promises (self-regulation skills). Ironically, then, those who are most motivated to be responsive may be most likely to break their romantic promises, as they are making ambitious commitments they will later be unable to keep.

Crimes of the past: defensive temporal distancing in the face of past in-group wrongdoing.

Relegating past in-group transgressions to ancient history might deflect threat to collective identity. Germans (but not Canadians) judged the Holocaust to be more subjectively remote in time when they read only about German-perpetrated atrocities than when this threat was mitigated. Greater subjective distance predicted lower collective guilt, which, in turn, predicted less willingness to make amends (Study 1). Distancing under threat was more pronounced among defensive Germans who felt unjustly blamed by other nations (Study 2). In Study 3, the authors examined the causal role of subjective time. Nondefensive Germans induced to view the Holocaust as closer reported more collective guilt and willingness to compensate. In contrast, defensive Germans reported less collective guilt after the closeness induction. Taken together, the studies demonstrate that how past wrongs are psychologically situated in time can play a powerful role in people's present-day reactions to them.

Is there a budget fallacy? The role of savings goals in the prediction of personal spending.

The authors extend research and theory on self prediction into the realm of personal financial behavior. Four studies examined people's ability to predict their future personal spending and the findings supported the two main hypotheses. First, participants tended to underestimate their future spending. They predicted spending substantially less money in the coming week than they actually spent or than they remembered spending in the previous week. Second, the prediction bias stemmed from people's savings goals-defined as the general desire to save money or minimize future spending-at the time of prediction. Participants who reported (Studies 2 and 3) or were induced to experience (Study 4) a stronger savings goal predicted they would spend less money. However, savings goals were not related to actual spending and thus contributed to the bias in prediction.