Publications
Publications
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- Faculty Publications (19)
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- April 2023
- Article
A Field Experiment on Subgoal Framing to Boost Volunteering: The Trade-off Between Goal Granularity and Flexibility
By: Aneesh Rai, Marissa A. Sharif, Edward H. Chang, Katherine L. Milkman and Angela L. Duckworth
Research suggests that breaking overarching goals into more granular subgoals is beneficial for goal progress. However, making goals more granular often involves reducing the flexibility provided to complete them, and recent work shows that flexibility can also be...
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- March 2023
- Article
Giving-by-proxy Triggers Subsequent Charitable Behavior
By: Samantha Kassirer, Jillian J. Jordan and Maryam Kouchaki
How can we foster habits of charitable giving? Here, we investigate the potential power of giving-by-proxy experiences, drawing inspiration from a growing trend in marketing and corporate social responsibility contexts in which organizations make charitable...
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- 2023
- Working Paper
'It Wouldn’t Have Mattered Anyway': When Overdetermined Outcomes Justify Our Sins
By: Stephanie C. Lin, Julian J. Zlatev and Dale T. Miller
We identify and document an “overdetermined outcome defense” which occurs when one learns
that circumstances besides one’s own actions were sufficient to produce a negative effect (e.g.,
deciding not to go to the gym, but later discovering that the gym had been...
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- December 2022
- Article
The Emotional Rewards of Prosocial Spending Are Robust and Replicable in Large Samples
By: Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn and Ashley V. Whillans
Past studies show that spending money on other people—prosocial spending—increases a person’s happiness. However, foundational research on this topic was conducted prior to psychology’s credibility revolution (or “replication crisis”), so it is essential to ask...
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- November 2022
- Article
Opportunity Neglect: An Aversion to Low-probability Gains
Seven preregistered studies (N = 2,890) conducted in the field, lab, and online document opportunity neglect: a tendency to reject opportunities with low probability of success, even when they come with little or no objective cost (e.g., time, money,...
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- October 17, 2022
- Article
Relational Diversity in Social Portfolios Predicts Well-Being
We document a link between the relational diversity of one’s social portfolio—the richness and evenness of relationship types across one’s social interactions—and well-being. Across four distinct samples, respondents from the United States who completed a preregistered...
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- November 2021
- Article
A Salient Sugar Tax Decreases Sugary Drink Buying
By: Grant E. Donnelly, Paige Guge, Ryan Howell and Leslie John
Many governments have introduced sugary drink excise taxes to reduce purchasing and consumption of such drinks; however, they do not typically stipulate how such taxes should be communicated at point-of-purchase. Historical, field, and experimental data entailing over...
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Keywords:
Decision-making;
Open Data;
Open Materials;
Preregistered;
Health;
Policy;
Taxation;
Consumer Behavior;
Decision Making
- September 2021
- Article
Income More Reliably Predicts Frequent Than Intense Happiness
By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Ruo Mo, Adam Eric Greenberg, Bertus Jeronimus and Ashley V. Whillans
There is widespread consensus that income and subjective well-being are linked, but when and why they are connected is subject to ongoing debate. We draw on prior research that distinguishes between the frequency and intensity of happiness to suggest that higher income...
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- Article
A Multicountry Perspective on Gender Differences in Time Use During COVID-19
By: Laura M. Giurge, Ashley V. Whillans and Ayse Yemiscigil (shared authorship)
The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered how people spend time, with possible consequences for subjective well-being. Using diverse samples of remote workers from the United States, Canada, Denmark, Brazil, and Spain (n = 31,141), following a preregistered...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Uncovering Inequalities in Time-Use and Well-Being during COVID-19: A Multi-Country Investigation
By: Laura M. Giurge, Ayse Yemiscigil, Joseph Sherlock and Ashley V. Whillans
The COVID-19 global pandemic continues to alter how people spend their time, with possible downstream consequences for subjective well-being. Using diverse samples from the United States, Canada, Denmark, Brazil, and Spain (n = 30,018) and following a preregistered...
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- Article
Forgoing Earned Incentives to Signal Pure Motives
By: Erika L. Kirgios, Edward H. Chang, Emma E. Levine, Katherine L. Milkman and Judd B. Kessler
Policy makers, employers, and insurers often provide financial incentives to encourage citizens, employees, and customers to take actions that are good for them or for society (e.g., energy conservation, healthy living, safe driving). Although financial incentives are...
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- June 2020
- Article
In Generous Offers I Trust: The Effect of First-offer Value on Economically Vulnerable Behaviors
By: M. Jeong, J. Minson and F. Gino
Negotiation scholarship espouses the importance of opening a bargaining situation with an aggressive offer, given the power of first offers to shape concessionary behavior and outcomes. In our research, we identify a surprising consequence to this common prescription....
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- June 2020
- Article
The Isolated Choice Effect and Its Implications for Gender Diversity in Organizations
By: Edward H. Chang, Erika L. Kirgios, Aneesh Rai and Katherine L. Milkman
We highlight a feature of personnel selection decisions that can influence the gender diversity of groups and teams. Specifically, we show that people are less likely to choose candidates whose gender would increase group diversity when making personnel selections in...
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- Article
Valuing Time Over Money Predicts Happiness After a Major Life Transition: A Preregistered Longitudinal Study of Graduating Students
By: A.V. Whillans, Lucia Macchia and Elizabeth Dunn
When making major life decisions—such as choosing what to do after graduation—is it better to prioritize time or money? In a pre-registered longitudinal study of 1,232 graduating university students, respondents who valued time over money chose more intrinsically...
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- July 2019
- Article
The Gravitational Pull of Expressing Passion: When and How Expressing Passion Elicits Status Conferral and Support from Others
By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Christopher To, Shira Agasi, Stéphane Côté and Adam D. Galinsky
Prior research attributes the positive effects of passion on professional success to intrapersonal characteristics. We propose that interpersonal processes are also critical because observers confer status on and support those who express passion. These interpersonal...
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- Article
The Mixed Effects of Online Diversity Training
By: Edward H. Chang, Katherine L. Milkman, Dena M. Gromet, Robert W. Rebele, Cade Massey, Angela L. Duckworth and Adam M. Grant
We present results from a large (n = 3,016) field experiment at a global organization testing whether a brief science-based online diversity training can change attitudes and behaviors toward
women in the workplace. Our preregistered field experiment included an...
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- April 2019
- Article
Shooting the Messenger
By: Leslie John, Hayley Blunden and Heidi Liu
Eleven experiments provide evidence that people have a tendency to “shoot the messenger,” deeming innocent bearers of bad news unlikeable. In a preregistered lab experiment, participants rated messengers who delivered bad news from a random drawing as relatively...
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- September 2017
- Article
The Belief in a Favorable Future
By: Todd Rogers, Don A. Moore and Michael I. Norton
People believe that future others’ preferences and beliefs will change to align with their own. People holding a particular view (e.g., support of President Trump) are more likely to believe that future others will share their view than to believe that future others...
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- June 2017
- Article
When Novel Rituals Lead to Intergroup Bias: Evidence from Economic Games and Neurophysiology
By: Nicholas M. Hobson, Francesca Gino, Michael I. Norton and Michael Inzlicht
Long-established rituals in pre-existing cultural groups have been linked to the cultural evolution of large-scale group cooperation. Here we test the prediction that novel rituals—arbitrary hand and body gestures enacted in a stereotypical and repeated fashion—can...
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