Christopher J. Bryan

Motivating voter turnout by invoking the self

Three randomized experiments found that subtle linguistic cues have the power to increase voting and related behavior. The phrasing of survey items was varied to frame voting either as the enactment of a personal identity (e.g., “being a voter”) or as simply a behavior (e.g., “voting”). As predicted, the personal-identity phrasing significantly increased interest in registering to vote (experiment 1) and, in two statewide elections in the United States, voter turnout as assessed by official state records (experiments 2 and 3). These results provide evidence that people are continually managing their self-concepts, seeking to assume or affirm valued personal identities. The results further demonstrate how this process can be channeled to motivate important socially relevant behavior.

Bolstering Implementation Plans for the Long Haul: The Benefits of Simultaneously Boosting Self-Concordance or Self-Efficacy

Recent studies suggest that implementation planning exercises may not be as helpful for long-term, self-initiated goals as for short-term, assigned goals. Two studies used the personal goal paradigm to explore the impact of implementation plans on goal progress over time. Study 1 examined whether administering implementation plans in an autonomy supportive manner would facilitate goal progress relative to a neutral, control condition and a condition in which implementation plans were administered in a controlling manner. Study 2 examined whether combining implementation plans with a self-efficacy boosting exercise would facilitate goal progress relative to a neutral, control condition and a typical implementation condition. The results showed that implementation plans alone did not result in greater goal progress than a neutral condition but that the combination of implementation plans with either autonomy support or self-efficacy boosting resulted in significantly greater goal progress.

Harnessing adolescent values to motivate healthier eating.

Significance Behavioral science has rarely offered effective strategies for changing adolescent health behavior. One limitation of previous approaches may be an overemphasis on long-term health outcomes as the focal source of motivation. The present research uses a rigorous randomized trial to evaluate an approach that aligns healthy behavior with values about which adolescents already care: feeling like a socially conscious, autonomous person worthy of approval from one’s peers. It improved the health profile of snacks and drinks participants chose in an ostensibly unrelated context and did so because it caused adolescents to construe the healthy behavior as being aligned with prominent adolescent values. This suggests a route to an elusive result: effective motivation for adolescent behavior change. What can be done to reduce unhealthy eating among adolescents? It was hypothesized that aligning healthy eating with important and widely shared adolescent values would produce the needed motivation. A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled experiment with eighth graders (total n = 536) evaluated the impact of a treatment that framed healthy eating as consistent with the adolescent values of autonomy from adult control and the pursuit of social justice. Healthy eating was suggested as a way to take a stand against manipulative and unfair practices of the food industry, such as engineering junk food to make it addictive and marketing it to young children. Compared with traditional health education materials or to a non–food-related control, this treatment led eighth graders to see healthy eating as more autonomy-assertive and social justice-oriented behavior and to forgo sugary snacks and drinks in favor of healthier options a day later in an unrelated context. Public health interventions for adolescents may be more effective when they harness the motivational power of that group’s existing strongly held values.

Cheating at the end to avoid regret.

How do people behave when they face a finite series of opportunities to cheat with little or no risk of detection? In 4 experiments and a small meta-analysis, we analyzed over 25,000 cheating opportunities faced by over 2,500 people. The results suggested that the odds of cheating are almost 3 times higher at the end of a series than earlier. Participants could cheat in 1 of 2 ways: They could lie about the outcome of a private coin flip to get a payoff that they would otherwise not receive (Studies 1-3) or they could overbill for their work (Study 4). We manipulated the number of cheating opportunities they expected but held the actual number of opportunities constant. The data showed that the likelihood of cheating and the extent of dishonesty were both greater when people believed that they were facing a last choice. Mediation analyses suggested that anticipatory regret about passing up a chance to enrich oneself drove this cheat-at-the-end effect. We found no support for alternative explanations based on the possibility that multiple cheating opportunities depleted peoples self-control, eroded their moral standards, or made them feel that they had earned the right to cheat. The data also suggested that the cheat-at-the-end effect may be limited to relatively short series of cheating opportunities (i.e., n < 20). Our discussion addresses the psychological and behavioral dynamics of repeated ethical choices.

Leveraging Psychological Insights to Encourage the Responsible Use of Consumer Debt

U.S. consumers currently hold

Cheating at the End to Avoid Regret

880 billion in revolving debt, with a mean household credit card balance of approximately

When Cheating Would Make You a Cheater: Implicating the Self Prevents Unethical Behavior

6,000. Although economic factors play a role in this societal issue, it is clear that psychological forces also affect consumers’ decisions to take on and maintain unmanageable debt balances. We examine three psychological barriers to the responsible use of credit and debt. We discuss the tendency for consumers to (a) make erroneous predictions about future spending habits, (b) rely too heavily on values presented on billing statements, and (c) categorize debt and saving into separate mental accounts. To overcome these obstacles, we urge policymakers to implement methods that facilitate better budgeting of future expenses, modify existing credit card statement disclosures, and allow consumers to easily apply government transfers (such as tax credits) to debt repayment. In doing so, we highlight minimal and inexpensive ways to remedy the debt problem.

You owe it to yourself: Boosting retirement saving with a responsibility-based appeal

What happens when people have repeated opportunities to cheat? Across 5 studies, we gave 2,585 people over 25,000 opportunities to cheat. We observed a consistent pattern: Cheating increased at the...