Engaging in a pre-eating ritual over a 5-day period helped reduce calorie intake; pairing a ritual with healthy eating behavior increased the likelihood of choosing healthy food subsequently; the positive effect of rituals in prosociality held even when ritualized gestures were not labeled as such

Tian, A. D., Schroeder, J., Häubl, G., Risen, J. L., Norton, M. I., & Gino, F. (2018). Enacting rituals to improve self-control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(6), 851-876. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000113

Abstract: Rituals are predefined sequences of actions characterized by rigidity and repetition. We propose that enacting ritualized actions can enhance subjective feelings of self-discipline, such that rituals can be harnessed to improve behavioral self-control. We test this hypothesis in 6 experiments. A field experiment showed that engaging in a pre-eating ritual over a 5-day period helped participants reduce calorie intake (Experiment 1). Pairing a ritual with healthy eating behavior increased the likelihood of choosing healthy food in a subsequent decision (Experiment 2), and enacting a ritual before a food choice (i.e., without being integrated into the consumption process) promoted the choice of healthy food over unhealthy food (Experiments 3a and 3b). The positive effect of rituals on self-control held even when a set of ritualized gestures were not explicitly labeled as a ritual, and in other domains of behavioral self-control (i.e., prosocial decision-making; Experiments 4 and 5). Furthermore, Experiments 3a, 3b, 4, and 5 provided evidence for the psychological process underlying the effectiveness of rituals: heightened feelings of self-discipline. Finally, Experiment 5 showed that the absence of a self-control conflict eliminated the effect of rituals on behavior, demonstrating that rituals affect behavioral self-control specifically because they alter responses to self-control conflicts. We conclude by briefly describing the results of a number of additional experiments examining rituals in other self-control domains. Our body of evidence suggests that rituals can have beneficial consequences for self-control.

Affect in self‐generated thought is prevalent, positively biased, highly variable (both within & across individuals), & consistently recruits many brain areas implicated in emotional processing

Affective neuroscience of self‐generated thought. Kieran C.R. Fox, Jessica R. Andrews‐Hanna, Caitlin Mills, Matthew L. Dixon, Jelena Markovic, Evan Thompson, Kalina Christoff. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.13740

Abstract: Despite increasing scientific interest in self‐generated thought—mental content largely independent of the immediate environment—there has yet to be any comprehensive synthesis of the subjective experience and neural correlates of affect in these forms of thinking. Here, we aim to develop an integrated affective neuroscience encompassing many forms of self‐generated thought—normal and pathological, moderate and excessive, in waking and in sleep. In synthesizing existing literature on this topic, we reveal consistent findings pertaining to the prevalence, valence, and variability of emotion in self‐generated thought, and highlight how these factors might interact with self‐generated thought to influence general well‐being. We integrate these psychological findings with recent neuroimaging research, bringing attention to the neural correlates of affect in self‐generated thought. We show that affect in self‐generated thought is prevalent, positively biased, highly variable (both within and across individuals), and consistently recruits many brain areas implicated in emotional processing, including the orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, insula, and medial prefrontal cortex. Many factors modulate these typical psychological and neural patterns, however; the emerging affective neuroscience of self‐generated thought must endeavor to link brain function and subjective experience in both everyday self‐generated thought as well as its dysfunctions in mental illness.

Partisan voters will be happier whenever a member of their party controls political office regardless of the policies; ideologues are happier when the politicians in power, regardless of party affiliation, enact their policies; those who hold extreme political views report higher levels of happiness

Jackson, Jeremy, Happy Partisans and Ideologues: State versus National (March 27, 2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3145282

Abstract: The political party of elected officials can affect the happiness of the voting public through several different channels. Partisan voters will be happier whenever a member of their party controls political office regardless of the policies implemented. Ideologues are happier when the politicians in power, regardless of party affiliation, enact policies closer to those that they prefer. Using data from the Generalized Social Survey the effect of party affiliation of national and state politicians on happiness is estimated. Political ideology scores are also gathered allowing the effect of ideology and its match with respondent preferences to be estimated. It is hypothesized that state political affiliations and ideology scores should have a greater impact on citizen happiness due to results from the literature on Tiebout sorting. However, this is not the case. Presidential party affiliation and ideology have a much greater impact on happiness than national legislative affiliation/ideology or gubernatorial and state legislative affiliation/ideology. These results suggest that identity politics appear to have the greatest effect on happiness.

Keywords: Happiness, Partisanship, Ideology, Party Politics
JEL Classification: D7, I31