Kathleen C. Burns

After Depletion: The Replenishment of the Self's Regulatory Resources

Two experiments investigated how people replenish the selfs limited regulatory resource after it is depleted by self-control exertion. Specifically, in Experiment 1, when depleted participants received a 10-minute period between regulatory tasks, their subsequent performance equaled non-depleted participants. In Experiment 2, inducing participants to relax between self-regulation tasks reduced the typical depletion effects. Thus, these findings suggest that replenishment of the selfs depleted resources occurs given the occurrence of favorable conditions.

Affect and Politics: Effects on Judgment, Processing, and Information Seeking

Political figures and events often elicit strong emotional responses in citizens. These responses have the power to impact judgments and information processing, as well as the types of information that individuals seek out. Recent examples of political events that have elicited strong emotional reactions are easily accessible. The fiasco in Florida during the presidential election of 2000 led many voters to experience anger at the outcome of the election and disgust at the process whereby it was decided. The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, led citizens to experience a collective sense of fear and anxiety, along with sadness for the loss of life and anger at Osama bin Laden for masterminding the attacks. Along with these negative emotions was a sense of enthusiastic patriotism in the United States. Positive affective reactions, however, tend to be more general than negative reactions. That is, while positive reactions may be experienced as general positivity, negative feelings are typically more differentiated and may be experienced, for example, as fear, anger, sadness, disgust, or guilt (e.g., Averill 1980; Ellsworth and Smith 1988).

Who am I?: The influence of affect on the working self-concept

Two experiments investigated the impact of affect on the working self-concept. Following an affect induction, participants completed the Twenty Statements Test (TST) to assess their working self-concepts. Participants in predominantly happy and angry states used more abstract statements to describe themselves than did participants in predominantly sad and fearful states. Evaluations of the statements that participants generated (Experiment 2) demonstrate that these effects are not the result of (1) participants describing positively and negatively valenced information at different levels of abstraction, or (2) valence-based affective priming. Further, half of the participants in Experiment 2 were led to attribute their affect to the manipulation prior to completing the TST. This manipulation eliminated the influence of affect on the working self-concept. Taken together, these results are consistent with theory and research on the informative functions of affect.

The benefits of emotional expression for math performance.

This study investigated the effects of emotional expression on actual and perceived math performance. Female participants were either asked to express their emotions or given no special instructions before taking a math test under stereotype threat or no stereotype threat conditions. Participants in the emotional expression condition performed better on the math test than participants in the control condition. Under stereotype threat, participants in the emotional expression condition believed they performed better on the math test. Emotional expression appears not only to have health benefits (e.g., Pennebaker, 1997), but academic benefits as well, including for stereotyped threatened individuals.

Security Blanket or Crutch? Crib Card Usage Depends on Students’ Abilities

This study investigated whether students use crib cards as a security blanket or a crutch by asking students to tally the number of times they used them during exams in a statistics class. There was a negative correlation between the number of times students used their crib cards and exam performance. High-achieving students did not utilize their crib cards very much, and this did not appreciably change over the course of the semester, implying that they may be merely a security blanket. Moderate- and low-achieving students increased their crib card usage throughout the semester, suggesting support for the dependency hypothesis. This research indicates that student ability may be a key moderator for the crib card literature to consider.

Pre-emptive self-presentations for future identity goals

Results from two experiments demonstrated that peoples pre-emptive self-presentations increased when faced with an upcoming evaluation. However, like compensatory self-presentations, these efforts were cautiously restricted to areas unrelated to the forthcoming evaluative dimension. The contributions to the literature are straightforward with the results building on and extending prior work. First, where previous research shows that people engage in self-presentations to compensate for an already unfavorable public image, the current data reveal that people also pre-emptively adjust their self-presentations prior to any direct evaluation or feedback. Moreover, the present findings are the first to show that pre-emptive efforts are prudently constrained in a manner similar to compensatory self-presentations.