New Directions in Self-Regulation Research
Roy Baumeister (Florida State University).
Just when we thought we had worked out the main outlines of self-regulation theory, several new findings have emerged to challenge that picture. This talk presents results from laboratory, longitudinal, and meta-analytic studies. High self-control may specialize less in resisting temptation than in avoiding it. Self-control is often highly effective but does grow weaker (ego depletion) as the day wears on. Ego depletion intensifies subjective desires and feelings, rather than just weakening powers of restraint. Similarity in trait self-control is not the best predictor of relationship satisfaction. Powerful leaders self-regulate task performance in unusual ways, sometimes performing better but sometimes worse than subordinates.
Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets
Roland Benabou (Princeton University).
This paper investigates collective denial and willful blindness in groups, organizations and markets. Agents with anticipatory preferences, linked through an interaction structure, choose how to interpret and recall public signals about future prospects. Wishful thinking (denial of bad news) is shown to be contagious when it is harmful to others, and self-limiting when it is bene…cial. Similarly, with Kreps-Porteus preferences, willful blindness (information avoidance) spreads when it increases the risks borne by others. This general mechanism can generate multiple social cognitions of reality, and in hierarchies it implies that realism and delusion will trickle down from the leaders. The welfare analysis di¤erentiates group morale from groupthink and identi…es a fundamental tension in organizations’ attitudes toward dissent. Contagious exuberance can also seize asset markets, generating investment frenzies and crashes.
