This article links recent work on assimilative and contrastive counterfactual thinking with research on the impact of accountability on judgment and choice. Relative to participants who felt accountable solely for bottom-line performance outcomes, participants who were accountable for their decision-making process (a) had more pronounced differential reactions to clearly winning versus (winning but) nearly losing and to clearly losing versus (losing but) nearly winning; (b) were less satisfied with the quality of their decisions when they nearly lost and more satisfied (...) with the quality of their decisions when they nearly won; and (c) invested less money into investments that nearly failed and more money into investments that nearly succeeded. This pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that process accountability amplified assimilative counterfactual thinking, whereas outcome accountability attenuated it. The evidence underscores the power of contextual features of the decision-making environment to shape key cognitive and affective consequences of upward and downward counterfactual comparisons. (shrink)

This article reviews research on counterfactual, social, and temporal comparisons and proposes a Reflection and Evaluation Model (REM) as an organizing framework. At the heart of the model is the assertion that 2 psychologically distinct modes of mental simulation operate during comparative thinking: reflection, an experiential (“as if”) mode of thinking characterized by vividly simulating that information about the comparison standard is true of, or part of, the self; and evaluation, an evaluative mode of thinking characterized by the use of (...) information about the standard as a reference point against which to evaluate one’s present standing. Reflection occurs when information about the standard is included in one’s self-construal, and evaluation occurs when such information is excluded. The result of reflection is that standard–consistent cognitions about the self become highly accessible, thereby yielding affective assimilation; whereas the result of evaluation is that comparison information is used as a standard against which one’s present standing is evaluated, thereby yielding affective contrast. The resulting affect leads to either an increase or decrease in behavioral persistence as a function of the type of task with which one is engaged, and a combination of comparison-derived causal inferences and regulatory focus strategies direct one toward adopting specific future action plans. (shrink)

Time, an important, yet scarce resource in daily living, affects cognition, decision-making, and behavior in various ways. For instance, in marketing practice, time-bound strategies are often employed to influence consumer behavior. Thus, understanding and mastering a target market from a temporal perspective can contribute to the ease with which marketers and businesses formulate marketing strategies. Accordingly, this research conducts three studies to explore the influence of temporal framing as an external time cue on the evaluation of sponsorship-linked marketing campaigns. The (...) studies show that future-framed participants adopted a global processing style. In this context, providing information about the sponsoring brand and sponsored event induced a more positive evaluation of future campaigns. However, in a past-frame context, participants were less likely to adopt a global processing style. Here, providing brand sponsor information alone increased the likelihood of a positive evaluation of past campaigns. Ultimately, the findings provide a theoretical basis for decision-making utilizing the influence of activities and events to enhance brand image. (shrink)

Aversive autobiographical memories sometimes prompt maladaptive emotional responses and contribute to affective dysfunction in anxiety and depression. One way to regulate the impact of such memories is to create a downward counterfactual thought–a mental simulation of how the event could have been worse–to put what occurred in a more positive light. Despite its intuitive appeal, counterfactual thinking has not been systematically studied for its regulatory efficacy. In the current study, we compared the regulatory impact of downward counterfactual thinking, temporal distancing, (...) and memory rehearsal in 54 adult participants representing a spectrum of trait anxiety. Participants recalled regretful experiences and rated them on valence, arousal, regret, and episodic detail. Two to six days later, they created a downward counterfactual of the remembered event, thought of how they might feel about it 10 years from now, or simply rehearsed it. A day later, participants re-rated the phenomenological characteristics of the events. Across all participants, downward counterfactual thinking, temporal distancing, and memory rehearsal were equally effective at reducing negative affect associated with a memory. However, in individuals with higher trait anxiety, downward counterfactual thinking was more effective than rehearsal for reducing regret, and it was as effective as distancing in reducing arousal. We discuss these results in light of the functional theory of counterfactual thinking and suggest that they motivate further investigation into downward counterfactual thinking as a means to intentionally regulate emotional memories in affective disorders. (shrink)

Decades of empirical and theoretical research has produced an extensive literature on the ethical judgments construct. Given its importance to understanding people’s ethical choices, future research should explore the psychological processes that produce ethical judgments. In this paper, the authors discuss two steps needed to advance this effort. First, they note that the business ethics literature lacks a single, generally accepted definition of ethical judgments. After reviewing several extant definitions, the authors offer a definition of the construct and discuss its (...) advantages. Second, future ethical judgment research would benefit from greater integration between theories of ethical decision making and theories of social cognition. Drawing upon the Hunt–Vitell ( Journal of Macromarketing 6 (Spring), 5–15, 1986 ; In: N. C. Smith and J. A. Quelch (eds.), Ethics in Marketing . Irwin, Homewood, IL, pp. 775–784, 1992 ) model and the heuristic-systematic model (Chaiken, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39 (November), 752–766, 1980 ), the authors present a brief research agenda intended to stimulate research on the psychological processes behind ethical judgments. (shrink)

Affect misattribution occurs when affective cues color subsequent unrelated evaluations. Research suggests that affect misattribution decreases when one is aware that affective cues are unrelated to the evaluation at hand. We propose that affect misattribution may even occur when one is aware that affective cues are irrelevant, as long as the source of these cues seems ambiguous. When source ambiguity exists, affective cues may freely influence upcoming unrelated evaluations. We examined this using an adapted affect misattribution procedure where pleasant and (...) unpleasant responses served as affective cues that could influence later evaluations of unrelated targets. These affective cues were either perceived as reflecting a single source , or as reflecting two sources suggesting source ambiguity. Results show that misattribution of affect decreased when participants perceived affective cues as representing one source rather than two. (shrink)

The effect of contextual information on the resolution of ambiguity was investigated in a group of individuals awaiting dental treatment and a group of control individuals. Participants heard threat/neutral, neutral/neutral and positive/neutral homophones while being simultaneously presented with a context word that was consistent with one of the two meanings of the homophone. Participants then made a lexical decision task on a target word that was one of the two alternate spellings of the homophone. We found that the dental group (...) was more sensitive to context for all types of homophones, and there was no evidence for mood congruency. It also appeared that there might have been an element of mood regulation in the dental group, as they were slower to respond to the emotional targets overall. Our results show that sensitivity to context in state anxiety is a robust phenomenon and one that generalises to naturally occurring anxious moods. (shrink)

Experimental work has revealed causal links between physical cleansing and various psychological variables. Empirically, how robust are they? Theoretically, how do they operate? Major prevailing accounts focus on morality or disgust, capturing a subset of cleansing effects, but cannot easily handle cleansing effects in non-moral, non-disgusting contexts. Building on grounded views on cognitive processes and known properties of mental procedures, we proposegrounded proceduresof separation as a proximate mechanism underlying cleansing effects. This account differs from prevailing accounts in terms of explanatory (...) kind, interpretive parsimony, and predictive scope. Its unique and falsifiable predictions have received empirical support: Cleansing attenuates or eliminates otherwise observed influences of prior events (1) across domains and (2) across valences. (3) Cleansing manipulations produce stronger effects the more strongly they engage sensorimotor capacities. (4) Reversing the causal arrow, motivation for cleansing is triggered more readily by negative than positive entities. (5) Conceptually similar effects extend to other physical actions of separation. On the flipside, grounded procedures ofconnectionare also observed. Together, separation and connection organize prior findings relevant to multiple perspectives (e.g., conceptual metaphor, sympathetic magic) and open up new questions. Their predictions are more generalizable than the specific mappings in conceptual metaphors, but more fine-grained than the broad assumptions of grounded cognition. This intermediate level of analysis sheds light on the interplay between mental and physical processes. (shrink)

Zaller's model of public-opinion formation portrays the average citizen as an automaton who responds unthinkingly to elite cues. That is, once people have received information from political elites, they tend to abide by whatever their respective cue-givers dictate, since rejecting information is more cognitively costly than simply accepting it. Empirical research in psychology on priming supports this view of the citizen as a passive receiver of information. For example, people are likely to be unconsciously influenced by subtle cues and they (...) tend to base their opinions on the accessibility of information in memory. However, some citizens, under certain conditions, may be ?active processors? of information: actively interpreting it, elaborating on its implications, and negotiating its meaning. Whether or not Zaller's model is an accurate representation of the process of public-opinion formation depends substantially upon the inclusiveness of the researcher's views about what constitutes public opinion and how to study its determinants. (shrink)

This paper examines how people anticipate negative emotion when faced with an uncertain outcome and try to manage their expectation. While extant research streams remain equivocal on whether managing expectation always succeeds, this research examines situations in which setting a low expectation can have an adverse emotional impact and ways to alleviate this negative emotional consequence. Using goal setting and false-feedback paradigm, we show that those who set low goals to manage expectation can end up feeling more disappointed than those (...) who set high goals (study 1), but this negative impact can be avoided when goals are reminded at feedback and when individuals are made aware of the inaccuracies in forecasting affect or are reminded of their initial goal (studies 1 and 2). (shrink)

Three studies address the role of social consensus on evaluative standards in different comparative contexts. Previous research has documented that self-categorisation at the individual or group level changes social comparison effects in terms of assimilation and contrast. With regard to self-ratings of physical attractiveness, the present studies show that people who focus on group membership can benefit from including outstanding others in their reference group, whereas people who focus on their individual attributes run the risk of self-devaluation. It is argued (...) that high consensus strengthens the association between evaluative standards and group membership and renders the inclusion of outstanding others more likely. Study 3 shows that the need to protect self-esteem moderates the influence of perceived consensus. Stressing the individual self led participants who received negative feedback to exclude outstanding others when consensus was low. Stressing the social self, however, led participants to include outstanding others when consensus was high. (shrink)

Research on temporal comparison has shown that people dissociate themselves from their past to attain a positive self view. Social comparison research has demonstrated that the distinctness of contextually activated information determines whether a recalled self exerts assimilation or contrast effects on the current self. However, hardly any study addressed individual differences. Also, very little is known about whether the ease or difficulty to date past events and experiences influences current self-judgments. We present a new scale capturing the degree of (...) the current self time extension. Three studies support the notion that temporal self-extension determines how past selves are accessed and processed, regarding both the abstractness with which self-knowledge is retrieved and the experienced temporal distance to the past. These findings have important implications for temporal as well as social comparison processes. (shrink)

In previous research, studies on motivated correction in the evaluation of branded products are rare. This experimental study with 246 participants examined how the motivation to correct the impact of brand knowledge influences the product evaluation of actual strong and weak brands in low and high involvement situations. As predicted, asymmetry between the strong and weak brands was observed. After the induction of the motivation to correction, the smaller brand effect occurred only in the cases of low involvement and the (...) weak brand. The effect of motivated correction was smaller than the effect of high involvement; therefore, the overall results suggest that conscious explicit motivation to correction evokes correction only in cases of weak brands under certain circumstances. However, this impact is not as strong as the influence of high motivation or a strong brand, even though explicit instructions are given to avoid the negative influence of the brand. (shrink)

Genomics, Climate Change, Nanotechnology, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance… For the uninitiated, scientific names created by experts can be difficult to understand. Yet, people have to make decisions about the related scientific concepts. Experts reach understanding with theory and expect non-experts to do the same. However, my research shows that people can satisfy their need to make sense of what they are dealing with by just using associations triggered by a name. For example, people often unfairly presume that genomics and the controversial (...) genetic manipulation are the same because of their similar names. Resulting beliefs are convincing enough to make decisions and they are difficult to change because activated associations influence further learning. This can cause persistent misunderstandings and unnecessary controversies that can harm scientific developments. By working together, experts and the public can prevent misunderstanding by co-creating names that foster meaningful associations by non-experts and promote appropriate understandings. (shrink)