[Press release] Boosting self-expression online may limit impulsive purchases

From the 10th December 2013 Penn State press release

By Matthew Swayne

December 10, 2013

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Long online transactions can take a toll on a person’s self-control, but adding more self-expression and personal identity to those processes can help restore control, according to Penn State researchers.

“Making a lot of choices leads to what researchers call ego-depletion and that can affect self-control,” said S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory. “When a person makes a lot of choices, the ability to exert self-control begins to diminish with every choice.”

Participants in an online study showed more self-control after they tailored a personal website that represented their own values and personality than a group that customized a site for other people, said Sundar. Creating the website required several decisions on what features to add and where to place the new features.

After people make too many choices, they tend to make more impulsive decisions, according to the researchers, who report their findings in the current issue of Computers in Human Behavior. For example, while making online purchases, customers may be more prone to buy upgraded, but unneeded features, toward the end of the sale.

Sundar, who worked with Hyunjin Kang, a doctoral student in mass communications, said that the study may help remind web users that they should exercise caution when they are making a lot of decisions duringecommerce sessions, surveys and other online transactions.

“People should become aware that if they are making a lot of choices — for example, during hotel or travel purchases — the activity can deplete their ability to control their actions,” said Sundar. “They may want to take a break and step away from the computer for a while to recharge that self-control.”

While some businesses may want users to be more impulsive during online purchases, Sundar said companies that want their customers to make reasoned decisions should incorporate self-affirming activities into the process.

“For instance, a customer who is environmentally conscious may be interested in personalizing their stay at a hotel with options that can help the environment and affirm their green identity,” Sundar said.

The researchers asked 54 university students to either tailor or browse a customizable website. One group was asked to customize a site to best reflect their personality and values. Researchers asked another group to create a site that represented someone of a different gender. The control group did not create a site, but browsed a similar, but generic website.

Participants who tailored their own site worked significantly longer on a puzzle than those who customized the website for others. The puzzle, which is an unsolvable anagram task, is a standard way to measure ego-depletion and decision fatigue, according to the researchers. The length of time that subjects try to solve the problem indicates the level of self-control remaining after the assigned activity.

“This shows that choosing behaviors in the customization process can make you feel depleted and you’ll persist less in an unsolvable task,” said Kang. “The cure, then, seems to be tasks that improve self-expression and help protect one’s identity.”

Related articles

• Self-indulgence and the License to Sin (psychologytoday.com)
• The biological basis of highly impulsive and aggressive behaviors: new evidence (medicalnewstoday.com)
• You want fries with that? Don’t go there (sciencedaily.com)
• Ego depletion, pro-sociality & capitalism (stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com)
• New evidence on the biological basis of highly impulsive and aggressive behaviors (eurekalert.org)

[Press Release] New evidence on the biological basis of highly impulsive and aggressive behaviors

This raises an interesting question, if those convicted of crimes should not be punished due to their biology, should they just be set free? Or should they be required to undergo therapy/treatments that might not be evidence-based? Or are other alternatives available?

 

From the 10 November 2013 Neuroscience 2013, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience press release as reported by EurkAlert

For want of a receptor: Some behaviors shaped during early development

SAN DIEGO — Physical and chemical changes in the brain during development can potentially play a role in some delinquent and deviant behaviors, according to research released today. Studies looking at the underlying mechanisms that influence our ability to exercise self-control were presented at Neuroscience 2013, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world’s largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.

Understanding the impact of changes in specific prefrontal regions during brain development could lead to new treatments and earlier interventions for disorders in which impulsivity plays a key factor. The research may have implications for understanding and dealing with aggressive and troublesome behaviors.

Today’s new findings show that:

• The absence of serotonin receptors during early development leads to highly aggressive and impulsive behaviors in mice. Impulsivity, but not aggression, returns to normal levels by reintroducing the receptors (Katherine Nautiyal, PhD, abstract 754.07, see attached summary).
• Adolescents react more impulsively to danger than adults or children, and the prefrontal cortex works harder to exert control over impulsive responses to threatening cues (Kristina Caudle, PhD, abstract 852.14, see attached summary).

Other recent findings discussed show that:

• Weak control of the brain’s prefrontal cortex (which monitors personality, decision-making, and self-restraint) over regions associated with reward and motivation could explain the lack of self-control experienced by anti-social individuals (Joshua Buckholtz, PhD, presentation 194.01, see attached speaker summary).
• Criminal defendants increasingly use brain science to explain their actions, pointing to brain scans and the scientific literature for evidence that brain impairments affect behavior. This is impacting how the legal system assigns responsibility and punishment for criminal wrongdoing in the United States (Nita Farahany, JD, PhD, presentation 301, see attached speaker summary).

“Our deeper understanding of the origins of delinquent behavior can be a double-edged sword,” said press conference moderator BJ Casey, PhD, of Weill Cornell Medical College, an expert in attention, behavior, and related brain disorders. “While we’re making tremendous gains in neuroscience that should lead to improved treatments, our biological insights also have implications for criminal cases and the judicial process that we need to understand.”

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This research was supported by national funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, as well as private and philanthropic organizations. More information about behavior and the brain can be found at BrainFacts.org.

 

Related articles

• New evidence on the biological basis of highly impulsive and aggressive behaviors (eurekalert.org)
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• Neuroscience criminal defense emerges: ‘my brain made me do it’ (rawstory.com)
• Brain stimulation affects compliance with social norms (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Study Shows How Brain of Gambling Addicts Work (medindia.net)
• US courts see rise in defendants blaming their brains for criminal acts (theguardian.com)

[Repost] Childhood economic status affects substance use among young adults

A NIDA educational pamphlet. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

From the 29 July 2013 EurekAlert

 

DURHAM, N.C. – Children who grow up in poverty are more likely than wealthier children to smoke cigarettes, but they are less likely to binge drink and are no more prone to use marijuana, according to researchers at Duke Medicine.

The researchers also found that economic strains in early life – including family worries about paying bills or needing to sell possessions for cash – independently erode a child’s self-control, regardless of strong parenting in adolescence. Lack of self-control often leads to substance use.

The findings, appearing July 30, 2013, in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology, debunk common assumptions about who abuses substances, and provide a basis for better approaches to prevent young people from falling into drug and alcohol addiction.

“Poverty during childhood not only appears to affect child development, but can have lasting effects on the types of health choices made during adolescence and early adulthood, especially as it relates to cigarette smoking,” said senior author Bernard Fuemmeler, Ph.D., MPH, MS, associate professor in Community and Family Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine. “Economic strains may shape an individual’s capacity for self-control by diminishing opportunities for self-regulation, or affecting important brain structures.”

Fuemmeler and colleagues at Duke set out to examine the direct effect of childhood economic strains on smoking, binge drinking, and marijuana use in young adults. They also sought to determine how financial difficulties impact self-control, and how positive parenting might mitigate the tendency to use drugs and alcohol.

The group analyzed data from 1,285 children and caregivers included in a representative sample of U.S. families studied from 1986-2009. Economic status was measured by annual family income, plus a survey with questions about economic problems such as difficulty paying bills or postponing medical care. Additional information was gathered to gauge childhood self-control and parental interactions.

Among the study participants who were transitioning to adulthood, young people who lived in poverty as children were far more likely to become regular cigarette smokers than children who grew up in wealthier households. The impoverished children also scored low on self-control measures.

“Poor self-control may be a product of limited learning resources and opportunities for developing appropriate behaviors,” Fuemmeler said.

Binge drinking, however, was much more common among the wealthier young people. And surprisingly, those who had good self-control as children were more likely to engage in heavy episodic drinking as young adults.

Neither wealth nor poverty appeared to influence marijuana use, although positive parenting did reduce the use of this drug. Parents who were nurturing and accepting, in fact, diminished the likelihood of young people using any of the substances.

The researchers also found no correlation between economic hardship and poor parenting – a contradiction to some other studies.

“We suspected we’d find a relationship between parenting and economic problems – the idea that economic strains may cause parents to have less capacity to deal with their children, but that relationship wasn’t there,” Fuemmeler said. “That means it’s not necessarily poverty that affects the parenting strategy, but poverty that affects the children’s self-control.”

Fuemmeler said the findings are important given the increase in U.S. children living in poverty. The U.S. Census Bureau reported 22 percent of children lived in poverty in 2010, compared to 18 percent in 2000.

“Continued work is needed to better understand how economic strains may influence the development of self-control, as well as to identify other potential mediators between economic strains and substance use outcomes,” Fuemmeler said.

 

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In addition to Fuemmeler, study authors include Chien-Ti Lee, Joseph McClernon, Scott H. Kollins and Kevin Prybol.

The National Institutes of Health (RO1 DA030487), the National Cancer Institute (K07CA124905) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (K24DA023464) funded the study.

 

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Prisoners Doing Yoga May See Psychological Benefits

yoga (Photo credit: GO INTERACTIVE WELLNESS)

 

From the 11 July 2013 article at Science Daily

 

Yoga can improve mood and mental wellbeing among prisoners, an Oxford University study suggests, and may also have an effect on impulsive behaviour.

The researchers found that prisoners after a ten-week yoga course reported improved mood, reduced stress and were better at a task related to behaviour control than those who continued in their normal prison routine.

‘We found that the group that did the yoga course showed an improvement in positive mood, a decrease in stress and greater accuracy in a computer test of impulsivity and attention,’ say Dr Amy Bilderbeck and Dr Miguel Farias, who led the study at the Departments of Experimental Psychology and Psychiatry at Oxford University. ‘The suggestion is that yoga is helpful for these prisoners.’

Dr Bilderbeck adds: ‘This was only a preliminary study, but nothing has been done like this before. Offering yoga sessions in prisons is cheap, much cheaper than other mental health interventions. If yoga has any effect on addressing mental health problems in prisons, it could save significant amounts of public money.’

…

If yoga is associated with improving behaviour control, as suggested by the results of the computer test, there may be implications for managing aggression, antisocial or problem behaviour in prisons and on return to society, the researchers note — though this is not measured in this initial study.

Dr Bilderbeck, who practices yoga herself, cautions: ‘We’re not saying that organising a weekly yoga session in a prison is going to suddenly turn prisons into calm and serene places, stop all aggression and reduce reoffending rates. We’re not saying that yoga will replace standard treatment of mental health conditions in prison. But what we do see are indications that this relatively cheap, simple option might have multiple benefits for prisoners’ wellbeing and possibly aid in managing the burden of mental health problems in prisons.’

Sam Settle, director of the Prison Phoenix Trust, says: ‘Almost half of adult prisoners return to prison within a year, having created more victims of crime, so finding ways to offset the damaging effects of prison life is essential for us as a society. This research confirms what prisoners have been consistently telling the Prison Phoenix Trust for 25 years: yoga and meditation help them feel better, make better decisions and develop the capacity to think before acting — all essential in leading positive, crime-free lives once back in the community.’

 

Related articles

• Yoga Improves Mental Health Among Prisoners (medindia.net)
• Prisoners should do yoga as a cheap way of improving their behaviour, according to academics (telegraph.co.uk)
• Teaching prisoners yoga stops them bending rules, says study (oxfordmail.co.uk)

 

Acceptance of What Cannot Be Changed Predicts Satisfaction in Later Life

From the 11 July 2013 article at Science Daily

When older adults lose control as they move into residential care, they adapt and accept what cannot be changed in order to stay happy. According to a new study, by Jaclyn Broadbent, Shikkiah de Quadros-Wander and Jane McGillivray from Deakin University in Australia, when it comes to satisfaction in later life the ability to accept what cannot be changed is as important as the feeling of being able to exert control.

..

Ageing with satisfaction has been linked to maintaining a sense of control into the later years. Perceived control consists of two components. Primary control relates to the capacity to make changes to the environment to suit your desire or needs — this applies to older adults living independently in the community. Secondary control describes making cognitive changes within yourself to adapt to the environment — for example when older adults move into residential care. In effect, secondary control buffers losses in primary control by helping us to accept what cannot be changed.

…

Their analyses revealed that the unique relationship between primary control and satisfaction was always larger for the elderly living in the community than those in residential care. Equally, the contribution of secondary control to satisfaction was larger in the residential care group than in the community group. Having a strong sense of control is therefore likely to be more important to older adults living in the community than those living in residential care. In contrast, acceptance is likely to be more important to the well-being of care residents than community dwellers.

The authors conclude: “In order to protect the well-being of older individuals, adaptation involves both a sense of control and the active acceptance of what cannot be changed. Primary and secondary perceived control may predict satisfaction with comparable strength depending on the older person’s situation. Acceptance takes more of a prime position in low control situations.”

 

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• Satisfaction In Later Life Hinges On Acceptance (medicalnewstoday.com)
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• Senior Moment? Ageist Stereotypes Can Hurt – Or Help – Older Adults’ Memory (psychologicalscience.org)

 

Who Multi-Tasks and Why? Multi-Tasking Ability, Perceived Multi-Tasking Ability, Impulsivity, and Sensation Seeking

Tantek Multitasking (Photo credit: Thomas Hawk)

 

From the 29 January 2013 summary at Full Text Reports

 

The present study examined the relationship between personality and individual differences in multi-tasking ability. Participants enrolled at the University of Utah completed measures of multi-tasking activity, perceived multi-tasking ability, impulsivity, and sensation seeking. In addition, they performed the Operation Span in order to assess their executive control and actual multi-tasking ability.

The findings indicate that the persons who are most capable of multi-tasking effectively are not the persons who are most likely to engage in multiple tasks simultaneously. To the contrary, multi-tasking activity as measured by the Media Multitasking Inventory and self-reported cell phone usage while driving were negatively correlated with actual multi-tasking ability.

Multi-tasking was positively correlated with participants’ perceived ability to multi-task ability which was found to be significantly inflated. Participants with a strong approach orientation and a weak avoidance orientation – high levels of impulsivity and sensation seeking – reported greater multi-tasking behavior.

Finally, the findings suggest that people often engage in multi-tasking because they are less able to block out distractions and focus on a singular task. Participants with less executive control – low scorers on the Operation Span task and persons high in impulsivity – tended to report higher levels of multi-tasking activity.

 

 

 

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Self-control may not be a limited resource after all

 

From the 12 September 2012 article at EurekAlert

So many acts in our daily lives – refusing that second slice of cake, walking past the store with the latest gadgets, working on your tax forms when you’d rather watch TV – seem to boil down to one essential ingredient: self-control. Self-control is what enables us to maintain healthy habits, save for a rainy day, and get important things done.

But what is self-control, really? And how does it work?

In a new article in the September 2012 issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers Michael Inzlicht of the University of Toronto and Brandon Schmeichel of Texas A&M University argue that the prevailing model of self-control may not be as precise as researchers once thought. Rather than being a limited resource, self-control may actually be more like a motivation- and attention-driven process.

Research on self-control has surged in the last decade and much of it has centered on the resource model of self-control. According to this model, originally proposed by Roy Baumeister and colleagues, self-control is a limited resource – if we exercise a lot of self-control by refusing a second slice of cake, we may not have enough self-control later in the day to resist the urge to shop or watch TV.

Over 100 papers have produced findings that support this model. Research has found, for example, that people who are required to manage their emotions show impaired performance on later tasks, such as solving a difficult puzzle, squeezing a handgrip exerciser, and keeping items in working memory.

But Inzlicht and Schmeichel point out that a newer crop of studies are yielding results that don’t fit with this idea of self-control as a depletable resource. Recent studies have shown that incentives, individual perceptions of task difficulty, personal beliefs about willpower, feedback on task performance, and changes in mood all seem to influence our ability to exercise self-control. These results suggest that self-control may not rely on a limited resource after all.

To accommodate these new findings and get at the mechanisms that underlie self-control, Inzlicht and Schmeichel propose an alternative model that describes self-control as a process involving motivation and attention.

“Engaging in self-control by definition, is hard work; it involves deliberation, attention, and vigilance,” the authors write. If we resist that second slice of cake, we may experience a shift in motivation so that we feel justified in indulging ourselves later on. It’s not necessarily the case that we can’t control ourselves because we’re “out” of self-control but rather that we choose not to control ourselves any longer.

At the same time, our attention shifts so that we’re less likely to notice cues that signal the need for self-control (cake = empty calories) and we pay more attention to cues that signal some kind of reward (cake = delicious treat).

In laying out the basic components of this process model, Inzlicht and Schmeichel want to motivate researchers to ask critical questions about how self-control really works. “The idea that self-control is a resource is one possibility, but there are alternative possibilities that can accommodate more of the accumulated data,” Inzlicht says.

Identifying the mechanisms that underlie self-control can help us to understand behaviors related to a wide range of important problems, including obesity, impulsive spending, gambling, and drug abuse. Inzlicht and Schmeichel hope that researchers will ultimately be able to use this knowledge to design effective m..

 

Related articles

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Favorite TV reruns may have restorative powers, says UB researcher

 

From the 9 September 2012 article at EurekAlert

IMAGE: Derrick’s findings may dispel some notions that watching TV is bad for us.Click here for more information.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — We hear all the time that we need to get off the couch, stop watching TV and get moving.

But what if watching TV under specific conditions could actually provide the mental boost you need to tackle a difficult task?

A new paper that describes two studies by Jaye Derrick, PhD, research scientist at the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions, found that watching a rerun of a favorite TV show may help restore the drive to get things done in people who have used up their reserves of willpower or self-control.

“People have a limited pool of these valuable mental resources,” explains Derrick. “When they use them on a task, they use up some of this limited resource. Therefore, they have less willpower and self-control for the next task.

“With enough time, these mental resources will return. However, there may be ways to more quickly restore them.”

One of these ways is to re-watch your favorite TV show, Derrick’s research found. Doing so, she says, taps into the surrogate relationship people form with the characters in their favorite shows. We find it comforting, mainly because we already know what the characters are going to say and do. All we have to do is sit back and enjoy it.

“When you watch a favorite re-run, you typically don’t have to use any effort to control what you are thinking, saying or doing. You are not exerting the mental energy required for self-control or willpower,” Derrick explains. “At the same time, you are enjoying your ‘interaction,’ with the TV show’s characters, and this

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Religion Replenishes Self-Control

Religion is at its best, I believe, when its practice is centered on focusing on others and the common good.  Self-control naturally flows from this.
Can self-control occur outside of religion? Yes, again, when the focus is beyond self-interest.

From the 16 May 2012 article at Medical News Today

There are many theories about why religion exists, most of them unproven.

Now, in an article published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologist Kevin Rounding of Queen’s University, Ontario, offers a new idea, and some preliminary evidence to back it up.

The primary purpose of religious belief is to enhance the basic cognitive process of self-control, says Rounding, which in turn promotes any number of valuable social behaviors. …

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Study Finds Religion Helps Us Gain Self-Control

 

Although I am not sure if there really is a cause/effect here, it is an interesting study. Perhaps self control is related to a cluster of factors, and religion is one?

Study Finds Religion Helps Us Gain Self-Control

From the Medical News Today article of Wed Jan 25, 2012

Excerpt

Thinking about religion gives people more self-control on later, unrelated tasks; according to results from a series of recent Queen’s University study.

“After unscrambling sentences containing religiously oriented words, participants in our studies exercised significantly more self-control,” says psychology graduate student and lead researcher on the study, Kevin Rounding.
Study participants were given a sentence containing five words to unscramble. Some contained religious themes and others did not. After unscrambling the sentences, participants were asked to complete a number of tasks that required self-control – enduring discomfort, delaying gratification, exerting patience, and refraining from impulsive responses.

Participants who had unscrambled the sentences containing religious themes had more self-control in completing their tasks.

“Our most interesting finding was that religious concepts were able to refuel self-control after it had been depleted by another unrelated task,” says Mr. Rounding. “In other words, even when we would predict people to be unable to exert self-control, after completing the religiously themed task they defied logic and were able to muster self-control.”

“Until now, I believed religion was a matter of faith; people had little ‘practical’ use for religion,” Mr. Rounding explains. “This research actually suggests that religion can serve a very useful function in society. People can turn to religion not just for transcendence and fears regarding death and an after-life but also for practical purposes.”

Thinking about religion gives people more self-control on later, unrelated tasks; according to results from a series of recent Queen’s University study. “After unscrambling sentences containing religiously oriented words, participants in our studies exercised significantly more self-control,” says psychology graduate student and lead researcher on the study, Kevin Rounding. Study participants were given a sentence containing five words to unscramble. Some contained religious themes and others did not

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When pride in achievement leads to a large order of fries (Want fries with that achievement??)

From a November 15, 2010 Eureka news alert

You aced that test; now it’s time for a treat.

Sometimes pride in an achievement can lead people to indulge in unhealthy choices, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

[ For a related article, go to Notions of Personal “Sacrifice” Help Docs Take Gifts From Industry ]

“Across four studies in the food consumptions and spending domains, we show that pride is associated with two opposing forces; it promotes a sense of achievement, which increases indulgence, and it promotes self-awareness, which facilitates self control,” write authors Keith Wilcox (Babson College), Thomas Kramer (University of South Carolina), and Sankar Sen (Baruch College).

The authors set out to examine the effect of pride on consumer self-control decisions, and discovered that pride has different varieties. One variant—pride in a sense of achievement—leads to people wanting to reward themselves with indulgences. Another kind of pride features increased self-awareness; this type of pride leads to less indulgence.

In their first study, the researchers asked students to write about a proud moment and then make a choice that involved self-control. Participants were able to choose between two gift certificates: a less-indulgent one that could be used for school supplies or one that could be used for entertainment. “As we predicted, when the sense of achievement factored more heavily into the decision, students that wrote about a proud moment were more likely to select the entertainment gift certificate,” the authors write.

In subsequent studies, the authors found that consumers who experienced pride in a sense of achievement were more likely to choose French fries over a salad with their lunch entrée. The authors also found that happiness, another positive emotion, did not have the same effect on consumer choice as pride.

“Because a number of key societal issues, such as the credit and obesity crises, have been attributed to poor self-control in money and health decisions, this research has important implications for improving consumer welfare,” the authors conclude.

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Keith Wilcox, Thomas Kramer, and Sankar Sen. “Indulgence or Self-Control: A Dual Process Model of the Effect of Incidental Pride on Indulgent Choice.” ***Journal of Consumer Research: June 2011 (published online November 5, 2010). Further information: http://ejcr.org.

*** Click here for possible ways to get this article for free.