Friday, June 7, 2019

Self-serving Optimism in Hedonic Prediction: People Believe in a Bright Future for Themselves and Their Friends, but Not for Their Enemies

Sjåstad, Hallgeir, Siv Skard, Helge Thorbjørnsen, and Elisabeth Norman. 2019. “Self-serving Optimism in Hedonic Prediction: People Believe in a Bright Future for Themselves and Their Friends, but Not for Their Enemies.” PsyArXiv. June 7. doi:10.31234/osf.io/wgc3z

Abstract: According to longitudinal research, psychological well-being is remarkably stable over time. However, people may still believe that the future will deviate from the past in a non-random, desirable direction. Across three experiments in USA and Norway (N=1,130; two pre-registered), participants were randomly assigned to report their well-being in the past (1-5 years back) or predict their future well-being (1-5 years ahead). In line with a "bright-future hypothesis", people had a strong tendency to predict higher levels of happiness and meaning in the future than the past. Rather than being the result of a cognitive illusion, the evidence favored a motivated-belief explanation. Specifically, the same time asymmetry was found both in separate judgment between-persons and joint evaluation within-persons, and the expectation of future improvement generalized to the judgment of a friend but not to a personal enemy. People may typically predict a bright future when they want to see one.

Self-Gifting in Interdependent Cultures: Lonely Mothers and Self-Compassion

Self-Gifting in Interdependent Cultures: Lonely Mothers and Self-Compassion. Satoko Suzuki, Saori Kanno. European Association for Consumer Research Conference Proceedings, Volume 11, 2018. http://www3.acrwebsite.org/assets/PDFs/Proceedings/EACRVol11.pdf

ABSTRACT: Self-gifting consumer behavior, due to its nature of focus on self, its compatibility with interdependent cultures had always been questioned. Still, self-gifting is now prevalent in many interdependent cultures. This paper illuminates that self-gifting plays an important role of self-compassion for Japanese mothers feeling isolated from their family members. As demonstrated in its name and characteristics, one of the predominant aspects of self-gift consumer behavior (SGCB) is the focus on self. Hence, Mick and DeMoss (1990a) suggested that SGCB may depend on an individually-centered view of self, and questioned its existence in cultures dominant with a group-centered view of self. Thus, the investigation of SGCB in non-Western cultures has become to be one of the research agendas in the self-gift research. However, only very recently, the initiatives of exploring SGCB in the Eastern cultures have begun (e.g., Joy et al. 2006; Suzuki 2011; Tynan et al. 2010). Using the data gathered from the Japanese mothers on their SGCB, we explore how self-gifts play a role in interdependent cultures.



The Use and Misuse of Income Data and Extreme Poverty: An implication of the low recent extreme poverty rate is that it cannot be substantially higher now due to welfare reform, as many commentators have claimed

The Use and Misuse of Income Data and Extreme Poverty in the United States. Bruce D. Meyer, Derek Wu, Victoria R. Mooers, Carla Medalia. NBER Working Paper No. 25907, May 2019. https://www.nber.org/papers/w25907

Abstract: Recent research suggests that rates of extreme poverty, commonly defined as living on less than $2/person/day, are high and rising in the United States. We re-examine the rate of extreme poverty by linking 2011 data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and Current Population Survey, the sources of recent extreme poverty estimates, to administrative tax and program data. Of the 3.6 million non-homeless households with survey-reported cash income below $2/person/day, we find that more than 90% are not in extreme poverty once we include in-kind transfers, replace survey reports of earnings and transfer receipt with administrative records, and account for the ownership of substantial assets. More than half of all misclassified households have incomes from the administrative data above the poverty line, and several of the largest misclassified groups appear to be at least middle class based on measures of material well-being. In contrast, the households kept from extreme poverty by in-kind transfers appear to be among the most materially deprived Americans. Nearly 80% of all misclassified households are initially categorized as extreme poor due to errors or omissions in reports of cash income. Of the households remaining in extreme poverty, 90% consist of a single individual. An implication of the low recent extreme poverty rate is that it cannot be substantially higher now due to welfare reform, as many commentators have claimed.