Chin Ming Hui

Motivational Versus Metabolic Effects of Carbohydrates on Self-Control

Self-control is critical for achievement and well-being. However, people’s capacity for self-control is limited and becomes depleted through use. One prominent explanation for this depletion posits that self-control consumes energy through carbohydrate metabolization, which further suggests that ingesting carbohydrates improves self-control. Some evidence has supported this energy model, but because of its broad implications for efforts to improve self-control, we reevaluated the role of carbohydrates in self-control processes. In four experiments, we found that (a) exerting self-control did not increase carbohydrate metabolization, as assessed with highly precise measurements of blood glucose levels under carefully standardized conditions; (b) rinsing one’s mouth with, but not ingesting, carbohydrate solutions immediately bolstered self-control; and (c) carbohydrate rinsing did not increase blood glucose. These findings challenge metabolic explanations for the role of carbohydrates in self-control depletion; we therefore propose an alternative motivational model for these and other previously observed effects of carbohydrates on self-control.

The Suffocation of Marriage: Climbing Mount Maslow Without Enough Oxygen

This article distills insights from historical, sociological, and psychological perspectives on marriage to develop the suffocation model of marriage in America. According to this model, contemporary Americans are asking their marriage to help them fulfill different sets of goals than in the past. Whereas they ask their marriage to help them fulfill their physiological and safety needs much less than in the past, they ask it to help them fulfill their esteem and self-actualization needs much more than in the past. Asking the marriage to help them fulfill the latter, higher level needs typically requires sufficient investment of time and psychological resources to ensure that the two spouses develop a deep bond and profound insight into each others essential qualities. Although some spouses are investing sufficient resources—and reaping the marital and psychological benefits of doing so—most are not. Indeed, they are, on average, investing less than in the past. As a result, mean levels of marital quality and personal well-being are declining over time. According to the suffocation model, spouses who are struggling with an imbalance between what they are asking from their marriage and what they are investing in it have several promising options for corrective action: intervening to optimize their available resources, increasing their investment of resources in the marriage, and asking less of the marriage in terms of facilitating the fulfillment of spouses’ higher needs. Discussion explores the implications of the suffocation model for understanding dating and courtship, sociodemographic variation, and marriage beyond Americans borders.

Promoting De-Escalation of Commitment A Regulatory-Focus Perspective on Sunk Costs

People frequently escalate their commitment to failing endeavors. Explanations for such behavior typically involve loss aversion, failure to recognize other alternatives, and concerns with justifying prior actions; all of these factors produce recommitment to previous decisions with the goal of erasing losses and vindicating these decisions. Solutions to escalation of commitment have therefore focused on external oversight and divided responsibility during decision making to attenuate loss aversion, blindness to alternatives, and justification biases. However, these solutions require substantial resources and have additional adverse effects. The present studies tested an alternative method for de-escalating commitment: activating broad motivations for growth and advancement (promotion). This approach should reduce concerns with loss and increase perceptions of alternatives, thereby attenuating justification motives. In two studies featuring hypothetical financial decisions, activating promotion motivations reduced recommitment to poorly performing investments as compared with both not activating any additional motivations and activating motivations for safety and security (prevention).

Self-Control and Forgiveness: A Meta-Analytic Review

In the 12 years since scholars first investigated the link between self-control and forgiveness (Finkel & Campbell, 2001), the literature investigating this relation has grown rapidly. The present article reports a meta-analytic review of this link across 40 independent samples and 5,105 independent observations. In addition, it investigates an array of potential moderators. Results revealed that the overall link between self-control and forgiveness is statistically robust and small to moderate in magnitude (r = .18). Consistent with the prevailing theoretical models, this link is stronger when forgiveness is assessed in terms of low vengeance (resisting retaliation: r = .31) rather than in terms of high benevolence (fostering prosociality: r = .16). Discussion focuses on the potentially crucial role of forgiveness, especially vengeance inhibition, in linking self-control to relationship well-being.

Why Do(n’t) Your Partner’s Efforts at Self-Improvement Make You Happy? An Implicit Theories Perspective:

People often try to improve their interpersonal skills to satisfy romantic partners. However, when and why a partner appreciates these efforts is an important but underaddressed question. The present research explored how people’s theories that interpersonal abilities are either fixed entities or can be changed incrementally affect their responses to relationship partner’s efforts at self-improvement. Study 1 validated a new measure for these theories and showed that, compared to the former entity theorists, the latter incremental theorists were less likely to attribute recalled instances of partners’ negative behaviors to dispositional causes and perceive these behaviors as fixed and stable. An experiment that induced these different implicit theories (Study 2) and a longitudinal study (Study 3) further demonstrated that perceptions of partners’ self-improvement efforts led to greater increases in relationship security and quality among incremental than among entity theorists. How implicit theories may shape the interpersonal dynamics of self-improvement is discussed.

Promotion, Prevention or Both: Regulatory Focus and Culture Revisited

Regulatory focus theory (e.g., Higgins, 1997) presented a differentiation between promotion orientation, focused on growth and advancement, and prevention orientation, focused on safety and security. Cross-culture differences in these systems generally show that that collectivist, Eastern cultures (mostly East-Asian cultures) are considered as prevention oriented whereas Western cultures are considered as promotion oriented. Two main claims that contribute to the refinement of the relations between culture and regulatory foci will be presented. The first refinement pertains to the relations between individualism-collectivism and regulatory foci on base of the vertical-horizontal distinction, showing that vertical collectivism is especially relevant to regulatory foci. The second claim challenges the traditional notion of uni-dimensional mapping of cultures on the prevention-promotion continuum. Cultural groups from Hong Kong and Israel were compared in their typical levels of regulatory foci and in reaction to different incentive framing (gain/non-gain vs non-loss/ loss). The findings revealed a culture (Hong Kong) that is oriented to both, prevention and promotion, at least regarding achievement. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. This article is available in Online Readings in Psychology and Culture: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol5/iss3/3

Understanding Self-Regulation Failure: A Motivated Effort-Allocation Account

Abstract Although enormously beneficial, self-regulation often proves to be enormously difficult. The typical explanation for such difficulty has been that people’s capacity for self-regulation is limited and depletes with use, hindering sustained regulation. However, recent findings challenge this capacity view, suggesting instead that peoples shifting experiences with and motivations for continued self-regulation better explain why regulation so frequently fails. This chapter integrates such findings, and several emerging theoretical perspectives developed to explain them, into an integrated model of self-regulation based on processes of motivated effort allocation. The model incorporates three main components: (1) assessments of motives to engage in self-regulation; (2) allocations of effort and attention based on these motives; and (3) monitoring of the consequences of this allocation, which then triggers a reassessment of motives and begins the cycle anew. After presenting the details of the model, the chapter reviews its implications for capacity views of self-regulation and future research on improving regulation.

Marriage at the Summit: Response to the Commentaries

This article serves as a response to the 13 commentaries on the target article, which introduced the suffocation model of marriage in America. This reply has four main sections. First, it presents an elaborated version of the suffocation model that was inspired by the commentaries. Second, it addresses three areas of significant disagreement that emerged as we digested the commentaries. Third, it examines the circumstances under which being instrumental for ones spouses needs benefits the self. And fourth, it takes strides toward the development of a mathematically formal version of the suffocation model. It concludes with a discussion of the ways in which policymakers, clinicians, and individual Americans can capitalize upon the suffocation model to strengthen marriage and, in doing so, bolster personal well-being.

Changing the World Through Changing the Self Understanding a New Control Strategy Through Self-Reported Coping Plans in Two Cultures

This study proposes a new control strategy, control via self-improvement, in addition to primary and secondary control. This strategy is aimed at an actual external change (primary target), whereas the means to reach the goal is self-improvement (secondary target—the self). A study conducted in Israel and in Hong Kong indicated that the strategy of control via self-improvement exists in the achievement domain and is more prevalent in Hong Kong than in Israel.

Self-concept integration and differentiation in subclinical individuals with dissociation proneness

Abstract Dissociative pathology is characterized by an altered sense of self. Still, it remains unclear (a) whether the altered sense of self is also associated with non-pathological dissociation as well and (b) whether this potential association is an intrinsic connection or a consequence of other related constructs, including childhood trauma. This study addresses this question by examining how self-concept organization may differ among individuals with different levels of dissociation proneness. The structure of self-concept was operationalized by various indexes of self-concept integration and differentiation. Results showed that individuals high in dissociation proneness have lower self-concept clarity and compartmentalize self-aspects with more polarized evaluations. Notably, the association between dissociation proneness and evaluative self-compartmentalization held after controlling for childhood trauma, anxiety, and depression. This characteristic self-concept organization can be an attribute of non-pathological dissociation.