Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental Social Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jesp Case Report Interventionist external agents make specific advice less demotivating Jamel Khenfer a,c,⁎ , Kristin Laurin b , Eric Tafani c , Elyette Roux c , Aaron C. Kay d a Zayed University, College of Business, P.O. Box: 144534, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates b University of British Columbia, Department of Psychology, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada c Aix-Marseille University, CERGAM research center, Aix-Marseille Graduate School of Management-IAE, Chemin de la Quille, Aix-en-Provence 13540, France d Duke University, Fuqua School of Business, 100 Fuqua Drive, Durham, NC 27708, United States ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Savings goal Advice, external agency Control Motivation Religion Banks ABSTRACT Across four experiments, we explored how reminders of powerful external agents—interventionist Gods and reliable corporate institutions—influence people's motivation in the realm of financial goals. We found evidence that when people receive specific financial advice, they feel demotivated by the overwhelming flow of concrete instructions for achieving success. We found further that, under these circumstances specifically, reminders of interventionist agents bolster motivation, but that these same agents under different circumstances (i.e., when people receive vague advice) instead undermine motivation. Our findings shed light on the effects of specific (versus vague) goal focus, and on the dynamics of compensatory control in consumer settings. 1. Introduction Culture is replete with reminders of powerful external entities watching over us as we pursue important goals. Religion is one notable example (e.g., “The Lord is my shepherd […]” Psalm 23, Bible), but businesses, and in particular banks, may be another. AIG, for instance, claims to have “The strength to be there,” Aviva reminds us they are “Taking care of what's important,” and Prudential Financial promises they will be “Growing and protecting your wealth.” These comforting messages may be a savvy marketing tool, casting companies as powerful entities that help people navigate through complex systems to achieve daunting financial goals. We argue that the idea of powerful, all-controlling external agents—religious or corpor- ate—can strengthen people's belief that actions and outcomes are in- terconnected, thereby bolstering motivation to pursue goals, which would otherwise suffer from detailed advice. We propose further that, in the absence of detailed advice, these interventionist agents can in- stead undermine people's motivation. 1.1. Specific advice undermines motivation People frequently receive advice; for instance, recommendations regarding savings and investment decisions. We might intuit that, when it comes to long-term goals, pursuers benefit from specific advice: concrete instructions detailing each step required for achieving success. Indeed, planning can facilitate goal pursuit, though primarily when people feel confident that their actions will lead to the expected out- comes (Wieber, Odenthal, & Gollwitzer, 2010). But specific plans for long-term goals involve intricate sets of actions—subgoals that must be accomplished in tandem, over time, to achieve desired outcomes. Such plans can, paradoxically, leave people doubting their ability to succeed (Mishra, Mishra, & Shiv, 2011), and feeling distressed and unwilling to invest efforts (Powers, Koestner, & Topciu, 2005; Townsend & Liu, 2012). For example, when people think about how much they want to save in concrete (vs. abstract) terms—when they think about all the specific details involved—they report lower savings intentions (Ülkümen & Cheema, 2011). Suppose, for instance, Jack wants to buy a home. If an advisor suggests he figure out his target down payment, how much he can set aside each month, and how long he can wait before purchasing a home, and then choose from a series of investment options, each with different fees and indicators of risk and return, this granular level of detail may make Jack doubt his ability to navigate this complex world effectively. 1 H1. When people receive specific(vs. vague) advice, they feel less motivated to achieve savings goals. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.07.003 Received 6 November 2016; Received in revised form 8 July 2017; Accepted 10 July 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: jamel.khenfer@zu.ac.ae (J. Khenfer), klaurin@psych.ubc.ca (K. Laurin), eric.tafani@iae-aix.com (E. Tafani), elyette.roux@iae-aix.com (E. Roux), aaron.kay@duke.edu (A.C. Kay). 1 Recent work shows that when people feel out of control, they can respond with increased approach motivation (Greenaway et al., 2015), rather than with the demotivation we posit here. However, these findings relate to people's approach motivation toward goals unrelated to their loss of control. Here, we posit that a specific-advice-induced lack of control over financial goals will reduce motivation for financial goals specifically. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 73 (2017) 189–196 0022-1031/ © 2017 Published by Elsevier Inc. MARK