Corcoran Katja, Brohmer Hilmar, Eckerstorfer Lisa V, Macher Silvia
Institute of Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
BioTechMed-Graz, Graz, Austria.
Compr Results Soc Psychol. 2020 Jun 8;4(1):78-108. doi: 10.1080/23743603.2020.1767502.
Just observing other people can influence what we do. Under certain conditions, it inspires us to strive for the same goal as the other person. Such goal contagion occurs, because one first automatically infers the goal and then adopts it for oneself. In a series of three experiments (overall = 840 university students), we investigated personal goal value and the observed person's effort as moderators of goal contagion, which is mediated by goal inference. In all three experiments, participants read a brief story about a student who either wants to earn money (target goal) or to do an internship (control) and expects to show much or little effort. In Studies 1a and b, goal inference was the dependent variable, whereas in Study 2, we considered the full moderated-mediation model and measured how strongly participants pursue the goal to earn money. We aimed at locating the moderators within this two-step process. We hypothesized that high effort increases goal inference, whereas personal goal value strengthens the relationship between goal inference and goal adoption. Across experiments, we did find evidence for explicit and spontaneous, but not for implicit goal inference. Furthermore, participants did not pursue to earn money to a different degree across conditions and different degrees of goal value. Taken together, neither the moderated-mediation process nor the basic goal contagion effect was supported. Results are discussed in the light of other published studies on goal contagion and the current Replication Crisis.
仅仅观察他人就能影响我们的行为。在某些情况下，它会激励我们去追求与他人相同的目标。这种目标感染的发生，是因为一个人首先会自动推断出目标，然后为自己采纳这个目标。在一系列的三个实验中（总共有840名大学生参与），我们研究了个人目标价值和被观察对象的努力程度作为目标感染的调节因素，目标感染是由目标推断介导的。在所有这三个实验中，参与者阅读了一个简短的故事，故事中的学生要么想赚钱（目标目标），要么想实习（对照），并且预期会付出很多或很少的努力。在研究1a和1b中，目标推断是因变量，而在研究2中，我们考虑了完整的调节中介模型，并测量了参与者追求赚钱目标的强烈程度。我们旨在在这个两步过程中确定调节因素。我们假设高努力会增加目标推断，而个人目标价值会加强目标推断与目标采纳之间的关系。在所有实验中，我们确实找到了明确和自发的目标推断的证据，但没有找到隐性目标推断的证据。此外，参与者在不同条件和不同目标价值程度下追求赚钱的程度并没有差异。综合来看，调节中介过程和基本的目标感染效应都没有得到支持。我们将根据其他已发表的关于目标感染的研究以及当前的复制危机来讨论这些结果。
