Encouraging Replotting to Promote Persuasion: How Imagining Alternative Plotlines Influences Message Processing and Intentions

Leave a Comment / Anxiety and Communication, Anxiety Research /

Communication Research, Volume 50, Issue 3, Page 338-360, April 2023. This set of studies investigated replotting as a mechanism of narrative persuasion. Replotting involves both the cognitive act of imagining alternative plot lines to avoid an undesirable story outcome and an accompanying emotion such as anger, anxiety, or sadness. Both studies utilized a 2 (story outcome: death vs. survivor) × 2 (efficacy appeal: present vs. absent) message experiment design. Study 1 (N = 1,207) tested a non-narrative efficacy appeal appended to the story and assessed replotting anger. Study 2 (N = 716) tested an efficacy appeal embedded within the narrative and assessed replotting anger, anxiety, and sadness. Death narratives generated greater replotting sadness across efficacy conditions and greater replotting anger and anxiety when a narrative efficacy appeal was not included in the story. Replotting was negatively related to counterarguing and positively related to message elaboration. Replotting influenced behavioral intention either via counterarguing or message elaboration dependent on the efficacy condition.

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What Makes Populist Messages Persuasive? Experimental Evidence for How Emotions and Issue Characteristics Moderate Populist Framing Effects

Leave a Comment / Fear and Politics, Fear Research /

Communication Research, Ahead of Print. Research asserts that populist messages are more persuasive when the audience’s predispositions align with the framing and topic of these messages. Yet, few studies have empirically analyzed this assertion. In this article, we examine how people’s emotional reactions to social issues (fear/anger) and the belief that society is in decline condition people’s reactions to populist framed messages, and whether a populist framing is more persuasive on specific issues—that is, the European refugee crisis, climate change, or the pension crisis. We also focus on two effects of populist messages: issue-specific attributions of responsibility and populist attitudes. Based on a survey experiment, we find that people who are more fearful about social issues express more populist attitudes after reading a populist framed message, compared to a pluralist framed message, and that populist messages increase the attribution of responsibility to politicians for the European refugee crisis and climate change (i.e., global issues).

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The timing of help: Receiving help toward the end (vs. beginning) undermines psychological ownership and subjective well-being.

Leave a Comment / Happiness Improvement, Happiness Research /

Giving help is a generous act, but it can cause psychological distress for the recipients by inducing feelings of dependency, incompetence, or indebtedness. The current research identifies a novel factor—the timing of help in the course of an activity—that modulates the negative effect of help on the recipient’s subjective well-being. Across nine studies, we show that people experience less happiness and satisfaction when they receive help in a later (vs. earlier) stage of an activity. We attribute this timing effect to the recipient’s loss of psychological ownership of the activity; help causes a temporary, perceived shift of ownership from the recipient to the helper, and the recipient perceives a greater loss of ownership after receiving help in a later (vs. earlier) stage. We also identify two theoretical moderators: The effect holds when the activity is pursued for intrinsic reasons (e.g., for enjoyment) but not when the activity is pursued for extrinsic reasons (e.g., out of obligation), and the effect holds when help is dependency-oriented (e.g., providing full solutions) but not when help is autonomy-oriented (e.g., providing tools). Our findings advance the current understanding of how the provision of help can hurt a recipient’s well-being and offer practical insight into when help should be given to minimize such harmful effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

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A meta-analysis of the dark side of the American dream: Evidence for the universal wellness costs of prioritizing extrinsic over intrinsic goals.

Leave a Comment / Happiness News, Happiness Research /

Self-determination theory holds that the intrinsic and extrinsic content of people’s aspirations differentially affect their wellness. An evidence base spanning nearly 30 years indicates that focusing on intrinsic goals (such as for growth, relationships, community giving, and health) promotes well-being, whereas a focus on extrinsic goals (such as for wealth, fame, and beauty) deters well-being. Yet, the evidence base contains exceptions, and some authors have argued that focusing on extrinsic goals may not be universally detrimental. We conducted a systematic review and used multilevel meta-analytic structural equation modeling to evaluate the links between intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations with indices of well-being and ill-being. Across 92 reports (105 studies), 1,808 effects, and a total sample of N = 70,110, we found that intrinsic aspirations were linked positively with well-being, r = 0.24 [95% CI 0.22, 0.27], and negatively with ill-being, r = −0.11 [−0.14, −0.08]. When the variety of extrinsic aspiration scoring methods were combined, the link with well-being was not statistically significant, r = 0.02 [−0.02, 0.06]. However, when extrinsic aspirations were evaluated in terms of their predominance in the overall pattern of aspiring the effect was universally detrimental, linking negatively to well-being, r = −0.22 [−0.32, −0.11], and positively to ill-being, r = 0.23 [0.17, 0.30]. Meta-analytic conclusions about the associations between goal types and wellness are important because they inform how individuals could shape aspirations to support their own happiness and how groups and institutions can frame goals such that their pursuit is for the common good. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

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Never underestimate fears, blocks, and resistances: The interplay between experiential practices, self‐conscious emotions, and the therapeutic relationship in compassion focused therapy

Leave a Comment / Anxiety and Communication, Anxiety News, Anxiety Research, Anxiety Resources, Anxiety Treatment, Fear Research, Psychotherapy Research, Social Anxiety Resources /

Journal of Clinical Psychology, EarlyView.

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[Articles] Grading disorder severity and averted burden by access to treatment within the GBD framework: a case study with anxiety disorders

Leave a Comment / Anxiety and Psychometrics, Anxiety News, Anxiety Public Health, Anxiety Research, Case Histories of Anxiety /

Because it is based on guidance from a single survey done in one high-income country, the burden of anxiety disorders in low-income and middle-income countries is probably underestimated by GBD. Despite the availability of effective treatments, low use of these treatments means that most burden is still avoidable. Most of the burden could be averted if all people with anxiety disorders had access to optimal treatment, highlighting the importance of public promotion and referral pathways of treatment for anxiety disorders.

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Computational Mechanisms of Addiction and Anxiety: A Developmental Perspective

Leave a Comment / Anxiety Research, neuroscience /

Biological Psychiatry, Volume 93, Issue 8, 2023 Apr 15, Pages 739-750 | Goldway, Noam; Eldar, Eran; Shoval, Gal;…AbstractA central goal of computational psychiatry is to identify systematic relationships between transdiagnostic dimensions of psychiatric symptomatology and the latent learning and decision-making computations that inform individuals’ thoughts,…

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