Chapter 13 The Self-Regulation Perspective

Question 1

The Self-Regulation Perspective (Overview)

Answer 1

• Assumes people differ in terms of how they adopt, prioritize and maintain goals
• Personality
• Naturally occurring organized systems and how they function
• Robotics
• Viewpoint on aspects of motivation
• Focuses on how people adopt, prioritize, and attain goals
• Focus is on how the cognitions and memories result in behavior

Question 2

Intentions (Icek Ajzen and Martin Fishbein)

Answer 2

• The process uses a kind of mental algebra to create an action probability
• If the probability is high enough, an intention forms to do the act
• When people decide whether to do something, they weigh several kinds of information
• Think about the action’s likely outcome
• How much they want it
• Attitude and subjective norm conflict
• Intention depends on which matters more: satisfying yourself or satisfying the others

Question 3

Attitude (Personal)

Answer 3

• Belief that the behavior leads to outcomes & Desire for outcomes
• the outcome and its desirability merge to form an attitude about the behavior
• Because it stems from your own wants, your attitude is your personal orientation to the act.

Question 4

Subjective Norm (Social)

Answer 4

• Belief that others want you to do the action & Desire to do what others want
• what other people want you to do and how much that matters merge to form a subjective norm about the action

Question 5

Goals

Answer 5

• Experience is organized around goals
• Personal strivings
• Current concerns
• Personal projects
• People’s goals energize their activities, direct their movements- even provide meaning for their lives
• The path you choose to the overall goal depends on other aspects of your life.
• Different people use different strategies to pursue the same life goals
• The self is made up partly of goals and the organizations among them
• Traits their meaning from the goals to which they relate
• Goals and aspirations vary from person to person.
• Goals have a coherent relationship among persons from diverse cultures
• Goals form a two-dimension space -> some are compatible and some conflict
• As a person’s values shift in importance over time, an increase in the importance of one value is accompanied by slight increases in the importance of other compatible values

Question 6

Goal setting

Answer 6

• Setting specific high goals leads to higher performance.
• When specific high goals are compared to specific easy goals
• When specific high goals are compared to the goal of “Do your best.”
• “Try to do reasonably well.” -> poorer performance than setting a specific high goal
• Higher goals lead to better performance
• Setting a higher goal causes you to try harder
• You’re more persistent
• High goals make you concentrate more, making you less susceptible to distractions
• Take up a goal that’s high enough to sustain strong effort but not so high that it’s rejected instead of adopted.

Question 7

Goal Setting (Locke & Latham)

Answer 7

• Easy and “Do your best”: just do the standard (-)
• Hard and Specific Goal: Impossible to do (-)
• Hard and “Do your best”: At least try (+)
• Easy and Specific goal: more likely to achieve goal (+)

Question 8

Goal intention

Answer 8

*Intent to reach a particular outcome

Question 9

Implementation intention (Peter Gollwitzer)

Answer 9

• Concerns the how, when, and where of the process; the intention to take specific actions when encountering specific circumstances; more concrete than goal intentions
• Serve the goal intentions
• They preempt problems that arise in getting the behavior done
• Help people get started in doing the behavior
• Help prevent goal striving from straying off course
• Take specific actions when encountering specific circumstances -> If…then
• Some are habitual and well learned
• Others need to be formed consciously for specific intended paths of behavior
• concrete and specific
• helps to recognize the opportunity and act on it
• Overcome tiredness
• Doing something hard
• Create link between situational cue and strategy for moving toward the goal -> derives from the concept of possible self (images of the person you think you might become -> reference points for self-regulation)

Question 10

Deliberative mindset

Answer 10

• Forming a goal intention requires weighing possibilities, thinking of pros and cons, and juggling options
• Deliberating the decision to act
• Open minded, careful and cautious mindset, in the service of making the best choice
• Frontal cortex

Question 11

Implemental mindset (Gollwitzer, Heckhausen and Sellar)

Answer 11

• focuses on implementing the intention to act
• Optimistic
• Minimizes potential problems, in the service of trying as hard as possible to carry out the action
• Fosters persistence

Question 12

Negative feedback loop (Carver and Scheier)

Answer 12

• Value for self-regulation: a goal, standard of comparison, or reference value for behavior (all of these mean the same thing here)
• Can come from many places and can exist at many levels of abstraction
• Feedback -> adjust the action, the result is feedback of a new perception -> rechecked against the reference value = control system = each event in the loop depends on the result of previous one
• Negative loop= its component processes negate, or eliminate, discrepancies between the behavior and the goal
• Aim is to decrease distance between reference value

Question 13

Reference value

Answer 13

*Goal or else outcome you’re trying to avoid

Question 14

Input

Answer 14

*Perception of present behavior

Question 15

Discrepancy

Answer 15

*Comparator; measure of distance between input and goal

Question 16

Meta-monitoring

Answer 16

• Rate of movement away or toward goal, or outcome you are trying to avoid
• Negative Feedback Loop-> Reflects how fast your discrepancy is being reduced at each subsequent time interval, and determines how happy or disappointed you feel

Question 17

Positive Feedback Loop (Carver and Scheier)

Answer 17

*Aim is to increase distance from reference value

Question 18

Self-Directed Attention and Feedback Loop

Answer 18

• If self-directed attention engages a comparator, behavior should be regulated more closely to the goal
• Self-focus leads to goal matching

Question 19

Mental Contrasting and Goal Matching

Answer 19

• Mental contrasting of present states with desired end states
• Using the mental contrast as engaging the comparator function
• Mental contrasting energizes their behavior
• People are more successful in attaining their goals

Question 20

Feedback Hierarchy

Answer 20

• There are both high-level and low-level goals that relate to each other
• Output of a high-level loop consists of setting a goal for a lower-level loop
• High-level loops don’t “behave” by creating physical actions but by providing guides to the loops below them
• Only the very lowest loops actually create physical acts, by controlling muscle groups
• Each layer receives feedback appropriate to its level of abstraction
• System concepts -> Principle control -> Programs

Question 21

System Concepts

Answer 21

• at the top are very abstract qualities
• You don’t just go out and be your ideal self
• Trying to attain that ideal self -> trying to live in accord with the principles it incorporates
• Ex: Ideal Self Image “Be a good person”

Question 22

Principles

Answer 22

• broad guidelines
• Specify broad qualities; be displayed in many ways
• Help you decide what activities to start and what choices to make as you do them
• Correspond to traits, or values- express values in actions
• Its abstractness and broad applicability, not its social appropriateness
• Principles act by specifying programs or by specifying decisions within programs
• Ex: “Be a clean roommate”

Question 23

Programs

Answer 23

• Program resembles script which specifies a general course of action but with many details left out
• Make choices within a larger set of possibilities
• Programs are strategies
• Entering either programs -> conform to the same principle
• Didn’t require entering a program -> principle might have come into play during a program
• All programs have general courses of predictable acts and subgoals
• But exactly what you do at a given point can vary -> depend on situation
• Connections between programs and lower levels of control -> stronger
• Ex: “Clean up the apartment”
• When lower levels are functionally superordinate-> the higher layers have been disconnected - isn’t permanent
• Goals at higher levels can be affected by things that happen while lower levels are in charge- good or bad effect
• A program can help you match a principle
• A program can create a problem if it violates the principle

Question 24

Action Identification Theory (Robin Vallacher and Dan Wegner)

Answer 24

• asking how people view their actions
• Any action can be identified in many ways
• Some identities are concrete, others are more abstract
• How you think about your actions presumably says something about the goals you’re using in acting
• People generally tend to see their actions in as high level a way as they can
• If people start to struggle in regulating an act at that high level -> retreat to lower-level identity for the action
• Difficulty at a high level -> lower level to become functionally superordinate
• Using the lower-level identity -> iron out the problem
• Person tends to drift again to a higher-level identification
• Experience leads to higher level identities
• People also differ in their chronic level of action identification.

Question 25

Individual differences in Action Identification (Trope & Liberman 2003)

Answer 25

• High-level agents (meaning, goals, why you are doing) tend to be more planful and more likely to incorporate their actions into their own self concept compared to low level agents
• Low level agents (focusing on action itself) tend to be more absent minded; forget what you are doing; less likely to carry around the goal; easy to get distracted
• Low level agents have a higher likelihood of being criminals

Question 26

Construal Level Theory (Yaacov Trope and Nira Liberman, 2003, 2010)

Answer 26

• How people construe their activities depends partly on how distant those activities are from the present moment.
• The farther in the future the activities are, the more abstractly they are viewed.
• Closer -> more concrete and less abstract
• Time-based construals - psychological distance
• The greater the psychological distance, the more abstract the mental representation becomes
• Closer -> more concrete and detailed the mental representation becomes
• Psychological distance: time, space, social distance, likelihood of occurrence, and even third person versus first-person viewpoints
• Different kinds of distance are interchangeable to some degree
• How people construe their behavior (abstractly or concretely) -> the level at which they try to regulate it.

Question 27

Emotions

Answer 27

• Herb Simon (1967):The order in which you do things is partly a matter of priorities- how important each goal is to you at the time
• Priority are subject to rearrangement.
• Simon (1967): emotions are an internal call to rearrange
• Anxiety: not paying enough attention to personal well-being and you need to do so
• Anger: your autonomy (another goal that people value) needs to have a higher priority
• If the problem gets big enough -> emotion becomes intense enough to interrupt what you’re doing
• Emotions are produced by a system that monitors “how well things are going” toward attaining goals
• Badly and negative feelings -> engage more effort -> try harder
• Positive feelings -> “coast” a little on it and check to see if anything else needs your attention
• Coasting helps in the progress of juggling many goals at once

Question 28

Effects of Expectancies

Answer 28

• Expectancy of success
• Having confidence in overcoming obstacles leads people back to self-regulatory effort.
• Levels of effort fall along a continuum.
• Variations in effort as forming a rough dichotomy
• Whether you keep trying or quit
• Different people emphasize different facets of expectancies.
• Bandura
• Efficacy expectancy: the belief that one has the personal capability of doing the action that needs to be done.
• Expectancies -> how hard people try and how well they do
• Confident individuals do better in many ways -> persistent and perform better
• Having confidence in diverse areas helped the women cope more effectively with their social world.

Question 29

Disengage

Answer 29

• When people feel doubt, however, they are more likely to disengage: reduce their effort toward goal attainment
• They may even abandon the goal altogether- temporarily or permanently

Question 30

Confidence About Life: Effects of Generalized Optimism

Answer 30

• Optimism is generalized confidence
• Pessimism is generalized doubt-not about a specific outcome but about life in general
• This generalized confidence -> traitlike
• Stable over time
• Genetically influenced
• People who are optimistic about life are liked better than pessimists
• Better at forming social networks when they go to a new environment
• Better in relationships because more supportive of their partners in resolving conflicts
• Deal better with adversity than pessimists
• Have less distress, are more focused on moving forward, and are less likely to withdraw from their usual activities
• Seem more prepared to accept the situation as real
• Don’t stick their heads in the sand and ignore threats to their well-being
• Less likely to require rehospitalization after having major heart surgery
• Literally healed better
• Lower risk of cancer death, cardiovascular death, and mortality in general
• Pervasive health benefits

Question 31

Partial Disengagement

Answer 31

*Between effort and giving up
-Sometimes a goal can’t be attained, but another one can be substituted for it
-Sometimes disengagement involves only scaling back from a lofty goal in a given domain to a less demanding one- giving up the first goal, more limited, doesn’t mean leaving the domain entirely
=Partial disengagement -> engaged in the domain you had wanted to quit
=Scaling back- giving up in a small way- trying to move ahead but not giving up in a larger way
-Whether giving up is bad or good depends on the context
=It’s a poor way of coping with the ordinary difficulties of life
=Sometimes being persistent would pay off in success.
=It’s necessary to give up or defer goals when circumstances make it hard or impossible to reach them.
==The failure to disengage -> continuing distress

Question 32

Kurt Lewin “Level of aspiration”

Answer 32

• Success causes us to raise our level of aspiration. This is related to Bandura’s idea of self efficacy (i.e. Efficacy expectancy)
• Failure causes us to lower our level of aspiration.
• Occasionally, people “leave the field”
• This happens for different reasons following success vs. failure
• “Leaving the field” following failure is also known as disengagement

Question 33

Assessment of Self-Regulatory Qualities

Answer 33

*It may be useful to measure individual differences in those self-regulatory processes
-Private self-consciousness: tendency to be self-reflective- to think about your feelings, motives, actions, and so on
=High in self-consciousness-> careful and thorough self-regulators (maybe even obsessive-compulsive ones)
==If their actions don’t match their intentions -> adjust accordingly
=Lower in self-consciousness -> more random and less guided in behavior
=Self-consciousness relates to conscientiousness from the five-factor model
==People high in self-consciousness are more prone to engage in self-regulation that’s automatic and nonconscious

Question 34

Tapnell and Campbell (1999)-Rumination-Reflection Questionnaire

Answer 34

• Two motives underlie it: curiosity (a growth-oriented motive) and the desire to probe negative feelings states (which is ultimately a safety-seeking motive, if the source of the feelings can be isolated)
• Rumination: being unable to put something behind you -> relates to neuroticism
• Reflection: being fascinated and inquisitive -> relates to openness to experience

Question 35

Vallacher and Wegner (1989): Behavior Identification Form

Answer 35

• Whether people tend to view their behavior in high-level or lower-level terms
• People with similar traits can differ greatly if they think of their goals at different levels
• Identify actions at high levels -> look at the “big picture” whether they’re socializing studying, or making music
• Identify actions at lower levels -> focus more on the “nuts and bolts” of what’s going on

Question 36

Problems in Behavior, and Behavior Change

Answer 36

*Hierarchical model
-Conflict occurs when a person is committed to two goals that can’t be attained easily at the same time.
-Alternate between the goals -> can be exhausting and distressing
-Decide that one goal contributes more to your higher-order values
-People sometimes want to abstract goals but lack the know-how to reach them
*Problems from an inability to disengage
-Because they are high in your hierarchy (central to your self) or represent paths to those higher goals
-Giving up on the person you want to be
-Deep doubt -> repeated cycle of sporadic effort, doubt, distress, disengagement, and confronting the goal again
-Keep thinking about a failure -> motivate you to try harder next time
=How to do things differently next time
=Dangerous to dwell on a failure when it can’t be undone -> major distress results
-Susan Nolen-Hoeksema: people who are prone to depression focus much of their attention on their sad feelings
=Rumination acts -> prolong depressed state

Question 37

Self-Regulation and Therapy

Answer 37

• Therapy-> break down the automaticity
• Provide them with a way to make the desired responses automatic in place of the problem responses
• Kanfer and Busemeyer (1982): process of therapy is itself a dynamic feedback system
• Series of stages in which clients repeatedly use feedback- both from therapy sessions and from actions outside therapy- to guide their movements through a long-term plan of change
• The goals and issues also keep changing
• Keep checking to make sure the concrete goals you’re working toward support your higher-order goals

Question 38

Means-end analysis

Answer 38

• a useful way to create choices
• Start by noting the difference between your present state and your desired state (end)
• Think of an action that would reduce the difference (mean)
• Abstract -> break into subgoals and steps -> concrete and complete -> create a strategy

Question 39

The Self-Regulation Perspective: Problems and Prospects

Answer 39

• Loose ends and unanswered questions with the cognitive view
• Derives from the robics metaphor it sometimes employs
• A model based on feedback principles is merely a model of homeostasis
• Hierarchical model fails to deal effectively with the homunculus problem
• Homunculus: how people act
• Where do the highest goals come from- the ones that specify all the lower goals?
• All this seems too much a description from the outside looking in
• Too little feel of what it means to have a personality
• Emphasizes structure and process, rather than content -> aren’t well specified
• Focus on issues that stand at a slight tangent from personality -> not focus directly on personality