No abstract

Two studies examined the effect of game outcome on sports fans' estimates of the team's as well as their own future performance. Consistent with social identity theory, it was expected that Ss for whom fanship was an important identity would respond to team success and failure as personal success and failure. Ss watched a live basketball game; then, in the context of a second, unrelated experiment, Ss estimated their own performance at several tasks. Results indicated that fans' mood and self-esteem were affected by game outcome. More important, fans' estimates of both the team's and their own future performance were significantly better in the win than in the loss condition. Furthermore, path analyses revealed that changes in self-esteem but not mood played a mediational role in fans' estimates of both team and their own future performance. In addition, comparisons with conditions of personal success and failure indicated that team outcome and personal outcome had similar effects on fans' estimates.

Considerable research demonstrates that the depletion of self-regulatory resources impairs performance on subsequent tasks that demand these resources. The current research sought to assess the impact of perceived resource depletion on subsequent task performance at both high and low levels of actual depletion. The authors manipulated perceived resource depletion by having participants 1st complete a depleting or nondepleting task before being presented with feedback that did or did not provide a situational attribution for their internal state. Participants then persisted at a problem-solving task (Experiments 1-2), completed an attention-regulation task (Experiment 3), or responded to a persuasive message (Experiment 4). The findings consistently demonstrated that individuals who perceived themselves as less (vs. more) depleted, whether high or low in actual depletion, were more successful at subsequent self-regulation. Thus, perceived regulatory depletion can impact subsequent task performance-and this impact can be independent of one's actual state of depletion.

Previous research has suggested that an effective strategy for debiasing judgments is to have participants "consider the opposite." The present research proposes that considering any plausible alternative outcome for an event, not just the opposite outcome, leads participants to simulate multiple alternatives, resulting in debiased judgments. Three experiments tested this hypothesis using an explanation task paradigm. Participants in all studies were asked to explain either 1 hypothetical outcome (single explanation conditions) or 2 hypothetical outcomes (multiple explanation conditions) to an event; after the explanation task, participants made likelihood judgments. The results of Studies 1 and 2 indicated that debiasing occurred in all multiple explanation conditions, including those that did not involve the opposite outcome. Furthermore, the findings indicated that debiased judgments resulted from participants' spontaneous consideration of additional alternatives in making their likelihood judgments. The results of Study 3 also identified the perceived plausibility of the explained alternative as an important moderating variable in debiasing.

The present study was an investigation of how Ss would respond when given 2 self-handicapping options, 1 behavioral (withdrawal of practice effort) and 1 self-reported (reporting high levels of stress). Ss anticipating a diagnostic test of intellectual ability were given different instructions regarding the effects of stress and practice on test performance. Ss were told that (a) stress only, (b) practice only, (c) both stress and practice, or (d) neither stress nor practice affected test scores. Ss were then given the opportunity to self-report a handicap on a stress inventory and to behaviorally self-handicap by failing to practice before the test. High self-handicapping men and women showed evidence of self-reported handicapping, but only high self-handicapping men behaviorally self-handicapped. However, when both self-handicaps were viable, both high self-handicapping men and women preferred the self-reported over the behavioral self-handicap.