Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind….

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind: How regulatory mode affects inter-temporal choices • Lucia Mannetti*, Susanne Leder**, Libera Insalata*, Antonio Pierro*, Tory Higgins***, Arie Kruglanski**** • * University of Rome, La Sapienza, Italy • ** Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen, Germany • *** Columbia University, New York, USA • **** University of Maryland, College Park, USA

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind…. • In every-day life people have to decide whether • to get an immediate pleasure (e.g. tasting an ice-cream = luxuriating during summer, like the grasshopper) or • to renounce to it in order to get the delayed benefits (decreased body weight = storing food for next winter, like the patient ant)

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • Psychologists talk of: • delay of gratification(e.g. Mischel, Ayduck, Mendoza-Denton, 2003) • self-control and will-power(e.g. Baumeister, Vohs, 2003), • Economists of: • temporal discounting • constant discount rate

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • Neuro-economy (McClure, et al. 2004): when making inter-temporal choices two neural systems are competing: • the limbic (i.e., affective) system (lower, automatic); • the lateral prefrontal cortex and associated structures that are typically viewed as more cognitive regions (recently evolved)

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • Which factors will increase the strength of the two different systems? • Previous studies : cognitive load, drug and alcohol consumption, sexual arousal reduce strength of cognitive s. (Ariely, Lowenstein, 2003) • we hypothesize the influence of tworegulatory mode orientations, namely locomotion and assessment(Higgins, et al. 2003; Kruglanski, et al. 2000).

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • the aspect of self-regulation concerned with • movement from state to state • committing the psychological resources that will initiate and maintain goal-related movement LOCOMOTION

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • The aspect of self-regulation concerned with: • critically evaluation in order to judge relative quality • determination of value or importance of something • critical appraisal as a guide for action. ASSESSMENT

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • According to Camerer, et al.(2005) assessment is like controlled processes and locomotion is like automatic processes. • locomotion and assessment can be made more salient by situational factors

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • Therefore, we hypothesized: • if locomotion>assessment = more impulsive choices • if assessment>locomotion = more far-sighted choices • We experimentally induced either a locomotion orientation or an assessment

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • Method • 40 students (20 females and 20 males) from University of Rome La Sapienza participated in the study on voluntary bases (mean age = 24 years) • 2 experimental phases presented to participants as involving two independent studies. • 1st intended to manipulate regulatory modes, following Avnet and Higgins’ (2002)procedure • 2nd: inter-temporal choice task

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • In the locomotion condition, participants were asked to “think of a day when: • they had made many different things, • they had finished one project and did not wait long before starting a new one, • they had decided to do something and could not wait to get started”.

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • In the assessment condition, they were asked to “think of a day when: • they had compared themselves with other people, • they had thought about their positive and negative characteristics, • they had critiqued work done by others or themselves”.

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • Choice tasks: 2 alternatives presented on a screen, (earlier reward always on the left) Responses made by pressing one of two buttons corresponding to the location of the options

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • Participants informed that they would receive money corresponding to one of their choices (randomly selected) • Participants were allowed as much time to respond as desired • The task took about 20 minutes

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • First, 2 questions to get acclimatized to the task. • Then, in random order, all the 48 choice pairs generated by combining: • the amount of the early reward • the delay to the later reward • the percent increase of later reward

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • Amount early reward (AER): 5 or 40 Euros • Delay of later reward (DLR): 2 or 4 or 6 weeks • Percent increase of later reward (PILR):1%, or 3%, or 5%, or 10%, or 15%, or 25%, or 35%, or 50%. • Choices coded “0” when early reward, and “1” when delayed reward

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • 2 (Regulatory mode) x 2 (AER) x 3 (DLR) x 8 (PILR) Anova with the last 3 factors as repeated measures. • significant between-subjects effect of regulatory mode(F1,38 = 6,553, p <.01; ηp2 = .15):

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • within-subject main effects of: • AER (F1,38 = 62,742, p <.0001, ηp2 = .62) • DLR (F2,76 = 43,454, p <.001, ηp2 = .53)

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • PILR (F7,266 = 58,627, p <.0001, ηp2 = .61). Choices of later reward

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind • Regulatory mode by AER by PILR interaction (F7,266 = 2,379 p <.02, ηp2 = .06).

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind Results of this study: • confirm previous findings • show that people may be more or less far-sighted as a function of the experimentally induced regulatory mode • In other words regulatory mode is one of the factors that can explain “intra-individual” variability in impatience (Camerer, et al., 2005).

Thanks …

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind….