We studied the decision making process in the Dictator Game and showed that decisions are the result of a two-step process. In a first step, decision makers generate an automatic, intuitive proposal. Given sufficient motivation and cognitive resources, they adjust this in a second, more...

We studied the decision making process in the Dictator Game and showed that decisions are the result of a two-step process. In a first step, decision makers generate an automatic, intuitive proposal. Given sufficient motivation and cognitive resources, they adjust this in a second, more...

People are often exposed to actionable food temptations (i.e., an immediate opportunity to consume, like when friends offer cookies) and nonactionable food temptations (i.e., no immediate consumption opportunity, like ads for chocolate). The results of three experiments suggest that prior...

Markman and Brendl have demonstrated that individuals tend to regard as more valuable those objects that are able to satisfy an active desire. Building on their framework, we predicted that desire would enlarge the consideration set and, hence, affect variety-seeking tendencies in a product...

The present paper shows that people’s compliance with a request can be substantially increased if the requester first gets them to agree with a series of statements unrelated to the request, but selected to induce agreement. We label this effect the ‘mere agreement effect’, and present a...

Neuroscientific studies demonstrate that erotic stimuli activate the reward circuitry processing monetary and drug rewards. Theoretically, a general reward system may give rise to nonspecific effects: exposure to "hot stimuli" from one domain may thus affect decisions in a different domain. We...

We suggest that cultivating an individual‟s connectedness to others promotes socially responsible behavior both directly and indirectly through increased perceived ability to make a difference. Individuals whose interdependent self is more prominent feel they have more of an impact on larger...

Recent research on the dynamics of moral behavior has documented two contrasting phenomena - moral consistency and moral balancing. Moral balancing refers to the phenomenon whereby behaving (un)ethically decreases the likelihood of doing so again at a later time. Moral consistency describes the...

We suggest that cultivating an individual's connectedness to others promotes socially responsible behavior both directly and indirectly – through increased perceived ability to make a difference. Individuals whose interdependent self is more prominent feel they have more of an impact on larger...