Several studies indicate that directional questions influence self-conceptions. For example, subjects asked "are you happy with your social life?" rated themselves as happier than did subjects asked "are you unhappy with your social life?". This occurs because subjects use a positive-test strategy to test directional hypotheses about themselves: Subjects were more likely to search their memories for examples of the hypothesized characteristic than for examples...

Cognitive priming methodologies were employed to examine whether internally represented interpersonal information can affect the experience of self. In the first study, psychology graduate students evaluated their own research ideas after exposures, below the level of conscious awareness, to slides of either the scowling, disapproving face of their department chair or the approving face of another person. In the second study, Catholic subjects evaluated themselves...

Research on counterfactual thinking has shown that people's emotional responses to events are influenced by their thoughts about "what might have been." The authors extend these findings by documenting a familiar occasion in which those who are objectively better off nonetheless feel worse. In particular, an analysis of the emotional reactions of bronze and silver medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics—both at the conclusion of...

This article describes a balance theory of wisdom and applies the theory to the context of schooling. First, the article discusses why intelligence-related skills are an important, but not a sufficient, basis for education. Second, the article briefly reviews alternative theories of wisdom. Third, the article presents a balance theory of wisdom, according to which wisdom is defined as the application of tacit as well...

People seem to think that a unit of some entity (with certain constraints) is the appropriate and optimal amount. We refer to this heuristic as unit bias. We illustrate unit bias by demonstrating large effects of unit segmentation, a form of portion control, on food intake. Thus, people choose, and presumably eat, much greater weights of Tootsie Rolls and pretzels when offered a large as...

Inspired by potential theoretical linkages between nonconscious priming work in psychology and the anthropological emphasis on the impact of material culture, five studies were conducted to investigate the role of implicitly presented material objects and automatic processes in interpersonal and organizational contexts. These studies showed that exposure to objects common to the domain of business (e.g., boardroom tables and briefcases) increased the cognitive accessibility of...

Using a simple videogame, the effect of ethnicity on shoot/don't shoot decisions was examined. African American or White targets, holding guns or other objects, appeared in complex backgrounds. Participants were told to "shoot" armed targets and to "not shoot" unarmed targets. In Study 1, participants made the correct decision to shoot an armed target more quickly if the target was African American than if he...

Default options can lead to striking differences in preferences, with significant economic impact. The authors of this Policy Forum use natural and experimental data to examine the impact of simple policy defaults on the decision to become an organ donor, finding large effects that significantly increase donation rates.   Johnson, E. J., & Goldstein, D. (2003). Do defaults save lives?. Science, 302, 1338-1339.DOI: 10.1126/science.1091721    

Construal level theory proposes that temporal distance changes people's responses to future events by changing the way people mentally represent those events. The greater the temporal distance, the more likely are events to be represented in terms of a few abstract features that convey the perceived essence of the events (high-level construals) rather than in terms of more concrete and incidental details of the events...

The authors examined whether and when changes in the self lead to mistaken assessments that the world has changed. Survey data revealed that: personal changes in respondents (e.g., parenthood, financial change) were positively correlated with their assessments of various social changes (e.g., crime rates, freedom). Experimental data provided converging evidence. Experimentally induced change in knowledge influenced participants' perceptions of change in an author's writing style...