People exhibit an "illusion of courage" when predicting their own behavior in embarrassing situations. In three experiments, participants overestimated their own willingness to engage in embarrassing public performances in exchange for money when those performances were psychologically distant:...

Social exchange theories posit that people engage in diverse forms of exchange to enhance their own interests. Knowing whom to exchange with and what to exchange, however, requires an understanding of other people's wants and needs. Gaining such an understanding requires skill at perspective...

In 5 studies, the authors examined people's perceptions of the endowment effect, or the tendency to value an object more once one owns it. In the 1st 2 studies, the authors documented egocentric empathy gaps between owners and buyers regarding the endowment effect: Both owners and buyers...

The results of six experiments indicate that emotional intensity reduces perceived psychological distance. People who described events emotionally rather than neutrally perceived those events as less psychologically distant, including embarrassing autobiographical events (Experiment 1), past and...

Although previous research has shown that helping others leads to higher happiness than helping oneself, people frequently predict that self-serving behavior will make them happier than prosocial behavior. Here, we explore whether abstract construal — thinking about an event from a higher...