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.
AjzenI. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179–211.
2.
AmesD. L.FiskeS. T. (2015). Perceived intent motivates people to magnify observed harms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112, 3599–3605.
3.
BateyM. (2012). The measurement of creativity: From definitional consensus to the introduction of a new heuristic framework. Creativity Research Journal, 24, 55–65.
4.
BellezzaS.GinoF.KeinanA. (2013). The red sneakers effect: Inferring status and competence from signals of nonconformity. Journal of Consumer Research, 41, 35–54.
5.
CameronC. D.SpringV. L.ToddA. R. (2017). The empathy impulse: A multinomial model of intentional and unintentional empathy for pain. Emotion, 17, 395–411.
6.
CarusoE. M.WaytzA.EpleyN. (2010). The intentional mind and the hot hand: Perceiving intentions makes streaks seem likely to continue. Cognition, 116, 149–153.
7.
ChoH.SchwarzN. (2008). Of great art and untalented artists: Effort information and the flexible construction of judgmental heuristics. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 18, 205–211.
8.
CiszewskiW. (2016). Narrow or broad? Questioning the scope of public reason. Zeszyty Naukowe Towarzystwa Doktorantów UJ Nauki Humanistyczne, 14, 79–96.
9.
DweckC. S.LeggettE. L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review, 95, 256–273.
10.
Ersner-HershfieldH.GalinskyA. D.KrayL. J.KingB. G. (2010). Company, country, connections: Counterfactual origins increase organizational commitment, patriotism, and social investment. Psychological Science, 21, 1479–1486.
GriffithsT. D. (2008). Capturing creativity. Brain, 131, 6–7.
13.
GuestS. (2002). The value of art. Art, Antiquity and Law, 7, 305–316.
14.
HayesA. F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. Guilford Press.
15.
KaracaB. (2021). Introduction: Intimate encounters: In the national frame: Art and state violence in Turkey and Germany (pp. 1–28). Fordham University Press.
16.
KrayL. J.GeorgeL. G.LiljenquistK. A.GalinskyA. D.TetlockP. E.RoeseN. J. (2010). From what might have been to what must have been: Counterfactual thinking creates meaning. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 106–118.
17.
KrugerJ.WirtzD.Van BovenL.AltermattT. W. (2004). The effort heuristic. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 91–98.
18.
KuporD.ReichT.LaurinK. (2018). The (bounded) benefits of correction: The unanticipated interpersonal advantages of making and correcting mistakes. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 149, 165–178.
19.
MalleB. F. (2010). Intentional action in folk psychology. In O’ConnorT.SandisC. (Eds.), A companion to the philosophy of action (pp. 357–365). Wiley-Blackwell.
20.
MalleB. F.KnobeJ. (1997). The folk concept of intentionality. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33, 101–121.
21.
McMullenM. N.MarkmanK. D. (2000). Downward counterfactuals and motivation: The wake-up call and the Pangloss effect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 575–584.
22.
MedvecV. H.MadeyS. F.GilovichT. (1995). When less is more: Counterfactual thinking and satisfaction among Olympic medalists. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 603–610.
23.
MeleA. R.MoserP. K. (1994). Intentional action. Nous, 28, 39–68.
24.
NewmanG. E.BloomP. (2012). Art and authenticity: The importance of originals in judgments of value. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 141, 558–569.
25.
NewmanG. E.GorlinM.DharR. (2014). When going green backfires: How firm intentions shape the evaluation of socially beneficial product enhancements. Journal of Consumer Research, 41, 823–839.
26.
NorenzayanA.LeeA. (2010). It was meant to happen: Explaining cultural variations in fate attributions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 702–720.
27.
PalmerM.SimmonsG.De KervenoaelR. (2010). Brilliant mistake! Essays on incidents of management mistakes and mea culpa. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 38, 234–257.
28.
PizarroD.UhlmannE.SaloveyP. (2003). Asymmetry in judgments of moral blame and praise: The role of perceived metadesires. Psychological Science, 14, 267–272.
29.
ReichT.KuporD. M.SmithR. K. (2018). Made by mistake: When mistakes increase product preference. Journal of Consumer Research, 44, 1085–1103.
30.
RimS.SummervilleA. (2014). How far to the road not taken? The effect of psychological distance on counterfactual direction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40, 391–401.
31.
RoeseN. J.KoehlerD. J.HarveyN. (2004). Twisted pair: Counterfactual thinking and the hindsight bias. In KoehlerD. J.HarveyN. (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of judgment and decision making (pp. 258–273). Blackwell.
32.
RoeseN. J.VohsK. D. (2012). Hindsight bias. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 411–426.
33.
RuckerD. D.GalinskyA. D. (2008). Desire to acquire: Powerlessness and compensatory consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 35, 257–267.
34.
SannaL. J.ChangE. C.MeierS. (2001). Counterfactual thinking and self-motives. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 1023–1034.
35.
SannaL. J.TurleyK. J. (1996). Antecedents to spontaneous counterfactual thinking: Effects of expectancy violation and outcome valence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 906–919.
36.
SimmonsJ. P.NelsonL. D.SimonsohnU. (2013, January17–19). Life after P-hacking [Paper presentation]. Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, United States. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2205186
37.
SmithR. K.NewmanG. E. (2014). When multiple creators are worse than one: The bias toward single authors in the evaluation of art. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 303–310.
38.
WeinerB. (1972). Attribution theory, achievement motivation, and the educational process. Review of Educational Research, 42, 203–215.
39.
WhiteK.LehmanD. R. (2005). Looking on the bright side: Downward counterfactual thinking in response to negative life events. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 1413–1424.
40.
ZwickR.PietersR.BaumgartnerH. (1995). On the practical significance of hindsight bias: The case of the expectancy-disconfirmation model of consumer satisfaction. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 64, 103–117.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
