Ronnie Janoff-Bulman

Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?

Adaptation level theory suggests that both contrast and habituation will operate to prevent the winning of a fortune from elevating happiness as much as might be expected. Contrast with the peak experience of winning should lessen the impact of ordinary pleasures, while habituation should eventually reduce the value of new pleasures made possible by winning. Study 1 compared a sample of 22 major lottery winners with 22 controls and also with a group of 29 paralyzed accident victims who had been interviewed previously. As predicted, lottery winners were not happier than controls and took significantly less pleasure from a series of mundane events. Study 2 indicated that these effects were not due to preexisting differences between people who buy or do not buy lottery tickets or between interviews that made or did not make the lottery salient. Paraplegics also demonstrated a contrast effect, not by enhancing minor pleasures but by idealizing their past, which did not help their present happiness.

Long-term impact of parental divorce on optimism and trust: changes in general assumptions or narrow beliefs?

Two studies were conducted to examine the long-term impact of parental divorce on beliefs about the self and others. In Study 1, college-aged children of divorce and students from intact families did not differ on 8 basic assumptions or on measures of depression. Those whose parents are divorced, however, were less optimistic about the success of their own future marriages. Assumptions about the benevolence of people best predicted the marital optimism of the parental divorce group, but not of the intact family group. In Study 2, assumptions about the benevolence of people were explored in terms of trust beliefs. College-aged children of divorce and a matched sample from intact homes differed only on marriage-related beliefs, not on generalized trust. Children of divorced reported less trust of a future spouse and were less optimistic about marriage. Exploratory analyses found that continuous conflict in family of origin adversely affected all levels of trust.

Approach Versus Avoidance Goals: Differences in Seff-Evaluation and Well-Being

Proceeding from a model of feature-positive goal monitoring, two studies tested hypothesized associations between approach goals and positive self-evaluations and between avoidance goals and negative self-evaluations. The existence of feature-positive searches in goal monitoring was expected to bias self-evaluations toward perceiving success for approach goals and failure for avoidance goals. Study 1 established the existence of a relationship between goal framing and global self-evaluations, or psychological well being, subjects with more avoidance goals evaluated themselves more negatively on measures of self-steem, optimism, and depression. Study 2 confirmed the causal role of goal framing in this relationship, for self perceptions of success and satisfaction differed as a function of manipulated approach versus avoidance goals.

The “Shoulds” and “Should Nots” of Moral Emotions: A Self-Regulatory Perspective on Shame and Guilt

A self-regulatory framework for distinguishing between shame and guilt was tested in three studies. Recently, two forms of moral regulation based on approach versus avoidance motivation have been proposed in the literature. Proscriptive regulation is sensitive to negative outcomes, inhibition based, and focused on what we should not do. Prescriptive regulation is sensitive to positive outcomes, activation based, and focused on what we should do. In the current research, consistent support was found for shame’s proscriptive and guilt’s prescriptive moral underpinnings. Study 1 found a positive association between avoidance orientation and shame proneness and between approach orientation and guilt proneness. In Study 2, priming a proscriptive orientation increased shame and priming a prescriptive orientation increased guilt. In Study 3, transgressions most apt to represent proscriptive and prescriptive violations predicted subsequent judgments of shame and guilt, respectively. This self-regulatory perspective provides a broad interpretive framework for understanding and extending past research findings.

Surveying the Moral Landscape Moral Motives and Group-Based Moralities

We present a new six-cell Model of Moral Motives that applies a fundamental motivational distinction in psychology to the moral domain. In addition to moral motives focused on the self or another, we propose two group-based moralities, both communal in orientation, but reflecting distinct moral motives (Social Order/Communal Solidarity vs. Social Justice/Communal Responsibility) as well as differences in construals of group entitativity. The two group-based moralities have implications for intragroup homogeneity as well as intergroup conflict. Our model challenges the conclusions of Haidt and colleagues that only conservatives (not liberals) are group oriented and embrace a binding morality. We explore the implications of this new model for politics in particular and for the self-regulation versus social regulation of morality more generally.

Cognitive biases in blaming the victim

Abstract Past research on cognitive biases has demonstrated the existence of a hindsight effect, whereby the receipt of outcome knowledge increases the perceived likelihood of the reported event. Three experiments were conducted that tested and supported the hindsight effect as a cause of victim blaming. Subjects read detailed accounts that were identical except for the concluding sentence, which provided outcome information. Half the subjects in each experiment were informed that the woman narrating the account was raped; the other half read a neutral outcome. Experiment 1 demonstrated that subjects were unable to ignore the influence of outcome knowledge, leading to an exaggerated perception of how likely the outcome appeared. In Experiment 2, the woman was blamed more by subjects who read the rape outcome than by those who read the neutral outcome, despite the presentation of identical behaviors and personality traits prior to outcome information. The increased blame attributed by rape outcome subjects was behavioral, and not characterological, in nature. Experiment 3 found a direct association between the hindsight effect and victim blaming and also demonstrated that an attempt to reduce the negative impact of the hindsight effect on victim blaming was ineffective due to the salience of the rape outcome. Explaining how a neutral outcome was possible given the same account did not reduce victim blaming by subjects who received a rape outcome. Rather, those who received a neutral outcome increased their victim blaming when asked to explain a rape outcome. The implications for victims are discussed.

Blame, Control, and Marital Satisfaction: Wives' Attributions for Conflict in Marriage.

Married women were interviewed in an investigation of attributions of control and blame for marital conflict and satisfaction with ones marriage. Each respondent was asked to discuss two standard conflict situations and two conflicts from her own marriage. Results supported the hypotheses that blaming ones spouse for marital problems is negatively associated with marital satisfaction, and perceived personal control over conflicts is positively associated with marital satisfaction. Using exploratory path analytic techniques, a model of marital satisfaction emerged in which the wifes satisfaction was found to be related to her perception of both husbands and wifes contributions. The husbands role was traced through husband blame to seriousness of the marital conflict, whereas the wifes own role was traced through the wifes control to the problems resolvability. Thus the wife perceived her husband as the one who determined how negative marital problems were, while she perceived herself as the major force behind the more positive aspects of resolving and avoiding conflicts.

Coping with traumatic life events: The role of denial in light of people's assumptive worlds.

Through our work with a number of populations that have experienced traumatic negative events (e.g., rape victims, cancer patients, paralyzed accident victims) we have come to recognize the extent to which we ordinarily take for granted our very basic assumptions about ourselves and our world. These assumptions play a significant role in the emotional trauma and the coping process following severe negative events. In what follows we will consider the process of denial in light of the existence of people’s assumptive worlds, in hopes of providing a richer framework for considering the role of denial. We will argue that the often-maligned process of denial is natural and often necessary, and that it generally facilitates the process of adaptation to traumatic experiences. Unfortunately, denial has generally been evaluated solely with respect to some external reality and too infrequently in view of the victim’s internal reality. First, then, let us consider the nature of this internal world.

“Please Ask Me How I Am”: Experiences of Family Homelessness in the Context of Single Mothers' Lives

An increasing number of studies in recent years have examined the issue of family homelessness. The majority of this research has taken a quantitative approach, focusing primarily upon the demographics and characteristics of homeless mothers and children and the conditions of shelter facilities. The goal of this study was to examine the experience of family homelessness from an alternative perspective through interviews with formerly homeless mothers about their lives before and after leaving the shelter system. In-depth interviews with 24 formerly homeless single mothers in New York City were conducted and subsequently analyzed employing a qualitative-narrative approach. Major themes that emerged from the womens life stories are elucidated: poverty, neglect, abuse, troubled interpersonal relationships, and mental health concerns. Surprisingly, a majority of women spoke of their experience in the shelter system in positive terms. This and other findings are discussed in the context of the womens life experiences and support services provided by the New York City shelter system. Social policy issues and recommendations for future research and program development are presented.

Women's Psychological Adjustment Following Emergency Cesarean versus Vaginal Delivery.

The present study was designed to investigate possible differences in psychological adjustment and satisfaction between women delivering vaginally and those delivering by emergency cesarean section. Womens satisfaction with the birth experience was distinguished from postpartum psychological adjustment, as measured by depression, anxiety, and confidence in mothering ability. Twenty-two women who delivered vaginally and twenty-two women who delivered by emergency cesarean section were selected according to stringent criteria, to control for factors known to be associated with positive cesarean outcomes. Significant differences were found in level of satisfaction, with cesarean mothers reporting less satisfaction with the delivery than vaginal mothers. However, no differences were found between the groups on the three measures of psychological adjustment. Under optimal conditions, cesarean deliveries are not associated with adverse early postpartum psychological adjustment.