Diener, E., Wirtz, D., & Oishi, S. (2001). End effects of rated life quality: The James Dean effect. Psychological science, 12(2), 124-128.

In three studies, we explored how the ending of a life influences the perceived desirability of that life. We consistently observed that participants neglected duration in judging the global quality of life. Across all the studies, the end of life was weighted heavily, producing ratings that contradict a simple hedonic calculus in which years of …

Scollon, C. N., Diener, E., Oishi, S., & Biswas-Diener, R. (2004). Emotions across cultures and methods. Journal of cross-cultural psychology, 35(3), 304-326.

Participants included 46 European American, 33 Asian American, 91 Japanese, 160 Indian, and 80 Hispanic students (N = 416). Discrete emotions, as well as pleasant and unpleasant emotions, were assessed: (a) with global self-report measures, (b) using an experience-sampling method for 1 week, and (c) by asking participants to recall their emotions from the experience …

Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological science, 8(3), 162-166.

For the past decade, an increasing number of studies have demonstrated that when individuals write about emotional experiences, significant physical and mental health improvements follow The basic paradigm and findings are summarized along with some boundary conditions Although a reduction in inhibition may contribute to the disclosure phenomenon changes in basic cognitive and linguistic processes …

Pennebaker, J. W., Mayne, T. J., & Francis, M. E. (1997). Linguistic predictors of adaptive bereavement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(4), 863-871.

The words people use in disclosing a trauma were hypothesized to predict improvements in mental and physical health in 2 studies. The first study reanalyzed data from 6 previous experiments in which language variables served as predictors of health. Results from 177 participants in previous writing studies showed that increased use of words associated with …

Wilson, T. D., Centerbar, D. B., Kermer, D. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2005). The Pleasures of Uncertainty: Prolonging Positive Moods in Ways People Do Not Anticipate.

The authors hypothesized that uncertainty following a positive event prolongs the pleasure it causes and that people are generally unaware of this effect of uncertainty. In 3 experimental settings, people experienced a positive event (e.g., received an unexpected gift of a dollar coin attached to an index card) under conditions of certainty or uncertainty (e.g., …

Hassin, R. R., Bargh, J. A., & Uleman, J. S. (2002). Spontaneous causal inferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38(5), 515-522.

Three studies examine the hypothesis that people spontaneously (i.e., unintentionally and without awareness of doing so) infer causes (the Spontaneous Causal Inference, or SCI, hypothesis). Using a cued-recall paradigm, Study 1 examines whether SCIs occur and Study 2 allows for a comparison between implicitly inferred and explicitly mentioned causes. Study 3 examines whether SCIs can …

Bluck, S., Alea, N., Habermas, T., & Rubin, D. C. (2005). A tale of three functions: The self–reported uses of autobiographical memory. Social Cognition, 23(1), 91-117.

Theories hold that autobiographical memory serves several broad functions (directive, self, and social). In the current study, items were derived from the theoretical literature to create the Thinking About Life Experiences (TALE) questionnaire to empirically assess these three functions. Participants (N = 167) completed the TALE. To examine convergent validity, they also rated their overall …

Crawford, M. T., McConnell, A. R., Lewis, A. C., & Sherman, S. J. (2002). Reactance, compliance, and anticipated regret. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38(1), 56-63.

The current work explored the relations among reactance, regret, and behavioral choice. A possible mechanism for reactance in opposition to persuasion attempts involves people anticipating greater regret for negative outcomes after complying with an agent of persuasion than for negative outcomes after reacting against an agent of persuasion. Some participants were asked to anticipate regret …

Zimbardo, P. G., Cohen, A. R., Weisenberg, M., Dworkin, L., & Firestone, I. (1966). Control of pain motivation by cognitive dissonance. Science, 151(3707), 217-219.

Responses by humans to painful electric shocks are significantly modified at subjective, behavioral, and physiological levels by verbal manipulations of degree of choice and justification for further exposure to the aversive stimuli. Pain perception, learning, and galvanic skin resistance are altered under these conditions of “cognitive dissonance,” as they are by reductions in voltage intensity. …

Jost, J. T., Pelham, B. W., Sheldon, O., & Ni Sullivan, B. (2003). Social inequality and the reduction of ideological dissonance on behalf of the system: …

According to system justification theory, people are motivated to preserve the belief that existing social arrangements are fair, legitimate, justifiable, and necessary. The strongest form of this hypothesis, which draws on the logic of cognitive dissonance theory, holds that people who are most disadvantaged by the status quo would have the greatest psychological need to …