Marina Milyavskaya

The Effects of Self-Criticism and Self-Oriented Perfectionism on Goal Pursuit

Five separate studies examined the associations of self-criticism and self-oriented perfectionism with goal pursuit across a variety of domains. Although self-criticism has previously been shown to be related to diminished goal progress, a controversy remains regarding the potential association between aspects of “positive perfectionism,” such as self-oriented perfectionism, and enhanced goal progress. The results of the five studies demonstrated a consistent pattern of negative association between self-criticism and goal progress. The results also showed a positive association between self-oriented perfectionism and goal progress when self-criticism was controlled. The important role of self-criticism for understanding the impact of perfectionistic concerns is highlighted by these results. Implications for the debate concerning the possible positive effects of perfectionistic strivings are also discussed.

Distinguishing Autonomous and Directive Forms of Goal Support: Their Effects on Goal Progress, Relationship Quality, and Subjective Well-Being

Three studies examined the relations of autonomy support and directive support to goal progress over 3 months. Autonomy support was defined in terms of empathic perspective-taking, whereas directive support was defined in terms of the provision of positive guidance. Results from Study 1 revealed that autonomy support between romantic partners was significantly positively related to goal progress over 3 months, and that the beneficial effect of autonomy support was mediated by enhanced autonomous goal motivation. Study 2 involved female friend dyads and extended the goal progress results to include both self-reports and reports by peers. Study 3 showed that autonomy support similarly promoted progress at vicarious goals. Across three studies, autonomy support was also significantly associated with improved relationship quality and subjective well-being. Directive support was marginally associated with better goal progress across the three studies and unrelated to relationship quality or well-being.

Where Do Self-Concordant Goals Come From? The Role of Domain-Specific Psychological Need Satisfaction:

Previous research has shown that self-concordant goals are more likely to be attained. But what leads someone to adopt a self-concordant goal in the first place? The present research addresses this question by looking at the domains in which goals are set, focusing on the amount of psychological need satisfaction experienced in these domains. Across three experimental studies, we demonstrate that domain-related need satisfaction predicts the extent to which people adopt self-concordant goals in a given domain, laying the foundation for successful goal pursuit. In addition, we show that need satisfaction influences goal self-concordance because in need-satisfying domains people are both more likely to choose the most self-concordant goal (among a set of comparable choices), and are more likely to internalize the possible goals. The implications of this research for goal setting and pursuit as well as for the importance of examining goals within their broader motivational framework are discussed.

What’s So Great About Self-Control? Examining the Importance of Effortful Self-Control and Temptation in Predicting Real-Life Depletion and Goal Attainment:

Self-control is typically viewed as a key ingredient responsible for effective self-regulation and personal goal attainment. This study used experience sampling, daily diary, and prospective data collection to investigate the immediate and semester-long consequences of effortful self-control and temptations on depletion and goal attainment. Results showed that goal attainment was influenced by experiences of temptations rather than by actively resisting or controlling those temptations. This study also found that simply experiencing temptations led people to feel depleted. Depletion in turn mediated the link between temptations and goal attainment, such that people who experienced increased temptations felt more depleted and thus less likely to achieve their goals. Critically, results of Bayesian analyses strongly indicate that effortful self-control was consistently unrelated to goal attainment throughout all analyses.

Goal internalization and persistence as a function of autonomous and directive forms of goal support.

Two prospective studies examined the relations of autonomy support and directive support to goal internalization and goal persistence over a year. Study 1 examined the role of support and internalization in semester-long goals set by college students and whether the goals were reset in the following semester. Study 2 examined semester-long goals and long-term developmental goals. Study 1 showed that autonomy support was not only significantly associated with greater internalization and goal success in the fall semester, but it was also significantly associated with actually resetting and subsequently succeeding at goals that one had failed to reach. Study 2 showed that autonomy support was significantly associated with progress for short-term goals over the semester, whereas directive support was unrelated to progress. For long-term goals, autonomy support was significantly related to greater internalization of goals and to greater goal satisfaction, whereas directive support was significantly negatively related to these outcomes. These studies point to the beneficial effects of autonomy support on goal internalization and resilient persistence. The effects of directive support (null vs. negative) were moderated by the timeline of the goals.

What does cognitive control feel like? Effective and ineffective cognitive control is associated with divergent phenomenology

Cognitive control is accompanied by observable negative affect. But how is this negative affect experienced subjectively, and are these feelings related to variation in cognitive control? To address these questions, 42 participants performed a punished inhibitory control task while periodically reporting their subjective experience. We found that within-subject variation in subjective experience predicted control implementation, but not neural monitoring (i.e., the error-related negativity, ERN). Specifically, anxiety and frustration predicted increased and decreased response caution, respectively, while hopelessness accompanied reduced inhibitory control, and subjective effort coincided with the increased ability to inhibit prepotent responses. Clarifying the nature of these phenomenological results, the effects of frustration, effort, and hopelessness-but not anxiety-were statistically independent from the punishment manipulation. Conversely, while the ERN was increased by punishment, the lack of association between this component and phenomenology suggests that early monitoring signals might precede the development of control-related subjective experience. Our results indicate that the types of feelings experienced during cognitively demanding tasks are related to different aspects of controlled performance, critically suggesting that the relationship between emotion and cognitive control extends beyond the dimension of valence.

Seeking Social Connectedness: Interdependent Self-Construal and Impression Formation Using Photographic Cues of Social Connectedness

ABSTRACT Impression formation research has traditionally focused on either the characteristics of the target or of the participant, failing to examine their interplay. In the present study, we explored the role of interdependent self-construal on ratings of others who are portrayed as alone or connected. We hypothesized that participants with an interdependent view of the self would prefer others who are portrayed as socially connected, while the opposite would be true for participants low on interdependence. Results showed that college students high on interdependence rated a university professor photographed with another person relatively more positively than a professor photographed alone. This pattern was reversed for participants low on interdependence.

Self-Growth in the College Years Increased Importance of Intrinsic Values Predicts Resolution of Identity and Intimacy Stages

Could a shift in values over time drive resolution of identity and intimacy in young adulthood? In the present study, we found support for our hypothesis that increased prioritization of intrinsic values over an academic year predicts university students’ resolution of the Eriksonian stages of identity and intimacy, and that stage resolution would mediate the relationship between value change and enhanced well-being. Among the 196 students followed from September to April, we found that increased prioritization of intrinsic relative to extrinsic values over the year related to greater resolution of both identity and intimacy, controlling for stage resolution at T1, and that increased resolution positively predicted enhanced subjective well-being and psychological well-being over time.

Variation in Cognitive Control as Emotion Regulation

Few fields in psychological science are growing as quickly as emotion regulation. Undoubtedly hastened by the introduction of the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998), researchers have identified a broad array of emotion regulatory tactics, each serving to alter the intensity, duration, or quality of the unfolding emotional response. In addition to being a buoyant research area in its own right, concepts from emotion regulation have permeated multiple subdisciplines of psychology, including biological, cognitive, clinical, developmental, personality, and social approaches, to name a few. Given this rapid expansion, the time is ripe not only to take stock of recent advancements but also to formulate new ideas about the mechanisms that govern emotion regulation. In this light, we welcome the synthesis and conceptual development provided by the extended process model of emotion regulation (Gross, this issue). However, we also believe that the targets of emotion regulation might range further than is typically acknowledged by existing models. Here, extending contemporary accounts of emotion regulation, we explore the idea that the implementation of cognitive control—one other emergent feature of the mind—can also be viewed as a form of emotion regulation, initiated to reduce the unpleasant experience of challenges to goal-directed behavior. In broad terms, cognitive control underlies intentional action, calibrating attentional, cognitive, and action systems to better attain performance goals, particularly in novel or challenging situations (Banich, 2009). Control is distinguished from automatic processing, where responses are implemented in a habitual and spontaneous manner. Of importance, rather than reflecting the execution of a unitary psychological process, cybernetic approaches decompose control into (at least) three core subsystems, including goal setting, control implementation, and monitoring (Carver & Sheier, 1990; Inzlicht, Legault, & Teper, 2014). First, goal setting represents current performance intentions (e.g., name ink color, eat healthily), and implementation systems calibrate ongoing information processing toward the fulfillment of these goals. Crucially, a continual monitoring process detects events that conflict with current objectives (e.g., errors or unwanted impulses), providing feedback to the implementation systems about the fluctuating need to increase or relax levels of control (Botvinick et al., 2001; Carver & Scheier, 1990). Several existing models have identified ways in which controlled processes can regulate automatic emotional impulses (Etkin, Egner, Peraza, Kandel, & Hirsch, 2006; Ochsner & Gross, 2005; Teper, Segal, & Inzlicht, 2013). Here, rather than further specifying how control processes might serve the regulation of prototypical affective material (e.g., negative imagery, distressing life events), we consider how the process of regulating emotional experiences might apply to the calibration of cognitive control, even for tasks that are not explicitly emotional in nature. In this regard, we suggest that emotional processing is inherently involved in goal-directed behavior. For example, in addition to coldly representing the requirements of the task at hand, our performance goals represent the value of successful performance; goal attainment is particularly valuable when goals align with overarching values and beliefs (Deci & Ryan, 1985), are externally incentivized (Chiew & Braver, 2011), or when a represented objective is personally meaningful (Proulx, Inzlicht & HarmonJones, 2012). Consequently, we suggest that situations requiring the use of control (e.g., conflict, errors, temptations) are particularly salient when goals are valued, triggering a transient negative affective state that (a) can be characterized as a type of emotion episode and (b) initiates regulatory action (Inzlicht & Legault, 2014; Saunders & Inzlicht, in press). In this commentary, rather than directly critiquing the extended process model (Gross, this issue), we note the generative nature of this model for understanding established cognitive control phenomena. First, we present evidence that situations requiring

Strong but insecure: Examining the prevalence and correlates of insecure attachment bonds with attachment figures

This study examined whether people can be insecurely attached to figures who are actively sought out (and not just desired) to fulfill attachment functions and whether this has negative consequences for psychological well-being. A total of 122 participants rated 3–15 relational targets on measures including the extent to which the target fulfills important attachment functions and the attachment style characterizing the relationship. Participants also completed general measures of well-being and attachment style. We specifically focused on targets who could be classified as attachment figures based on the WHOTO and examined the attachment style characterizing these relationships. Results show that a significant proportion of attachment bonds can be characterized by insecurity, which has consequences both for the extent to which these attachment figures can fulfill important attachment functions and for overall well-being. The discussion considers the implications of these results for attachment priming research and the distinction between attachment strength and security.