Vanessa M. Patrick

Psychological Distancing: Why Happiness Helps You See the Big Picture

We propose that a positive mood, by signaling that a situation is benign, might allow people to step back and take in the big picture. As a consequence, a positive mood might increase abstract construal and the adoption of abstract, future goals. In contrast, a negative mood, by signaling not only danger but also its imminence, might focus attention on immediate and proximal concerns and reduce the adoption of abstract, future goals.

Art for Reward’s Sake: Visual Art Recruits the Ventral Striatum

A recent study showed that people evaluate products more positively when they are physically associated with art images than similar non-art images. Neuroimaging studies of visual art have investigated artistic style and esthetic preference but not brain responses attributable specifically to the artistic status of images. Here we tested the hypothesis that the artistic status of images engages reward circuitry, using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during viewing of art and non-art images matched for content. Subjects made animacy judgments in response to each image. Relative to non-art images, art images activated, on both subject- and item-wise analyses, reward-related regions: the ventral striatum, hypothalamus and orbitofrontal cortex. Neither response times nor ratings of familiarity or esthetic preference for art images correlated significantly with activity that was selective for art images, suggesting that these variables were not responsible for the art-selective activations. Investigation of effective connectivity, using time-varying, wavelet-based, correlation-purged Granger causality analyses, further showed that the ventral striatum was driven by visual cortical regions when viewing art images but not non-art images, and was not driven by regions that correlated with esthetic preference for either art or non-art images. These findings are consistent with our hypothesis, leading us to propose that the appeal of visual art involves activation of reward circuitry based on artistic status alone and independently of its hedonic value.

The Positivity Effect in Perceptions of Services: Seen One, Seen Them All?

A series of studies show converging evidence of a positivity effect in consumers’ inferences about service providers. When the consumer has little experience with a service, positive information about a single employee leads to inferences that the firm’s other service providers are similarly positive to a greater extent than negative information leads to inferences that the firm’s other service providers are similarly negative. Four studies were conducted that varied in the amount of information about the service provider, the firm, and the service. The positivity effect was supported despite differences across studies in methods as well as measures.

Positive Mood and Resistance to Temptation: The Interfering Influence of Elevated Arousal

We investigate the interfering influence of elevated arousal on the impact of positive mood on resistance to temptation. Three studies demonstrate that when a temptation activates long-term health goals, baseline positive mood facilitates resistance to temptation in (1) the choice between two snack items, one of which is more unhealthy, sinful, and hard to resist (M&Ms) than the other (grapes) and (2) the monitoring of consumption when the sinful option is chosen. However, this influence is attenuated when positive mood is accompanied by elevated arousal. We demonstrate that the cognitive depletion that accompanies elevated arousal interferes with the self-regulatory focus of positive mood, decreasing resistance to temptation.

The Perception and Evaluation of Visual Art

Visual art is a complex stimulus. Drawing on extant theory that the interplay of affect and cognition evoked by a stimulus drives evaluations, we develop a generalizable model for the perception and evaluation of visual art. In three stages, we develop scaled measurements for the affective and cognitive components involved in the perception of visual art and present a structural equation model that integrates these components in art evaluation.

Not as Happy as I Thought I'd Be: Affective Misforecasting and Product Evaluations

We introduce the concept of affective misforecasting (AMF) and study its impact on product evaluations. Study 1 examines whether and when AMF affects evaluations, finding that AMF has an impact on evaluations when the affective experience is worse (but not when better) than forecasted. Study 2 tests a process model designed to understand how and why AMF influences evaluations. The extent of elaboration is shown to underlie the observed effects. The studies demonstrate the robustness of the findings by controlling for alternative factors, specifically experienced affect, expectancy disconfirmation, and actual performance, which might have an impact on these judgments.

“I Don’t” versus “I Can’t”: When Empowered Refusal Motivates Goal-Directed Behavior

This research is based on the insight that the language we use to describe our choices serves as a feedback mechanism that either enhances or impedes our goal-directed behavior. Specifically, we investigate the influence of a linguistic element of self-talk, in which a refusal may be framed as “I don’t” (vs. “I can’t”), on resisting temptation and motivating goal-directed behavior. We present a set of four studies to demonstrate the efficacy of the “don’t” (vs. “can’t”) framing (studies 1–3) when the source of the goal is internal (vs. external; studies 2A and 2B), as well as the mediating role of psychological empowerment (studies 1, 2A, and 2B). We demonstrate this novel and effective refusal strategy with actual choice (study 1) and with behavioral intent (studies 2A and 2B) and also illustrate its applicability in the real world in a longitudinal intervention-based field study (study 3).

Influence of Warm versus Cool Temperatures on Consumer Choice: A Resource Depletion Account

Across five studies, the authors demonstrate that warm (vs. cool) temperatures deplete resources, increase System 1 processing, and influence performance on complex choice tasks. Real-world lottery data (pilot study) and a lab experiment (Study 1) demonstrate the effect of temperature on complex choices: People are less likely to make difficult gambles in warmer temperatures. Study 2 implicates resource depletion as the underlying process; warm temperatures lower cognitive performance for nondepleted people but do not affect the performance of depleted people. Study 3 illustrates the moderating role of task complexity to show that warm temperatures are depleting and decrease willingness to make a difficult product choice. Study 4 juxtaposes the effects of depletion and temperature to reveal that warm temperatures hamper performance on complex tasks because of the participants’ increased reliance on System 1 (heuristic) processing.

Aesthetic Incongruity Resolution

Four studies demonstrate how consumers resolve the aesthetic incongruity that arises between a newly acquired product and the existing consumption environment. The novel insight on which this research is based is that the aesthetic incongruity involving products high in design salience is more likely than aesthetic incongruity involving products low in design salience to be resolved by accommodating the product within the consumption environment, often through additional purchases. Furthermore, the relative presence of frustration versus regret is shown to mediate the relationship between design salience and the decision to buy more.

Turning Art Into Mere Illustration: Concretizing Art Renders Its Influence Context Dependent

Broadly speaking, artworks are accorded a special significance and are recognized as powerful communication tools. In the current research, the authors posit that the “specialness” of artworks may be diminished simply by emphasizing that which is depicted in them. This emphasis results in the artwork being viewed as a mere illustration rather than a work of art. Specifically, the influence of an “artwork as art” is context independent, but the influence of an “artwork as illustration” is context dependent. The authors demonstrate this phenomenon in two experiments, in the context of products associated with artworks. In a third experiment, they further demonstrate that an abstract (concrete) mind-set aligns with the influence of an artwork as art (illustration).