Category: Psychology

Here’s a little tip for life: try to always have something to look forward to, no matter how small. The power of anticipation in boosting our well-being is incredible.

You know that feeling you get when you’re dreading giving a public talk or going to the dentist? That is the negative power of anticipation, but it also works the other way. We get enormous amounts of pleasure from looking forward to good things in the future (Bryant, 2003).

This is part of the reason why our modern consumer society of ‘buy now and pay later’ robs us of pleasure. Part of the fun of purchasing both objects and experiences is in their anticipation. Waiting for good things to come is fun.

There’s a part of our minds that thinks we’ll enjoy it more if we get it right now, but that part is the greedy part. And it’s wrong.

Get it later

You might think that what we lose in anticipation, we’ll gain in reminiscences. In other words we’ll get the pleasure the other side of our purchase. But this doesn’t seem to be the case. The pleasure people get from their anticipation is stronger than from their reminiscences (Van Boven & Ashworth, 2007).

This may be partly to do with the Zeigarnik effect: the idea that something tends to stick in our mind until it’s completed. In the same way once objects or experiences are ‘obtained’ our mind forgets about them. But while they’re still in the future, we keep mulling them over.

There are two other added bonuses of paying now and getting it later:

• Better decisions: People make better choices for the future than they do for right now. Right now we’re more like greedy children who want everything that’s bad for us. When choosing for the future we’re like sensible grown-ups, choosing things we know are better for us. Economists call this ‘hyperbolic discounting’, psychologists call it ‘the present bias’ and I call it the ‘chocolate-now-fruit-next-week effect’.
• Pleasure of uncertainty: The process of choosing creates uncertainty about what we’re going to get. And this uncertainty heightens our pleasure (see this article on How to Feel More Pleasure).

We’re all well aware of how the culture of ‘buy now, pay later’ has got our economies into trouble. But this inability to wait for good things to come is also robbing us of what Dunn et al. (2011) call ‘free pleasure’.

If we can wait, then anticipation, uncertainty and better decisions will all contrive to give us more pleasure from our money.

Image credit: Mike Bitzenhofer

Everyone hates to lose out. Indeed in many circumstances we hate losses more than we love gains (it’s called risk aversion).

The insurance industry knows this only too well so it frames products in terms of losses:

• Worried you’re going to be robbed?
• Worried your holiday will be a disaster?
• Worried you’re going to die?

Well, worry no more! Insurance is the answer!

A lot advertising works like this, by creating a need and then (supposedly) satiating it. So far, so mundane. But insurance is particularly insidious because it purports to be selling ‘peace of mind’.

The question is whether our minds will really be as troubled as we imagine if (and when) things go wrong.

The extended warranty trap

Psychological research suggests the reality is that things aren’t usually as bad as we think they’re going to be. That’s because of the psychological immune system.

The article linked above has the full details but here’s the drift: when we predict how negative events will leave us feeling, we’re usually too pessimistic. The reason is that our unconscious is continually working to reduce the effects of negative events.

We rationalise, we avoid blaming ourselves and our own decisions, so we end up feeling less regret than we predict. In the end we are psychologically stronger than we imagine.

That doesn’t mean that all insurance is pointless. We still need car insurance or a similar system to spread the risk of driving, healthcare insurance in countries where it isn’t provided and other types of insurance can be useful…

But extended warranties are often a waste of time, as are many other types of insurance. Even if the product goes wrong, we won’t regret not getting the insurance nearly as much as we imagine. So save the money and take the risk.

Life is a lottery but, don’t worry, you’ll bear up better than you imagine.

Image credit: Jason Nicholls

Making comparisons between goods and services is supposed to get us a better deal but it doesn’t always work that way. That’s because of the weird way our brains make mountains out of molehills.

The potato chip study

Consider a study by Morewedge et al. (2010). Participants were asked to predict how much they would enjoy a potato chip. Half the participants were in a room that also happened to contain other superior snacks like a luxurious chocolate bar; others were in a room with inferior snacks, like sardines and spam.

People in the room with the superior snacks thought they’d enjoy the chip less than those in the room with the inferior snack. They were wrong. In fact they liked the snacks exactly the same, no matter the surrounding snacks.

Here’s the moral: when you enjoy whatever you choose, you’re mostly not comparing it with other options: you enjoy it for what it is. Comparisons mess with your mind.

The tyranny of small differences

When we go to buy a car, a house or a snack we tend to make a big deal out of the differences between similar products. We notice that this car is faster, or this house is slightly bigger, or this chocolate bar is bigger. In reality the differences in our enjoyment are much smaller than we imagine; maybe no more than a hill of beans.

If you’re the kind of person that really sweats over their comparison shopping, then take note. This research suggests: don’t bother, let it go, it won’t matter. Sure, get the lowest price for the same goods or service, but don’t go crazy choosing between models or features, it really won’t make that much difference.

The danger is that the tyranny of relatively small differences will force you to spend more money than you want or can afford. Then you end up having to pay for something that makes you no happier than a cheaper option. Indeed, when you consider the extra effort required to pay for expensive things like houses and cars, it may even make you less happy in the long-run.

So, be happier, do what psychologists call ‘satisficing’ (a combination of satisfy and suffice): get something that does the job but don’t torture yourself, it’s not worth it.

Image credit: Yampee Yankee

We’re always hearing about how many billions it costs the economy when workers go off sick. Annually it could be as much as $350 billion in the US and $66 billion in the UK.

But what aspects of work make people sick?

Nixon (2011) looked at 72 studies of the effect of occupational stress on physical symptoms including headaches, backaches, sleep disturbances and gastrointestinal problems. Here are the associations with physical symptoms in decreasing order of strength:

1. Organisational constraints

Overall the factor most strongly associated with physical symptoms was organisational constraints. These are the aspects of a workplace environment that stop you getting your job done. It could include things like not having the time, materials or the authority to reach the goals that have been set for you. It seems that this is likely to be the strongest cause of physical symptoms (although we can’t say much about causality as this was a correlational study).

The types of physical symptoms most associated with organisational constraints were tiredness and gastrointestinal problems.

2. Role conflict

This is where one boss tells you to do one thing and another tells you to do something else. Infuriating. This was most associated with gastrointestinal problems.

3. Interpersonal conflict

Interpersonal conflict covers anything from rude or unthinking behaviour by co-workers up to all-out bullying. Interpersonal conflict was most associated with sleep disturbances.

4. Workload

This is the first one that you might expect to appear higher up the list. We tend to think that it’s having too much work that makes us ill. It certainly contributes but not as much as organisational constraints or role conflict. Unsurprisingly workload was most associated with fatigue.

5. Role ambiguity

Role ambiguity occurs when you don’t quite know what the job is. And when you don’t know what’s expected of you, the stress it causes is associated with illness. In fact in this analysis it was most associated with fatigue.

6 & 7. Work hours & lack of control

Work hours is most interesting because of how far down the list it comes. You might imagine that working hours would be at the top but it comes down at the bottom with lack of control, which had a similar association with physical symptoms. Both associations were weak, but still there.

Work hours were most associated with eye strain while lack of control was most associated with backache and problems sleeping.

Image credit: Peter Hellberg

A strange thing happens when we imagine doing some exercise.

That’s what Ruby et al. (2011) found when they had people think about an upcoming session of exercise. Each person tried to predict how much they would enjoy their workout—whether it was Pilates, yoga, weight training, running or something else. Then after the workout they rated it again.

On average people’s predictions were too pessimistic: they actually enjoyed their workouts more than they had guessed. This was true across lots of different types of people. It was true for both moderate and challenging workouts, whether people exercised on their own or in the gym and even when people had designed their own workouts.

The reason was that they focused heavily on the relatively unpleasant start of the exercise session rather than the enjoyable middle section.

The researchers christened this effect ‘forecasting myopia’ and tried to identify ways to combat it.

Focus on the whole

In a final study Ruby et al. asked people to think about their whole exercise routine, including the warm-up, main workout and cool-down. It emerged that this method encouraged people to make more positive predictions of how much they would enjoy their exercise. This also had the effect of boosting people’s intention to exercise in the future.

So it seems that the short-sighted forecasting of how much we’ll enjoy exercising can be overcome. We can do this by focusing on the exercise session as a whole rather than just the (relatively) painful beginning.

Image credit: Patrick Hoesly

The old joke goes like this: What’s a procrastinator’s busiest day? Answer: tomorrow.

If you’re a procrastinator then you’re not alone: 75% of college students consider themselves procrastinators and 50% are problem procrastinators.

According to Steel (2007), there are four pillars of procrastination and so four potential ways to fight it:

1. Low task value

The value of the goal naturally affects our procrastination, for example we procrastinate more on unpleasant tasks. Tasks that are unpleasant because they’re boring can be made more difficult artificially to help us avoid procrastination, say by using time limits or unusual conditions.

Otherwise you can try and tie an aversive task to something attractive. Students who enjoy socialising often create study groups: they can enjoy socialising at the same time as revising for exams.

Or, just treat yourself like a dog: small rewards for the right activities, punishment for procrastination.

2. The procrastinator’s personality

Some people are born procrastinators. They have low self-control, are easily distracted and impulsive. There is not much we can do about our personalities but we can adjust our surroundings.

Standard advice is to put yourself in the right environment, i.e. one that reinforces work and avoids temptation. A favourite for writers is to pull out the internet cable from the back of the computer and hide it at the furthest reaches of your house. While you’re at it, hide your smartphone there too.

Procrastination tends to occur whenever you have to stop and think. Even quite small decision in your work can prompt procrastination. So have everything you need to hand and develop automatic habits of work so there’s no need to stop and think.

3. Expecting success?

If you expect to complete a task easily, then you are less likely to procrastinate. So increasing expectations of success should reduce procrastination. Unfortunately expectations mostly change with experience, i.e. experience of completing the task. It’s a Catch-22.

Still it’s useful to know that once you do get going on a task and successfully complete it, you’re unlikely to procrastinate as much in the future on that same task.

4. Goal failure

Almost by definition procrastination is a failure to meet goals. So setting goals in the right way is crucial. You should use short-term as well as long-term goals and even artificial deadlines can be helpful. There’s loads more on setting goals in this article: 11 Goal Hacks: How to Achieve Anything.

Forgive yourself

Don’t be too hard on yourself: there’s evidence that forgiving yourself for procrastinating can help stop the cycle. See my previous article: Procrastinate Less By Forgiving Yourself.

Image credit: Rishi Bandopadhay

PsyBlog is now nearing 50,000 subscribers to its RSS feed and email updates as well as 10,000 more through Facebook and Twitter, not to mention the millions of casual visitors the site receives. And now there are more ways than ever to follow PsyBlog.

You can keep up with the site on all three major social networking sites. Links to new articles are posted on Facebook, Twitter and most recently Google+. I also post links on these sites to selected older articles from PsyBlog.

To keep in touch with the latest stories you may want to like PsyBlog on Facebook, follow PsyBlog on Twitter and join PsyBlog’s circle on Google+.

You can, of course, still receive an automatic email whenever a new article is published or subscribe to the RSS feed (click here for full instructions).

Supporting PsyBlog

Please do support PsyBlog through whichever social networking site you use. When you find something interesting here you can ‘like’ articles on Facebook, tweet about them on twitter and ‘plus one’ them on Google+.

PsyBlog also receives strong support from people on Stumbleupon and reddit and many other sites.

Wherever you talk about PsyBlog, I’d like to thank you for your support which is so important to the site.

When a person meets you for the first time they ask themselves two questions. The answers to these two questions will have all sorts of knock-on effects for how they think about you and how they behave towards you.

Professor Susan Fiske of Princeton University has shown that all social judgements can be boiled down to these two dimensions (Fiske et al., 2007):

1. How warm is this person? The idea of warmth includes things like trustworthiness, friendliness, helpfulness, sociability and so on. Initial warmth judgements are made within a few seconds of meeting you.
2. How competent is this person? Competency judgements take longer to form and include things like intelligence, creativity, perceived ability and so on.

Susan Fiske’s research has looked at different cultures, times and types of social judgements, but these two concepts come up again and again in slightly different guises. Not only do we make these judgements about other people, but we frame their behaviour using these two questions; we ask ourselves whether it was friendly, moral, sincere, clever etc..

The primacy of warmth and competence may reflect evolved, instinctual reactions to these two questions about others:

1. Friend or foe? Is this person going to hurt me or help me?
2. Capable of hurting or helping? Can this person help me if they’re friendly or hurt me if they’re not?

How warm and competent do other people find you? According to new research by Carlson et al. (2011) you probably know quite well how other people view you.

Image credit: Marco Bellucci

We have to make a lot of complicated decisions in life. Some are made in a hurry and most involve situations in which we don’t have all the information.

Surgeons have to make split-second decisions in emergencies and fire-fighters have to decide which route is safest. Less dramatically we have to work out the right arguments at a business meeting, at home we have to negotiate over the weekend’s activities and in the store we have to calculate the best deals.

These are complex decisions in which time is short. So, should you go with your gut and be done with it or try to use what little time you have to reason it out?

A new study by Mikels et al. (2011) supports the power of gut instincts for quick decisions. Across multiple studies they gave people a series of complex decisions including choosing between cars, apartments, vacations, physicians and treatments.

Overall they found that compared with trying to work out the details, using the emotions led to much better outcomes. In one of the studies the number of participants getting the right answer went up from only 26% in the detail-focused condition to 68% in the feeling-focused condition.

This held for both objective and subjective aspects of a decision (this covers the car that’s objectively best overall and the best car taking into account your preferences).

For quick decisions, then, this looks like good evidence that you should focus on feelings rather than thoughts.

On the other hand, if you’ve got more time—more time than it takes to just understand the problem—then a detail-focused approach is likely to be better. In one of Mikels et al.’s studies, when participants we are given extra time to think, a focus on feelings was positively detrimental to decision quality. With time in hand, the smart money was on the thinker rather than the feeler.

Why is it that our feelings should be most effective in the moment? Mikels speculates that it’s because they are more hooked in to the mind’s automatic, unconscious processes. In a short space of time our unconscious can signal through our emotions the best course of action.

Of course the unconscious is far from infallible, indeed the power of the unconscious mind has been overblown by some popular accounts (see: Can the Unconscious Outperform the Conscious Mind). Still, gut instinct is a remarkably effective resource given the short space of time and complexity of decisions it faces.

Image credit: Julia Manzerova