Striving and Feeling

Interactions Among Goals, Affect, and Self-regulation

Leonard L. Martin, Abraham Tesser, Leonard L. Martin, Abraham Tesser

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317780403
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Recently, research on the ways in which goals, affect, and self-regulation influence one another has enjoyed an upsurge. New findings are being published and new theories are being developed to integrate these findings. This volume reports on the latest of this work, including a substantial amount of data and theory that has not yet been published. Emanating from a conference exploring affect as both a cause and effect in various social contexts, this book examines some of the complex and reciprocal relationships among goals, self structures, feelings, thoughts, and behavior. The chapters address: *the effects of intrinsic versus extrinsic goals;
*the different effects of approach versus avoidance goals;
*the role of awareness in goal pursuit and affective states;
*the meaning of affective states in relation to goal attainment;
*the impact of hedonistic concerns as motivational factors;
*how people regulate their moods; and
*the role of the self in affective experiences.

1
Introduction

Leonard L. Martin
Abraham Tesser
University of Georgia

In Gordon Allport's (1985) classic definition, social psychology was described as the scientific investigation of people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as a function of the real, imagined, or implied presence of other people. A review of the field reveals that this definition has remained fairly accurate over the years. Of course, the field's central emphasis has fluctuated between thinking, feeling, and behavior. For example, the plethora of person memory studies in the 1980s led some people to describe that era as the decade of cognition. Based on a count of the number of current studies involving affect as a central component, one might be led to conclude that the 1990s is the decade of affect. We believe, however, that the current emphasis on affect has not come at the expense of either cognition or behavior. In fact, there are a number of researchers conducting integrative work on affect, cognition, and behavior, and some of these have contributed to this volume. More specifically, the volume reports on research examining the separate and interactive effects of goals and affect on people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

The volume began as a conference organized by the editors and sponsored by the University of Georgia's vice president for academic affairs. For three days, the contributors and editors met in Athens, Georgia, to present data, discuss the implications of this data, and generally have a good time interacting. The chapters in this volume grew out of these presentations, discussions, and interactions.

The chapters are organized into three broad sections. Part 1 involves the affective and behavioral consequences of goals, Part 2 involves the affective consequences of self-organization and self-regulation, and Part 3 involves the role of affect in a number of processes (i.e., affect as an independent rather than a dependent variable).

In chapter 2, Carver, Lawrence, and Scheier describe a way in which their control theory of self-regulation can account for affect. According to control theory, people engage in a continual process of establishing goals and intentions, and adjusting current patterns of behavior so as to more closely match these values, using informational feedback as a guide to progress. Carver, Lawrence, and Scheier assume that affect is not influenced directly by a discrepancy between goals and current behavior. Rather, it is influenced by the perceived rate of discrepancy reduction (velocity) and by perceived changes in rate of discrepancy reduction (acceleration). This view of affect implies a mechanism within the organism that actively prevents the too-frequent occurrence of negative as well as positive feelings. The advantage of such a mechanism is that it allows people to balance their attention and effort between various strivings. Evidence consistent with this model is presented, and implications for goal setting and different types of emotions (elation-depression, relief-anxiety) are discussed.

McIntosh explores the processes by which some people become more heavily invested in goal pursuit than others and with what consequence. To do this, he considers differences in people's beliefs about goal attainment. Linkers are people who interpret nonattainment of lower order goals (e.g., ideal weight) as threats to the attainment of higher order goals (i.e., happiness). Nonlinkers do not make this interpretation. These differences in goal beliefs are discussed in terms of their implications for happiness, rumination, negative affect, depression, physical illness, and mood repair. Mcintosh concludes with some suggestions as to how people might avoid negative emotional reactions to goal nonattainment and ends with a discussion of the relation between linking and other constructs.

Emmons and Kaiser suggest that irrespective of the content of one s goal pursuits, individual differences in goal setting and striving have important ramifications for a person's emotional life. Generally speaking, personal goal systems are precursors of life satisfaction and long-term positive and negative affective states. Their chapter addresses different types of individual differences in goal orientations, including level of specification, approach versus avoidance, conflicts between goals, and differentiation between goals. The effects of these different goal orientations are discussed primarily in terms of subjective well-being and reports of physical illness. Emmons and Kaiser conclude that goals capture affectively charged themes that are central to a person's life and that these goals emerge from and determine the nature of the person's transactions with the social world.

Cochran and Tesser address an interesting but perplexing breakdown in self-regulation known as the "what the hell?" effect. They ask why goal nonattainment sometimes leads people to engage in behaviors that lead them even further from attaining their goals. For example, after exceeding his or her desired calorie intake at lunch, a dieter may say "What the hell, I've already blown it for the day. I may just as well get the banana split for dessert." Cochran and Tesser review and discount several possible explanations of this effect. Then, they present a model that implicates the interaction of goal proximity and goal framing (i.e., avoidance vs. approach). They present evidence consistent with this model and discuss the implications of their work for the effectiveness of self-regulation more generally.

Part 2 begins with Halberstadt, Niedenthal, and Setterlund's exploration of the role of self-complexity in affective reactions. Halberstadt et al. suggest that people do not possess a single unitary mental representation of who they are. Rather, people have representations of who they are, who they have been, and who they could be and will be. In this chapter, the authors focus on people's conceptions of their future selves. The authors present evidence that the future self is distinct from other self-concepts, that people vary in their degree of future self-complexity, and that this complexity accounts for affective reactivity. Halberstadt, Niedenthal, and Setterlund also discuss the role of future self-complexity in performance and decisions relevant to future behavior and suggest other domains to which a future self-complexity analysis might be fruitfully applied.

Showers and Kling outline a theoretical framework that describes the relationships between specific self-regulatory goals and distinct types of self-concept organization. They suggest that the organization of self-information, and not just its content, can influence self-evaluation. The differences they explore are between compartmentalized and evaluatively integrated organization. Compartmentalized selves have positive and negative beliefs in distinct categories and are associated with extreme affective reactions. Integrated selves have positive and negative beliefs mixed within a single category and are associated with mild affective reactions. Showers and Kling further note that while organization can influence affective reactions, people's goals and affect can also influence the organization of their self-concepts. Finally, Showers and Kling discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each type of self-organization and indicate when each is likely to occur.

Strauman presents a theory of the relation between self-evaluation and vulnerability to negative mood states. According to the theory, people learn the emotional consequences of their behavior and the stimuli related to those consequences. This learning may involve the development of a representation of people's reactions to our behavior. These representations, in turn, operate as self-guides, possessing inherent emotional and motivational significance. As children develop the capacity for continuous, largely unintended self-evaluation, they may also experience affective states for reasons that are not necessarily accessible to awareness (i.e., automatic self-evaluations). Strauman's model depicts a general pathway to a final dysregulated state that could result in clinical depression. The role of biological factors, traumatic life events, and cognitive and personality development are also discussed.

Sansone and Harackiewicz explore the possibility that explanations of the form "I felt like it" or "I didn't feel like it" may, under some conditions, be legitimate explanations for behavior. More generally, they explore the mediating role of phenomenal experience in motivating performance. They note that most current approaches to behavior regulation are teleological in orientation. That is, most models hypothesize that people's motivation depends on and is defined in terms of the potential outcomes of their actions. Sansone and Harackiewicz suggest that in some conditions what an individual feels like doing may be the more vivid and compelling determinant of the individual's action. They suggest that the coordination and regulation of process-derived and outcome-derived motivation may be the essential task of self-regulation. The model they present represents a bridge between research on self-regulation and research on intrinsic motivation.

Singer and Salovey start with the observation that purely associationistic, mechanistic models cannot account for the mood-memory link. They suggest that conscious recruitment of memories may provide people with vital cognitive and affective information about the status of future events and desired events. A specific kind of memory, those they call self-defining, are particularly useful in this regard. Self-defining memories are those that are affectively intense, vivid, repetitive, linked to similar memories, and focus on an unresolved conflict in one's life. Singer and Salovey suggest that people come to know themselves and be known by others through the repetition of these memories. Individuals may retrieve memories selectively relevant to the attainment of desired goals as a means of self-encouragement in the pursuit of these goals. In short, self-defining memories may provide an affective "virtual reality" that makes meaningful the effect of goal attainment or nonattainment. Evidence consistent with this hypothesis is discussed.

Erber provides a theoretical and empirical account of the conditions that are likely to elicit attempts toward mood regulation and discusses the processes that are likely to be effective toward this end. He begins by assessing the widely held assumption that people always seek out and preserve good moods while at the same avoiding or repairing bad moods. His conclusion is that this assumption paints an oversimplified picture of people's mood regulation tendencies. Erber's suggestion for a more complete model involves the consideration of goals and social context, and this suggestion is spelled out in his social contingency model. According to this model, people modify their moods not just in response to what is positive but in response to perceptions of what is appropriate or fitting given the social constraints on their behavior and emotions. Evidence consistent with this view is discussed.

Part 3 begins with Martin and Stoner's exploration of the effects of moods on cognitive processing. They begin with the assumption that there are few, if any, effects that follow directly from the mere fact that one is experiencing a certain mood. They suggest, instead, that the effects of any given mood depend upon the context within which the mood is experienced. They present evidence for this so-called mood as input model and compare this model with others that assume that affective states give rise to specific predispositions (e.g., to process in a heuristic manner) that can then be overridden with effort (e.g., instructions to pay attention). A variety of phenomena (e.g., creativity, categorization, evaluation) are addressed and are interpreted in terms of the mood as input model.

Hirt, McDonald, and Melton investigate the manner in which mood influences processing and performance. They note that a perusal of the literature shows conflicting results that cannot be easily accommodated by the existing models. Next, they describe the view that moods have stable, predictable effects on processing and thus on performance. This is compared with the view that moods have no stable processing implications and that the effects of moods on performance depend on people's current processing goals. Hirt, McDonald, and Melton discuss a study that found support for both models and that also found support for direct as well as mediated effects of mood (i.e., task interest). Finally, the authors address some factors that might moderate these effects and suggest that the mood as main effect and the mood as input models can peacefully co-exist.

Wegener and Petty explore the way in which moods influence attitude change. They suggest that the currently diverse literature on mood effects in persuasion could be organized in terms of the goals message recipients have when they encounter persuasive appeals. Wegener and Petty begin with a description of the role of elaboration likelihood (i.e., the extent to which people are either motivated or able to think carefully about the substantive information in a persuasive communication) in determining the process by which attitude change takes place. Following this, they outline their hedonic contingency hypothesis that emphasizes the role of mood management in determining the effects of mood on persuasion. Evidence consistent with this hypothesis is discussed and its relation to other models is addressed. Wegener and Petty's general conclusion is that the effects of mood appear to be more flexible than previously described and demonstrated.

Oatley and Johnson-Laird discuss their theory of emotion. They present the original version of their theory, discuss some tests and criticisms of it, discuss the relation between this and other theories, and then present a revised version of the theory. They begin with the assumption that emotions are based on signals within the brain that reflect priorities of goals and that predispose people toward appropriate classes of action. Happiness, for example, encourages people to continue doing what they are doing, whereas sadness signals an interrupt. Their theory accounts for basic emotions, derived emotions, and mixed emotions. Oatley and Johnson-Laird also discuss the implications of their theory for attachment, psychopathology, vicarious emotions, and the interaction between emotion and intellectual performance.

As can be seen, each chapter reflects the specific research of its author(s). What may be less obvious from these summaries, however, is the extent to which the chapters address common themes. These themes include:

1. The effects of intrinsic versus extrinsic goals. Sometimes goal objects are sought as ends in themselves. Sometimes they are sought only as means to an end. These alternate motivations have important consequences for people's performance as well as for their affective reactions upon attaining or not attaining a goal. This issue is addressed by Mcintosh; Emmons and Kaiser; Sansone and Harackiewicz; and Hirt, McDonald, and Melton.

2. The different effects of approach versus avoidance goals. In some cases, a person's goal is to obtain some desired object or outcome (e.g., to be in good physical shape). In other cases, a person's goal may be to avoid some undesired outcome (e.g., to be in poor physical shape). These orientations have different psychological antecedents as well as different performance and affective consequences. This issue is addressed by Carver, Lawrence, and Scheier; Emmons and Kaiser; Cochran and Tesser; and Singer and Salovey.

3. The role of awareness in goal pursuit. When a person says that he or she has a certain goal, what is the relation of this stated goal to the person's actual goal? Can people specify the goals that are guiding their behavior? This issue is addressed by Mcintosh; Emmons and Kaiser; and Sansone and Harackiewicz.

4. The role of awareness in affective states. When a person's affective state influences that person's performance, what is it about the affect that is doing the influencing? Is it the phenomenal experience or is it some more direct (e.g., unconscious) signal in the brain? This issue is addressed by Carver, Lawrence, and Scheier; Hirt, McDonald, and Melton; Sansone and Harackiewicz; Martin and Stoner; and Oatley and Johnson-Laird.

5. The meaning of affective states in relation to goal attainment. To the extent that affective states communicate information to the person experiencing those states, how specific is this information? Do certain feelings stand in one-to-one relations with certain motivations or are the relations more mutable and context dependent? This issue is addressed by Carver, Lawrence, and Seheier; McIntosh; Erber; Martin and Stoner; Hirt, McDonald, and Melton; and Wegener and Petty.

6. Are people really motivated by hedonistic concerns? Presumably, if given the chance, most people would chose to experience a positive affective state over a negative one. But how far can we take this assumption? Can it form the basis of our explanations of the effects of mood on processing, or does it leave out important factors? This issue is addressed by Carver, Lawrence, and Scheier; Sansone and Harackiewicz; Erber; Hirt, McDonald, and Melton; Martin and Stoner; and Wegener and Petty.

7. How do people regulate their moods? Given that people do not desire the mood they are currently experiencing, what can they do to change it? When are they likely to attempt to change their moods? These questions are addressed by Showers and Kling; Sansone and Harackiewicz; Singer and Salovey; Erber; and Wegener and Petty.

8. What is the role of the self in affective experiences? Why are some goals more important than others? Why do some people react more strongly to goal attainment and nonattainment than do others? The answer to both questions may have something to do with people's self-concepts. The role of the self in affective experience is discussed by Halberstadt, Niedenthal, and Setterlund; Showers and Kling; Strauman; and Singer and Salovey.

In summary, we feel that each of the chapters addresses the interactions among affect, cognition, and behavior, and that there is a great deal of connection between the conceptual issues addressed in each of the chapters. We hope that this integration both within and between chapters will allow readers to derive some new insights into affect, cognition, and behavior and that this may influence their own thinking and research.

References

Allport, G. W. (1985), The historical background of social psychology. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Ed.), Handbook of social psychology (3rd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 1-46). New York: Random House.

I
Affective and Behavioral Consequences of Goals

2
A Control-Process ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• PART I: AFFECTIVE AND BEHAVIORAL CONSEQUENCES OF GOALS
• PART II: AFFECTIVE CONSEQUENCES OF SELF-ORGANIZATION AND SELF-REGULATION
• PART III: HOW GOALS AND AFFECT INFLUENCE OTHER PROCESSES
• Author Index
• Subject Index