Repeating the Past

Abstract

Prevention-focused individuals are motivated to maintain the status quo. Given this, we predicted that individuals with a strong prevention focus, either as a chronic predisposition or situationally induced, would treat their initial decision on how to behave on a first task as the status quo and would thus be motivated to repeat that decision on a subsequent task—even for decisions that were ethically questionable. Results from five studies supported this prediction in multiple ethical domains: whether or not to overstate performance (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b), whether or not to disclose disadvantageous facts (Study 3), and whether or not to pledge a donation (Study 4). The prevention-repetition effect was observed both when the initial and subsequent decisions were in the same domain (Studies 1–3) and when they were in different domains (Study 4). Alternative accounts for this effect, such as justification for the initial decision and preference for consistency, were ruled out (Study 2b).

Keywords

ethics motivation morality regulatory focus prevention focus slippery slope

One of the most tenacious problems facing our society is the frequent occurrence of repeated transgressions: Salespersons forge one sale after another to meet financial targets (Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004); managers overstate their firms’ earnings in growing amounts (Schrand & Zechman, 2012); auditors escalate one questionable call into overt violations (Moore, Tetlock, Tanlu, & Bazerman, 2006); police officers fail to resist small but frequent bribes (Ashforth & Anand, 2003). A significant portion of transgressions can be attributed to repeated violations (Clinard & Yeager, 1980), yet little is known about repeated ethical decision making (Pfarrer, Decelles, Smith, & Taylor, 2008). As Darley (1992) put it, “The question is not whether or not to commit an immoral act. It is what to do when such an act has been committed” (p. 215).

Even studies that adopt a relational, process view of ethical decision making yield equivocal findings on how one decision influences another. According to a dynamic view of the moral self, people feel entitled to act unethically after incurring “moral credits” from a good deed, and they feel propelled to act ethically following a misconduct that created “moral debits,” both indicating a reverse in the ethical stance of a previous decision (Monin & Jordan, 2009; Zhong, Ku, Lount, & Murnighan, 2010). However, one decision can elicit more similar ones, as evidenced by transgressions that occur along a slippery slope, whereby a sequence of decisions follows a “gradual erosion” pattern (Ashforth & Anand, 2003; Schrand & Zechman, 2012; Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004). These opposite predictions thus beg the question: When will one decision be followed by a similar one?

In the present research, we addressed this question by focusing on the role of self-regulation in ethical decision making. Specifically, we drew on regulatory-focus theory as one way to explain the motivation behind repeating a previous decision regardless of its ethicality. Regulatory-focus theory distinguishes between two self-regulatory orientations: a promotion focus, which is concerned with advancement through making a change from the status quo (“0”) to a new, better state (“+1”), and a prevention focus, which is concerned with security through maintaining the status quo (“0”) against a worse state (“−1”; Higgins, 1997, 1998). Hence, when at the status quo, prevention-focused individuals generally prefer conservative maintenance strategies (Crowe & Higgins, 1997; Friedman & Förster, 2001). For example, prevention-focused individuals would prefer to resume a prior interrupted task or keep currently possessed objects, whereas promotion-focused individuals would be more open to switching to new alternatives in both cases (Liberman, Idson, Camacho, & Higgins, 1999).

Given that maintaining the status quo is a fit strategy for prevention-focused individuals (Higgins, 2005), we would expect them to repeat a prior decision regardless of its ethical value. This is because past decisions indicate “the ways things are done,” creating a de facto rule that is incorporated in personal standards for gauging a new decision (Greve, Palmer, & Pozner, 2010). People are motivated to adjust personal standards to fit a questionable past decision (Gino & Bazerman, 2009). This notion finds support in the “self-herding” phenomenon, whereby people refer to their past behavior for guidance in deciding what to do later (Ariely, 2009). Even as observers, people tend to approve of the unethical behaviors of another person that occur gradually (Gino & Bazerman, 2009). What we propose is that prevention-focused individuals will be motivated to repeat a past decision, even if it was unethical, to maintain the status quo created by that decision.

One might predict instead that prevention-focused individuals would feel bad after making an initial unethical decision, such as by feeling guilty or ashamed (Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007), which would cause them to be cautious about repeating it in order to avoid having these negative feelings again. However, what is most important to prevention-focused individuals—the essence of prevention—is to maintain the status quo (Halvorson & Higgins, 2013; Higgins, 2012). As a behavioral tactic that fulfills this underlying motivation, repeating a prior decision creates a fit experience that feels right, independent of the hedonic feelings associated with the behavior being repeated (Higgins, 2005, 2012). Indeed, research has found that the prevention-focused concerns for repeating past behaviors trump hedonic concerns about those behaviors. For example, prevention-focused individuals are motivated to repeat the managing behaviors of their former manager, even when they consider those behaviors to have been unpleasant or ineffective (Zhang, Higgins, & Chen, 2011).

In five studies, we tested the hypothesis that a chronic or induced prevention focus predicts repeating the ethical stance of a prior decision. Each study included two consecutive tasks in which participants made decisions in one of three ethical domains: whether or not (a) to overstate their own performance (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b), (b) to disclose disadvantageous facts to an interested party (Study 3), and (c) to pledge a donation (Study 4). In addition to testing participants’ repetition of decisions within the same domain (Studies 1–3), we evaluated the possibility that they would repeat the ethical stance of their decisions across different domains, such as by initially refusing to pledge a donation and subsequently overstating their performance (Study 4).

Study 1

In Study 1, participants completed two consecutive tasks, each of which presented them with an opportunity to cheat by overstating their performance for potential gain. We predicted that only for participants with a strong chronic prevention focus, those who cheated on the first task would be more likely to cheat on the second task than those who did not cheat on the first task.

Method

Eighty-seven college students (30 males, 57 females¹) participated in an experiment that consisted of two tasks: a general-knowledge quiz (Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008) and an anagram task. For each task, participants could win a $100 lottery if their performance ranked in the top half of all participants. At the end of the general-knowledge quiz, participants received feedback on their performance and a slightly overstated score and were asked to accept or reject the score (Weiss & Johar, 2012). Because participants were aware of the overstatement, accepting the score or entering another overstated score after rejecting this score would constitute cheating. Participants then worked on the anagram task. When they finished, they viewed the answer key and reported how many anagrams they had solved. To inconspicuously detect intentional cheating, we used the carbonless anagram method (Ruedy & Schweitzer, 2011), which allowed us to compare participants’ self-reported performance with their true performance (for more details, see Anagram Task in the section for Studies 1, 2a, and 2b in the Supplemental Material available online). Finally, we measured participants’ chronic prevention and promotion foci as two separate dimensions (Higgins et al., 2001).

Results

Table 1 shows the percentages of participants who cheated on the two tasks. Logistic regressions showed that initial cheating on the quiz did not affect subsequent cheating on the anagram task,² b = 0.56, exp(b) = 1.75, p = .25. However, prevention focus and initial cheating had an interactive effect on subsequent cheating, b = 1.18, exp(b) = 3.27, p = .03. Simple-slopes tests showed that participants with a strong prevention focus were more likely to overstate their anagram performance after cheating on the quiz than after not cheating, t(81) = 2.27, p = .03, whereas participants with a weak prevention focus did not show this tendency, t(81) = −0.85, p = .40 (Fig. 1). There was no interaction between promotion focus and initial cheating, b = 0.25, exp(b) = 1.29, p = .61.

Table 1.

Percentages of Participants Who Made Less-Than-Ethical Decisions (Studies 1–4)

Decision	Study 1	Study 2a	Study 2b	Study 3	Study 4
Initial decision	57	53	59	58	61
Subsequent decision	31	30	32	84	43

Note: Less-than-ethical decisions were cheating (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b), failing to disclose information (Study 3), and initially failing to pledge a donation and subsequently cheating (Study 4).

Fig. 1.

Likelihood of cheating on an anagram task as a function of participants’ chronic prevention focus and whether they had cheated on an initial task (Study 1). The asterisk indicates a significant difference between groups (*p < .05).

Discussion

Study 1 revealed a prevention-repetition effect in two rounds of ethical decision making: Individuals with a strong prevention focus were more likely to inflate their performance after having done so on a previous task. Moreover, the fact that prevention focus did not directly affect initial or subsequent cheating confirmed the notion that this self-regulatory motive functions to maintain the ethical stance of a previous decision regardless of its ethical value.

Studies 2a and 2b

In Studies 2a and 2b, we situationally induced regulatory focus, which allowed us to test the causality of the prevention-repetition effect. In Study 2b, we also tested other prevention-related mechanisms that might account for this effect, including justification for the initial decision and preference for consistency.

Study 2a

Method

Eighty college students (28 males, 52 females) participated in an experiment. The tasks and procedures in this study were identical to those in Study 1 except that instead of measuring chronic regulatory focus, we experimentally induced it using incidental cues and message framing. Participants first drew an escape pathway for a cartoon mouse trapped inside a maze. An owl or a piece of Swiss cheese appeared in the maze, serving as an incidental cue that could activate a prevention or a promotion focus, respectively (Friedman & Förster, 2001). Then, at the beginning of both the general-knowledge quiz and the anagram task, the same regulatory focus was induced through message framing (Shah, Higgins, & Friedman, 1998). The prevention-focus message emphasized relative losses by telling participants that they were currently in a $100 lottery for each task but would be removed from the lottery if their performance ranked in the bottom half of all participants. The promotion-focus message emphasized relative gains by telling participants that they would be entered in a $100 lottery for each task if their performance ranked in the top half of all participants.

Results

Manipulation checks showed that more participants in the prevention condition than in the promotion condition reported seeing a mouse hiding from an owl, χ²(1, N = 80) = 80.00, p < .001, and trying to remain in the lottery, χ²(1, N = 80) = 22.25, p < .001. Table 1 shows the percentages of participants who cheated on the two tasks. Logistic regressions yielded no effect of initial cheating on subsequent cheating, b = 0.34, exp(b) = 1.40, p = .49. As expected, induced regulatory focus and initial cheating had an interactive effect on subsequent cheating, b = −2.26, exp(|b|) = 9.60, p = .04. Participants with an induced prevention focus were more likely to overstate their anagram performance after cheating on the initial quiz than after not cheating, b = 1.64, exp(b) = 5.14, p = .06, whereas participants with an induced promotion focus did not exhibit this tendency, b = −0.62, exp(|b|) = 1.87, p = .37 (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.

Percentage of participants who cheated on the anagram task as a function of induced regulatory focus and whether participants cheated or did not cheat on an initial task. Results are shown separately for Study 2a, in which participants did not justify their initial decision, and Study 2b, in which they did. Asterisks indicate significant differences between groups (*p < .05).

Study 2b

In Study 2b, we investigated two alternative accounts for the prevention-repetition effect. First, repeating a prior decision may function to justify the decision (Beauvois, Joule, & Brunetti, 1993), given that switching to a new decision constitutes an admission that the prior decision was problematic, which would be more threatening to prevention-focused individuals, who do not want to make mistakes. If this were true, justification of a prior decision should eliminate the motivation to repeat that decision. According to another account, repetition is driven by preference for consistency, and this need may be stronger among prevention-focused individuals, given their stronger self-evaluative motive for self-certainty (Leonardelli, Lakin, & Arkin, 2007). If this were true, controlling preference for consistency should eliminate the prevention-repetition effect.

Method

Participants were 63 college students (23 males, 40 females). The tasks and procedures in this study were identical to those used in Study 2a except for two differences. First, after accepting or rejecting the overstated score for the quiz but before starting the anagram task, participants indicated whether they noticed any error in the score by choosing from a list of statements (Table 2) or writing down an open-ended response. Second, we measured participants’ preference for consistency (Cialdini, Trost, & Newsom, 1995).

Table 2.

Justification Statements for the Initial Decision (Study 2b)

Response	Number of participants
Inflated score rejected
I noticed some error, so I rejected the wrong score and put in a score that I thought was correct.	30^a
I didn’t notice any error and found the computer-calculated scores to be reliable	0
Other	0
Inflated score accepted
I didn’t notice any error, but I could be wrong, as I may have missed it.	14
I didn’t notice any error and found the computer-calculated scores to be reliable.	9^b
I noticed some error but may have accepted a wrong score by accident.	5
I wasn’t aware that the data collection is new and may have errors, so I assumed that the computer-calculated scores were reliable.	4
Other	1^c

Note: Responses were to the following item: “To help us improve the new data collection system, we’d appreciate your feedback on the computer-calculated scores. Did you notice any error in the computer-calculated scores?” All participants received a (fictitious) score of 56; the inflated score was 65. (For more details, see General Knowledge Quiz in the section for Studies 1, 2a, and 2b in the Supplemental Material.)

Of the 30 participants who rejected the inflated score, 26 later entered the correct score, and 4 entered another inflated score (58, 68, 80, and 80, respectively). ^bThe 9 participants who reported not having noticed the error might have been telling the truth and thus might not have been cheating. However, even when these participants were excluded from the analyses, the relation between initial and subsequent cheating remained significant for participants with an induced prevention focus, b = 2.91, exp(b) = 18.41, p = .02, and the relation remained nonsignificant for participants with an induced promotion focus, b = 1.17, exp(b) = 3.21, p = .21. ^cThe open-ended response of the participant who chose “Other” was “I couldn’t notice any error, as I had no outside confirmation of how many and which questions I answered incorrectly.”

Results

Again, more participants in the prevention condition than in the promotion condition reported seeing a mouse hiding from an owl, χ²(1, N = 63) = 63.00, p < .001, and trying to remain in the lottery, χ²(1, N = 63) = 17.80, p < .001. As Table 2 shows, all participants justified their accepting or rejecting the overstated quiz score. Table 1 shows the percentages of participants who cheated on the two tasks. Logistic regressions yielded no effect of preference for consistency on initial cheating, b = 0.35, exp(b) = 1.42, p = .48, or subsequent cheating, b = −0.14, exp(|b|) = 1.15, p = .79. Initial and subsequent cheating were positively related, b = 1.43, exp(b) = 4.19, p = .02, and this relation was driven by the prevention-focus condition. Controlling for preference for consistency, initial cheating predicted subsequent cheating only for participants with an induced prevention focus, b = 2.17, exp(b) = 8.74, p = .03, not for participants with an induced promotion focus, b = 0.90, exp(b) = 2.46, p = .33 (Fig. 2). Importantly, preference for consistency did not predict repeating the first decision in the second task, b = −0.22, exp(|b|) = 1.25, p = .86.

Discussion

Through an experimental induction of regulatory focus, Studies 2a and 2b supported the hypothesized causal effect of prevention focus on repeating a prior decision. Further, Study 2b showed that the prevention-repetition effect still held when participants justified their initial decision before repeating that decision, which rules out the possibility that repetition was driven simply by the need for justification. Preference for consistency was also ruled out as an alternative explanation for the effect. Thus, these results provided additional support for the notion that maintaining the status quo created by a prior decision is the motivation behind repetition.

Study 3

Study 3 aimed to generalize the prevention-repetition effect in an interactive context of two-party negotiations in which one party could deceive the other by willfully failing to disclose relevant factual information (Kern & Chugh, 2009; Steinel, Utz, & Koning, 2010). Although failing to disclose information is perceived as being less negative than lying outright, it becomes unethical when it can “adversely affect the receiver, who would act very differently if he or she knew the truth being concealed” (Fleming & Zyglidopoulos, 2008, p. 839). This was the case for the decisions examined in this study, in which participants who had proprietary information could benefit from not disclosing it to another party who could act differently if given the information.

Method

Eighty-six college students (30 males, 56 females) participated in a study on negotiation strategies. Paired into 43 dyads, they were randomly assigned to a buyer role or a seller role and played the same role in two rounds of negotiation. The first round was a negotiation over the sale of a used car, and the buyer had the incentive to not disclose the intended use of the car because it could raise the seller’s asking price. The second round was a negotiation over the sale of a real-estate property (Karp, Gold, & Tan, 1998), and the buyer had the incentive to not disclose the intended use of the property because it could break the deal. (For more details, see the section for Study 3 in the Supplemental Material.)

Buyers were further randomly assigned to have a prevention or a promotion focus, which we induced with incentive messages similar to those used in Studies 2a and 2b. The prevention-focus message for each round of negotiation emphasized relative losses by telling buyers that they were currently in a $100 lottery but would be removed from this lottery if their purchase price was above the average for all buyers; if no deal was reached, the chance of their being removed from the lottery was 50%. The promotion-focus message emphasized relative gains by telling buyers that they would be entered in a $100 lottery if their purchase price was below the average for all buyers; if no deal was reached, the chance of their being entered in the lottery was 50%.

Results

Manipulation checks showed that more prevention-focused buyers than promotion-focused buyers tried to remain in the lottery, χ²(1, N = 43) = 13.47, p < .001. Two research assistants independently coded sellers’ reports of what buyers said about their intentions in each round of negotiation (0 = disclosure, 1 = failure to disclose). Their codings converged for 39 (91%) and 42 dyads (98%) for the first and second rounds, respectively, and the remaining discrepancies were thoroughly discussed before a final consensus was reached.³

All dyads reached an agreement in the first round, and 34 dyads (79%) reached an agreement in the second round. Table 1 shows the percentages of participants who failed to disclose information in each round. The higher failure-to-disclose rate in the second round could be because buyers knew they could not fulfill the goal of buying the property if they disclosed true intentions.

Chi-square tests yielded a positive relation between initial and subsequent failures to disclose, χ²(1, N = 43) = 6.61, p = .01, φ = .39, which was moderated by induced regulatory focus, χ²(1, N = 43) = 13.27, p < .001, φ = .56. For buyers with an induced prevention focus, those who had not disclosed information in the first round were less likely to disclose information in the second round than those who had disclosed information in the first round, χ²(1, N = 22) = 9.35, p = .002, φ = .65, whereas buyers with an induced promotion focus did not show this tendency, χ²(1, N = 21) = 0.05, p = .83 (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.

Percentage of participants who failed to disclose information as a function of induced regulatory focus and previous disclosure or failure to disclose (Study 3). Asterisks indicate a significant difference between groups (**p < .01).

Discussion

Study 3 generalized the prevention-repetition effect to a social setting in which the outcomes of participants’ decisions impacted another person and not just the participants themselves. In Study 3, we induced regulatory focus solely through message framing rather than by using message framing following a maze-cue manipulation as in Studies 2a and 2b. This means that the prevention-repetition effect found in these studies did not depend on the maze-cue manipulation, which might have also manipulated approach-avoidance motivations (Förster, Friedman, Özelsel, & Denzler, 2006).

As a long-standing issue, failure to disclose information characterizes problems in many fields, including financial, medical, legal, and environmental services. Although we measured failure to disclose as a negotiation-specific behavior, our findings may speak to a variety of forms of misconduct, from passive nondisclosure to fraudulent concealment.

Study 4

The four previous studies examined repeated decisions in the same ethical domain, such as overstating performance (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b) and failing to disclose information (Study 3). In Study 4, we considered whether the prevention-repetition effect might generalize even further by testing the role of prevention focus in repeating the ethical stance of a previous decision, instead of repeating the decision itself, from one domain (pledging a donation) to another (overstating one’s performance).

Method

Fifty-six individuals (22 males, 34 females) from the Amazon Mechanical Turk completed an online study of motivation and performance. Participants were first introduced to a donation opportunity as an attempt to increase social responsibility (Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, 2009). They could select from a list of six donation recipients or specify any outside recipient and indicate the amount of money that they wished to donate. They then completed the same general-knowledge quiz used in Study 1. As in Study 1, we measured participants’ chronic prevention and promotion foci as two separate dimensions.

Results

Table 1 shows the percentages of participants who refused to donate and who later cheated on the quiz. Logistic regressions yielded a marginally significant effect of donation on cheating, b = −1.10, exp(|b|) = 3.00, p = .06, which suggests that the less prosocial decision of refusing to donate increased the likelihood of cheating later. More importantly, this effect was driven by an interaction between prevention focus and donation, b = −2.66, exp(|b|) = 14.24, p = .02. Simple-slopes tests showed that for participants with a strong prevention focus, those who had previously decided not to donate were more likely to cheat than those who had previously decided to donate, t(50) = −3.32, p = .002, whereas participants with a weak prevention focus did not show this tendency, t(50) = 0.09, p = .93 (Fig. 4). The interaction between promotion focus and initial cheating was nonsignificant, b = −1.16, exp(|b|) = 3.18, p = .27.

Fig. 4.

Likelihood of subsequent cheating as a function of participants’ chronic prevention focus and initial decision about whether to pledge a donation (Study 4). Asterisks indicate a significant difference between groups (**p < .01).

Discussion

Tested across different domains of ethical decision making, the notion that the ethical stance of a prior decision would be repeated in a subsequent decision was supported for individuals with a strong prevention focus. Extending previous studies, Study 4 showed that the prevention-repetition effect is not constrained by the domain of a status quo decision. Instead, the broad, cross-domain relevance of this effect corroborates with the notion that “people cognitively categorize fairly disparate activities (e.g., helping and cheating) within a single moral rubric” (Jordan, Mullen, & Murnighan, 2011, p. 710).

General Discussion

Results from five studies led to the novel finding that having a chronic or induced prevention focus predicts repeating the ethical stance of a prior decision. The prevention-repetition effect emerged for decisions in multiple ethical domains (overstating one’s performance, failing to disclose information, and failing to pledge a donation) whether the initial and subsequent decisions were in the same or different domains. The possibilities that this effect was due to prevention-focused individuals’ need to justify their initial decision or to their desire for consistency were ruled out (Study 2b).

There was no effect of prevention focus on generally being ethical or unethical, either in the initial or the subsequent decision.⁴ Rather, the prevention effect was on repeating the second time what was done the first time, regardless of its ethical value. Although a prevention focus can lead to more bad feelings about “a sin of commission,” such as overstating performance, than about “a sin of omission,” such as failing to disclose information (Camacho, Higgins, & Luger, 2003), the prevention-repetition effect was found for both types of “sins,” as well as for honest decisions, which reflects the motivational strength of fit over hedonic and ethical concerns.

This research complements the traditional view of ethical decision making as consisting of isolated events by providing one explanation for why repeated unethical decisions occur. Notably, a prevention focus can perpetuate unethical decisions, but it can also sustain ethical decisions. What matters is where decision makers initially stand. Bearing a resemblance to “arbitrary coherence” (Ariely, Loewenstein, & Prelec, 2003), a prevention focus itself does not dictate the direction individuals arbitrarily take at each ethical crossroad; rather, it serves as a motivator that generates coherent repeated decisions. The path-dependent property of this effect reveals that, in the domain of ethics, maintaining the status quo represents an essential contribution to repeated ethical decision making when individuals are prevention focused.

Our findings delineate a sequential process of ethical degradation related to prevention motivation. Previously proposed process models have described the temporal development of unethical behaviors, such as routinization (Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004), normalization (Greve et al., 2010), moral seduction (Moore et al., 2006), and gradual erosion (Gino & Bazerman, 2009), and the present research complements these models by adding a regulatory-focus motivational element. It is telling, for example, that despite a prevention focus per se having no effect on a single decision, it increased participants’ likelihood of repeating the ethical stance of a previous decision.

The findings draw attention to the downsides of negative reward systems that penalize transgressors through punishment. Although anticipating punishment can function as a deterrent, research has found mixed effects of punishment (Ariely et al., 2003). From a regulatory-focus perspective, punishment induces prevention concerns (Higgins, 1996) and, paradoxically, may encourage the repetition of past wrongs, especially when maintaining the status quo is a deeper motivation than hedonic concerns (Higgins, 2005, 2012). One way to alleviate this downside of punishment is to “reset” the status quo by supporting former transgressors in taking new and positive actions to safely reverse previous misconducts and reestablish an ethical status quo.

The prevention-repetition effect can result in bliss or woe, and future work is needed to uncover ways to harvest its benefits and minimize its costs. In our studies, participants received no explicit feedback on their initial decision, which might have supported their using that decision to create the status quo. Because the definition of what is ethical or not is often constructed in relative terms, a social-control agent can play an important role in one’s judgment of whether a decision transgresses the line separating right from wrong (Greve et al., 2010). Hence, feedback that reflects negatively on an initial unethical decision without evoking physical or psychological threats (e.g., by presenting an ethical exemplar) could prevent people from creating the status quo from that decision and subsequently repeating it.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank Dolly Chugh, Baruch Eitam, Michael W. Morris, Krishna Savani, Elke Weber, and Batia Wiesenfeld for their comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript, and Emma Chaves, Boyoon Choi, and Julia Lushing for their assistance with data collection and coding.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.

Funding

This work was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant 39429 awarded to E. T. Higgins.

Supplemental Material

Additional supporting information may be found at

Notes

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