Suchergebnisse

AbstractDefaults may not directly get people to behave as intended, such as saving more, eating healthy food or donating to charity. Rather, defaults often only put people on the 'right' path, such as joining a savings plan, buying healthy food or pledging money to charity. This an issue because getting more people to take those first steps does not necessarily motivate them to go on with further steps. Indeed, the default does little to help them understand the benefit of doing so. This can greatly reduce the impact of the default. We test this idea in a charitable giving experiment where people first can promise to give to charity ('pledge') and then can go on to donate. We find that participants pledge more often when that is the default, but those who pledge in that case are less likely to take further steps to donate than those who pledge when pledging is against the default. We interpret this in terms of motivation and transaction costs. Some people pledge only to avoid the psychological costs of going against the default. Those people are closest to indifference between donating or not and are therefore less motivated to go on to donate. We also show that the intrinsic motivation of pledgers is lower when pledging is the default and that making pledges the default does not change attitudes to charities.

The primary purpose of the present research is to investigate the process that unfolds after an Emotional Seesaw Phenomenon (ESP). The ESP is a relatively new Social Influence Technique that is defined as a situation, in which a person experiences a certain emotion, but where the external stimulus that evoked and upheld the emotion suddenly disappears (Dolinski; 2001). Previous research on the ESP indicated that the fostered affective shift (negative to positive or vice versa) promotes a temporary state of mindlessness, leaving the individual momentarily vulnerable to requests (Dolinski & Nawrat, 1998; Dolinski, et. al., 2002). Despite extensive previous research, the underlying automaticity-evoking processes couldn't be elucidated so far. Therefore the present dissertation is designed to further analyze the ESP, its consequences and underlying mechanism. We suggest that (a) it is not the affective shift per se, but its expectancy-violating structure that promotes the effect, (b) the expectancy violation itself provokes the allocation of attention to the inside, which consumes cognitive resources (cognitive busyness), and (c) that this induced cognitive busyness alters compliance susceptibility through the use of heuristic principles and the reduction of resistance towards compliance itself. Finally (d) dispositional mindfulness plays a significant role in the vulnerability to this particular social influence technique.

The primary purpose of the present research is to investigate the process that unfolds after an Emotional Seesaw Phenomenon (ESP). The ESP is a relatively new Social Influence Technique that is defined as a situation, in which a person experiences a certain emotion, but where the external stimulus that evoked and upheld the emotion suddenly disappears (Dolinski; 2001). Previous research on the ESP indicated that the fostered affective shift (negative to positive or vice versa) promotes a temporary state of mindlessness, leaving the individual momentarily vulnerable to requests (Dolinski & Nawrat, 1998; Dolinski, et. al., 2002). Despite extensive previous research, the underlying automaticity-evoking processes couldn't be elucidated so far. Therefore the present dissertation is designed to further analyze the ESP, its consequences and underlying mechanism. We suggest that (a) it is not the affective shift per se, but its expectancy-violating structure that promotes the effect, (b) the expectancy violation itself provokes the allocation of attention to the inside, which consumes cognitive resources (cognitive busyness), and (c) that this induced cognitive busyness alters compliance susceptibility through the use of heuristic principles and the reduction of resistance towards compliance itself. Finally (d) dispositional mindfulness plays a significant role in the vulnerability to this particular social influence technique.

Abstract. While previous research discussed populism as a phenomenon of declining trust, we investigated the predictive value of populist attitudes for citizens' trust, attitudes, and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, we tested the role of trust in several institutions simultaneously. As preregistered, the cross-sectional ( N = 1,090) and longitudinal ( n = 216) data collected (April to June, 2020) in Germany ( n = 617) and Poland ( n = 473) showed that stronger populist attitudes predicted higher trust in (a) alternative news media but less trust in (b) mainstream news media, (c) political institutions, and (d) scientific institutions. Moreover, we found negative effects of populist attitudes on acceptance and compliance, mediated via trust in political and scientific institutions (but not news media).