The Interactive Effect of Incentive Salience and Prosocial Motivation on Prosocial Behavior.

Charities often use incentives to increase prosocial action. However, charities sometimes downplay these incentives in their messaging (pilot study), possibly to avoid demotivating donors. We challenge this strategy, examining whether increasing the salience of incentives for prosocial action can in fact motivate charitable behavior. Three controlled experiments (N = 2,203 adults) and a field study with an alumni-donation campaign (N = 22,468 adults) found that more (vs. less) salient incentives are more effective at increasing prosocial behavior when prosocial motivation is low (vs. high). This is because more (vs. less) salient incentives increase relative consideration of self-interest (vs. other-regarding) benefits, which is a stronger driver of behavior at low (vs. high) levels of prosocial motivation. By identifying that prosocial motivation moderates the effect of incentive salience on charitable behavior, and by detailing the underlying mechanism, we advance theory and practice on incentive salience, motivation, and charitable giving.

Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort.

Achieving personal growth often requires experiencing discomfort. What if instead of tolerating discomfort (e.g., feeling awkward or uncomfortable), people actively sought it out? Because discomfort is usually experienced immediately and is easy to detect, we suggest that seeking discomfort as a signal of growth can increase motivation. Five experiments (total N = 2,163 adults) tested this prediction across various areas of personal growth: taking improvisation classes to increase self-confidence, engaging in expressive writing to process difficult emotions, becoming informed about the COVID-19 health crisis, opening oneself to opposing political viewpoints, and learning about gun violence. Across these areas of personal development, seeking discomfort as a signal of self-growth motivated engagement and increased perceived goal achievement relative to standard instructions. Consistent with our theorizing, results showed that these effects occurred only in areas of personal growth that cause immediate discomfort.

Shared Plates, Shared Minds: Consuming From a Shared Plate Promotes Cooperation.

A meal naturally brings people together, but does the way a meal is served and consumed further matter for cooperation between people? This research ( N = 1,476) yielded evidence that it does. People eating from shared plates (i.e., a Chinese-style meal) cooperated more in social dilemmas and negotiations than those eating from separate plates. Specifically, sharing food from a single plate increased perceived coordination among diners, which in turn led them to behave more cooperatively and less competitively toward each other, compared with individuals eating the same food from separate plates. The effect of sharing a plate on cooperation occurred among strangers, which suggests that sharing plates can bring together more than just allies.

The exaggerated benefits of failure.

Commencement speakers, business leaders, and the popular press tell us that failure has at least one benefit: It fuels success. Does it? Across 11 studies, including a field study of medical professionals, predictors overestimated the rate at which people course correct following failure (Studies 1-4). Predictors overestimated the likelihood that professionals who fail a professional exam (e.g., the bar exam, the medical boards) pass a retest (Studies 1a, 1b, and 2a), the likelihood that patients improve their health after a crisis (e.g., heart attack, drug overdose; Studies 2b and 6), and the probability, more generally, of learning from one's mistakes (Studies 3-5). This effect was specific to overestimating success following failure (Study 4) and erasing mention of an initial failure that had actually occurred corrected the problem (Studies 2a and 2b). The success overestimate was due, at least in part, to the belief that people attend to failure more than they do (Studies 5 and 6). Correcting this overestimate had policy implications. Citizens apprised of the sobering true rate of postfailure success increased their support for rehabilitative initiatives aimed at helping struggling populations (e.g., people with addiction, ex-convicts) learn from past mistakes (Studies 7a-7c). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Food restriction and the experience of social isolation.

Across 7 studies, food restrictions increased loneliness by limiting the ability to bond with others through similar food consumption. We first found that food restrictions predict loneliness using observer- and self-reports among children and adults (Studies 1-3). Next, we found mediation by the experience of worry and moderation by eating similar food as others. When restricted individuals were unable to bond over a meal (i.e., they ate different vs. the same food as others), they worried. These "food worries" mediated the effect of restrictions on loneliness (Studies 4 and 5). Moving to controlled experiments, manipulating the presence of a food restriction for unrestricted individuals increased reported loneliness (Study 6). This effect replicated in an experiment that capitalized on a naturally occurring food restriction-the holiday of Passover-where Jewish observers were restricted from eating chametz (leavened food; Study 7). Overall, while both food restrictions and loneliness are on the rise; this research found they may be related epidemics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

It's about time: Earlier rewards increase intrinsic motivation.

Can immediate (vs. delayed) rewards increase intrinsic motivation? Prior research compared the presence versus absence of rewards. By contrast, this research compared immediate versus delayed rewards, predicting that more immediate rewards increase intrinsic motivation by creating a perceptual fusion between the activity and its goal (i.e., the reward). In support of the hypothesis, framing a reward from watching a news program as more immediate (vs. delayed) increased intrinsic motivation to watch the program (Study 1), and receiving more immediate bonus (vs. delayed, Study 2; and vs. delayed and no bonus, Study 3) increased intrinsic motivation in an experimental task. The effect of reward timing was mediated by the strength of the association between an activity and a reward, and was specific to intrinsic (vs. extrinsic) motivation-immediacy influenced the positive experience of an activity, but not perceived outcome importance (Study 4). In addition, the effect of the timing of rewards was independent of the effect of the magnitude of the rewards (Study 5). (PsycINFO Database Record

Closing your eyes to follow your heart: Avoiding information to protect a strong intuitive preference.

Rationally, people should want to receive information that is costless and relevant for a decision. But people sometimes choose to remain ignorant. The current paper identifies intuitive-deliberative conflict as a driver of information avoidance. Moreover, we examine whether people avoid information not only to protect their feelings or experiences, but also to protect the decision itself. We predict that people avoid information that could encourage a more thoughtful, deliberative decision to make it easier to enact their intuitive preference. In Studies 1 and 2, people avoid learning the calories in a tempting dessert and compensation for a boring task to protect their preferences to eat the dessert and work on a more enjoyable task. The same people who want to avoid the information, however, use it when it is provided. In Studies 3-5, people decide whether to learn how much money they could earn by accepting an intuitively unappealing bet (that a sympathetic student performs poorly or that a hurricane hits a third-world country). Although intuitively unappealing, the bets are financially rational because they only have financial upside. If people avoid information in part to protect their intuitive preference, then avoidance should be greater when an intuitive preference is especially strong and when information could influence the decision. As predicted, avoidance is driven by the strength of the intuitive preference (Study 3) and, ironically, information avoidance is greater before a decision is made, when the information is decision relevant, than after, when the information is irrelevant for the decision (Studies 4 and 5). (PsycINFO Database Record

A structural model of intrinsic motivation: On the psychology of means-ends fusion.

The term intrinsic motivation refers to an activity being seen as its own end. Accordingly, we conceptualize intrinsic motivation (IM) as (perceived) means-ends fusion and define an intrinsicality continuum reflecting the degree to which such fusion is experienced. Our means-ends fusion (MEF) theory assumes four major antecedents of activity-goal fusion: (a) repeated pairing of the activity and the goal, (b) uniqueness of the activity-goal connection, (c) perceived similarity between the activity and its goal, and (d) temporal immediacy of goal attainment following the activity. MEF theory further identifies two major consequences of the activity-goal fusion (i.e., manifestations of intrinsic motivation): (a) perceived instrumentality of the activity to goal attainment and consequent activity engagement, and (b) goal-related affective experience of the activity. Empirical evidence for MEF theory comes from diverse fields of psychological inquiry, including animal learning, brain research, and social cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record

Immediate Rewards Predict Adherence to Long-Term Goals.

People primarily pursue long-term goals, such as exercising, to receive delayed rewards (e.g., improved health). However, we find that the presence of immediate rewards is a stronger predictor of persistence in goal-related activities than the presence of delayed rewards. Specifically, immediate rewards (e.g., enjoyment) predicted current persistence at New Year's resolutions whereas delayed rewards did not (Study 1). Furthermore, immediate rewards predicted persistence in a single session of studying and exercising whereas delayed rewards did not, even though people report primarily pursuing these activities for delayed rewards (Studies 2 and 3). This is true for both short (1 week) and long (3 month) time frames (Study 4), and regardless of whether anticipated or materialized rewards are assessed (Study 5). Overall, whereas delayed rewards may motivate goal setting and the intentions to pursue long-term goals, a meta-analysis of our studies finds that immediate rewards are more strongly associated with actual persistence in a long-term goal.

The experience matters more than you think: People value intrinsic incentives more inside than outside an activity.

We document a shift in the value assigned to intrinsic incentives: people value these incentives more inside an activity than outside the activity (i.e., during vs. before or after pursuit). For example, people care more about the level of interest of their present work task than of past or future work tasks. We document this shift across a variety of activities (exercising, visiting a museum, and lab tasks) and using various measures, including rated importance of intrinsic incentives inside and outside pursuit, actual and planned persistence on activities that offer these incentives, and regret when choosers outside pursuit forgo intrinsic incentives that pursuers later seek. This shift in valuation occurs because intrinsic incentives improve the experience during action pursuit, and therefore, this shift is unique to intrinsic incentives. Extrinsic incentives, by contrast, are valued similarly inside and outside pursuit.