The Effect of Money Priming on Self-Focus in the Imitation-Inhibition Task: A Registered Report
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In: Experimental Psychology, Vol. 66, No. 6, 01.11.2019, p. 423-436.
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The Effect of Money Priming on Self-Focus in the Imitation-Inhibition Task
T2 - A Registered Report
AU - Genschow, Oliver
AU - Schuler, Johannes
AU - Cracco, Emiel
AU - Brass, Marcel
AU - Wänke, Michaela
N1 - Funding Information: This work was partially supported by a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG; grant number 410562468). Publisher Copyright: © 2019 Hogrefe Publishing.
PY - 2019/11/1
Y1 - 2019/11/1
N2 - The self-sufficiency hypothesis suggests that priming individuals with money makes them focus more strongly on themselves than on others. However, recently, research supporting this claim has been heavily criticized and some attempts to replicate have failed. A reason for the inconsistent findings in the field may lay in the common use of explicit measures, because they tend to rely on one or just a few items and are thus prone to demand effects and low reliability. In the present research, we administered, in two experiments, the imitation-inhibition task - a robust, unobtrusive, and reliable paradigm that is sensitive to self-other focus on a trial-by-trial basis. A pilot study found an increased focus on the self as compared to others when primed with money. Building on this finding, a preregistered high-powered experiment replicated this effect, suggesting that money primes may indeed increase a focus on the self. An additionally carried out meta-analysis indicates that automatic imitation is modulated by self-other focus and that money primes lead to a smaller focus on the self than conventional methods. Overall, the found effects are rather small and several limitations, such as order effects, call for a cautious interpretation of the findings.
AB - The self-sufficiency hypothesis suggests that priming individuals with money makes them focus more strongly on themselves than on others. However, recently, research supporting this claim has been heavily criticized and some attempts to replicate have failed. A reason for the inconsistent findings in the field may lay in the common use of explicit measures, because they tend to rely on one or just a few items and are thus prone to demand effects and low reliability. In the present research, we administered, in two experiments, the imitation-inhibition task - a robust, unobtrusive, and reliable paradigm that is sensitive to self-other focus on a trial-by-trial basis. A pilot study found an increased focus on the self as compared to others when primed with money. Building on this finding, a preregistered high-powered experiment replicated this effect, suggesting that money primes may indeed increase a focus on the self. An additionally carried out meta-analysis indicates that automatic imitation is modulated by self-other focus and that money primes lead to a smaller focus on the self than conventional methods. Overall, the found effects are rather small and several limitations, such as order effects, call for a cautious interpretation of the findings.
KW - automatic imitation
KW - money priming
KW - self-other focus
KW - Business psychology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85079337902&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1027/1618-3169/a000466
DO - 10.1027/1618-3169/a000466
M3 - Journal articles
C2 - 32054430
AN - SCOPUS:85079337902
VL - 66
SP - 423
EP - 436
JO - Experimental Psychology
JF - Experimental Psychology
SN - 1618-3169
IS - 6
ER -