Social contagion of challenge-seeking behaviour

Ogulmus, C., Lee, Y., Chakrabarti, B. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6649-7895 and Murayama, K. (2024) Social contagion of challenge-seeking behaviour. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 153 (10). pp. 2573-2587. ISSN 1939-2222 doi: 10.1037/xge0001620

Abstract/Summary

Despite having little economic utility, people are sometimes motivated to seek challenges (i.e., proactively choosing to work on a more difficult task than an easier one). The present study investigated whether just observing others’ challenge-seeking behaviors could motivate people to seek more challenging tasks—the social contagion effect of challenge-seeking. The participants were presented with pairs of options, each associated with a math word problem of a certain difficulty level. We examined whether the participants’ preference for a more challenging (i.e., more difficult) option changes after observing the decisions of others who hold a challenge-seeking or a challenge-avoiding attitude. Five experiments consistently showed that, while the participants generally avoided challenging word problems, observing challenge-seeking in others increased the probability of participants choosing more challenging options. These results indicate that our motivation to seek challenges may be instilled, in part, through social processes.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/116928
Identification Number/DOI	10.1037/xge0001620
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN) Interdisciplinary centres and themes > ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorders) Research Network Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Psychopathology and Affective Neuroscience
Publisher	American Psychological Association
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