Behavioral Phenomena Research Articles

Dynamics of travel decision-making between organized packaged tourists and backpackers

Tourists are different in terms of their purpose of travel, the tourist type, the number of days spent, and how they spend time in a destination. Tourist decision-making models attempt to conceptualize how tourists make decisions during their pre-travel, onsite experiences, and post-travel stages. These models, including the grand models of tourist behavior, have paved the way to broaden our understanding of this complex behavioral phenomenon. Despite their remarkable contributions to the existing knowledge, these models display some limitations in terms of complexity, general nature of explanations, poor empirical support, and lack of consideration of different traveler types. Further examinations are necessary to understand the dynamic nature of decisions that take place under each broader stage. This study attempted to address some of these limitations through a qualitative inquiry with a comparison of tourist decision-making between two mainstream traveler types i.e. organized package tourists and backpackers. The findings uncovered empirical evidence to propose a research proposition that a general travel decision-making model cannot be derived for different traveler types and certain alterations need to be done with reference to different traveler types. These findings contribute to the literature on tourist behavior by inviting scholars to revisit the existing models in light of different traveler types.

Community Empowerment Through Community Tourism in Efforts to Develop Tourism in The Village of Kemenuh, Gianyar District (Study on Sumampan Waterfall Tourism)

The problem faced by Kemenuh Village in developing tourism is that all elements and actors of tourism development are not yet organized. Efforts must be made to overcome these problems through community empowerment programs. This community service aims to empower the community through community-based tourism, aimed at developing tourism in Kemenu village, Gianyar district. The type of research used is qualitative research which uses a descriptive approach to obtain a comprehensive understanding of behavioral phenomena, cognition, motivation, behavior and so on experienced by research subjects. The data sources used are primary data sources and secondary data sources. The implementation of community-based tourism as an effort to develop the Sumapang Waterfall tourist attraction has proven to be very effective. Forms of community participation in the management of Sumapang Waterfall have played an active role, including community participation in the form of ideas in the early stages of establishing the management of Sumapang Waterfall. Large community participation is manifested in the form of a gate that marks the entrance to Sumapang Waterfall. Community participation in the form of energy, namely mutual cooperation activities carried out every week

The neural dynamics of loss aversion

Abstract In human decision-making under risk, loss is typically valued more than the same amount of gain, a behavioral phenomenon known as loss aversion, which suggests that gain and loss are evaluated differently in the brain. Most previous neuroimaging studies focused on the brain regions that show differential responses to losses relative to gains. What is still largely unknown is how the neural processing of gain and loss may unfold in time and drives loss aversion. Here, we designed a gambling task ideal for investigating the temporal course of the valuation process and used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to track human participants’ brain activities for valuating gain and loss. Computational modeling of participants’ behaviors implies that the gain and loss presented simultaneously can compete for cognitive resources, during which loss signals dominate the valuation process, resulting in loss aversion. Indeed, time-resolved MEG analysis reveals that the evaluation process of loss terminated later for participants with higher loss aversion than those with lower loss aversion, though the gain valuation had similar temporal courses for different participants. These results suggest that the origin of loss aversion may lie in the neural dynamics of loss processing

Reward conditioning may not have an effect on category-specific memory

Behavioural tagging facilitates the temporary storage of seemingly insignificant episodic events, which may later become salient and enhanced in memory. Human behavioural studies have demonstrated selective memory enhancement for neutral stimuli from one category when this category is subsequently paired with reward. Although this phenomenon has implications for the role of reward conditioning on emotional and adaptive memory, its generalisability is underexplored. We conducted four experiments to investigate whether pairing items from a semantic category, animals or objects, with high or low rewards resulted in preferential memory for the high-reward category. Three of these experiments also aimed to replicate the category-specific retrospective enhancement effect reported by Patil et al. and two explored the corresponding prospective memory effect. None of our experiments showed consistent evidence for an effect of reward on category-specific memory enhancement, despite employing the same reward paradigm and incidental encoding protocol as in the original study. Consequently, we found no evidence for category-specific retrospective or prospective enhancement effects. Our experiments were conducted online which is an equally relevant method for assessing behavioural phenomenon as the in-person studies conducted by Patil et al. Overall, our results question the generalisability of previously reported category-specific memory enhancement effects due to reward.

Reconsidering the path for neural and physiological methods in consumer psychology

AbstractRecent decades have witnessed a burst of neuroscience research investigating mental and physiological processes central to consumer behavior, including sensory perception, memory, and decision making. Nonetheless, few publications that include neural and physiological measures, or develop conceptual frameworks around neuroscience principles, have been published in consumer psychology. It is clear that “consumer neuroscience” has thus far not lived up to its promises in the marketing literature. We suggest three main reasons for this. First, neural and other biological markers are often mistaken to be identical to the overlaying psychological constructs in traditional consumer psychology work. Second, somewhat surprisingly, there has been an overly narrow utilization of neural data. Most previous work focused on linking existing behavioral phenomena or psychological constructs central to consumer research to neural correlates using brain imaging techniques while ignoring other methods. We argue that much can be gained from improved integration of physiological measures and through them, different levels of analysis. Third, there remain significant structural hurdles to the broad adoption of neural and physiological measures for consumer researchers. We outline how addressing these three components can translate to a more holistic understanding of the consumer via both broader and deeper consumer insights.

Conceptualizing Sustainable Consumption Behaviors among Millennial Employees in the Energy Sector

The increasing concern regarding the impact of energy consumption on the environment and the 2050 net-zero emission target necessitates the investigation of behavioral studies in energy consumption among employees. This study aims to develop a conceptual framework for future research on sustainable consumption behavior, specifically focusing on millennials. The conceptual framework links millennials’ sustainable consumption behavior to proactive work behavior through the lens of workplace spirituality. To develop this framework, the paper reviewed published studies related to sustainable consumption behaviors, work values, and behavioral factors across different generations. The review utilized computerized keyword searches in scholarly databases such as SpringerLink, Emerald, ScienceDirect, ProQuest, and Google Scholar. Based on the review’s empirical findings, narrative examples were drawn to construct the conceptual framework. The findings emphasize the importance of exploring millennials’ sustainable consumption behavior in relation to their values and behavioral factors. Proactive work behavior and workplace spirituality are identified as actionable elements to promote sustainable consumption behaviors among employees in the energy sector. Workplace spirituality is proposed as a moderating variable for the relationship between sustainable consumption behaviors and proactive work behavior, providing potential for further research in this area. Given that millennials are a significant generation in achieving sustainable energy consumption goals by 2050, this study focuses on their hiring and training to drive sustainable behavior. It evaluates the influence of HR and organizational behavior factors on sustainable consumption behavior in the energy industry. Practical implications and recommendations aim to assist practitioners and policymakers in analyzing behavioral phenomena to establish and implement sustainable goals for millennials. The paper extends the conceptual underpinning of sustainable consumption behavior by integrating proactive work behavior and workplace spirituality in the context of energy sector millennials. It paves the way for future researchers to empirically investigate and examine these variables in the energy sector. The study’s significance lies in its conceptual contributions to the existing body of knowledge in the field of sustainable consumption behavior.
 Keywords: energy sector, millennials generation, sustainable consumption behaviors, proactive work behavior, workplace spirituality

Statistical prediction alone cannot identify good models of behavior.

The dissociation between statistical prediction and scientific explanation advanced by Bowers et al. for studies of vision using deep neural networks is also observed in several other domains of behavior research, and is in fact unavoidable when fitting large models such as deep nets and other supervised learners, with weak theoretical commitments, to restricted samples of highly stochastic behavioral phenomena.

The influence of mother's belief on determining dental visit in pandemic covid-19: Literature review

Coronavirus disease or known as COVID-19 hugely impacted individual's psychological health and individual’s well-being worldwide. This phenomenon has an impact on maternal dental anxiety. Mothers tend to feel a higher level risk of COVID-19 transmission due to treatment while at the dentist, which might lead to avoiding dental visits. Through maternal dental anxiety, it may affect children’s oral and dental health. This behavioral phenomenon can be studied using the Health Belief Model (HBM). The aim of this review was to analyze the influence of the mother's beliefs in determining the need to visit the dentist during a pandemic in terms of the Health Belief Model (HBM) aspect. In this review, we used The Health Belief Model because it can be used to show disease prevention programs and health promotion. The method that we used in this review is a narrative review. Search for articles via ResearchGate, PubMed, and Google Scholar with databases published in 2019-2023. The keywords that we used to search the article were "Health Belief Model in Mother Dental Anxiety" AND "Maternal Dental Fear and Anxiety in COVID-19" or “Toddlers Dental Anxiety in COVID-19.” Articles that we use are original research articles including full text, open access articles, and articles that discuss dental anxiety during COVID-19. The results for this review is HBM influenced maternal dental anxiety in perceived susceptibility and severity. In conclusion, The Influential Health Beliefs Model affects maternal dental anxiety through the perceived susceptibility and perceived severity component.

Comparative Analysis of Discrete Choice Approaches for Modeling Destination Choices of Urban Home-Based Trips to Work

Discrete choice models based on the Random Utility Maximization (RUM) approach are alternatives to traditional aggregated trip distribution models. However, the Random Regret Minimization (RRM) approach has emerged as an alternative to RUM for analyzing behavioral phenomena. This study compares the RUM and RRM approaches to model the destination choice of urban home-based trips to work, with a case study in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The attributes of distance between traffic analysis zones (TAZs), total number of jobs, and number of jobs per type (industry and services) were considered, and the attributes referring to TAZs in commercial areas were tested in different models. We combined a method to estimate the optimal choice set size and a stratified sampling method to choose alternatives from available choices for a destination-choice problem with many alternatives. The RUM and RRM models produced similar results with respect to the final log-likelihood, [Formula: see text], Akaike information criterion, and Bayesian information criterion for the studied case. However, the RRM models required 52 min to be estimated on average, whereas estimation of the RUM models took only 31 s on average. Models derived from the RUM approach including the total number of jobs and distance produced higher accuracy, requiring less computational time to estimate the parameters.

Emergence of behavioral phenomena and adaptation effects in human numerosity decoder using recurrent neural networks

Humans possess an innate ability to visually perceive numerosities, which refers to the cardinality of a set. Numerous studies indicate that the lateral intraparietal cortex (LIP) and other intraparietal sulcus (IPS) regions (region) of the brain contain the neurological substrates responsible for number processing. Existing computational models of number perception often focus on a limited range of numbers and fail to account for important behavioral characteristics like adaptation effects, despite simulating fundamental aspects such as size and distance effects. To address these limitations, our study develops (introduces) a novel computational model of number perception utilizing a network of neurons with self-excitatory and mutual inhibitory properties. Our approach assumes that the mean activation of the network at steady state can encode numerosity by exhibiting a monotonically increasing relationship with the input variable set size. By optimizing the total number of inhibition strengths required, we achieve coverage of the full range of numbers through three distinct intervals: 1 to 4, 5 to 17, and 21 to 50. Remarkably, this division aligns closely with the breakpoints in numerosity perception identified in behavioral studies. Furthermore, our study develops a method for decoding the mean activation into a continuous scale of numbers spanning from 1 to 50. Additionally, we propose a mechanism for dynamically selecting the inhibition strength based on current inputs, enabling the network to operate effectively across an extended (entire) range of numerosities. Our model not only sheds new light on the generation of diverse behavioral phenomena in the brain but also elucidates how continuous visual attributes and adaptation effects influence perceived numerosity.

Working Anytime and Anywhere -Even When Feeling Ill? A Cross-sectional Study on Presenteeism in Remote Work

BackgroundWorking despite feeling ill – presenteeism – is a widespread behavioral phenomenon. Previous research has shown that presenteeism is influenced by various work-related and personal factors. It's an illness behavior leading to a range of negative but also positive consequences. Due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, remote work has become the “new normal” for many employees. But so far, little is known about presenteeism in remote work. This study aims to investigate presenteeism in remote work by looking at the extent of remote presenteeism, differences to presenteeism in on-site work, and associated factors. MethodsA nationwide cross-sectional online survey was conducted in Germany with N = 233 participants. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-tests, and correlation analysis. ResultsThe results reveal that presenteeism is prevalent in remote work x̅ = 4.13 days (Md = 3; D = 2; s = 4.95). A low ability to detach from work (r = -.17; p = .005) and low supervisor support (r = -.14; p = .02) is associated with more remote presenteeism days. Remote working conditions seem to facilitate presenteeism. ConclusionThis study provides empirical insights into a subject area of great societal relevance. The results show that awareness should be raised for presenteeism in remote work. It should be regarded as a behavior that can be functional or dysfunctional, depending on the individual situation. Supervisor support and detachment should be fostered to help reduce dysfunctional presenteeism. Promotion of health literacy might help remote workers to decide on a health-oriented illness behavior. Further research is vital to analyze to what extent and under which circumstances presenteeism in remote work is (dys)functional and to derive clear recommendations.

Apprehending HIV Stigma

AbstractThe literary narrative Kiss of the Fur Queen, by Indigenous author Tomson Highway, calls for applying a decolonial framework that brings together different disciplinary systems to investigate responses to the stigma associated with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Approaching the narrative as testimony in which Highway foregrounds Indigenous knowledges, the text allows for a reframing of stigma as working within much larger systemic violences and operations of power than can be anticipated within a politics of recognition, indexed to the expository logic of Eve Sedgwick's paranoid position. Locating HIV‐related stigma as emerging within the context of intergenerational collective trauma rooted in colonial violence makes possible the kind of reparative work that Sedgwick envisions, as well as allowing for an engagement with the infinite possibilities of encounter as an ethical response to this socially polarizing behavioural phenomenon that has proven so difficult to dislodge. Attentive to specific racialized and minoritized colonial histories, Highway's narrative unravels the entanglement of events and conditions surrounding HIV in a watershed moment when decolonial work collides with ongoing histories of colonial violence. Such a decolonial lens offers a non‐positivist framework to potentially unsettle the stasis of stigma reduction.

The Art of Blending In Unveiling Camouflaging Traits in Adults with or Without Autism

Camouflaging a complex behavioral and social phenomenon commonly associated with individuals on the autism spectrum, takes center stage in this study. However, it doesn't stop at autism; it delves into the intriguing realm of camouflaging strategies employed by both adult individuals with and without autism. Additionally, the research further investigates the influence of gender on these camouflaging behaviors. This quantitative study exposes notable distinctions in camouflaging traits between adults with and without autism. Individuals with autism spectrum frequently utilize camouflaging to replicate socially accepted behaviors, such as maintaining eye contact and suppressing repetitive actions, in order to integrate into society and escaping potential stigmatization. Nevertheless, this adaptive coping strategy can exact a toll on their mental health & well-being, resulting in heightened stress, anxiety, and mental exhaustion. Remarkably, the research also highlights that camouflaging isn't unique to autism; individuals without autism also harness these strategies in various social situations. These individuals may adjust their body language, behavior, emotional expressions, and appearance to align with dominant societal norms, foster social harmony, or seamlessly integrate into specific social circles. This indicates that camouflaging is a broader phenomenon rooted in the universal human impulse for social adaptation and compliance. Moreover, the study underscores the significance influence of gender expectations on the adoption of camouflaging strategies. It notes that camouflaging appears to be more prevalent among females, irrespective of their autism status, reflecting the unique social challenges and societal expectations faced by women across various cultural landscapes. In essence, this research illuminates the multifaceted nature of camouflaging behaviors and their far-reaching implications. It emphasizes the vital importance of comprehending these behaviors and their potential impacts on individuals' overall mental health & well-being. Moreover, the study advocates for further exploration of the long-term effects of camouflaging and the creation of interventions focused on promoting authenticity in social interactions while alleviating the need for excessive camouflaging efforts.

Coupled dynamics of endemic disease transmission and gradual awareness diffusion in multiplex networks

Understanding the interplay between human behavioral phenomena and infectious disease dynamics has been one of the central challenges of mathematical epidemiology. However, socio-cognitive processes critical for the initiation of desired behavioral responses during an outbreak have often been neglected or oversimplified in earlier models. Combining the microscopic Markov chain approach with the law of total probability, we herein institute a mathematical model describing the dynamic interplay between stage-based progression of awareness diffusion and endemic disease transmission in multiplex networks. We analytically derived the epidemic thresholds for both discrete-time and continuous-time versions of our model, and we numerically demonstrated the accuracy of our analytic arguments in capturing the time course and the steady state of the coupled disease-awareness dynamics. We found that our model is exact for arbitrary unclustered multiplex networks, outperforming a widely adopted probability-tree-based method, both in the prediction of the time-evolution of a contagion and in the final epidemic size. Our findings show that informing the unaware individuals about the circulating disease will not be sufficient for the prevention of an outbreak unless the distributed information triggers strong awareness of infection risks with adequate protective measures, and that the immunity of highly-aware individuals can elevate the epidemic threshold, but only if the rate of transition from weak to strong awareness is sufficiently high. Our study thus reveals that awareness diffusion and other behavioral parameters can nontrivially interact when producing their effects on epidemiological dynamics of an infectious disease, suggesting that future public health measures should not ignore this complex behavioral interplay and its influence on contagion transmission in multilayered networked systems.

Sex divergent behavioral responses in platform-mediated avoidance and glucocorticoid receptor blockade

Women are more likely than men to develop anxiety or stress-related disorders. A core behavioral symptom of all anxiety disorders is avoidance of fear or anxiety eliciting cues. Recent rodent models of avoidance show reliable reproduction of this behavioral phenomenon in response to learned aversive associations. Here, a modified version of platform-mediated avoidance that lacked an appetitive task was utilized to investigate the learning and extinction of avoidance in male and female C57BL6/J mice. Here, we found a robust sex difference in the acquisition and extinction of platform-mediated avoidance. Across three experiments, 63.7% of female mice acquired avoidance according to our criterion, whereas 83.8% of males acquired it successfully. Of those females that acquired avoidance, they displayed persistent avoidance after extinction compared to males. Given their role in regulating stress responses and habitual behaviors, we investigated if glucocorticoid receptors (GR) mediated avoidance learning in males and females. We found that a subcutaneous injection (25 mg/kg) of the GR antagonist, RU486 (Mifepristone), significantly reduced persistent avoidance in females but did not further reduce avoidance in males after extinction. These data suggest that GR activation during avoidance learning may contribute to persistent avoidance in females that is resistant to extinction.

Everyone knows what behavior is but they just don’t agree on it

Studying "behavior" lies at the heart of many disciplines. Nevertheless, academics rarely provide an explicit definition of what "behavior" actually is. What range of definitions do people use, and how does that vary across disciplines? To answer these questions, we have developed a survey to probe what constitutes "behavior." We find that academics adopt different definitions of behavior according to their academic discipline, animal model that they work with, and level of academic seniority. Using hierarchical clustering, we identify at least six distinct types of "behavior" which are used in seven distinct operational archetypes of "behavior." Individual respondents have clear consistent definitions of behavior, but these definitions are not consistent across the population. Our study is a call for academics to clarify what they mean by "behavior" wherever they study it, with the hope that this will foster interdisciplinary studies that will improve our understanding of behavioral phenomena.

Testosterone and the Amygdala's Functional Connectivity in Women and Men.

The amygdala contains androgen receptors and is involved in various affective and social functions. An interaction between testosterone and the amygdala's functioning is likely. We investigated the amygdala's resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) network in association with testosterone in 94 healthy young adult women and men (final data available for analysis from 42 women and 39 men). Across the whole sample, testosterone was positively associated with the rsFC between the right amygdala and the right middle occipital gyrus, and it further predicted lower agreeableness scores. Significant sex differences appeared for testosterone and the functional connectivity between the right amygdala and the right superior frontal gyrus (SFG), showing higher testosterone levels with lower connectivity in women. Sex further predicted the openness and agreeableness scores. Our results show that testosterone modulates the rsFC between brain areas involved in affective processing and executive functions. The data indicate that the cognitive control of the amygdala via the frontal cortex is dependent on the testosterone levels in a sex-specific manner. Testosterone seems to express sex-specific patterns (1) in networks processing affect and cognition, and (2) in the frontal down-regulation of the amygdala. The sex-specific coupling between the amygdala and the frontal cortex in interaction with the hormone levels may drive sex-specific differences in a variety of behavioral phenomena that are further associated with psychiatric illnesses that show sex-specific prevalence rates.

Antidrug effects of GTS201 dipeptide, an imitation of the second bird BDNF, in morphine-addicted rats

BACKGROUND: The V.V. Zakusov Research Institute of Pharmacology developed hybrid digital sensors for the first, second, and fourth BDNF patches (GSB-214, GTSB-201, and GSB-106, respectively). When tested in vitro, on an oxidative stress model, in the culture of hippocampal neurons NT-22, the compound GTS201 (hexamethylenediamide bis-hexanoyl-seryl-lys), a simulator of the 2nd series of BDNF, activates the TrkB spy receptor and MAPK/Erk kinase pathway but does not affect the PI3K/Akt signature pathway and has neuroprotective activity similar to BDNF.
 AIM: To study the effect of GTS-201 dipeptide on the behavior of laboratory white rats during the formation of their dependency state and morphine withdrawal syndrome.
 MATERIALS AND METHODS: Morphine dependence in rats was developed due to administration of morphine in a doses escalation manner ranging from 10 to 20 mg/kg twice daily at 8-h intervals for 5 days. GTS-201 was given in 1- or 5-mg/kg doses for once in 30 minutes before morphine on the 5th day of the experiment or daily (in one of the groups) for 5 days in the morning 30 minutes before morphine administration. On the 5th day of the experiment, animals were tested for the presence of specific signs of morphine withdrawal syndrome in an open field for 5 minutes. Four experimental groups were formed: group 1 morphine hr. + naloxone (active control group); group 2 morphine hr. + GTS-201 (1) + naloxone; group 3 morphine hr. + GTS-201 (5) + naloxone; and group 4 morphine hr. + GTS-201 (1 5) + naloxone. Designations: hr. morphine administration within 5 days; (1) and (5) doses of substances in mg/kg, (1 5) chronic administration of the peptide for 5 days.
 RESULTS: When studying the effect of GTS-201 dipeptide on behavioral, somatic, and neurological markers of animal behavior after morphine withdrawal, significant changes in the severity of individual signs of withdrawal syndrome were noted. Manifestations of diarrhea were significantly decreased in all groups of animals injected with the peptide. In animals from group 3, morphine hr. + GTS201 (5) + naloxone showed the maximum effect: diarrhea was decreased by 71.0% (p 0.001), convulsions were decreased by 83.3 % (p 0.05), running was decreased by 71.4% (p 0.01), and vocalization was decreased by 62.5% (p 0.05). GTS-201, administered at a dose of 1 mg/kg once, eliminated the appearance of escape attempts in group 2, but the peptide at the same dose completely blocked convulsive reactions in rats in group 4. Despite significant changes in individual indicators, the total index (of morphine withdrawal syndrome for groups chronically injected with morphine) did not change statistically significantly compared with group 1 of active control. In the control group, its value in points was 7.3 0.36 (100%), whereas in groups 24, it ranged from 6.2 (84.9%) to 6.5 (89.0%; p 0.05).
 CONCLUSIONS: It is assumed that the antiaddictive dipeptide activity of GTS-201 is mediated by activation of these receptors and markers/the Erk-kinase signaling pathway, which does not exclude the involvement of opioid receptor mechanisms in the implementation of the observed behavioral phenomena.

Self-Organization of Nonlinearly Coupled Neural Fluctuations Into Synergistic Population Codes.

Neural activity in the brain exhibits correlated fluctuations that may strongly influence the properties of neural population coding. However, how such correlated neural fluctuations may arise from the intrinsic neural circuit dynamics and subsequently affect the computational properties of neural population activity remains poorly understood. The main difficulty lies in resolving the nonlinear coupling between correlated fluctuations with the overall dynamics of the system. In this study, we investigate the emergence of synergistic neural population codes from the intrinsic dynamics of correlated neural fluctuations in a neural circuit model capturing realistic nonlinear noise coupling of spiking neurons. We show that a rich repertoire of spatial correlation patterns naturally emerges in a bump attractor network and further reveals the dynamical regime under which the interplay between differential and noise correlations leads to synergistic codes. Moreover, we find that negative correlations may induce stable bound states between two bumps, a phenomenon previously unobserved in firing rate models. These noise-induced effects of bump attractors lead to a number of computational advantages including enhanced working memory capacity and efficient spatiotemporal multiplexing and can account for a range of cognitive and behavioral phenomena related to working memory. This study offers a dynamical approach to investigating realistic correlated neural fluctuations and insights to their roles in cortical computations.

Relief in everyday life.

Despite being implicated in a wide range of psychological and behavioral phenomena, relief remains poorly understood from the perspective of psychological science. What complicates the study of relief is that people seem to use the term to describe an emotion that occurs in two distinct situations: when an unpleasant episode is over, or upon realizing that an outcome could have been worse. This study constitutes a detailed empirical investigation of people's reports of everyday episodes of relief. A set of four studies collected a large corpus (N = 1,835) of first-person reports of real-life episodes of relief and examined people's judgments about the antecedents of relief, its relation to counterfactual thoughts, and its subsequent effects on decision making. Some participants described relief experiences that had either purely temporal or purely counterfactual precursors. Nevertheless, the findings indicated that the prototypical instance of relief appears to be one in which both these elements are present. The results also suggest that, although relief is frequently experienced in situations in which people are not responsible for the relief-inducing event, nevertheless they typically report that the experience had a positive impact on subsequent decision making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).