Self-control, future orientation, smoking, and the impact of Dutch tobacco control measures

Introduction: The pronounced discrepancy between smokers' intentions to quit and their smoking behavior has led researchers to suggest that many smokers are time inconsistent, have self-control problems, and may benefit from external efforts to constrain their consumption. This study aims to test whether self-control and future orientation predict smoking levels and to identify if these traits modify how cigarette consumption responds to the introduction of tobacco control measures. Methods: A sample of Dutch adults (N=1585) completed a measure of self-control and the Consideration of Future Consequences Scale (CFCS) in 2001 and indicated their tobacco consumption each year from 2001 to 2007. In 2004, a workplace smoking ban and substantial tax increase on tobacco was introduced in the Netherlands. To identify the potential impact of these tobacco control measures we examined whether participants smoked or were heavy smokers (20+ cigarettes per day) each year from 2001 to 2007. Results: Participants with high self-control and CFCS scores showed lower rates of smoking across the seven year period of the study. The 2004 smoking restrictions were linked with a subsequent decline in heavy smoking. This decline was moderated by self-control levels. Those with low self-control showed a large reduction in heavy smoking whereas those with high self-control did not. The effects were, however, temporary: many people with low self-control resumed heavy smoking 2-3years after the introduction of the tobacco restrictions. Conclusions: The immediate costs which national tobacco control measures impose on smokers may assist smokers with poor self-control in reducing their cigarette consumption

Conscious thought does not guide moment-to-moment actions—it serves social and cultural functions

Humans enjoy a private, mental life that is richer and more vivid than that of any other animal. Yet as central as the conscious experience is to human life, numerous disciplines have long struggled to explain it. The present paper reviews the latest theories and evidence from psychology that addresses what conscious thought is and how it affects human behavior. We suggest that conscious thought adapts human behavior to life in complex society and culture. First, we review research challenging the common notion that conscious thought directly guides and controls action. Second, we present an alternative view—that conscious thought processes actions and events that are typically removed from the here and now, and that it indirectly shapes action to favor culturally adaptive responses. Third, we summarize recent empirical work on conscious thought, which generally supports this alternative view. We see conscious thought as the place where the unconscious mind assembles ideas so as to reach new conclusions about how best to behave, or what outcomes to pursue or avoid. Rather than directly controlling action, conscious thought provides the input from these kinds of mental simulations to the executive. Conscious thought offers insights about the past and future, socially shared information, and cultural rules. Without it, the complex forms of social and cultural coordination that define human life would not be possible

Childhood Self-Control and Unemployment Throughout the Life Span: Evidence From Two British Cohort Studies

The capacity for self-control may underlie successful labor-force entry and job retention, particularly in times of economic uncertainty. Analyzing unemployment data from two nationally representative British cohorts (N = 16,780), we found that low self-control in childhood was associated with the emergence and persistence of unemployment across four decades. On average, a 1-SD increase in self-control was associated with a reduction in the probability of unemployment of 1.4 percentage points after adjustment for intelligence, social class, and gender. From labor-market entry to middle age, individuals with low self-control experienced 1.6 times as many months of unemployment as those with high self-control. Analysis of monthly unemployment data before and during the 1980s recession showed that individuals with low self-control experienced the greatest increases in unemployment during the recession. Our results underscore the critical role of self-control in shaping life-span trajectories of occupational success and in affecting how macroeconomic conditions affect unemployment levels in the population

Forget the Folk: Moral Responsibility Preservation Motives and Other Conditions for Compatibilism

For years, experimental philosophers have attempted to discern whether laypeople find free will compatible with a scientifically deterministic understanding of the universe, yet no consensus has emerged. The present work provides one potential explanation for these discrepant findings: People are strongly motivated to preserve free will and moral responsibility, and thus do not have stable, logically rigorous notions of free will. Seven studies support this hypothesis by demonstrating that a variety of logically irrelevant (but motivationally relevant) features influence compatibilist judgments. In Study 1, participants who were asked to consider the possibility that our universe is deterministic were more compatibilist than those not asked to consider this possibility, suggesting that determinism poses a threat to moral responsibility, which increases compatibilist responding (thus reducing the threat). In Study 2, participants who considered concrete instances of moral behavior found compatibilist free will more sufficient for moral responsibility than participants who were asked about moral responsibility more generally. In Study 3a, the order in which participants read free will and determinism descriptions influenced their compatibilist judgments–and only when the descriptions had moral significance: Participants were more likely to report that determinism was compatible with free will than that free will was compatible with determinism. In Study 3b, participants who read the free will description first (the more compatibilist group) were particularly likely to confess that their beliefs in free will and moral responsibility and their disbelief in determinism influenced their conclusion. In Study 4, participants reduced their compatibilist beliefs after reading a passage that argued that moral responsibility could be preserved even in the absence of free will. Participants also reported that immaterial souls were compatible with scientific determinism, most strongly among immaterial soul believers (Study 5), and evaluated information about the capacities of primates in a biased manner favoring the existence of human free will (Study 6). These results suggest that people do not have one intuition about whether free will is compatible with determinism. Instead, people report that free will is compatible with determinism when desiring to uphold moral responsibility. Recommendations for future work are discussed

Home Team (Dis)Advantage Patterns in the National Hockey League:Changes Through Increased Emphasis on Individual Performance with the 3-on-3 Overtime Rule

Past research examining National Hockey League (professional ice hockey; NHL) data from the 4-on-4 overtime era (seasons between 2005-06 and 2013-14) revealed an inconsistent home team (dis)advantage pattern (Hoffmann et al., 2017) such that home teams that were superior to their visiting counterparts had slightly greater odds of winning during regulation play compared to overtime (demonstrating home crowd advantages for team performance during regulation); in contrast, home teams experienced lower odds of winning in the shootout period than in overtime regardless of team quality (thereby demonstrating risks for individual choking from home crowd pressures). In this study, we explored the NHL home (dis)advantage pattern during four more recent seasons (2015-16 through 2018-19) in which the league instituted 3-on-3 play during overtime (perhaps increasing individual pressure for athletes competing in the 3-on-3 overtime period). We used archival data from the regular season (N = 5,002 games) to compare home teams’ odds of winning in regulation (with 5-on-5 skaters per team) to overtime (with 3-on-3) and in the shootout, adjusting for the quality of home and visiting teams. We conducted fixed-effects and multi-level logistic regression modeling. Evenly matched home teams were 1.66 times more likely to win than inferior home teams when games concluded in regulation versus overtime. Superior home teams were 4.24 times more likely to win than inferior home teams when games concluded in regulation rather than overtime. Thus, it is apparently more difficult for superior and evenly matched home teams to win in overtime than during regulation, suggesting that such home teams may be susceptible to choking in overtime. In contrast to the earlier 4-on-4 overtime era, home teams did not have lower odds of winning in the shootout compared to overtime. These results may have implications for NHL coaches’ and players’ tactical decision-making