Gilbert, D. T., Lieberman, M. D., Morewedge, C. K., & Wilson, T. D. (2004). The peculiar longevity of things not so bad. Psychological Science, 15(1), 14-19.

Intense hedonic states trigger psychological processes that are designed to attenuate them, and thus intense states may abate more quickly than mild states. Because people are unaware of these psychological processes, they may mistakenly expect intense states to last longer than mild ones. In Study 1, participants predicted that the more they initially disliked a …

Gilbert, D. T., & Ebert, J. E. J. (2002). Decisions and revisions: The affective forecasting of changeable outcomes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(4), 503-514.

People prefer to make changeable decisions rather than unchangeable decisions because they do not realize that they may be more satisfied with the latter. Photography students believed that having the opportunity to change their minds about which prints to keep would not influence their liking of the prints. However, those who had the opportunity to …

Higgins, E. T., Rholes, W. S., & Jones, C. R. (1977). Category accessibility and impression formation. Journal of experimental social psychology, 13(2), 141-154.

The present study examined the immediate and delayed effects of unobtrusive exposure to personality trait terms (e.g., “reckless”, “persistent”) on subjects’ subsequent judgments and recollection of information about another person. Before reading a deion of a stimulus person, subjects were unobtrusively exposed to either positive or negative trait terms that either could or could not …

Dijksterhuis, A., & van Knippenberg, A. (1998). The relation between perception and behavior, or how to win a game of Trivial Pursuit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(4), 865-877.

The authors tested and confirmed the hypothesis that priming a stereotype or trait leads to complex overt behavior in line with this activated stereotype or trait. Specifically, 4 experiments established that priming the stereotype of professors or the trait intelligent enhanced participants’ performance on a scale measuring general knowledge. Also, priming the stereotype of soccer …

Wegner, D. M., Erber, R., & Zanakos, S. (1993). Ironic processes in the mental control of mood and mood-related thought. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(6), 1093-1104.

Investigated the mental control of mood and mood-related thought. In Exp 1, Ss reminiscing about a happy or sad event were asked to make their mood positive, were given no instructions, or were asked to make their mood negative. Ss attempting mood control without an imposed cognitive load were successful, whereas those who attempted control …

Gilbert, D. T., Morewedge, C. K., Risen, J. L., & Wilson, T. D. (2004). Looking forward to looking backward: The misprediction of regret. Psychological Science, 15(5), 346-350.

Decisions are powerfully affected by anticipated regret, and people anticipate feeling more regret when they lose by a narrow margin than when they lose by a wide margin. But research suggests that people are remarkably good at avoiding self-blame, and hence they may be better at avoiding regret than they realize. Four studies measured people’s …

Ritov, I. (1996). Probability of regret: Anticipation of uncertainty resolution in choice. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 66(2), 228-236.

In choice between uncertain options, uncertainty may be eventually resolved for all options, or just for the chosen option. The findings described here demonstrate that preference between uncertain options is systematically affected by expectations concerning uncertainty resolution: Prospects which are less likely to yield worse outcome than the alternative are selected more often when all …

Taylor, S. E., & Lobel, M. (1989). Social comparison activity under threat: Downward evaluation and upward contacts. Psychological Review, 96(4), 569-575.

Social comparison processes include the desire to affiliate with others, the desire for information about others, and explicit self-evaluation against others. Previously these types of comparison activities and their corresponding measures have been treated as interchangeable. We present evidence that in certain groups under threat, these comparison activities diverge, with explicit self-evaluation made against a …

Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & LaPrelle, J. (1985). Social comparison after success and failure: Biased search for information consistent with a self-serving conclusion.

Based on the traditional and attributional perspectives on social comparison, it was hypothesized that the search for social comparison information after performance outcomes is biased so as to provide evidence consistent with a favorable self-evaluation. In Experiment 1, subjects were led to believe that they obtained 16 or 8 out of 20 items correct on …

Munro, G. D., Ditto, P. H., Lockhart, L. K., Fagerlin, A., Gready, M., & Peterson, E. (2002). Biased assimilation of sociopolitical arguments: Evaluating the 1996 US presidential debate.

The tendency for people to rate attitude-confirming information more positively than attitude-disconfirming information (biased assimilation) was studied in a naturalistic context. Participants watched and evaluated the first 1996 Presidential Debate between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. Regression analyses revealed that predebate attitudes but not expectations predicted postdebate argument evaluations and perceived attitude change. Participants evaluated …