Social contagion of challenge-seeking behaviourOgulmus, 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
It is advisable to refer to the publisher's version if you intend to cite from this work. See Guidance on citing. To link to this item DOI: 10.1037/xge0001620 Abstract/SummaryDespite 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.
Download Statistics DownloadsDownloads per month over past year Altmetric Deposit Details University Staff: Request a correction | Centaur Editors: Update this record |