The Martyrdom Effect: When Pain and Effort Increase Prosocial Contributions

Most theories of motivation and behavior (and lay intuitions alike) consider pain and effort to be deterrents. In contrast to this widely held view, we provide evidence that the prospect of enduring pain and exerting effort for a prosocial cause can promote contributions to the cause. Specifically, we show that willingness to contribute to a charitable or collective cause increases when the contribution process is expected to be painful and effortful rather than easy and enjoyable. Across five experiments, we document this “martyrdom effect,” show that the observed patterns defy standard economic and psychological accounts, and identify a mediator and moderator of the effect. Experiment 1 showed that people are willing to donate more to charity when they anticipate having to suffer to raise money. Experiment 2 extended these findings to a non‐charity laboratory context that involved real money and actual pain. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the martyrdom effect is not the result of an attribute substitution strategy (whereby people use the amount of pain and effort involved in fundraising to determine donation worthiness). Experiment 4 showed that perceptions of meaningfulness partially mediate the martyrdom effect. Finally, Experiment 5 demonstrated that the nature of the prosocial cause moderates the martyrdom effect: the effect is strongest for causes associated with human suffering. We propose that anticipated pain and effort lead people to ascribe greater meaning to their contributions and to the experience of contributing, thereby motivating higher prosocial contributions. We conclude by considering some implications of this puzzling phenomenon. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance and Learning of Generalized Motor Programs: Relative (GMP) and Absolute (Parameter) Errors

The effects of practice (Experiment 1) and parameter variability (Experiment 2) on the learning of generalized motor programs (GMPs) and movement parameterization were investigated In each experiment, 2 tasks with different relative force-time structures were tested. Participants (N = 32, Experiment (N = 40, Experiment 2) attempted to exert a pattern of force that resembled in force and time a waveform that was displayed on a computer monitor. In both experiments, the analysis suggested that the GMP, although refined over practice, was relatively stable (i.e., resistant to decay and interference), even early in practice (after 20 trials). In addition, the results indicated that constant and variable parameter practice did not differentially affect GMP learning but did degrade the learning of the parameter that was not varied. The data provided additional evidence for the dissociation of the GMP and the parameterization processes proposed in GMP theory. Contrary to schema theory, the present data suggest an interdependence between the force and the time parameters: The manipulation of 1 of the parameters has a negative effect on the learning of the other parameter.     

Resemblance and investment in children

According to evolutionary explanations men hardly ever are absolutely certain about their biological fatherhood therefore they must seek various sources of information to subjectively establish whether they are the genetic fathers of the children they raise. Apicella and Marlowe (2004) showed that fathers who perceived greater similarity between their children and themselves were willing to invest more resources (e.g., time, money, care) in their offspring presumably because the perceived resemblance indicated to the fathers their genetic relatedness with their children. The present study extended the design of Apicella and Marlowe's original study and included both fathers and mothers as participants. Parents were recruited by a female confederate at the airport and at the railway station in Wroclaw (Poland). Multiple regression analyses showed that perceived resemblance predicted parental investment in the child for both men and women. The fact that mothers' declarations of investment in their children also depended on the perceived resemblance factor is not consistent with evolutionary formulations delineated by Apicella and Marlowe (2004; 2007). Future studies must resolve the issue of whether the resemblance‐investment relation in fathers results from men relaying on child's resemblance to themselves as an indicator of their own biological paternity, or whether it results from the more parsimonious phenomenon that people in general are attracted more to other people who are similar to them.     

Predicting Psychologists' Intentions to Integrate Complementary and Alternative Therapies Into Their Practice

Drawing on an extended Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) framework, we employed a cross‐sectional design study to investigate psychologists' intentions to integrate complementary and alternative therapies (CAT) into their practice via recommending CAT to clients or referring clients to CAT practitioners. Participants were registered practicing psychologists from a range of therapeutic orientations (e.g., narrative, cognitive behavioural, psychodynamic). The psychologists were either recruited by phone, following a search of the Internet, or were contacted through their place of employment (hospitals, university counselling service). Those who agreed to participate (N = 122; n = 88 females, n = 34 males) completed a questionnaire that included standard TPB items of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control, along with items measuring perceived risk, past behaviour, CAT knowledge, and gender. The outcome variables of interest were (a) intention to recommend CAT to clients and (b) intention to refer clients to CAT practitioners. Structural equation modelling revealed that the extended model was a good fit, explaining 69% (recommending CAT) and 51% (referring to CAT practitioners) of the variance in intentions. For both behaviours, direct paths from attitude and subjective norm to intentions were observed, with perceived risk and past behaviour influencing the TPB predictors of attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control. The findings illustrate the role that cognitive and risk factors have on psychologists' decisions to integrate CAT into their practice. Understanding psychologists' cognitions and decisions about CAT integration forms an important basis on which to consider future changes in policy or practice.     

Constructing Confidence Intervals for Effect Size Measures of an Indirect Effect

Confidence intervals for an effect size can provide the information about the magnitude of an effect and its precision as well as the binary decision about the existence of an effect. In this study, the performances of five different methods for constructing confidence intervals for ratio effect size measures of an indirect effect were compared in terms of power, coverage rates, Type I error rates, and widths of confidence intervals. The five methods include the percentile bootstrap method, the bias-corrected and accelerated (BCa) bootstrap method, the delta method, the Fieller method, and the Monte Carlo method. The results were discussed with respect to the adequacy of the distributional assumptions and the nature of ratio quantity. The confidence intervals from the five methods showed similar results for samples of more than 500, whereas, for samples of less than 500, the confidence intervals were sufficiently narrow to convey the information about the population effect sizes only when the effect sizes of regression coefficients defining the indirect effect are large.     

The perils of intimacy: Closeness and distance in feeding and weaning

This paper is based on work in the baby clinic of a general practice, with examples from infant observation, and ideas from recent research. It is something of an interdisciplinary paper.     

Basic Response Time Tools for Studying General Processing Capacity in Attention,Perception, and Cognition

One of the more important constructs in the study of attention, perception, and cognition is that of capacity. The authors reviewed some of the common meanings of this construct and proposed a more precise treatment. They showed how the distribution of response times can be used to derive measures of process capacity and to further illustrate how these measures can be used to address important hypotheses in cognition.     

The Duration and Intensity of the Exposure Light as Factors in Determining the Course of the Subsequent Dark-Adaptation: I. the Matching Method

The authors investigated the phenomenon that performance in an ongoing task declines when individuals must carry out a prospective memory (PM) task. This effect is referred to as the PM interference effect. The authors examined whether the PM interference effect differs between event-based and time-based PM tasks and whether it is increased among the elderly. The authors also investigated adult age differences in PM performance and the potential underlying mechanisms of the age deficits in PM. They found that the PM interference effect was greater in event-based than in time-based tasks. However, aging was not associated with an increase in PM interference effects. Age differences in PM performance were more exaggerated in time-based than event-based PM, but they were not mediated by age differences in traditional cognitive ability measures. In time-based PM, age showed a unique adverse effect even after controlling for the ability to externally monitor the time, leading to the possibility that aging disrupts time-based PM because of deficits in internally processing the time.