Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., Nathan DeWall, C., &Zhang, L. (2007). How emotion shapes behavior: Feedback, anticipation, and reflection, rather than direct causation.

  Fear causes fleeing and thereby saves lives: this exemplifies a popular and common sense but increasingly untenable view that the direct causation of behavior is the primary function of emotion. Instead, the authors develop a theory of emotion as a feedback system whose influence on behavior is typically indirect. By providing feedback and stimulating …

Johnson, W., &Krueger, R. F. (2006). How money buys happiness: Genetic and environmental processes linking finances and life satisfaction.

Measures of wealth such as income and assets are commonly considered to be objective measures of environmental circumstances, making direct contributions to life satisfaction. Here, the authors explored the accuracy of this assumption. Using a nationwide sample of 719 twin pairs from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States, the authors first …

Thomas, M., Desai, K. K., &Seenivasan, S. (2010). How credit card payments increase unhealthy food purchases: Visceral regulation of vices. Journal of consumer research, 38(1), 126-139.

  Some food items that are commonly considered unhealthy also tend to elicit impulsive responses. The pain of paying in cash can curb impulsive urges to purchase such unhealthy food products. Credit card payments, in contrast, are relatively painless and weaken impulse control. Consequently, consumers are more likely to buy unhealthy food products when they …

Aknin, L. B., et al. (2012). Happiness runs in a circular motion: Evidence for a positive feedback loop between prosocial spending and happiness. Journal of Happiness Studies, 13(2), 347-355.

We examine whether a positive feedback loop exists between spending money on others (i.e. prosocial spending) and happiness. Participants recalled a previous purchase made for either themselves or someone else and then reported their happiness. Afterward, participants chose whether to spend a monetary windfall on themselves or someone else. Participants assigned to recall a purchase …

Easterlin, R. A. (2003). Explaining happiness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(19), 11176-11183.

What do social survey data tell us about the determinants of happiness? First, that the psychologists’ setpoint model is questionable. Life events in the nonpecuniary domain, such as marriage, divorce, and serious disability, have a lasting effect on happiness, and do not simply deflect the average person temporarily above or below a setpoint given by …

DeVoe, S. E., &House, J. (2012). Time, money, and happiness: How does putting a price on time affect our ability to smell the roses?

In this paper, we investigate how the impatience that results from placing a price on time impairs individuals’ ability to derive happiness from pleasurable experiences. Experiment 1 demonstrated that thinking about one’s income as an hourly wage reduced the happiness that participants derived from leisure time on the internet. Experiment 2 revealed that a similar …

Nawijn, J., Marchand, M. A., Veenhoven, R., &Vingerhoets, A. J. (2010). Vacationers happier, but most not happier after a holiday.

  The aim of this study was to obtain a greater insight into the association between vacations and happiness. We examined whether vacationers differ in happiness, compared to those not going on holiday, and if a holiday trip boosts post-trip happiness. These questions were addressed in a pre-test/post-test design study among 1,530 Dutch individuals. 974 …

MacLeod, A. K., Pankhania, B., Lee, M., &Mitchell, D. (1997). Parasuicide, depression and the anticipation of positive and negative future experiences. Psychological Medicine, 27(4), 973-977.

Background. Previous research has shown that parasuicides’ view of the future is characterized by an absence of anticipation of positive experiences rather than the presence of anticipation of negative experiences. The present study aimed to replicate this finding and examine whether it would also be found in parasuicides who were not depressed.   Method. Depressed …

Neal, D. T., Wood, W., Wu, M., &Kurlander, D. (2011). The pull of the past: When do habits persist despite conflict with motives?.

  To identify the factors that disrupt and maintain habit performance, two field experiments tested the conditions under which people eat out of habit, leading them to resist motivational influences. Habitual popcorn eaters at a cinema were minimally influenced by their hunger or how much they liked the food, and they ate equal amounts of …