Person:

Lerner, Jennifer

Individuals tend toward status quo bias: preferring existing options over new ones. There is a countervailing phenomenon: Humans naturally dispose of objects that disgust them, such as foul-smelling food. But what if the source of disgust is independent of the object? We induced disgust via a film clip to see if participants would trade away an item (a box of unidentified office supplies) for a new item (alternative unidentified box). Such “incidental disgust” strongly countered status quo bias. Disgusted people exchanged their present possession 51% of the time compared to 32% for people in a neutral state. Thus, disgust promotes disposal. A second experiment tested whether a warning about this tendency would diminish it. It did not. These results indicate a robust disgust-promotes-disposal effect. Because these studies presented real choices with tangible rewards, their findings have implications for everyday choices and raise caution about the effectiveness of warnings about biases.

Sadness influences consumption, leading individuals to pay more to acquire new goods and to eat more unhealthy food than they would otherwise. These undesirable consumption effects of sadness can occur without awareness, thus representing more than just conscious attempts at “retail therapy.” In an experiment with real food consumption, the present paper examines the hypothesis that sadness’ impact on consumption could be attenuated if the choice context counteracted appraisals of helplessness and enhanced a sense of individual control. Results revealed that: (1) sadness elevates self‐reports of helplessness in response to the emotion inducing situation, (2) helplessness mediates the sadness‐consumption effect, and (3) inducing a sense of control (via choice) attenuates sadness’ effect.

As leaders ascend to more powerful positions in their groups, they face ever-increasing demands. This has given rise to the common perception that leaders have higher stress levels than non-leaders. But if leaders also experience a heightened sense of control—a psychological factor known to have powerful stress-buffering effects—leadership should be associated with reduced stress levels. Using unique samples of real leaders, including military officers and government officials, we found that, compared to non-leaders, leaders had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and lower reports of anxiety (Study 1). In a second study, leaders holding more powerful positions exhibited lower cortisol levels and less anxiety than leaders holding less powerful positions, a relationship explained significantly by their greater sense of control. Altogether, these findings reveal a clear relationship between leadership and stress, with leadership level being inversely related to stress.

When making decisions, people sometimes deviate from normative standards. While such deviations may appear to be alarmingly common, examining individual differences may reveal a more nuanced picture. Specifically, the personality factor of need for cognition (i.e., the extent to which people engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities; Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) may moderate decision makers’ susceptibility to bias, as could personality factors associated with being a leader. As part of a large-scale assessment of high-level leaders, participants completed a battery of decision-making competence and personality scales. Leaders who scored higher on need for cognition performed better on two of four components of a decision-making competence measure: framing and honoring sunk costs. In addition, the leader sample performed better than published controls. Thus, both individual differences in need for cognition and leadership experience moderate susceptibility to decision biases. Implications for broader theories of individual differences and bias are discussed.

Escalation of commitment—the tendency to remain committed to a course of action, often despite negative prospects—is common. Why does it persist? Across three preregistered experiments (N = 3,888), we tested the hypothesis that escalating commitment signals trustworthiness. Experiments 1–2, respectively, revealed that decision makers who escalated commitment were perceived as more trustworthy and entrusted with 29% more money by third-party observers. Experiment 3 revealed that decision makers who escalated commitment subsequently made more trustworthy choices, returning 15% more money than those who de-escalated. Decision makers were equally likely to escalate commitment in public versus in private, possibly because they previously internalized how others would evaluate them. Complementing research examining cognitive factors driving escalation of commitment, the present work reveals that accounting for the reputational causes and consequences of decisions to escalate enhances understanding of why escalation is so common and suggests how organizations might reduce it.

The human mind tends to excessively discount the value of delayed rewards relative to immediate ones, with “hot” affective processes believed to drive desires for short-term gratification. Supporting this view, recent findings demonstrate that sadness exacerbates financial impatience even when the sadness is unrelated to the economic decision at hand (Lerner, Li, & Weber, 2012). Such findings might reinforce the view that emotions must always be suppressed to combat impatience. But if emotions serve adaptive functions, then certain emotions might be capable of reducing excessive impatience for delayed rewards. We find evidence supporting this alternative view. Specifically, we find that (1) the emotion gratitude reduces impatience even with real money at stake, and (2) the effects of gratitude are differentiable from those of the more general positive state of happiness. These findings challenge the view that individuals must tamp down affective responses through effortful self-regulation to reach more patient and adaptive economic decisions.

Cultivating successful personal and professional relationships requires the ability to accurately infer the feelings of others – i.e., to be empathically accurate. Some are better than others at this, which may be explained by mode of thought, among other factors. Specifically, it may be that empathically-accurate people tend to rely more on intuitive rather than systematic thought when perceiving others. Alternatively, it may be the reverse – that systematic thought increases accuracy. In order to determine which view receives empirical support, we conducted four studies examining relations between mode of thought (intuitive versus systematic) and empathic accuracy. Study 1 revealed a lay belief that empathic accuracy arises from intuitive modes of thought. Studies 2-4, each using executive-level professionals as participants, demonstrated that (contrary to lay beliefs) people who tend to rely on intuitive thinking also tend to exhibit lower empathic accuracy. This pattern held when participants inferred others’ emotional states based on (a) in-person face-to-face interactions with partners (Study 2) as well as on (b) pictures with limited facial cues (Study 3). Study 4 confirmed that the relationship is causal: experimentally inducing systematic (as opposed to intuitive) thought led to improved empathic accuracy. In sum, evidence regarding personal and social processes in these four samples of working professionals converges on the conclusion that -- contrary to lay beliefs -- empathic accuracy arises more from systematic thought than from gut intuition.

Recent research has explored the relationship between social hierarchy and empathic accuracy— the ability to accurately infer others’ mental states. In the current research, we tested the hypothesis that, regardless of one’s personal level of status and power, simply believing that social inequality is natural and morally acceptable (e.g., endorsement of social dominance orientation, or SDO), would be negatively associated with empathic accuracy. In a sample of managers, a group for whom empathic accuracy is a valuable skill, empathic accuracy was lower for those who possessed structural power and also for those who endorsed social dominance, regardless of their structural power. Moreover, men were less empathically accurate than women, a relationship statistically mediated by men’s higher SDO and greater structural power. These findings suggest that for empathic abilities, it matters just as much what you think about social hierarchies as it does where you stand within them.

Misery is not miserly: sadness increases the amount of money decision makers give up to acquire a commodity (Lerner, Small, & Loewenstein, 2004). The present research investigated when and why the “misery-is-not-miserly” effect occurs. Drawing on William James’s (1890) concept of the material self, we tested a model specifying relationships among sadness, self-focus, and the amount of money decision makers spend. Consistent with our Jamesian hypothesis, results revealed that self-focus both moderates and mediates the effect of sadness on spending. Results were consistent across males and females. Because the study used real commodities and real money, results hold implications for everyday decisions. They also hold implications for theoretical development. Economic theories of spending may benefit from incorporating psychological theories – specifically theories of emotion and the self.