Confabulating reasons for behaving bad: The psychological consequences of unconsciously activated behaviour that violates one's standards

European Journal of Social Psychology

Volumn 44, Issue 3, 2014, Pages 255-266

  Adriaanse, Marieke A ^a   Weijers, Jonas ^a   De Ridder, Denise T D ^a   De Witt Huberts, Jessie ^a   Evers, Catharine ^a  

^a UTRECHT UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84898033496     PISSN: 00462772     EISSN: 10990992     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.2005     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. Aiken, L. S., & West, R. R. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
2. Anderson, C. A. (2004). An update on the effects of playing violent video games. Journal of Adolescence, 27, 113-122.
3. Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2001). Effects of violent video games on aggressive behaviour, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behaviour: A meta-analytic review of the scientific literature. Psychological Science, 12, 353-359.
4. Bar-Anan, Y., Wilson, T. D., & Hassin, R. R. (2010). Inaccurate self-knowledge formation as a result of automatic behaviour. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 884-894.
5. Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American Psychologist, 54, 462-479.
6. Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behaviour: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype priming on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 230-244.
7. Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1173-1182.
8. Bem, D. J. (1972). Self-perception theory. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 6, 1-57.
9. Berlyne, N. (1972). Confabulation. British Journal of Psychiatry, 120, 31-39. In Hirnstein, W. (2009). Confabulation: views from neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology and philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
10. Bongers, K. C. A., Dijksterhuis, A., & Spears, R. (2009). Self-esteem regulation after success and failure to attain unconsciously activated goals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 468-477.
11. Borsutzky, S., Fujiwara, E., Brand, M., & Markowitsch, H. J. (2008). Confabulations in alcoholic Korsakoff patients. Neuropsychologia, 46, 3133-3143.
12. Burger, J. M. (1992). Desire for control: Personality, social, and clinical perspectives. New York: Plenum Press.
13. Burger, J. M., & Cooper, H. M. (1979). The desirability of control. Motivation and Emotion, 3, 381-393.
14. Chartrand, T. L. (2005). The role of conscious awareness in consumer behaviour. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 15, 203-210.
15. Chartrand, T., & Bargh, J. A. (2002). Nonconscious motivations: Their activation, operation, and consequences. In A. Tesser, D. A. Stapel, & J. W. Wood (Eds.), Self and motivation: Emerging psychological perspectives (pp. 13-41). Washington, DC: APA.
16. Chartrand, T. L., Cheng, C. M., Dalton, A. N., & Tesser, A. (2010). Nonconscious goal pursuit: Isolated incidents or adaptive self-regulatory tool? Social Cognition, 28, 569-588.
17. Cooper, J., & Fazio, R. H. (1984). A new look at dissonance theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 17, (pp. 229-245). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
18. Elliot, A. J., & Devine, P. G. (1994). On the motivational nature of cognitive dissonance: Dissonance as psychological discomfort. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 382-394.
19. Evers, C., De Ridder, D. T. D., & Adriaanse, M. A. (2009). Assessing yourself as an emotional eater: Mission impossible? Health Psychology, 28, 717-725.
20. Ferguson, C. J. (2007). Evidence for publication bias in video game violence effects literature: A meta-analytic review. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 12, 470-482.
21. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Evanston: Row, Peterson.
22. Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203-210.
23. Fishbach, A., Friedman, R. S., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2003). Leading us not into temptation: Momentary allurements elicit overriding goal activation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 296-309.
24. Gailliot, M. T., Baumeister, R. F., DeWall, C. N., Maner, J. K., Plant, E. A., & Tice, D. M. (2007). Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: Willpower is more than a metaphor. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 325-336.
25. Gosling, P., Denizeau, M., & Oberle, D. (2006). Denial of responsibility: A new mode of dissonance reduction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 722-733.
26. Hirnstein, W. (2009). Confabulation: Views from neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology and philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
27. Kiesler, C. A., & Pallak, M. S. (1976). Arousal properties of dissonance manipulations. Psychological Bulletin, 83, 1014-1025.
28. Kopelman, M. D. (1980). Two types of confabulation. Neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry. In W. Hirnstein (2009) (Ed.), Confabulation: Views from neuroscience, psychiatry, Psychology and philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
29. Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 480-498.
30. McGraw, K. M. (1987). Guilt following transgression: An attribution of responsibility approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 247-256.
31. Muller, D., Judd, C. M., & Yzerbyt, V. Y. (2005). When moderation is mediated and mediation is moderated. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 852-863.
32. Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231-259.
33. Oettingen, G., Grant, H., Smith, P. K., Skinner, M., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2006). Unconscious goal pursuit: Acting in an explanatory vacuum. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 668-675.
34. Parks-Stamm, E. J., Oettingen, G., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2010). Making sense of one's actions in an explanatory vacuum: The interpretation of unconscious goal striving. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 531-542.
35. Quirin, M., Kazen, M., & Kuhl, J. (2009). When nonsense sounds happy or helpless: The Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 500-516.
36. Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011). False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allow presenting anything as significant. Psychological Science, 11, 1359-1366.
37. Stone, J., & Cooper, J. (2001). A self-standards model of cognitive dissonance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 37, 228-243.
38. Stroebe, W., Mensink, W., Aarts, H., Schut, H., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2008). Why dieters fail: Testing the goal conflict model of eating. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 24, 26-36.
39. Stroebe, W., Van Koningsbruggen, G. M., Papies, E. K., & Aarts, H. (2013). Why most dieters fail but some succeed: A goal conflict model of eating behavior. Psychological Review, 120(1), 110-138.
40. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5, 207-232.
41. Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063-1070.
42. Wegner, D. M. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
43. Wegner, D., & Wheatley, T. (1999). Apparent mental causation: Sources of the experience of will. American Psychologist, 54, 480-492.
44. Wilson, T. D. (2002). Strangers to ourselves: Discovering the adaptive unconscious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
45. Wilson, T. D., Dunn, D. S., Kraft, D., & Lisle, D. J. (1989). Introspection, attitude change, and attitude-behaviour consistency: The disruptive effects of explaining why we feel the way we do. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 22, pp. 287-343). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
46. Zanna, M. P., & Cooper J. (1974). Dissonance and the pill: An attribution approach to studying the arousal properties of dissonance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29, 703-709.