Inspired to act: motivational effects of being moved by love and willpower.

ABSTRACTPeople can be moved and touched by exceptional closeness between people or by outstanding willpower. We investigated the causal effect of these feelings on motivations. We based our research on the previously identified phenomenon that feelings of being moved are stronger in unfavourable circumstances (e.g. psychological closeness after conflict, high achievement against all odds). In two studies in the US (N1 = 136) and in Germany (N2 = 161), we independently varied context (love vs. willpower) and circumstances (favourable vs. unfavourable) in short stories and assessed feelings of being moved as well as the motivation to show love and the motivation to show willpower after each story. In both contexts and consistent across the two studies, unfavourable circumstances elicited stronger motivations to show love as well as stronger motivations to show willpower. Multilevel mediation modelling revealed that these effects were mediated by feelings of being moved. This indicates that feelings of being moved enhance pro-social as well as achievement-related motivations.

A Laughing Matter? How Humor in Alcohol Ads Influences Interpersonal Communication and Persuasion.

Exposure to alcohol ads increases alcohol consumption. A potential partial explanation is that certain (e.g., humorous) alcohol ads trigger conversations which can, in turn, increase drinking behaviors. Therefore, we investigated the influence of humor in alcohol ads on conversational occurrence, length, and valence about alcohol and alcohol ads. One hundred and fourteen participants were shown one of three beer ads (humor; positive; no ad), after which participants could voluntarily discuss the ad and alcohol. Next, all participants were requested to discuss the topic and answered a questionnaire assessing conversational valence and ad, brand, and alcohol evaluations. Results showed that humor leads to more conversations about the ad and alcohol, longer conversations about alcohol, and more positive conversations about the ad. This interpersonal communication, and especially conversational valence, was subsequently related to ad, brand, and alcohol evaluations. These findings may explain the effect of alcohol ads on alcohol consumption, and provide important starting points for using humor as a potentially effective behavior change tool.

Against the odds: human values arising in unfavourable circumstances elicit the feeling of being moved.

People sometimes say they are "moved" or "touched" by something. Although the experience is familiar to most, systematic research on being moved has just begun. The current research aims to advance our understanding of the prototypical elicitors of being moved. We tested the hypothesis that being moved is elicited by core values (i.e. values that are particularly central to being human) that manifest themselves in circumstances that are unfavourable to their emergence. In three experiments, two with text stimuli and one with pictorial stimuli, we found compelling evidence that the same core value (e.g. love, willpower, beauty) is perceived as more moving when it emerges in unfavourable than in favourable circumstances. The effect was found in both males and females, although stronger in the latter group, and across all investigated core values, although love was generally more moving than other core values. The theoretical and practical significance of these findings is discussed.

The implicit power motive predicts action selection.

Previous research has indicated that implicit motives can reliably predict which behaviors people select or decide to perform. However, so far, the question of how these motives are able to predict this action selection process has received little attention. Based on ideomotor theory, we argue that implicit motives can predict action selection when an action has become associated with a motive-congruent (dis)incentive through repeated experiences with the action-outcome relationship. This idea was investigated by examining whether the implicit need for power (nPower) would come to predict action selection (i.e., choosing to press either of two buttons) when these actions had repeatedly resulted in motive-congruent (dis)incentives (i.e., submissive or dominant faces). Both Studies 1 and 2 indicated that participants became more likely to select the action predictive of the motive-congruent outcome as their history with the action-outcome relationship increased. Study 2 indicated that this effect stemmed from both an approach towards incentives and an avoidance of disincentives. These results indicate that implicit motives (particularly the power motive) can predict action selection as a result of learning which actions yield motive-congruent (dis)incentives. Our findings therefore offer a model of how implicit motives can come to predict which behaviors people select to perform.

Thinking in Black and White: Conscious thought increases racially biased judgments through biased face memory.

It is a common research finding that conscious thought helps people to avoid racial discrimination. These three experiments, however, illustrate that conscious thought may increase biased face memory, which leads to increased judgment bias (i.e., preferring White to Black individuals). In Experiments 1 and 2, university students formed impressions of Black and White housemate candidates. They judged the candidates either immediately (immediate decision condition), thought about their judgments for a few minutes (conscious thought condition), or performed an unrelated task for a few minutes (unconscious thought condition). Conscious thinkers and immediate decision-makers showed a stronger face memory bias than unconscious thinkers, and this mediated increased judgment bias, although not all results were significant. Experiment 3 used a new, different paradigm and showed that a Black male was remembered as darker after a period of conscious thought than after a period of unconscious thought. Implications for racial prejudice are discussed.

Good morning creativity: task reactivation during sleep enhances beneficial effect of sleep on creative performance.

Both scientists and artists have suggested that sleep facilitates creativity, and this idea has received substantial empirical support. In the current study, we investigate whether one can actively enhance the beneficial effect of sleep on creativity by covertly reactivating the creativity task during sleep. Individuals' creative performance was compared after three different conditions: sleep-with-conditioned-odor; sleep-with-control-odor; or sleep-with-no-odor. In the evening prior to sleep, all participants were presented with a problem that required a creative solution. In the two odor conditions, a hidden scent-diffuser spread an odor while the problem was presented. In the sleep-with-conditioned-odor condition, task reactivation during sleep was induced by means of the odor that was also presented while participants were informed about the problem. In the sleep-with-control-odor condition, participants were exposed to a different odor during sleep than the one diffused during problem presentation. In the no odor condition, no odor was presented. After a night of sleep with the conditioned odor, participants were found to be: (i) more creative; and (ii) better able to select their most creative idea than participants who had been exposed to a control odor or no odor while sleeping. These findings suggest that we do not have to passively wait until we are hit by our creative muse while sleeping. Task reactivation during sleep can actively trigger creativity-related processes during sleep and thereby boost the beneficial effect of sleep on creativity.

Zen meditation and access to information in the unconscious.

In two experiments and two different research paradigms, we tested the hypothesis that Zen meditation increases access to accessible but unconscious information. Zen practitioners who meditated in the lab performed better on the Remote Associate Test (RAT; Mednick, 1962) than Zen practitioners who did not meditate. In a new, second task, it was observed that Zen practitioners who meditated used subliminally primed words more than Zen practitioners who did not meditate. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

The effectiveness of a cue-reminder intervention to reduce adolescents' alcohol use in social contexts.

AIMS: To examine the use of a cue-reminder to target alcohol use among youth in social contexts. METHODS: Two experiments were conducted. First, among 92 late adolescents, we tested if a cue-reminder could be effectively associated with information about empowerment, awareness and monitoring of one's own limits with regard to alcohol use. Second, among 107 young adults, the effect of the cue in a real-life drinking setting was examined. RESULTS: The first study showed that adolescents in the experimental condition recalled more empowerment information compared with adolescents in the control condition (mean 2.00 ± 0.92 vs mean 1.52 ± 0.96, P = 0.017), indicating the possibility of creating an association between a symbol (cue-reminder) and empowerment information with regard to alcohol use. In the second study, significant interaction effects between general drinking frequency and condition were found in relation to having an alcoholic consumption (ß = -0.24; P = 0.027) and to the amount of alcoholic consumptions (ß = -0.24; P = 0.035), suggesting that the presence of the cue-reminder in a drinking situation may have an inhibitory effect on alcohol consumption among frequent drinkers. CONCLUSION: The cue-reminder seems to have the potential to function as an intervention to reduce excessive alcohol use in social settings.

Moral dilemmas and trust in leaders during a global health crisis.

Trust in leaders is central to citizen compliance with public policies. One potential determinant of trust is how leaders resolve conflicts between utilitarian and non-utilitarian ethical principles in moral dilemmas. Past research suggests that utilitarian responses to dilemmas can both erode and enhance trust in leaders: sacrificing some people to save many others ('instrumental harm') reduces trust, while maximizing the welfare of everyone equally ('impartial beneficence') may increase trust. In a multi-site experiment spanning 22 countries on six continents, participants (N = 23,929) completed self-report (N = 17,591) and behavioural (N = 12,638) measures of trust in leaders who endorsed utilitarian or non-utilitarian principles in dilemmas concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Across both the self-report and behavioural measures, endorsement of instrumental harm decreased trust, while endorsement of impartial beneficence increased trust. These results show how support for different ethical principles can impact trust in leaders, and inform effective public communication during times of global crisis. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION STATEMENT: The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 13 November 2020. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13247315.v1 .

Unconscious-thought effects take place off-line, not on-line.

The unconscious-thought effect refers to an improvement in decision making following distraction from the decision context for a period of time. The dominant explanation for this effect is that unconscious processes continue to deal with the problem during the distraction period. Recently, however, some researchers have proposed that unconscious thinkers may be merely recalling a judgment that was formed on-line (i.e., during information acquisition). We present two experiments that rule out the latter interpretation. In the unconscious-thought condition of the first experiment, participants who reported making their decision after unconscious thought made better decisions than those who reported making their decision on-line. In the second experiment, all participants judged the choice alternatives both on-line and off-line. On-line judgments were predictive of off-line judgments only in the immediate-decision condition, but not in the conscious- and unconscious-thought conditions. These results demonstrate that a period of unconscious thought does improve judgments that were formed earlier on-line.

Humor in the eye tracker: attention capture and distraction from context cues.

The humor effect refers to a robust finding in memory research that humorous information is easily recalled, at the expense of recall of nonhumorous information that was encoded in close temporal proximity. Previous research suggests that memory retrieval processes underlie this effect. That is, free recall is biased toward humorous information, which interferes with the retrieval of nonhumorous information. The present research tested an additional explanation that has not been specifically addressed before: Humor receives enhanced attention during information encoding, which decreases attention for context information. Participants observed humorous, nonhumorous positive, and nonhumorous neutral texts paired with novel consumer brands, while their eye movements were recorded using eye-tracker technology. The results confirmed that humor receives prolonged attention relative to both positive and neutral nonhumorous information. This enhanced attention correlated with impaired brand recognition.

Finding comfort in a joke: consolatory effects of humor through cognitive distraction.

This study aimed to demonstrate that the cognitive demands involved in humor processing can attenuate negative emotions. A primary aspect of humor is that it poses cognitive demands needed for incongruency resolution. On the basis of findings that cognitive distraction prevents mood-congruent processing, the authors hypothesized that humorous stimuli attenuate negative emotions to a greater extent than do equally positive nonhumorous stimuli. To test this idea, the authors used a modified version of the picture-viewing paradigm of L. F. Van Dillen and S. L. Koole (2007). Participants viewed neutral, mildly negative, and strongly negative pictures, followed by either a humorous or an equally positive nonhumorous stimulus, and then rated their feelings. Participants reported less negative feelings in both mildly and strongly negative trials with humorous positive stimuli than with nonhumorous positive stimuli. Humor did not differentially affect emotions in the neutral trials. Stimuli that posed greater cognitive demands were more effective in regulating negative emotions than less demanding stimuli. These findings fully support Van Dillen and Koole's working memory model of distraction from negative mood and suggest that humor may attenuate negative emotions as a result of cognitive distraction.

Humor in advertisements enhances product liking by mere association.

Humor in advertising is known to enhance product liking, but this attitude change is often considered nonpredictive of product choice. Previous research relied exclusively on explicit self-report measures to assess attitudes and purchase intentions. The present research shows that unobtrusive association of a product with humor can affect persuasion through implicit attitude change. Participants viewed humorous and nonhumorous cartoons in a mock-up magazine. One of two products was consistently presented in the vicinity of the humorous cartoons, whereas the other product was consistently presented in the vicinity of the nonhumorous cartoons. The results of an evaluative priming task showed enhanced evaluations of products paired with humor (Experiment 1, 2, and 3). Furthermore, these enhanced evaluations mediated the relation between association with humor and product choice (Experiment 2 and 3). Paradoxically, products paired with humor were also less recognized than the control products (Experiments 2 and 3). In summary, the present research demonstrates that mere association with humor enhances product evaluations and product choice in a way that is dissociated from the accessibility of the product in memory.

Seductive eyes: attractiveness and direct gaze increase desire for associated objects.

Recent research in neuroscience shows that observing attractive faces with direct gaze is more rewarding than observing attractive faces with averted gaze. On the basis of this research, it was hypothesized that object evaluations can be enhanced by associating them with attractive faces displaying direct gaze. In a conditioning paradigm, novel objects were associated with either attractive or unattractive female faces, either displaying direct or averted gaze. An affective priming task showed more positive automatic evaluations of objects that were paired with attractive faces with direct gaze than attractive faces with averted gaze and unattractive faces, irrespective of gaze direction. Participants' self-reported desire for the objects matched the affective priming data. The results are discussed against the background of recent findings on affective consequences of gaze cueing.

The implicit power motive predicts decisions in line with perceived instrumentality.

Past research suggests that the implicit power motive (i.e., an unconsciously held motivational disposition to derive pleasure from having impact on others) predicts a preference to interact with individuals having submissive-looking faces. The present research extends this finding by testing whether the relation between the implicit power motive and approaching submissiveness depends on instrumentality. In two experiments, participants were assigned to a group that would ostensibly compete with another group. Within this intergroup context, they were asked to select persons as leaders or members for the in-group or the out-group. Potential leaders and members were displayed as submissive-looking or dominant-looking. Results showed that the implicit power motive predicted decisions favoring dominant-looking persons as in-group leaders, and submissive-looking persons as out-group leaders (Study 1) or in-group members (Study 2). These findings indicate that the tendency for people high in the implicit power motive to approach submissive-looking persons depends on the perceived instrumentality for gaining influence over others.

When conflict influences liking: The case of the Stroop task.

Research suggests that cognitive conflict is accompanied by a negative signal. Building on the demonstrated role of negative affect in attitude formation and change, the present research investigated whether the experience of cognitive conflict negatively influences subsequent evaluations of neutral stimuli. Relying on the emergence of conflict in the Stroop task, participants were presented with compatible (non-conflict) and incompatible (conflict) Stroop color words that were each followed by a neutral visual stimulus. In general, participants liked stimuli following incompatible Stroop words less than stimuli following compatible Stroop words. The results revealed similar compatibility effects in tasks in which participants actively responded to the Stroop words and in tasks in which they passively observed them. Furthermore, these effects emerged in offline and online measures of evaluation. Interestingly, the results also suggest that the compatibility effect on liking observed in the present research was to some degree driven by the positivity associated with the compatible Stroop words, and not just by the negativity associated with the incompatible Stroop words. We discuss the present findings in the context of how and when conflicting responses to events (such as in the Stroop task) can influence evaluations of stimuli associated with the conflicting events.

A Brief Mindfulness Exercise Promotes the Correspondence Between the Implicit Affiliation Motive and Goal Setting.

People often choose to pursue goals that are dissociated from their implicit motives, which jeopardizes their motivation and well-being. We hypothesized that mindfulness may attenuate this dissociation to the degree that it increases sensitivity to internal cues that signal one's implicit preferences. We tested this hypothesis with a longitudinal repeated measures experiment. In Session 1, participants' implicit affiliation motive was assessed. In Session 2, half of the participants completed a mindfulness exercise while the other half completed a control task before indicating their motivation toward pursuing affiliation and nonaffiliation goals. In Session 3, this procedure was repeated with reversed assignment to conditions. The results confirmed our hypothesis that, irrespective of the order of the conditions, the implicit affiliation motive predicted a preference to pursue affiliation goals immediately after the mindfulness exercise, but not after the control task. We discuss implications of these findings for satisfaction and well-being.

A Case for Thinking Without Consciousness.

People can engage in prolonged thought processes, such as when they are facing an important decision or when they are working on a scientific discovery. Such thought processes can take months or even years. We argue that while people engage in such thinking, they make progress not only when they consciously think but also sometimes when they are consciously thinking about something else-that is, while they think unconsciously. We review the literature on unconscious thought (UT) processes and conclude that there is indeed quite some evidence for UT. Conceptualized as a form of unconscious goal pursuit, UT is likely to be especially fruitful for thought processes that are complex, important, or interesting to the thinker. In addition, we discuss other characteristics of the UT process. We end with proposing Type 3 processes, in addition to Type 1 and Type 2 (or Systems 1 and 2) processes, to accommodate prolonged thought processes in models on thought.

Striking the right chord: moving music increases psychological transportation and behavioral intentions.

Three experiments among university students (N = 372) investigated the persuasive power of moving (i.e., intensely emotional and "chills"-evoking) music in audio-visual advertising. Although advertisers typically aim to increase elaborate processing of the message, these studies illustrate that the persuasive effect of moving music is based on increased narrative transportation ("getting lost" in the ad's story), which reduces critical processing. In Experiment 1, moving music increased transportation and some behavioral intentions (e.g., to donate money). Experiment 2 experimentally increased the salience of manipulative intent of the advertiser, and showed that moving music reduces inferences of manipulative intent, leading in turn to increased behavioral intentions. Experiment 3 tested boundary effects, and showed that moving music fails to increase behavioral intentions when the salience of manipulative intent is either extremely high (which precludes transportation) or extremely low (which precludes reduction of inferences of manipulative intent). Moving music did not increase memory performance, beliefs, and explicit attitudes, suggesting that the influence is affect-based rather cognition-based. Together, these studies illustrate that moving music reduces inferences of manipulation and increases behavioral intentions by transporting viewers into the story of the ad.

Those who laugh are defenseless: how humor breaks resistance to influence.

Three experiments illustrate that humor in advertisements prevents the development of negative brand associations due to resistance. Previous research on humor in advertising suggested that humor can counter negative responses during ad processing, but less is known about the effect of humor on the development of negative brand associations in memory. Brand associations are important because there is often a time delay between ad exposure and brand decisions. We separately manipulated two typical aspects of humor processing, that is, distraction and positive affect, and examined their effects on the development of respectively negative and positive brand associations. All experiments were conducted with university students as participants. The results showed that resistance causes negative brand associations (Experiments 1 and 2), and humor prevents the development of these negative brand associations more than nondistracting positive stimuli and neutral stimuli (Experiment 2 and 3). The prevention of negative brand associations was caused by the distractive properties of humor. Irrespective of resistance, the positive affect engendered by humor enhanced positive brand associations. Experiment 3 showed that distraction and positive affect in humor uniquely contribute to brand preference. Together, these results illustrate that the effect of humor on resistance follows a two-step process: humor forestalls the development of negative brand associations because of its distractive properties (cognitive mechanism), and engenders positive brand associations because of its positive emotional outcomes (affective mechanism). These effects of humor on brand associations jointly promote brand preference.