Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind:

How regulatory mode affects inter-temporal choices

• Lucia Mannetti*, Susanne Leder**, Libera Insalata*, Antonio Pierro*, Tory Higgins***, Arie Kruglanski****

• * University of Rome, La Sapienza, Italy• ** Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen, Germany• *** Columbia University, New York, USA• **** University of Maryland, College Park, USA

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind….

• In every-day life people have to decide whether – to get an immediate pleasure (e.g. tasting an

ice-cream = luxuriating during summer, like the grasshopper)

or– to renounce to it in order to get the delayed

benefits (decreased body weight = storing food for next winter, like the patient ant)

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• Psychologists talk of:– delay of gratification (e.g. Mischel, Ayduck,

Mendoza-Denton, 2003)

– self-control and will-power (e.g. Baumeister, Vohs, 2003),

• Economists of:– temporal discounting– constant discount rate

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• Neuro-economy (McClure, et al. 2004): when making inter-temporal choices two neural systems are competing: – the limbic (i.e., affective) system (lower,

automatic); – the lateral prefrontal cortex and associated

structures that are typically viewed as more cognitive regions (recently evolved)

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• Which factors will increase the strength of the two different systems?– Previous studies : cognitive load, drug and

alcohol consumption, sexual arousal reduce strength of cognitive s. (Ariely, Lowenstein, 2003)

• we hypothesize the influence of two regulatory mode orientations, namely locomotion and assessment (Higgins, et al.

2003; Kruglanski, et al. 2000).

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• the aspect of self-regulation concerned with – movement from state to state– committing the psychological

resources that will initiate and maintain goal-related movement

LOCOMOTION

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• The aspect of self-regulation concerned with:

– critically evaluation in order to judge relative quality

– determination of value or importance of something

– critical appraisal as a guide for action.

ASSESSMENT

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• According to Camerer, et al.(2005) assessment is like controlled processes and locomotion is like automatic processes.

• locomotion and assessment can be made more salient by situational factors

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• Therefore, we hypothesized:

– if locomotion > assessment = more impulsive choices

– if assessment > locomotion = more far-sighted choices

• We experimentally induced either a locomotion orientation or an assessment

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• Method • 40 students (20 females and 20 males) from

University of Rome La Sapienza participated in the study on voluntary bases (mean age = 24 years)

• 2 experimental phases presented to participants as involving two independent studies. – 1st intended to manipulate regulatory modes, following

Avnet and Higgins’ (2002)procedure– 2nd: inter-temporal choice task

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• In the locomotion condition, participants were asked to “think of a day when: – they had made many different things,– they had finished one project and did not

wait long before starting a new one, – they had decided to do something and could

not wait to get started”.

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• In the assessment condition, they were asked to “think of a day when:– they had compared themselves with other

people,– they had thought about their positive and

negative characteristics,– they had critiqued work done by others or

themselves”.

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• Choice tasks: 2 alternatives presented on a screen, (earlier reward always on the left)

5 €oggi

7,50 €fra 2 settimane

Responses made by pressing one of two buttons corresponding to the location of the options

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• Participants informed that they would receive money corresponding to one of their choices (randomly selected)

• Participants were allowed as much time to respond as desired

• The task took about 20 minutes

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• First, 2 questions to get acclimatized to the task.

• Then, in random order, all the 48 choice pairs generated by combining:

– the amount of the early reward

– the delay to the later reward

– the percent increase of later reward

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• Amount early reward (AER): 5 or 40 Euros

• Delay of later reward (DLR): 2 or 4 or 6 weeks

• Percent increase of later reward (PILR): 1%, or 3%, or 5%, or 10%, or 15%, or 25%, or 35%, or 50%.

• Choices coded “0” when early reward, and “1” when delayed reward

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• 2 (Regulatory mode) x 2 (AER) x 3 (DLR) x 8 (PILR) Anova with the last 3 factors as repeated measures.

• significant between-subjects effect of regulatory mode (F1,38 = 6,553, p <.01; ηp2 = .15):

0

0,05

0,1

0,15

0,2

0,25

0,3

Assessment

Locomotion

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• within-subject main effects of:– AER (F1,38 = 62,742, p <.0001, ηp2 = .62)– DLR (F2,76 = 43,454, p <.001, ηp2 = .53)

0

0,05

0,1

0,15

0,2

0,25

0,3

0,35

amount early reward

5 Euros

40 Euros

0

0,05

0,1

0,15

0,2

0,25

0,3

weeks of delay

2 weks

4 weeks

6 weeks

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• PILR (F7,266 = 58,627, p <.0001, ηp2 = .61).

00,050,1

0,150,2

0,250,3

0,350,4

0,450,5

Increase of delayed reward

1% 3%5% 10%15% 25%35% 50%

Choices of later reward

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

• Regulatory mode by AER by PILR interaction (F7,266 = 2,379 p <.02, ηp2 = .06).

5 Euros

0

0,2

0,4

0,6

0,8

1% 3% 5% 10% 15% 25% 35% 50%

% increase later reward

late

r ch

oic

es

Locomotion

Assessment

40 Euros

0

0,2

0,4

0,6

0,8

1% 3% 5% 10% 15% 25% 35% 50%

% increase later reward

late

r ch

oic

es

Locomotion

Assessment

Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people’s mind

Results of this study:– confirm previous findings – show that people may be more or

less far-sighted as a function of the experimentally induced regulatory mode

– In other words regulatory mode is one of the factors that can explain “intra-individual” variability in impatience (Camerer, et al., 2005).

Thanks …