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• Course Overview Note | July 2014 (Revised August 2018)

  FIELD Foundations

  Anthony J. Mayo, Alan MacCormack, Teresa Amabile and Michael Norton

  Citation:

  Mayo, Anthony J., Alan MacCormack, Teresa Amabile, and Michael Norton. "FIELD Foundations." Harvard Business School Course Overview Note 415-011, July 2014. (Revised August 2018.)  View Details

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2018

  Time Use and Happiness of Millionaires

  Paul Smeets, Ashley V. Whillans, Rene Bekkers and Michael I. Norton

  How do the wealthy spend their time, and does their time use relate to their greater well-being? Two large-scale surveys of millionaires and the general population show that millionaires spend their time in surprisingly similar ways as the general population. For example, millionaires spend the same amount of time as the general population cooking, shopping, and eating – and even spend more time on household chores. However, while millionaires and non-millionaires also spend the same amount of time engaging in leisure activities, a critical difference emerged: the wealthy engage in more active leisure (e.g., exercising and volunteering) and less passive leisure (e.g., watching TV and relaxing). Moreover, the extent to which wealthy individuals engage in greater active leisure helps to explain the gap in life satisfaction between millionaires and the general population. Together, these results further our understanding of when and how wealth translates into well-being.

  Keywords: Time use; wealth; Life Satisfaction; Millionaires; Social Class; Time Management; Wealth; Behavior; Satisfaction; Demographics; Status and Position;

  Citation:

  Smeets, Paul, Ashley V. Whillans, Rene Bekkers, and Michael I. Norton. "Time Use and Happiness of Millionaires." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 18-111, June 2018.  View Details

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• Article | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

  Enacting Rituals to Improve Self-control

  D. A. Tian, J. Schroeder, G. Haubl, J. Risen, M. I. Norton and F. Gino

  Rituals are predefined sequences of actions characterized by rigidity and repetition. We propose that enacting ritualized actions can enhance subjective feelings of self-discipline, such that rituals can be harnessed to improve behavioral self-control. We test this hypothesis in six experiments. A field experiment showed that engaging in a pre-eating ritual over a 5-day period helped participants reduce calorie intake (Experiment 1). Pairing a ritual with healthy eating behavior increased the likelihood of choosing healthy food in a subsequent decision (Experiment 2), and enacting a ritual prior to a food choice (i.e., without being integrated into the consumption process) promoted the choice of healthy food over unhealthy food (Experiments 3a and 3b). The positive effect of rituals on self-control held even when a set of ritualized gestures enacted were not explicitly labeled as a ritual, and in other domains of behavioral self-control (i.e., prosocial decision-making; Experiments 4 and 5). Furthermore, Experiments 3a, 3b, 4, and 5 provided evidence for the psychological process underlying the effectiveness of rituals: heightened feelings of self-discipline undergirded the facilitative effect of rituals on behavioral self-control. Finally, Experiment 5 showed that the absence of a self-control conflict eliminated the effect of rituals on behavior, demonstrating that rituals affect behavioral self-control specifically because they alter responses to self-control conflicts.

  Keywords: Behavior; Perception; Personal Characteristics; Health;

  Citation:

  Tian, D. A., J. Schroeder, G. Haubl, J. Risen, M. I. Norton, and F. Gino. "Enacting Rituals to Improve Self-control." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 114, no. 6 (June 2018): 851–876.  View Details

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