Lisa G. Aspinwall

A stitch in time: self-regulation and proactive coping.

In a conceptual and temporal framework, derived from research on social cognition, social interaction, and stress and coping, the authors analyze the processes through which people anticipate or detect potential stressors and act in advance to prevent them or to mute their impact (proactive coping). The framework specifies five stages in proactive coping: (1) resource accumulation, (2) recognition of potential stressors, (3) initial appraisal, (4) preliminary coping efforts, and (5) elicitation and use of feedback concerning initial efforts. The authors detail the role of individual differences skills, and resources at each stage. They highlight the unique predictions afforded by a focus on proactive coping and the importance of understanding how people avoid and offset potential stressors.

Modeling Cognitive Adaptation: A Longitudinal Investigation of the Impact of Individual Differences and Coping on College Adjustment and Performance

Drawing on cognitive adaptation theory, optimism, psychological control, and self-esteem were explored as longitudinal predictors of adjustment to college in a sample of 672 freshmen. Although a direct effect of optimism on adjustment was found, most of the predicted effects were mediated by coping methods. Controlling for initial positive and negative mood, the beneficial effects of optimism, control, and self-esteem on adjustment were mediated by the nonuse of avoidance coping, greater use of active coping, and greater seeking of social support. Alternative models of the causal relations among these variables did not fit the data as well as the a priori mediational model. The results of a 2-year follow-up indicated that self-esteem and control predicted greater motivation and higher grades, controlling for college entrance exam scores. Implications for cognitive adaptation theory and for interventions with populations under stress are discussed.

A psychology of human strengths : Fundamental questions and future directions for a positive psychology

A Psychology of Human Strengths: Some Central Issues of an Emerging Field, Lisa G. Aspinwall and Ursula M. Staudinger Human Strength as the Orchestration of Wisdom and Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC), Paul B. Baltes and Alexandra M. Freund The Humans Greatest Strength - Other Humans, Ellen Berscheid Constructive Cognition, Personal Goals, and the Social Embedding of Personality, Nancy Cantor A Conception of Personality for a Psychology of Human Strengths - Personality as an Agentic, Self-Regulating System, Gian Vittorio Caprara and Daniel Cervone Human Aging - Why Is Even Good News Taken as Bad?, Laura L. Carstensen and Susan T. Charles Three Human Strengths, Charles S. Carver and Michael F. Scheier The Malleability of Sex Differences in Response to Changing Social Roles, Alice H. Eagly and Amanda B. Diekman Toward a Positive Psychology - Social Developmental and Cultural Contributions, Nancy Eisenberg and Vivian Ota Wang Light and Dark in the Psychology of Human Strengths - The Example of Psychogerontology, Roc o Fern ndez-Ballesteros Intervention as a Major Tool of a Psychology of Human Strength - Examples from Organizational Change and Innovation, Dieter Frey, Eva Jonas, and Tobias Greitemeyer Judgmental Heuristics: Human Strengths or Human Weaknesses?, Dale Griffin and Daniel Kahneman Positive Affect as a Source of Human Strength, Alice Isen The Parametric Unimodel of Human Judgment - A Fanfare to the Common Thinker, Arie W. Kruglanski, Hans-Peter Erb, Scott Spiegel, and Antonio Pierro Turning Adversity to Advantage - On the Virtues of the Coactivation of Positive and Negative Emotions, Jeff T. Larsen, Scott H. Hemenover, Catherine J. Norris, and John T. Cacioppo A Holistic Person Approach for Research on Positive Development, David Magnusson and Joseph L. Mahoney Harnessing Willpower and Socio-emotional Intelligence to Enhance Human Agency and Potential, Walter Mischel and Rodolpho Mendoza-Denton The Motivational Sources of Creativity as Viewed from the Paradigm of Positive Psychology, Jeanne Nakamura and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Ironies of the Human Condition: Well-being and Health on the Way to Mortality, Carol D. Ryff and Burton Singer Political Symbols and Collective Moral Action, David O. Sears Positive Clinical Psychology, Martin E. P. Seligman and Christopher Peterson Driven to Despair: Why We Need to Redefine the Concept and Measurement of Intelligence, Robert J. Sternberg The Ecology of Human Strengths, Daniel Stokols.

Rethinking the role of positive affect in self-regulation

This introduction to the two-part special issue reviews recent evidence that suggests that positive mood may play a beneficial, multifaceted, and flexible role in self-regulatory processes that cannot be explained by most current theories. First, under some conditions positive mood seems to facilitate careful processing of goal-relevant information, even negative information. Second, the relation of positive mood to cognition and behavior seems to be strongly moderated by goal-relevant features of the task context. Three frameworks (mood as input, processing advantages conferred by positive mood, and mood as resource) that may account for these facilitating effects of positive mood on self-regulation are discussed.

Optimism, coping, psychological distress, and high-risk sexual behavior among men at risk for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)

In a cohort of gay men responding to the threat of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), dispositional optimism was associated with less distress, less avoidant coping, positive attitudes as a coping strategy, and fewer AIDS-related concerns. Men who knew they were seropositive for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) were significantly more optimistic about not developing AIDS than men who knew they were seronegative for HIV. This AIDS-specific optimism was related to higher perceived control over AIDS and to active coping among seropositive men only and to health behaviors in both serostatus groups. There was no relation of optimism to risk-related sexual behavior. It is concluded that optimism is psychologically adaptive without necessarily compromising health behavior. It is also concluded that it is useful to distinguish between event-based optimistic expectations and dispositional optimism.

Self-Affirmation Reduces Biased Processing of Health-Risk Information

An experiment tested whether a positive experience (the endorsement and recall of ones past acts of kindness) would reduce biased processing of self-relevant health-risk information. Women college students (N = 66) who reported high or low levels of daily caffeine use were exposed to both risk-confirming and risk-disconfirming information about the link between caffeine consumption and fibrocystic breast disease (FBD). Participants were randomly assigned to complete an affirmation of their kindness via questionnaire or to a no-affirmation condition. Results indicated that the affirmation manipulation made frequent caffeine drinkers more open, less biased processors of risk-related information. Relative to frequent caffeine drinkers who did not affirm their kindness, frequent caffeine drinkers in the affirmation condition oriented more quickly to the risk-confirming information, rated the risk-confirming information as more convincing than the risk-disconfirming information, and recalled less risk-disconfirming information at a 1-week follow-up. They also reported greater perceived personal control over reducing their level of caffeine consumption. Although frequent caffeine drinkers in the affirmation condition initially reported lower intentions to reduce their caffeine consumption, there was no evidence that they were less likely to decrease their caffeine consumption at the follow-up. The possibility that positive beliefs and experiences function as self-regulatory resources among people confronting threats to health and well-being is discussed.

Effects of social comparison direction, threat, and self-esteem on affect, self-evaluation, and expected success

Two studies explored the conditions under which social comparisons are used to manage negative affect and naturalistic threats. Study 1 examined induced mood and dispositional self-esteem as determinants of affective responses to upward and downward comparisons. Consistent with a mood repair prediction, only low-self-esteem Ss in whom a negative mood had been induced reported improved mood after exposure to downward comparison information. Study 2 examined the impact of naturalistic threats on responses to comparison information. Relative to a no-comparison baseline, low-self-esteem Ss who had experienced a recent academic setback reported more favorable self-evaluations and greater expectations of future success in college after exposure to downward comparison information. These results remained significant after controlling statistically for general distress. Implications for downward comparison theory are discussed.

Emotion Regulation Across the Life Span: An Integrative Perspective Emphasizing Self-Regulation, Positive Affect, and Dyadic Processes

In this commentary, we build upon the papers featured in this 2-part special issue to advance an integrative perspective on emotion regulation that emphasizes the developmentally specific goal-contexts of emotional phenomena. We highlight the importance of (1) multilevel longitudinal investigations of interactions among biological, affective, cognitive, and behavioral processes with respect to emotion regulation; (2) the integration of emotion-regulation processes with self-regulatory processes across the life course; (3) the dynamic relationship between positive and negative affect and their respective influence on regulatory processes; and (4) greater consideration of the dyadic context of emotion-regulation processes. From this perspective, the optimal developmental outcome with respect to emotion regulation is not affective homeostasis, but rather a dynamic flexibility in emotional experience, the ability to pursue and prioritize different goals, and the capacity to selectively and proactively mobilize emotions and cognitions in the service of context-specific and developmentally specific goals.

Distinguishing Optimism from Denial: Optimistic Beliefs Predict Attention to Health Threats

Research has yielded conflicting views of the adaptiveness of optimistic beliefs in confronting negative events and information. To test whether optimism functions like denial, the authors examined the prospective relation of optimistic beliefs to attention to threatening health information presented by computer in a college student sample (N= 57). Optimistic beliefs about ones health predicted greater attention to risk information than to neutral or benefit information and greater levels of recall overall, especially when the information was self-relevant. Results concerning attention to risk information were similar, but weaker, for dispositional optimism. Implications for theoretical treatments of optimistic beliefs are discussed.

Social Comparison, Stress, and Coping

In recent years, basic research and theory on social comparison activities has been applied to understanding the coping processes of people undergoing stressful events. These investigations have both elucidated coping and highlighted issues that need reconsideration in traditional social comparison frameworks. These issues include the predominant motives that guide social comparison activity; the role of cognitive processes in the creation of targets and the selection of dimensions for evaluation; the limits imposed on available social comparison information by stressful or victimizing circumstances; the role of similarity in social comparisons under threat; the inherent meaning of upward and downward comparisons; and the divergence of evaluative versus information-seeking comparative activities. Implications for theoretical integration and for understanding coping and social support are discussed.