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 In the studies reported here, we used computerized content analysis of historical documents to investigate the relation between positive thinking about the future and economic development.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.

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).