David DeSteno

Gratitude and Prosocial Behavior: Helping When It Costs You

The ability of the emotion gratitude to shape costly prosocial behavior was examined in three studies employing interpersonal emotion inductions and requests for assistance. Study 1 demonstrated that gratitude increases efforts to assist a benefactor even when such efforts are costly (i.e., hedonically negative), and that this increase differs from the effects of a general positive affective state. Additionally, mediational analyses revealed that gratitude, as opposed to simple awareness of reciprocity norms, drove helping behavior. Furthering the theory that gratitude mediates prosocial behavior, Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 and demonstrated gratitudes ability to function as an incidental emotion by showing it can increase assistance provided to strangers. Study 3 revealed that this incidental effect dissipates if one is made aware of the true cause of the emotional state. Implications of these findings for the role of gratitude in building relationships are discussed.

Manipulations of Emotional Context Shape Moral Judgment

Recent work in psychology and neuroscience has revealed that moral judgments are often mediated by two classes of brain processes (Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004; Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Haidt, 2001). One class, probably reflecting earlier evolutionary development, consists of processes that automatically alter hedonic states in response to specific types of socially relevant stimuli. A second class consists of more domain-general, effortful processes that underlie abilities for abstract reasoning, simulation, and cognitive control. Often, these intuitive and deliberative processes work in unison to foster decisions in accord with the goals of both; goals that are socially adaptive are often congruent with more abstract moral principles. Certain classes of ethical dilemmas, however, require decisions in which the competition between these two systems becomes evident (Greene et al., 2001, 2004). The structure of such dilemmas often requires endorsing a personal moral violation in order to uphold a utilitarian principle. The well-known footbridge dilemma is illustrative. In it, the lives of five people can be saved through sacrificing another. However, the sacrifice involves pushing a rather large man off a footbridge to stop a runaway trolley before it kills the other five. The vast majority of individuals believe it wrong to push him, even though not pushing him will result in a greater number of deaths (Greene et al., 2004; Thomson, 1986). The reason for this seemingly illogical response stems from competition between the emotionally intuitive and deliberative systems. Neuroimaging has revealed that such dilemmas produce increased activation in emotion-related brain centers, as well as in centers normally used for deliberative reasoning; considering personal moral violations, such as inflicting direct harm, elicits prepotent negative reactions that appear designed to inhibit amoral acts (Greene et al., 2001). The infrequent selection of the logically appropriate option in such dilemmas is associated with heightened activation of deliberative centers aimed at cognitive control, suggesting that the automatic negative reaction must be disregarded if a utilitarian judgment is to bemade (Greene et al., 2004). Given these findings, one might expect that the ultimate arbiter of ethical choice for such dilemmas would reside in individuals’ abilities and motivations to engage in controlled analysis. However, the proposed dual-process model of moral judgment suggests another unexamined route by which choice might be influenced: contextual sensitivity of affect. Affective states stand as momentary informational signals regarding the environment and are multiply determined (Schwarz & Clore, 1996). Consequently, environmental factors separate from any potential moral violations might influence affect at the time of judgment. A close temporal contiguity of such affectively stochastic events and the stable negative emotion stemming from a dilemmamight unhinge the direct relation between a dilemmaspecific prepotent emotional response and choice. Simply put, environment-induced feelings of positivity at the time of judgment might reduce the perceived negativity, or aversion ‘‘signal,’’ of any potential moral violation and, thereby, increase utilitarian responding.

Beyond valence in the perception of likelihood: the role of emotion specificity.

Positive and negative moods have been shown to increase likelihood estimates of future events matching these states in valence (e.g., E. J. Johnson & A. Tversky, 1983). In the present article, 4 studies provide evidence that this congruency bias (a) is not limited to valence but functions in an emotion-specific manner, (b) derives from the informational value of emotions, and (c) is not the inevitable outcome of likelihood assessment under heightened emotion. Specifically, Study 1 demonstrates that sadness and anger, 2 distinct, negative emotions, differentially bias likelihood estimates of sad and angering events. Studies 2 and 3 replicate this finding in addition to supporting an emotion-as-information (cf. N. Schwarz & G. L. Clore, 1983), as opposed to a memory-based, mediating process for the bias. Finally, Study 4 shows that when the source of the emotion is salient, a reversal of the bias can occur given greater cognitive effort aimed at accuracy.

Pride and Perseverance: The Motivational Role of Pride

Perseverance toward goals that carry short-term costs is an important component of adaptive functioning. The present experiments examine the role that the emotion pride may play in mediating such perseverance. Across 2 studies, pride led to greater perseverance on an effortful and hedonically negative task believed to be related to the initial source of pride. In addition, the causal efficacy of pride was further demonstrated through dissociating its effects from related alternative mechanisms. Study 1 differentiated the effects of pride from self-efficacy. Study 2 differentiated the effects of pride from general positive affect. Taken together, these findings provide support for the proposed motivational function of pride in which this emotion serves as an incentive to persevere on a task despite initial costs.

Discrete Emotions and Persuasion: The Role of Emotion-Induced Expectancies

The authors argue that specific emotions can alter the persuasive impact of messages as a function of the emotional framing of persuasive appeals. Because specific emotions inflate expectancies for events possessing matching emotional overtones (D. DeSteno, R. E. Petty, D. T. Wegener, & D. D. Rucker, 2000), the authors predicted that attempts at persuasion would be more successful when messages were framed with emotional overtones matching the emotional state of the receiver and that these changes would be mediated by emotion-induced biases involving expectancies attached to arguments contained in the messages. Two studies manipulating discrete negative emotional states and message frames (i.e., sadness and anger) confirmed these predictions. The functioning of this emotion-matching bias in parallel with emotion-induced processing differences and the limitations of a valence-based approach to the study of attitude change are also considered.

Synchrony and the Social Tuning of Compassion

Although evidence has suggested that synchronized movement can foster cooperation, the ability of synchrony to increase costly altruism and to operate as a function of emotional mechanisms remains unexplored. We predicted that synchrony, due to an ability to elicit low-level appraisals of similarity, would enhance a basic compassionate response toward victims of moral transgressions and thereby increase subsequent costly helping behavior on their behalf. Using a manipulation of rhythmic synchrony, we show that synchronous others are not only perceived to be more similar to oneself but also evoke more compassion and altruistic behavior than asynchronous others experiencing the same plight. These findings both support the view that a primary function of synchrony is to mark others as similar to the self and provide the first empirical demonstration that synchrony-induced affiliation modulates emotional responding and altruism.

Sex differences in jealousy: evolutionary mechanism or artifact of measurement?

Two studies are presented that challenge the evidentiary basis for the existence of evolved sex differences in jealousy. In opposition to the evolutionary view, Study I demonstrated that a sex difference in jealousy resulting from sexual versus emotional infidelity is observed only when judgments are recorded using a forced-choice response format. On all other measures, no sex differences were found; both men and women reported greater jealousy in response to sexual infidelity. A second study revealed that the sex difference on the forced-choice measure disappeared under conditions of cognitive constraint. These findings suggest that the sex difference used to support the evolutionary view of jealousy (e.g., D. M. Buss, R. Larsen, D. Westen, & J. Semmelroth, 1992; D. M. Buss et al., 1999) likely represents a measurement artifact resulting from a format-induced effortful decision strategy and not an automatic, sex-specific response shaped by evolution.

Prejudice From Thin Air The Effect of Emotion on Automatic Intergroup Attitudes

Two experiments provide initial evidence that specific emotional states are capable of creating automatic prejudice toward outgroups. Specifically, we propose that anger should influence automatic evaluations of outgroups because of its functional relevance to intergroup conflict and competition, whereas other negative emotions less relevant to intergroup relations (e.g., sadness) should not. In both experiments, after minimal ingroups and outgroups were created, participants were induced to experience anger, sadness, or a neutral state. Automatic attitudes toward the in- and outgroups were then assessed using an evaluative priming measure (Experiment 1) and the Implicit Association Test (Experiment 2). As predicted, results showed that anger created automatic prejudice toward the outgroup, whereas sadness and neutrality resulted in no automatic intergroup bias. The implications of these findings for emotion-induced biases in implicit intergroup cognition in particular, and in social cognition in general, are considered.

Meditation Increases Compassionate Responses to Suffering

Contemplative science has documented a plethora of intrapersonal benefits stemming from meditation, including increases in gray matter density (Hölzel, Carmody, et al., 2011), positive affect (Moyer et al., 2011), and improvement in various mental-health outcomes (Hölzel, Lazar, et al., 2011). Strikingly, however, much less is known about the interpersonal impact of meditation. Although Buddhist teachings suggest that increases in compassionate responding should be a primary outcome of meditation (Davidson & Harrington, 2002), little scientific evidence supports this conjecture. Even as scientists have begun to examine the effects of meditation on prosocial action, the conclusions that can be drawn with respect to compassion have been limited by designs that lack real-time person-to-person interactions centered on suffering. Previous work, for example, has utilized meditators’ self-reported intentions and motivations to behave in supportive manners toward other individuals (e.g., Fredrickson, Cohn, Coffey, Pek, & Finkel, 2008) and computer-based economic games requiring cooperation (e.g., Leiberg, Klimecki, & Singer, 2011; Weng et al., 2013) to assess altruistic action. Such methods have suggested that meditation may increase generalized prosocial responding, but have not clearly and objectively gauged responses meant solely to mitigate the suffering of other individuals. To address this gap, we utilized a design in which individuals were confronted with a person in pain in an ecologically valid setting. If, as suggested by Buddhist theorizing, meditation enhances compassionate responding, participants who have completed a brief meditation course should act to relieve such a person’s suffering more frequently than those who have not completed the course.

Pride Adaptive Social Emotion or Seventh Sin

This experiment examined the ability of pride to serve as an adaptive emotion within the context of social interaction. After an in vivo induction of pride or a neutral state, participants engaged in a group problem-solving task. In contrast to a conventional view that pride is often associated with negative interpersonal outcomes, results confirmed that proud individuals not only took on a dominant role within the group problem-solving task, but also were perceived as the most likeable interaction partners. These findings suggest that pride, when representing an appropriate response to actual performance (as opposed to overgeneralized hubris), constitutes a functional social emotion with important implications for leadership and the building of social capital.This experiment examined the ability of pride to serve as an adaptive emotion within the context of social interaction. After an in vivo induction of pride or a neutral state, participants engaged in a group problem-solving task. In contrast to a conventional view that pride is often associated with negative interpersonal outcomes, results confirmed that proud individuals not only took on a dominant role within the group problem-solving task, but also were perceived as the most likeable interaction partners. These findings suggest that pride, when representing an appropriate response to actual performance (as opposed to overgeneralized hubris), constitutes a functional social emotion with important implications for leadership and the building of social capital.