Don't Stop Believing: Rituals Improve Performance by Decreasing Anxiety

Alison Wood  Brooks; Julianna  Schroeder; Jane  Risen; Francesca  Gino; Adam D. Galinsky; Michael I. Norton; Maurice  Schweitzer

Article | Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Don't Stop Believing: Rituals Improve Performance by Decreasing Anxiety

by Alison Wood Brooks, Julianna Schroeder, Jane Risen, Francesca Gino, Adam D. Galinsky, Michael I. Norton and Maurice Schweitzer

Abstract

From public speaking to first dates, people frequently experience performance anxiety. And when experienced immediately before or during performance, anxiety harms performance. Across a series of experiments, we explore the efficacy of a common strategy that people employ to cope with performance-induced anxiety: rituals. We define a ritual as a predefined sequence of symbolic actions often characterized by formality and repetition that lack direct instrumental purpose. Using different instantiations of rituals and measures of anxiety (both physiological and self-report), we find that enacting rituals improves performance in public and private performance domains by decreasing anxiety. Belief that a specific series of behaviors constitute a ritual is a critical ingredient to reduce anxiety and improve performance: engaging in behaviors described as a “ritual” improved performance more than engaging in the same behaviors described as “random behaviors.”

Keywords: Behavior; Performance; Emotions;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Brooks, Alison Wood, Julianna Schroeder, Jane Risen, Francesca Gino, Adam D. Galinsky, Michael I. Norton, and Maurice Schweitzer. "Don't Stop Believing: Rituals Improve Performance by Decreasing Anxiety." Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 137 (November 2016): 71–85.

How do the very wealthy spend their time, and how does time use relate to well-being? In two studies in the Netherlands, the affluent (N=863, N=690) and the general population (N=1232, N=306) spent time in surprisingly similar ways, such as by spending the same amount of time working. Yet, the nature of their time-use differed in critical ways that are related to life satisfaction. In Study 1, millionaires spent more time engaged in active leisure (e.g., exercising and volunteering) rather than passive leisure (e.g., watching television and relaxing). In Study 2, millionaires spent more time engaged in tasks at work over which they had more control. The affluent sample belongs to the top of the income and wealth distribution, representing a significantly wealthier sample than in previous studies. These results further our understanding of when and how wealth may translate into greater well-being.

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act intensified debates over the role of government in the distribution of healthcare. A nationally-representative sample of Americans reported their estimated and ideal distributions of healthcare (unmet need for prescription medications) and death (gains in life expectancy). Respondents across the demographic and political spectrum wanted mortality and healthcare to be distributed more evenly among the rich and poor than they estimated them to be. For example, respondents estimated that Americans in the poorest quintile lived 1.5 months longer over the previous 20 years while those in the richest quintile lived 4.7 months longer, but reported ideal figures of 2.5 and 3.6 months – both were far more equal than the actual figures: -1.8 and 7.2 months. Despite heated debates about healthcare, Americans share a consensus belief that current disparities in death and healthcare are far from their ideals.

Article | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Signing at the Beginning vs at the End Does Not Decrease Dishonesty

Ariella Kristal, A.V. Whillans, Max Bazerman, Francesca Gino, Lisa Shu, Nina Mazar and Dan Ariely

Honest reporting is essential for society to function well. However, people frequently lie when asked to provide information, such as misrepresenting their income to save money on taxes. A landmark finding published in PNAS (Shu, Mazar, Gino, Ariely, and Bazerman, 2012, “Signing at the Beginning Makes Ethics Salient and Decreases Dishonest Self-reports in Comparison to Signing at the End”) provided evidence for a simple way of encouraging honest reporting: asking people to sign a veracity statement at the beginning instead of at the end of a self-report form. Since this finding was published, various government agencies have adopted this practice. However, in this project, we failed to replicate this result. Across five conceptual replications (N = 4,559) and one highly powered, pre-registered, direct replication (N = 1,235) conducted with the authors of the original paper, we observed no effect of signing first on honest reporting. Given the policy applications of this result, it is important to update the scientific record regarding the veracity of these results.

Keywords: Morality; nudge; policy-making; replication; honesty; Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Policy;

Citation:

Kristal, Ariella, A.V. Whillans, Max Bazerman, Francesca Gino, Lisa Shu, Nina Mazar, and Dan Ariely. "Signing at the Beginning vs at the End Does Not Decrease Dishonesty." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117, no. 13 (March 31, 2020). View Details

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Don't Stop Believing: Rituals Improve Performance by Decreasing Anxiety

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