Mike Prentice

Threat and defense as goal regulation: from implicit goal conflict to anxious uncertainty, reactive approach motivation, and ideological extremism.

Four studies investigated a goal regulation view of anxious uncertainty threat (Gray & McNaughton, 2000) and ideological defense. Participants (N = 444) were randomly assigned to have achievement or relationship goals implicitly primed. The implicit goal primes were followed by randomly assigned achievement or relationship threats that have reliably caused generalized, reactive approach motivation and ideological defense in past research. The threats caused anxious uncertainty (Study 1), reactive approach motivation (Studies 2 and 3), and reactive ideological conviction (Study 4) only when threat-relevant goals had first been primed, but not when threat-irrelevant goals had first been primed. Reactive ideological conviction (Study 4) was eliminated if participants were given an opportunity to attribute their anxiety to a mundane source. Results support a goal regulation view of anxious uncertainty, threat, and defense with potential for integrating theories of defensive compensation.

Reactive Approach Motivation (RAM) for Religion

In 3 experiments, participants reacted with religious zeal to anxious uncertainty threats that have caused reactive approach motivation (RAM) in past research (see McGregor, Nash, Mann, & Phills, 2010, for implicit, explicit, and neural evidence of RAM). In Study 1, results were specific to religious ideals and did not extend to merely superstitious beliefs. Effects were most pronounced among the most anxious and uncertainty-averse participants in Study 1 and among the most approach-motivated participants in Study 2 (i.e., with high Promotion Focus, Behavioral Activation, Action Orientation, and Self-Esteem Scale scores). In Studies 2 and 3, anxious uncertainty threats amplified even the most jingoistic and extreme aspects of religious zeal. In Study 3, reactive religious zeal occurred only among participants who reported feeling disempowered in their everyday goals in life. Results support a RAM view of empowered religious idealism for anxiety management (cf. Armstrong, 2000; Inzlicht, McGregor, Hirsch, & Nash, 2009).

Personal Uncertainty Management by Reactive Approach Motivation

The uncertainty management model (UMM) addresses a basic predicament of the human condition. Personal Uncertainty (PU) has long been identified by classic philosophical, sociological, and psychological theories as a cause of rigid and aggressive phenomena from repression and suicide to prejudice and hate. In this commentary, we review a Reactive Approach Motivation (RAM) view of compensatory conviction and worldview defense that is consistent with the UMM and grounded in the neuropsychology of anxiety. We also report new findings from our lab, cited in the target article, which further illuminate precise triggers of UMM and RAM outcomes. A complementarity of the UMM and our research is that the UMM tends to focus on affective reactions to PU, and our research tends to focus on compensatory worldview reactions to PU. Together, UMM and RAM research support the classic, multidisciplinary observation that PU is aversive and causes consequential outcomes.

Do Some People Need Autonomy More Than Others? Implicit Dispositions Toward Autonomy Moderate the Effects of Felt Autonomy on Well‐Being

The present studies examined whether implicit or explicit autonomy dispositions moderate the relationship between felt autonomy and well-being. Study 1 (N = 187 undergraduate students) presents an initial test of the moderator hypothesis by predicting flow experience from the interaction of autonomy need satisfaction and autonomy dispositions. Study 2 (N = 127 physically inactive persons) used vignettes involving an autonomy (un)supportive coach to test a moderated mediation model in which perceived coach autonomy support leads to well-being through basic need satisfaction. Again, the effects of need satisfaction on well-being were hypothesized to be moderated by an implicit autonomy disposition. Study 1 showed that individuals with a strong implicit autonomy (but not power or achievement) motive disposition derived more flow experience from felt autonomy than individuals with a weak implicit autonomy disposition. Study 2 revealed that perceived autonomy support from sports coaches, which we experimentally induced with a vignette method, leads to autonomy satisfaction, leading in turn to positive effects on well-being. This indirect effect held at high and average but not low implicit autonomy disposition. The results indicate that the degree to which people benefit from autonomy need satisfaction depends on their implicit disposition toward autonomy.

Muted neural response to distress among securely attached people

Neural processes that support individual differences in attachment security and affect regulation are currently unclear. Using electroencephalography, we examined whether securely attached individuals, compared with insecure individuals, would show a muted neural response to experimentally manipulated distress. Participants completed a reaction time task that elicits error commission and the error-related negativity (ERN)-a neural signal sensitive to error-related distress-both before and after a distressing insecurity threat. Despite similar pre-threat levels, secure participants showed a stable ERN, whereas insecure participants showed a post-threat increase in ERN amplitude. These results suggest a neural mechanism that allows securely attached people to regulate distress.

The Experiential Incompatibility of Mindfulness and Flow Absorption

Mindfulness and flow are both beneficial states of mind, but are they difficult to experience simultaneously? After all, flow involves losing self-awareness within an activity, and mindfulness involves maintaining self-awareness throughout or even despite an activity. In three studies, we examine this potential antagonism, finding negative associations between mindfulness and flow as assessed in a variety of ways and contexts. These associations emerged within Global trait data and diary data concerning daily goal behavior (Study 1), experience-sampling data concerning behavior at the time of signaling (Study 2), and experimental data concerning the experience of playing the flow-conducive computer game, Tetris, after undergoing a mindfulness induction (Study 3). However, these associations only apply to the “absorption” aspect of flow, not the “sense of control” aspect.

Priming Effects on Cooperative Behavior in Social Dilemmas: Considering the Prime and the Person

ABSTRACT. We test whether people with a relatively more intrinsic vs. extrinsic value orientation (RIEVO) are particularly likely to enact cooperative behavior in resource dilemmas when they are primed with relatedness goals. In Study 1, high RIEVO participants primed with relatedness exhibited more restrained fishing behavior in a resource dilemma than their unprimed counterparts or participants low in RIEVO. Study 2 replicated this effect and further showed that the prime must signal the possibility of satisfying a valued goal (relatedness satisfaction) in order to elicit the value-consistent behavior. We discuss these results in the context of recent process models of goal priming, and also discuss how these findings contribute to our understanding of cooperative behavior and the predictive power of value constructs more broadly.

Motivation for aggressive religious radicalization: goal regulation theory and a personality × threat × affordance hypothesis

A new set of hypotheses is presented regarding the cause of aggressive religious radicalization (ARR). It is grounded in classic and contemporary theory of human motivation and goal regulation, together with recent empirical advances in personality, social, and neurophysiological psychology. We specify personality traits, threats, and group affordances that combine to divert normal motivational processes toward ARR. Conducive personality traits are oppositional, anxiety-prone, and identity-weak (i.e., morally bewildered). Conducive threats are those that arise from seemingly insurmountable external forces and frustrate effective goal regulation. Conducive affordances include opportunity for immediate and concrete engagement in active groups that are powered by conspiracy narratives, infused with cosmic significance, encouraging of moral violence, and sealed with religious unfalsifiability. We propose that ARR is rewarding because it can spur approach motivated states that mask vulnerability for people whose dispositions and circumstances would otherwise leave them mired in anxious distress.

Evolutionary and Social Psychological Perspectives on Human Cooperation

Integrating early social psychological theory and data with evolutionary theory proved difficult due to an apparent paradox: Humans are deeply cooperative in everyday situations, but how can this be so if Darwinian imperatives necessitate competition? In this chapter, we review research and theory that combines evolutionary ideas with observations from social psychological science that help to resolve this paradox. We begin by introducing the social dilemma framework to ground the conflict between the interests of the individual and others in the social environment. We then review evolutionary theories that predict when cooperation should emerge and some supportive research. Finally, we examine some of the psychological factors that favor cooperative behavior.

Anxiety and the Approach of Idealistic Meaning

This chapter will provide an overview of some of our research on meaning-related motivational processes. We outline our Reactive Approach Motivation theory, which offers a goal-regulation perspective on anxiety and meaning regulation. We suggest that both day-to-day and significant life uncertainties exhibit their effects because they create motivational conflict, which leads to the undesirable experience of anxiety. Re-establishing an approach orientation toward one’s goals can eliminate this anxiety, and we can understand the search for meaning as a generalized, approach-motivated response to anxious uncertainty. We echo William James’ contention that “inner meaning can be complete and valid…only when the inner joy, courage, and endurance are joined with an ideal” (James 1899/2010, p. 177). More specifically, we show that idealistic goals are more reliable and more potent levers of approach than concrete goals, which is why people often fend off anxious uncertainties by engaging idealistic meanings and goals. We submit that this basic motivational model provides insight into the perennial human striving for idealistic meaning. Within the chapter, we will point out how our theoretical perspective draws heavily from humanistic-existential thought, while our research practices tend to align with mainstream scientific quantitative methodologies germane to positive psychologists. Though perhaps an uncomfortable alliance for some, we hold that multimethod research, inspired by humanistic premises, can help to capture and understand human experiential processes and provide a way forward for a mutually satisfying future of humanistic-existential and positive psychological fields.