Self-Regulation

Question 1

What is self-regulation?

Answer 1

the ability to control thoughts, feelings and behaviours in order to achieve goals
successful regulation = successful pursuit of goals

Question 2

What processes are involved in self-regulation?

Answer 2

deciding which goals to pursue
managing goal conflicts
resisting temptation

Question 3

How does the Marshmallow test predict outcomes in teens and adults?

Answer 3

Mischel (1970)
children who could not resist temptation;
teens - worse academic achievement, social outcomes and more behavioural problems
adults - lower income, lower self-esteem, drug taking, obesity and divorce
however self-regulation skills are acquirable so nothing is predetermined from childhood

Question 4

How does the marshmallow test relate to self-regulation?

Answer 4

the ability to delay gratification is key to success as a teen and an adult

Question 5

What are the benefits of trait self-control?

Answer 5

DeRidder et al. (2012)
self-control predicts success across all measured behaviours, strongest for school and work, weakest for eating and weight
Baumeister & Alquist (2009)
trait self-control is an overwhelmingly beneficial trait with no drawbacks, is a limited resource so must be managed carefully, can affect intelligent thought and decision making

Question 6

What is the model of action phases?

Answer 6

Heckhausen & Gollwitzer (1987)
pre-decisional phase
pre-actional phase
actional phase
post-actional outcomes

Question 7

What can the model of action phases tell us?

Answer 7

considering the process of self-regulation as a timeline, there are different reasons why we might be failing

Question 8

Why might people fail at the pre-decisional phase?

Answer 8

errors in affective forecasting (Wilson & Gilbert, 2003); over-predict how we will react to situations and how long the feeling will last
we incorrectly predict what will make us happy (Dunn et al., 2011 - spending money)

Question 9

Why might people fail at the pre-actional phase?

Answer 9

planning fallacy (Buehler et al., 1994); a tendency to believe that a project will run as planned despite previous problems
incorrect focus on future plans rather than past experiences

Question 10

Why might people fail at the actional phase?

Answer 10

limited resources (Baumeister, Vohs & Tice, 2007); self-control can be depleted, recently exerting self-control makes it less likely to be used on a subsequent task
ego depletion (Hagger et al., 2010); willpower can deplete depending on your current state

Question 11

How can people improve self-regulation?

Answer 11

observing a significant other showing self-regulation
precommitment
self-compassion

Question 12

What are the benefits of precommitment?

Answer 12

Ariely et al. (2012)
if people commit to certain behaviours beforehand, they are more likely to actually achieve their goals
however if we do not precommit optimally then we may face worse results

Question 13

How can self-compassion affect self-regulation

Answer 13

Breins & Chen (2012)
self-esteem manipulation; must be intelligent
self-compassion; encouraged to be kinder to themselves
s/c condition made students work harder in subsequent tests and actually perform better

Question 14

What are emotions?

Answer 14

motivated states with various components;

• physiological arousal
• expressive behaviours
• cognitive experience

Question 15

What is the evolutionary perspective of emotions?

Answer 15

Loewenstein (2010)

emotions promote the right response to recurring situations of adaptive significance

Question 16

How do emotions affect cognition?

Answer 16

emotions can have a significant effect on judgements and decisions however we tend to underestimate how much influence they will have
we are bad at recognising when emotions have influenced our decisions

Question 17

What is the hot-cold empathy gap?

Answer 17

the underestimation of the influence of emotions on decision making (Loewenstein, 2010)

Question 18

What is mood congruent recall?

Answer 18

we are more likely to retrieve memories consistent with our current mood (Lloyd & Lishman, 1975)

Question 19

What is state dependent memory?

Answer 19

we remember best when mood at encoding matches mood at recall (Bower, 1981)

Question 20

What is Bower’s (1981) Network Theory?

Answer 20

emotional arousal spreads through a network and primes things its associated with
- when in a bad mood more negative memories are primed and more likely to be recalled

Question 21

What is a self-serving bias?

Answer 21

the tendency to make more positive/optimistic judgements about the self than others

Question 22

What is depressive realism?

Answer 22

mildly depressed individuals show more accurate self-ratings, they do not have a self-serving bias (Alloy & Abramson, 1988)

Question 23

How does arousal affect judgements?

Answer 23

Capilano Suspension Bridge (Dutton & Aron, 1974)
participants cross either a high or low bridge
the higher bridge induced higher arousal
39% who crossed the high bridge and 9% who crossed the low bridge called the experimenter
people misattributed their anxiety arousal for attraction arousal

Question 24

How do emotions affect our judgements about others?

Answer 24

emotions can influence judgements of others even when they are logically irrelevant; e.g. weather dependent (Simonsohn, 2007)
however if we are aware of these feelings then they less likely to influence our decisions (Schwarz & Clore, 1983)

Question 25

What is the model of feelings as information?

Answer 25

Schwarz & Clore (1983)
we experience our feelings as a reaction to whatever we are focusing on and assume they provide information about the object or decision we are considering
e.g. if you feel anxious when predicting risk, you will predict threatening events to be more likely

Question 26

Which part of the brain is responsible for emotional processing?

Answer 26

the ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Question 27

What can happen if there is damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex?

Answer 27

impaired emotional processing
impaired decision making
inability to learn from mistakes
no improvement in rationality

Question 28

Are emotions good or bad for decision making?

Answer 28

Loewenstein (2010); the most serious problems facing the world are caused by a deficiency rather than an excess of emotions

Question 29

Why might emotional decision making appear irrational?

Answer 29

if it does not suit the current circumstances or produces undesirable effects, it may be socially inappropriate

Question 30

What did Baumeister, Vohs et al. (2007) conclude about emotions?

Answer 30

they can be both helpful AND harmful

• conscious emotions guide behaviour indirectly; learning from experiences, predicting future emotions, directing behaviour to pursue/avoid these future emotions
• making decisions based on one’s current emotional state is not an effective strategy