Unintentional Inception: When a Premium Is Offered to Unintentional Creations
Open Access
- 29 December 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
- Vol. 49 (1), 152-164
- https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211063750
Abstract
Creations can be fundamentally intended or unintended from their outset. Past work has focused on intentional creations, finding that people place a premium on effort. We examine the role of unintentionality in the inception of creations in six studies using a variety of stimuli (N = 1,965), finding that people offer a premium to unintentional creations versus otherwise identical intentional creations. We demonstrate that the unintentionality involved in the inception of a creation results in greater downward counterfactual thought about how the unintentional creation may have never been created at all, and this in turn heightens perceptions that the creation was a product of fate, causing people to place a premium on such creations. We provide evidence for this causal pathway using a combination of mediation and moderation approaches. Further, we illuminate that this premium is not offered when a negative outcome is ascribed to an unintentional creation.This publication has 37 references indexed in Scilit:
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