FEATURED PUBLICATIONS
Pitfalls of self-reported measures of self-control
Jia, L., Yuen, W. L., Ong, Q., & Theseira, W. E. (2022). Pitfalls of self-reported measures of self-control: Surprising insights from extreme debtors. Journal of Personality, OnlineFirst.
We took a rare opportunity to examine whether extreme debtors have inflated assessment of their self-control capacity, potentially rendering self-reported measures ineffective as prediction tools for debt risks. Our findings suggest that self-reported measures may be more susceptible to psychological distortions than behavioral measures, a pitfall that past research has overlooked. Furthermore, we reveal a double whammy faced by extreme debtors: they have a low capacity to regulate their behavior but hold an illusory perception of high capacity, which may expose them to further debt accumulation. The insights from our study underscore the utility of examining extreme segments of the population for advancing psychological knowledge.
GUILT AND SHAME IN SELF-CONTROL CONFLICTS
Li, Y. & Jia, L. (2021). Don’t miss the forest for the trees: New recommendations for exploiting guilt and shame in self-control conflicts. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 15, e12627.
Guilt and shame, two negative self-conscious emotions, have drawn theoretical and empirical attention in studying self-control. Although a functionalist view suggests that their reparative tendencies would help combat self-control failures, the evidence is equivocal. In this review, we begin with a systematic analysis of how the context of self-control conflicts allows mood management to dominate reparative control as the primary means of regulating guilt and shame and, subsequently, sours the potential benefits of mood management. Then, inspired by the emerging literature of strategic indulgence and a multilevel perspective on self-control, we propose that people should adopt a tolerant view of indulgence at the behavioral level while channeling the reparative tendencies of guilt and shame at the strategy (behavioral plans) and the system (goal balance) levels.
ATTITUDES TOWARD IMMIGRANTS
Yong, J. C., Jia, L., Ismail, I., & Lee, P. (2021). Conditional love: Threat and attitudinal perceptions of immigrants depend on their instrumentality to locals' basic psychological needs. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 47(12), 1686-1704.
Although threat perceptions are commonly used to explain attitudes toward immigrants, the psychological factors underlying threat are surprisingly understudied. Drawing from goal pursuit and self-determination theory, we examined the perceived instrumentality of immigrants as an antecedent of locals’ threat and attitudinal perceptions. Through four studies (N = 1,372) with different configurations of local population segments and target immigrant groups, we investigated the impact of immigrants’ instrumentality in terms of hindrances to locals’ autonomy, belonging, and competence needs.
EDUCATIONAL MOBILITY AND GROWTH MINDSET
Jia, L., Lim, C. H., Ismail, I., & Tan, Y. C. (2021). Stunted upward mobility in a learning environment reduces the academic benefits of growth mindsets. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(10), e2011832118.
Does stunted upward mobility in an educational system impede beneficial psychological processes of learning? We predicted that growth mindsets of intelligence, a well-established psychological stimulant to learning, would be less potent in low-mobility, as compared to high-mobility, learning environments. An analysis of a large cross-national dataset and a longitudinal experiment accumulated converging evidence for this novel hypothesis.
ALL PUBLICATIONS
*Corresponding author (when not first author), #Co-first author, ^Student co-authors
Jia, L., Yuen, W. L.^ , Ong, Q., & Theseira, W. E. (2022). Pitfalls of self-reported measures of self-control: Surprising insights from extreme debtors. Journal of Personality, OnlineFirst. [doi]
Li, Y.^ , & Jia, L. * (2021). Don’t miss the forest for the trees: New recommendations for exploiting guilt and shame in self‐control conflicts. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 15(8), e12627. [doi]
Yong, J. C.^ , Jia, L.*, Ismail, I.^ , & Lee, P. ^ (2021). Conditional love: Threat and attitudinal perceptions of immigrants depend on their instrumentality to locals' basic psychological needs. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 47(12), 1686-1704. [doi]
Jia, L., Lim, C. H.#^ , Ismail, I.^ , & Tan, Y. C.^ (2021). Stunted upward mobility in a learning environment reduces the academic benefits of growth mindsets. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(10). [doi]
Dang. J., Barker, P., Baumert, A., Bentvelzen, M., Berkman, E., Buchholz, N., …, Ismail, I.^ , Jia, L., …, Tan, Y. C.^ , …, Zinkernagel, A. (2021). A multi-lab replication of the ego depletion effect. Social Psychology and Personality Science, 12(1), 14-24. [doi]
Hou, M.^ , Jia, L.* , & Tan, J.^ (2020). To tip off or not? Predicting gatekeepers' reporting intention of deviant close-others through desirability and feasibility. Psychology, Crime & Law, 1-24. [doi]
Sasaki, E.^ , Jia, L.* , Lwa, H. Y.^ , & Goh, M. T.^ (2020). Gratitude inhibits competitive behavior in threatening interactions. Cognition and Emotion, 34(6), 1097-1111. [doi]
Jia, L., Hirt, E. R., & Fishbach, A. (2019). Protecting an important goal: When prior self-control increases motivation for active goal pursuit. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 85. [doi]
Jia, L., Hirt, E. R., & Nowak, M. (2019). Adaptive indulgence in self-control: A multilevel cost-benefit analysis. Psychological Inquiry, 30(3), 140-146. [doi]
Jia, L., Hirt, E. R., & Koh, A. H. Q.^ (2019). How to have your cake and eat it too: Strategic indulgence in big-time collegiate sports among academically successful students. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(6), 792-801. [doi]
Jia, L., Koh, A. H. Q.^ , & Tan, F. M. E.^ (2018). Asymmetric goal contagion: Social power attenuates goal contagion among strangers. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(5), 673-676. [doi]
Koh, A. H. Q. ^ , Jia, L.* , & Hirt, E. R. (2017). Where do desires come from? Positivity offset and negativity bias predict implicit attitude toward temptations. Motivation and Emotion, 41(4), 431-442. [doi]
Tong, E. M. W., & Jia, L. (2017). Positive emotion, appraisal, and the role of appraisal overlap in positive emotion co-occurance. Emotion, 17(1), 40-54. [doi]
Jia, L., Yu, R. J., Hirt, E. R., & Fishbach, A. (2016). Motivational tuning in response to ego depletion. In E. R. Hirt, J. J. Clarkson, & L. Jia (Eds.), Self-Regulation and Ego Control. San Diego, CA: Elsevier.
Ho, S., Tong, E. M. W., & Jia, L. (2016). Authentic and hubristic pride: Differential effects on delay of gratification. Emotion, 16(8), 1147-1156. [doi]
Jia, L., & Hirt, E. R. (2016). Depletion suspends the comparator mechanism in monitoring: The role of chronic self-consciousness in sequential self-regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111(2), 284-300. [doi]
Jia, L., Lee, L. N., & Tong, E. M. W. (2015). Gratitude facilitates behavioral mimicry. Emotion, 15(2), 134-138. [doi]
Jia, L., Hirt, E. R., & Evans, D. (2014). Putting the freeze on priming: The role of need for cognitive closure on the prime-norm dynamic. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(7), 931-942. [doi]
Jia, L., Tong, E. M. W., & Lee, L. N. (2014). Psychological "gel" to bind individuals' goal pursuit: Gratitude facilitates goal contagion. Emotion, 14(4), 748-760. [doi]
Jia, L., & Smith, E. R. (2013). Distance makes the metaphor grow stronger: A psychological distance model of metaphor use. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(3), 492-497. [doi]
Karpen, S. C., Jia, L., & Rydell, R. J. (2012). Discrepancies between implicit and explicit attitude measures as an indicator of attitude strength. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42(1), 24-29. [doi]
Clarkson, J. J., Hirt, E. R., Chapman, D. A., & Jia, L. (2011).The impact of illusory fatigue on executive control: Do perceptions of depletion impair working memory capacity? Social Psychology and Personality Science, 2(3), 229-238.[doi]
Jia, L., Karpen, S. C., & Hirt, E. R. (2011). Beyond anti-Muslim sentiment: Opposing the Ground Zero Mosque as a means to pursuing a stronger America. Psychological Science, 22(10), 1327-1335. [doi]
Jia, L., & Hirt, E. R. (2011). The creative side of House: It's the last muse on the right. In E. Cascio & L. Martin (Eds.), House and Psychology: Humanity is Overrated (pp 37-55). New Jersey: Wiley.
Clarkson, J. J., Hirt, E. R., Jia, L., & Alexander, M. B. (2010). When perception is more than reality: The effects of perceived versus actual resource depletion on self-regulatory behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(1), 29-46. [doi]
Jia, L., Hirt, E. R., & Karpen, S. C. (2009). Lessons from a faraway land: The effect of spatial distance on creative cognition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(5), 1127-1131. [doi]
Jia, L., & Singh, R. (2009). Asymmetrical attention allocation to dissimilar and similar attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(6), 1259-1265. [doi]
Hirt, E. R., Clarkson, J. J., & Jia, L. (2016). Self-Regulation and Ego Control. San Diego, CA: Elsevier.