Evan Polman

Effects of Self-Other Decision Making on Regulatory Focus and Choice Overload

A growing stream of research is investigating how choices people make for themselves are different from choices people make for others. In this paper, I propose that these choices vary according to regulatory focus, such that people who make choices for themselves are prevention focused, whereas people who make choices for others are promotion focused. Drawing on regulatory focus theory, in particular work on errors of omission and commission, I hypothesize that people who make choices for others experience a reversal of the choice overload effect. In 6 studies, including a field study, I found that people who make choices for themselves are less satisfied after selecting among many options compared to few options, yet, people who make choices for others are more satisfied after selecting among many options compared to few options. Implications and suggestions for other differences in self-other decision making are discussed.

Decisions for Others Are More Creative Than Decisions for the Self

Four studies investigate whether decisions for others produce more creative solutions than do decisions for the self and if construal level explains this relation. In Study 1, participants carried out a structured imagination task by drawing an alien for a story that they would write, or alternatively for a story that someone else would write. As expected, drawing an alien for someone else produced a more creative alien. In Studies 2a and 2b, construal level (i.e., psychological distance) was independently manipulated. Participants generated more creative ideas on behalf of distant others than on behalf of either close others or themselves. Finally, in Study 3, a classic insight problem was investigated. Participants deciding for others were more likely to solve the problem; furthermore, this result was mediated by psychological distance. These findings demonstrate that people are more creative for others than for themselves and shed light on differences in self—other decision making.

Embodied Metaphors and Creative “Acts”

Creativity is a highly sought-after skill. Prescriptive advice for inspiring creativity abounds in the form of metaphors: People are encouraged to “think outside the box,” to consider a problem “on one hand, then on the other hand,” and to “put two and two together” to achieve creative breakthroughs. These metaphors suggest a connection between concrete bodily experiences and creative cognition. Inspired by recent advances in the understanding of body-mind linkages in the research on embodied cognition, we explored whether enacting metaphors for creativity enhances creative problem solving. Our findings from five studies revealed that both physical and psychological embodiment of metaphors for creativity promoted convergent thinking and divergent thinking (i.e., fluency, flexibility, or originality) in problem solving. Going beyond prior research, which focused primarily on the kind of embodiment that primes preexisting knowledge, we provide the first evidence that embodiment can also activate cognitive processes that facilitate the generation of new ideas and connections.

Effects of Anger, Guilt, and Envy on Moral Hypocrisy

In the current article the authors examined the impact of specific emotions on moral hypocrisy, the tendency among people to judge others more severely than they judge themselves. In two studies, they found that (a) anger increased moral hypocrisy, (b) guilt eliminated moral hypocrisy, and (c) envy reversed moral hypocrisy. In particular, these findings were observed in two domains. In Study 1, participants responded to moral dilemmas describing unethical behavior and rated how acceptable it would be if others engaged in the unethical behavior, or alternatively, if they themselves engaged in the unethical behavior. In Study 2, participants were asked how much they would like to donate to research on cancer, or alternatively, how much they think others should donate. The results demonstrate that specific emotions influence moral decision making, even when real money is at stake, and that emotions of the same valence have opposing effects on moral judgment.

Revising probability estimates: why increasing likelihood means increasing impact

Forecasted probabilities rarely stay the same for long. Instead, they are subject to constant revision-moving upward or downward, uncertain events become more or less likely. Yet little is known about how people interpret probability estimates beyond static snapshots, like a 30% chance of rain. Here, we consider the cognitive, affective, and behavioral consequences of revisions to probability forecasts. Stemming from a lay belief that revisions signal the emergence of a trend, we find in 10 studies (comprising uncertain events such as weather, climate change, sex, sports, and wine) that upward changes to event-probability (e.g., increasing from 20% to 30%) cause events to feel less remote than downward changes (e.g., decreasing from 40% to 30%), and subsequently change peoples behavior regarding those events despite the revised event-probabilities being the same. Our research sheds light on how revising the probabilities for future events changes how people manage those uncertain events. (PsycINFO Database Record

Effects of Anger, Disgust, and Sadness on Sharing with Others

Although scholars have suggested that emotions are important for social dilemmas, extant research has neither documented, nor directly studied the influence of anger, disgust, or sadness on choices that involve social dilemmas. What is more, research that looks at social dilemmas typically examines public good dilemmas (e.g., giving resources to a group) and resource dilemmas (e.g., taking resources from a group) separately. Rarely are both dilemmas examined simultaneously, a potential oversight considering research on decision-making implicates give-and-take differences. In this paper, we propose that an important part of cooperating in different social dilemmas involves emotionally guided goals, termed emotivations. For example, emotivations include: in anger, wanting to antagonize others; in disgust, wanting to expel objects and avoid taking anything new; and in sadness, wanting to change one’s situation. We suggest that the amount of shared group resources that people give and take is associated with each of these particular emotivations.

Decision Fatigue, Choosing for Others, and Self-Construal

Past research has shown that people tend to feel depleted by their decisions. In contrast, we found people report that making decisions for others (vs. the self) is less depleting because it is more enjoyable. Our investigation thus replicated a prior finding (that decision-making is depleting), moderated it by target of decision (self vs. other), and demonstrated mediation (enjoyment). We further measured chronic focus on self or others (self-construal) and established a full process model that marries prior findings with the current ones: Choosing for others is more enjoyable and less depleting to the extent that decision makers are independent, and less enjoyable and more depleting to the extent that decision makers are interdependent. That a mismatch between chronic and state orientation leads to the better outcomes for self-control indicates a special link between self-construal and decision-making.

Spatial Orientation Shrinks and Expands Psychological Distance

Being objectively close to or far from a place changes how people perceive the location of that place in a subjective, psychological sense. In the six studies reported here, we investigated whether people’s spatial orientation (defined as moving toward or away from a place) will produce similar effects—by specifically influencing psychological closeness in each of its forms (i.e., spatial, temporal, probabilistic, and social distance). Orientation influenced subjective spatial distance at various levels of objective distance (Study 1), regardless of the direction people were facing (Study 2). In addition, when spatially oriented toward, rather than away from, a particular place, participants felt that events there had occurred more recently (Studies 3a and 3b) and that events there would be more likely to occur (Study 4). Finally, participants felt more similarity to people who were spatially oriented toward them than to people who were spatially oriented away from them (Study 5). Our investigation broadens the study of psychological distance from static spatial locations to dynamically moving points in space.

The Name-Letter-Effect in Groups: Sharing Initials with Group Members Increases the Quality of Group Work

Although the name-letter-effect has been demonstrated reliably in choice contexts, recent research has called into question the existence of the name-letter-effect–the tendency among people to make choices that bear remarkable similarity with the letters in their own name. In this paper, we propose a connection between the name-letter-effect and interpersonal, group-level behavior that has not been previously captured in the literature. Specifically, we suggest that sharing initials with other group members promotes positive feelings toward those group members that in turn affect group outcomes. Using both field and laboratory studies, we found that sharing initials with group members cause groups to perform better by demonstrating greater performance, collective efficacy, adaptive conflict, and accuracy (on a hidden-profile task). Although many studies have investigated the effects of member similarity on various outcomes, our research demonstrates how minimal a degree of similarity among members is sufficient to influence quality of group outcomes.

Mere Gifting: Liking a Gift More Because It Is Shared

We investigated a type of mere similarity that describes owning the same item as someone else. Moreover, we examined this mere similarity in a gift-giving context, whereby givers gift something that they also buy for themselves (a behavior we call “companionizing”). Using a Heiderian account of balancing unit-sentiment relations, we tested whether gift recipients like gifts more when gifts are companionized. Akin to mere ownership, which describes people liking their possessions more merely because they own them, we tested a complementary prediction: whether people like their possessions more merely because others own them too. Thus, in a departure from previous work, we examined a type of similarity based on two people sharing the same material item. We find that this type of sharing causes gift recipients to like their gifts more, and feel closer to gift givers.