Responses to Success: Seeking Pleasant Experiences before a Task Is Complete?

Marina Schall, Thomas Goetz, Sarah E Martiny and Rebecca Maymon

PLOS ONE, 2015, vol. 10, issue 8, 1-14

Abstract: Although engaging in pleasant experiences following successful performance may be hedonically rewarding, in the present research we proposed that individuals might forego pleasant experiences when they have not yet completed a task. In Study 1 (N = 100), participants reported the extent to which they would like to engage in pleasant experiences in a hypothetical situation where their performance outcome on a task (successful vs. average) and task completion (task in progress vs. completed) were manipulated. In Study 2 (N = 115), participants were in a real situation in which they achieved either a successful or average performance outcome. Task completion was manipulated (task in progress vs. completed) and motivation to engage in a pleasant experience was assessed by a behavioral measure. Results of both studies provided support for our prediction by showing individuals to have a lower desire to engage in pleasant experiences following successful, but not average, performance when the task was in progress than when it was complete. These findings are discussed in light of the underlying mechanisms and consequences of the tendency to forego pleasant experiences.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0135952 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 35952&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0135952

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0135952

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone (plosone@plos.org).