Peter Gollwitzer

Implicitly processed pictures of facial expressions of emotions have been found to systematically influence sympathetically mediated cardiovascular reactivity during task performance. According to the Implicit‐Affect‐Primes‐Effort model, this happens because different affect primes activate the concepts of performance ease versus performance difficulty. Grounded in a recent action shielding model, our laboratory experiment (N = 129 university students) tested whether engaging in action by personal choice can immunize against those implicit affective influences on effort. Participants worked on an objectively difficult cognitive task, which was either externally assigned or ostensibly personally chosen. As predicted, participants in the assigned task condition showed weaker cardiac pre‐ejection period reactivity during task performance, reflecting disengagement, when they were primed with sadness than when …

Research on the Implicit-Affect-Primes-Effort model (Gendolla, 2012) found that priming happiness or anger in challenging tasks results in stronger sympathetically mediated cardiovascular responses, reflecting effort, than priming sadness or fear. Recent studies on action shielding revealed that personal task choice can attenuate affective influences on action execution (e.g., Gendolla et al., 2021). The present experiment tested if this action shielding effect also applies to affect primes' influences on cardiovascular response. Participants (N = 136) worked on a cognitive task with integrated briefly flashed and backward masked facial expressions of sadness vs. happiness. Half of the participants could ostensibly choose whether they wanted to work on an attention or on a memory task, while the other half was assigned to one task. Our findings revealed effects on cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP), which align with the …

Past research has shown that disgust is a heterogeneous category and lacks unity in its defining features. In the two studies reported in this paper, we examined the internal structure of disgust in English, and its translation equivalents of asco in Spanish, Ekel in German, garaf in Arabic, and yanwu in Chinese. In Study 1, 517 participants listed the most accessible constitutive features (definition, elicitors, and physical responses) of the concept of disgust in their culture. In Study 2, 653 participants were asked to judge the extent to which each of the 63 features extracted from Study 1 was typical of the concept of disgust in their respective culture. Results revealed differences in content, as well as internal structures across the five cultural groups: the disgust concepts differed in the degree of typicality of their constitutive features, the relevance of single features, the extent to which they shared features and the structural …

People are more likely to think statements are valid when they agree with them than when they do not. We conducted four studies analyzing the interference of self-reported ideologies with performance in a syllogistic reasoning task. Study 1 established the task paradigm and demonstrated that participants’ political ideology affects syllogistic reasoning for syllogisms with political content but not politically irrelevant syllogisms. The preregistered Study 2 replicated the effect and showed that incentivizing accuracy did not alleviate these differences. Study 3 revealed that syllogistic reasoning is affected by ideology in the presence and absence of such bonus payments for correctly judging the conclusions’ logical validity. In Study 4, we observed similar effects regarding a different ideological orientation: environmentalism. Again, monetary bonuses did not attenuate these effects. Taken together, the results of four studies …

Objective: The present research examined whether mentally contrasting a negative, feared future (i.e., infection with the Coronavirus) with a still positive reality can promote preventative actions in the context of the pandemic. Design In two randomized controlled trials, we varied participants’ mode of thought (mental contrasting of a negative future with a positive reality versus fantasizing of a negative future). Study 2 took into account the interpersonal nature of the pandemic and manipulated the mode of thought in a vicarious manner (vicarious mental contrasting versus vicarious negative fantasizing). Main Outcome Measures After the manipulation, we assessed participants’ intentions to learn about COVID-19 (Study 1) and attention to COVID-19 information (Study 1 and 2). Three days later, we measured the amount of physical distancing (Study 1 and 2). Results Study 1 found that mental contrasting leads to more …

When and how should one plan? We estimated the scope (when) of implementation intentions by computing effect sizes for different outcomes, samples, and study characteristics, and tested the components (how) of implementation intentions by analysing the format, processes of formation, and contents of plans. Across 642 independent tests, forming implementation intentions proved effective for cognitive, affective, and behavioural outcomes (.27 ≤ d ≤ .66). Effect sizes were larger when plans had a contingent (if-then) format, participants were highly motivated to pursue the goal, and plans were rehearsed. We developed a new taxonomy of the cues (e.g., time-and-place, task juncture) and responses (e.g., cognitive procedures, ignore- or inner speech-responses) specified in implementation intentions and tested their efficacy in promoting outcomes. Our review underlines the utility of implementation intentions …

Since personal choice fosters commitment and shields action execution against potentially conflicting influences, two laboratory experiments with university students (N = 228) tested whether engaging in action by personal choice versus external assignment of task characteristics moderates the effect of irrelevant acoustic noise on cardiovascular responses reflecting effort. Participants who could personally choose the stimulus color of moderately difficult cognitive tasks were expected to be shielded against the irrelevant noise. By contrast, when the stimulus color was externally assigned, we predicted receptivity for the irrelevant noise to be high. As expected, in both experiments, participants in the assigned color condition showed stronger cardiac pre‐ejection period reactivity during task performance when exposed to noise than when working in silence. On the contrary, participants who could choose the …

Two potentially costly errors are common in sequential investment decisions: sticking too long to a failing course of action (escalation of commitment), and abandoning a successful course of action prematurely. Past research has mostly focused on escalation of commitment, and identified three critical determinants: personal responsibility, preferences for prior decisions, and decision framing. We demonstrate in three studies using an incentivized poker inspired task that these determinants of escalation reliably lead decision makers to keep investing even when real money is on the line. We observed in Experiments 1, 2 and 3 that reinvestments were more likely when decision makers were personally responsible for prior decisions. This likelihood was also increased when the decision makers had indicated a preference for initial investments (Experiments 2 and 3), and when outcomes were framed in terms of losses as compared to gains (Experiment 3). Both types of decision errors – escalation of commitment and prematurely abandoning a course of action – could be traced to the same set of determinants. Being personally responsible for prior decisions, having a preference for the initial investment, and loss framing did increase escalation, whereas lacking personal responsibility, having no preference for the initial investment, and gain framing increased the likelihood of prematurely opting out. Finally, personal responsibility had a negative effect on decision quality, as decision-makers were still more likely to reinvest when they were personally responsible for prior decisions, than when prior decisions were assigned optimally by an algorithm …