Abigail A. Scholer

• University of Waterloo

To confront difficult decisions, religious believers commonly seek guidance from sacred sources of knowledge, such as an all-knowing God. We predicted that engaging in this practice may be related to decision satisfaction. Specifically, across 3 studies (N= 2,474; two pre-registered), and three countries (U.S., Sweden, Canada), we explored whether...

Previous research has found a consistent trade-off between speed and accuracy. Whereas completing work tasks quickly is generally associated with increased mistakes, slowing down allows individuals to work in a more careful and accurate manner. However, this previous work has not considered the implications that subjective speed perceptions have fo...

People do not form a coherent understanding of the world in isolation. Instead, people cocreate a sense of what is real and true through shared reality—the experience of shared attitudes and judgments about the world. However, little is known about when and with whom shared reality emerges. Building on the people-as-means goal framework, we tested...

Researchers from social and educational psychology have typically taken distinct approaches to investigating how individuals regulate their motivational states. The metamotivational framework that we describe in this article serves to bridge these approaches by drawing on insights from the literatures on metacognition and emotion regulation. Metamo...

Self-control—the prioritization of valued global goals over immediate local rewards—is typically conceptualized and studied as isolated decisions. Goal pursuit, however, generally requires people to make repeated self-control decisions across contexts. We adopt a higher order, strategic level of analysis of self-control and explore, for the first t...

Researchers across theoretical traditions have long recognized the need for people to monitor and modulate certain aspects of their subjective experiences (such as their thoughts and feelings) in response to situational challenges that interfere with the attainment of important goals. Comparatively less attention has been devoted to understanding t...

Although intrinsic motivation is often viewed as preferable to more extrinsic forms of motivation, there is evidence that the adaptiveness of these motivational states depends on the nature of the task being completed (e.g., Cerasoli et al., 2014). Specifically, research suggests task-motivation fit such that intrinsic motivation tends to benefit p...

People often face conflicts where they must choose between their long-term goals and tempting alternatives. Using an open-ended daily diary design, we investigated the characteristics of self-control conflicts in daily life, both replicating and extending past work. Specifically, we examined the factors that affected self-control conflict success,...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1124171.].

Why are some people more successful than others? In addition to individual factors (e.g., self-control), research has recently suggested that the quality of people’s interpersonal relationships is crucial for success. Successful people seem to recognize this, as they tend to like and draw closer to both instrumental objects and instrumental others...

Self-regulation research highlights the performance trade-offs of different motivational states. For instance, within the context of regulatory focus theory, promotion motivation enhances performance on eager tasks and prevention motivation enhances performance on vigilant tasks (i.e., regulatory focus task-motivation fit). Work on metamotivation—p...

In this article, we argue that the relationship between workplace hazardousness and accidents is best characterized as an inverted‐U, such that accidents are most likely to occur within moderately hazardous environments. Specifically, whereas highly hazardous work environments are strong situations in which there is a clear need for a high degree o...

Employees often have a great deal of work to accomplish within stringent deadlines. Therefore, employees may engage in shortcut behaviors, which involve eschewing standard procedures during goal pursuit to save time. However, shortcuts can lead to negative consequences such as poor-quality work, accidents, and even large-scale disasters. Despite th...

Self-affirmation—reflecting on a source of global self-integrity outside of the threatened domain—can mitigate self-threat in education, health, relationships, and more. Whether people recognize these benefits is unknown. Inspired by the metamotivational approach, we examined people’s beliefs about the benefits of self-affirmation and whether indiv...

One of the challenges of effectively managing others is flexibly equipping them for tasks that may differ significantly in their motivational demands. Using a metamotivational approach (Scholer et al., 2018) in the domain of regulatory focus (Higgins, 1997), five studies (N = 932) examine people’s metamotivational knowledge of how to actively manag...

Employees often have a great deal of work to accomplish within stringent deadlines. Therefore, employees may engage in shortcut behaviors, which involve eschewing standard procedures during goal pursuit to save time. However, shortcuts can lead to negative consequences such as poor-quality work, accidents, and even large-scale disasters. Despite th...

The current research addresses dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic's disruption to goal pursuit. Specifically, we examined the effects of disengaging from frozen goals (goals for which progress had been disrupted due to COVID-19). In May 2021, we asked participants (N = 226) what percentage of their goals were COVID-frozen goals and asked them to rep...

Metamotivation research suggests that people understand the benefits of engaging in high-level versus low-level construal (i.e., orienting toward the abstract, essential versus concrete, idiosyncratic features of events) in goal-directed behavior. The current research examines the psychometric properties of one assessment of this knowledge and test...

Desire is part of human nature, and being vulnerable to desire is part of what differentiates humans from machines. However, individuals with high self-control—who demonstrate impressive resistance to their desires—may appear to lack such human vulnerability. We propose that people perceived as high in self-control tend to be dehumanized as more ro...

Desire is part of human nature, and being vulnerable to desire is part of what differentiates humans from machines. However, individuals with high self-control—who demonstrate impressive resistance to their desires—may appear to lack such human vulnerability. We propose that people perceived as high in self-control tend to be dehumanized as more ro...

Throughout the course of the pandemic, it has become clear that the strictures of social isolation and various levels of lockdown constraints have impacted people’s well-being. Here, our aim was to explore relations between trait dispositions associated with boredom proneness, self-regulation and well-being using data collected early in the pandemi...

The COVID-19 pandemic poses unique opportunities to explore how fundamental self-regulatory variables affect responses to the pandemic. We examine how two critical self-regulatory orientations, locomotion and assessment, relate to psychological distress and obeying public health guidelines using secondary data analysis. In the initial pandemic stag...

Research recently showed that boredom proneness was associated with increased social distancing rule-breaking in a sample collected early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we explore data collected early in the pandemic to examine what factors might drive this relation. We focus on political affiliation. Given the functional account of boredom as a ca...

Conditions of low and high perceived control often lead to boredom, albeit for different reasons. Whereas, high perceived control may be experienced as boring because the situation lacks challenge, low perceived control may be experienced as boring because the situation precludes effective engagement. In two experiments we test this proposed quadra...

Recent metamotivation research revealed that Westerners recognize that promotion versus prevention motivations benefit performance on eager versus vigilant tasks, respectively; that is, they know how to create task-motivation fit with respect to regulatory focus. Westerners also believe that, across tasks, promotion is more beneficial than preventi...

Research recently showed that boredom proneness was associated with increased social distancing rule-breaking in a sample collected early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we explore data collected early in the pandemic to examine what factors might drive this relation. We focus on political affiliation. Given the functional account of boredom as a ca...

Historically, the study of multiple goals has focused on the dynamics between two goals as the prototypical example of multiple goals. This focus on dyadic relations means that many issues central to the psychology of more than two goals are still unexplored. We argue that a deeper understanding of multiple-goal issues involves moving beyond two go...

How can people wisely navigate social conflict? Two preregistered longitudinal experiments (Study 1: Canadian adults; Study 2: American and Canadian adults; total N = 555) tested whether encouraging distanced (i.e., third-person) self-reflection would help promote wisdom. Both experiments measured wise reasoning (i.e., intellectual humility, open-m...

Historically, the study of multiple goals has focused on the dynamics between two goals as the prototypical example of multiple goals. This focus on dyadic relations means that many issues central to the psychology of more than two goals are still unexplored. We argue that a deeper understanding of multiple goal issues involves moving beyond two go...

The state of boredom presents a conundrum: When bored, we want to engage with an activity, but we don't want to engage with whatever is currently available. This conflict is exacerbated when external factors impose restrictions on the range of behaviors we can engage in, which is precisely the scenario we are currently facing, at a global level, du...

Past research has established the relational benefits of engaging in novel tasks with a romantic partner. However, little empirical evidence exists for the mechanisms responsible. The current research examined growth experiences—the proposed and tested mechanism in past work—as well as security experiences, a previously unexplored mechanism. Using...

State boredom presents a conundrum: When bored, we want to engage with something, but we don’t want whatever is currently available. This is exacerbated when external factors impose restrictions on what we can engage in, which is precisely the scenario we are currently facing during the COVID-19 pandemic. We surveyed 924 participants to examine the...

We examined the hypothesis that boredom is likely to occur when opportunity costs are high; that is, when there is a high potential value of engaging in activities other than the researcher-assigned activity. To this end, participants were either placed in a room with many possible affordances (e.g. a laptop, puzzle, etc.; affordances condition; n...

We examined the hypothesis that boredom is likely to occur when opportunity costs are high; that is, when there is a high potential value of engaging in activities other than the researcher-assigned activity. To this end, participants were either placed in a room with many possible affordances (e.g., a laptop, puzzle, etc.; affordances condition; n...

Metamotivation refers to the beliefs and mechanisms by which people regulate their motivational states to achieve desired ends. Recent metamotivation research demonstrates that Westerners recognize the benefits of engaging in high-level and low-level construal (i.e., motivational orientations toward abstract, essential vs. concrete, idiosyncratic f...

Juggling multiple goals is an inescapable reality of human life. Over the past two decades, the study of the nature of multiple (vs. single) goals has emerged to become an influential topic. To facilitate the understanding of the current state of the literature, this article presents an overview of the study of multiple goals. It first addresses th...

In the era in which people are bombarded with misinformation about vaccination, research regarding the degree to which various types of risk or benefit information affect perceptions of vaccines and intentions to vaccinate is critical. The present research utilizes a robust methodology to quantify the extent to which risk and benefit information af...

When and why do people choose a more or a less risky option? To answer this question, we propose that it is essential to examine the dynamic interrelations among three factors-the decision maker's goal (e.g., promotion vs. prevention goal), the current value state (e.g., the domain of gains vs. losses), and the choice set (i.e., perceived available...

The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation, Second Edition, addresses key advances made in the field since the previous edition, offering the latest insights from the top theorists and researchers of human motivation. The volume includes chapters on social learning theory, control theory, self-determination theory, terror management theory, and regula...

Approach motivation (striving for desired end-states, eagerly focusing on where one wants to be) is often held up as the best type of motivation: It feels good and is associated with many positive outcomes. Indeed, a common perception is that regulation in terms of approach motivation is almost always better than regulation in terms of avoidance mo...

We have argued for a balanced perspective on the relative benefits and costs of approach and avoidance motivation, and that thinking hierarchically about these motives contributes to a better understanding of goal pursuit. Having received several scholarly commentaries on these primary claims, in this reply, we further clarify the roles of regulato...

Metamotivation research suggests that people may be able to modulate their motivational states strategically to secure desired outcomes (Scholer & Miele, 2016). To regulate one's motivational states effectively, one must at minimum understand (a) which states are more or less beneficial for a given task and (b) how to instantiate these states. In t...

We tested the utility of illeism – a practice of referring to oneself in the third person – for the trainability of wisdom-related characteristics in everyday life: i) wise reasoning (intellectual humility, open-mindedness in ways a situation may unfold, perspective-taking, attempts to integrate different viewpoints) and ii) accuracy in emotional f...

Significance We show that different genotypes of the human ortholog of the foraging gene, PRKG1 , were associated with unique patterns of self-regulation. On a virtual foraging task, we show that these self-regulatory profiles also engaged distinct search strategies. One of the genotypes looks remarkably similar, in terms of foraging behavior, to a...

Self-regulation research typically focuses on the modulation of thoughts, feelings, and behavior to achieve desired ends. We propose that understanding the regulation of the underlying motivational orientations that drive these reactions is a critical yet underappreciated research question. We review research on metamotivation—people’s understandin...

Research on self-regulation has primarily focused on how people exert control over their thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which people manage their motivational states in the service of achieving valued goals. In this article, we explore an emerging line of research that focuses on people’s beliefs about...

To increase employee creativity is critical for organizational success, and yet we still know very little about what organizational contexts promote creative performance. Our research proposes that goal regulation in the workplace may have consequences for creativity. While there is an increasing trend for organizations and workers to visualize the...

Though recent motivational accounts of self-control highlight the importance of experiences of effort and fatigue for continued goal pursuit in the moment, less research has investigated potential longer-term effects of these experiences. In three studies, we tested the hypothesis that experiencing self-control as effortful and exhausting would lea...

Communication varies in indirectness, influencing the effectiveness of the message as well as interpersonal dynamics. However, this issue was not studied empirically in the feedback literature. Integrating communication indirectness and message framing theories, we propose that whether success and failure feedback are framed as a negation (non-loss...

Communication varies in indirectness, influencing the effectiveness of the message as well as interpersonal dynamics. However, this issue was not studied empirically in the feedback literature. Integrating communication indirectness and message framing theories, we propose that whether success and failure feedback are framed as a negation (non-loss...

The current research examined the hypothesis that the relative importance of growth- and security-related relationship qualities in establishing successful relationships depends on the motivational orientation—regulatory focus (Higgins, 1997)—of the individual. Across four studies, we found that individuals in a promotion focus, whether chronic (St...

This article builds on existing models of motivation regulation in order to examine how students identify and address motivational deficits (e.g., not enough motivation or not the right type of motivation). Integrating perspectives from the achievement motivation, metacognition, and emotion regulation literatures, we propose that metamotivational p...

Purpose Shortcut behaviors are methods of completing a task that require less time than typical or standard procedures. These behaviors carry the benefit of increasing efficiency, yet can also carry risks (e.g., of an accident). The purpose of this research is to understand the reasons individuals engage in shortcut behaviors, even when doing so is...

Successful self-regulation involves both assessment (e.g., making the right choices) and locomotion (e.g., managing change and movement). Regulatory mode theory is a motivational framework that highlights the ways in which these locomotion versus assessment concerns can receive differential emphasis across both individuals and situations. Although...

Disturbances are factors outside of a person’s control that influence goal progress. Although disturbances are typically included in theoretical accounts of goal pursuit, relatively little empirical research has explicitly considered the effects of disturbances on the goal-striving process. We address this gap in the literature by examining the eff...

Researchers have often disagreed on how to define maximization, leading to conflicting conclusions about its potential benefits or drawbacks. Drawing from motivation research, we distinguish between the goals (i.e., wanting the best) and strategies (e.g., alternative search) associated with maximizing. Three studies illustrate how this differentiat...

Researchers have often disagreed on how to define maximization, leading to conflicting conclusions about its potential benefits or drawbacks. Drawing from motivation research, we distinguish between the goals (i.e., wanting the best) and strategies (e.g., alternative search) associated with maximizing. Three studies illustrate how this differentiat...

One of the challenges of effective goal pursuit is being able to flexibly adapt to changing situations and demands. The current studies investigate whether individuals exhibit effective metamotivation—successful management of one’s motivational states—in creating fit between an optimal motivational orientation and specific task demands (e.g., induc...

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 people's shifting ex...

Sexual satisfaction is an important component of relationship well-being within romantic relationships. Yet, relatively little is known about the psychological factors that predict responses to the inevitable sexual challenges couples face. Four studies provide evidence that implicit theories of sexual attraction as either fixed or malleable predic...

We investigated the relationship between self-regulation and two types of boredom proneness (perceived lack of internal stimulation, perceived lack of external stimulation) using a variety of measures of self-regulation. These included a general measure of self-control, measures of both regulatory focus (i.e., promotion or a sensitivity to gains/no...

Four experiments examined whether information implying imminent threat to safety would interact with regulatory focus (Higgins, 1997) to affect the utilization of threat-relevant stereotypes. Because information suggesting imminent danger is more relevant to the safety goals of prevention-focused individuals than the advancement goals of promotion-...

We propose a motivational affordance account to explain both stability and variability in risk-taking propensity in major decision domains. We draw on regulatory focus theory to differentiate two types of motivation (prevention, promotion) that play a key role in predicting risk-taking. Study 1 demonstrated that prevention motivation is negatively...

Four studies demonstrate the importance of self-regulatory mechanisms for understanding risk-seeking behavior under loss. Findings suggest that risk seeking becomes a motivational necessity under 3 conditions: (a) when an individual is in a state of loss; (b) when the individual is in a prevention-focused regulatory state (E. T. Higgins, 1997); and...

This article examines the role of promotion motivation in decision making in the domain of gains. Using a stock investment paradigm in which individuals believed that they were making decisions that were real and consequential, we found that promotion motivation, and not prevention motivation, predicted the likelihood of switching between risky and...

In the current research, we explored differences in the self-regulation of the personal dos (i.e., engaging in active and effortful behaviors that benefit the self) and in the self-regulation of the social dos (engaging in those same effortful behaviors to benefit someone else). In 6 studies, we examined whether the same trait self-control abilitie...

Many models of motivation suggest that goals can be arranged in a hierarchy, ranging from higher-level goals that represent desired end-states to lower-level means that operate in the service of those goals. We present a hierarchical model that distinguishes between three levelsgoals, strategies, and tacticsand between approach/avoidance and regula...

The ways in which individuals think and feel about themselves play a significant role in guiding behavior across many domains in life. The current studies investigate how individuals may shift the positivity of self-evaluations in order to sustain their chronic or momentary motivational concerns. Specifically, we propose that more positive self-eva...

Mischel and Shoda's Cognitive Affective Personality System (CAPS) theory revolutionized thinking about personality. We review the functional utility of the CAPS perspective in light of the purposes for which people typically use and seek personality information—prediction, explanation, and influence. We suggest that the critical if…then… situation-...

Different kinds of motivational orientations provide distinctive ways of perceiving the world, dealing with life's inevitable slings and arrows, regulating challenges and opportunities, and creating success. In this chapter, we explore these differences in the two motivational systems outlined in regulatory focus theory: the promotion and preventio...

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 e...

Participants in our study worked on an anagram task to win a prize while aversive noise played in the background. They were instructed to deal with the noise either by "opposing" it as an interference or by "coping" with the unpleasant feelings it created. The strength of attention to the opposing or coping response to adversity was measured by poo...

The factors that motivate commitment to behavioral change (e.g., quitting smoking) are important in understanding self-regulation processes. The current research examines how an individual’s motivational orientation during deliberation affects the likelihood that they will commit to change. Building on the insights of regulatory mode theory (Higgin...

Although people high in agreeableness have often been shown to be positively biased toward others, four studies provide evidence that agreeableness is associated with extremity effects, not simple positivity effects, in social judgment. Across studies, agreeable participants judged prosocial behaviors more favorably, but antisocial behaviors more u...

Four studies demonstrate the importance of self-regulatory mechanisms for understanding risk-seeking behavior under loss. Findings suggest that risk seeking becomes a motivational necessity under 3 conditions: (a) when an individual is in a state of loss; (b) when the individual is in a prevention-focused regulatory state (E. T. Higgins, 1997); and...

Traditionally, self-control conflicts have been defined as conflicts between some immediate, short-term gratification versus some delayed, long-term gain. Although this is certainly a self-control issue, we argue that a focus on this definition of self-control has obscured the broader self-control issue: self-control is about resolving and managing...

Regulatory Focus TheoryCoping in High Demand SituationsConcluding RemarksReferences

Regulatory engagement theory [Higgins, E. T. (2006). Value from hedonic experience and engagement. Psychological Review, 113, 439-460.] proposes that value is a motivational force of attraction to or repulsion from something, and that strength of engagement contributes to value intensity independent of hedonic and other sources of value direction....

Regulatory engagement theory (Higgins, E. T. (2006). Value from hedonic experience and engagement. Psychological Review, 113, 439–460; Higgins, E.T. & Scholer, A.A. (2009). Engaging the consumer: The science and art of the value creation process. Journal of Consumer Psychology) proposes that engagement strength plays a critical role in the creation...

We propose a motivational model of impression formation—people as resources—as a way to understand what information perceivers seek in their interpersonal world. Prior work has established that the warm–cold dimension is fundamental to impression formation. Building on other functional approaches, we suggest that the attributes warm and cold are im...

We hypothesized that perceiving oneself as choosing an object in a proper way, by strengthening engagement in the ongoing decision process, can intensify attraction to the chosen object. Participants in all four studies chose between a coffee mug and a nonexpensive pen. The analyses were restricted to those participants who made the same choice-ove...

Regulatory focus theory distinguishes between two motivational systems—a promotion system concerned with nurturance and advancement and a prevention system concerned with security and safety [Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52, 1280–1300]. In signal detection terms, a preference for eager strategies within th...

How can researchers and practitioners use regulatory fit theory to increase the effectiveness of their attempts to change attitudes and behavior? In this article, we extract from the literature a set of basic processes by which fit can influence persuasion and describe different methods for inducing fit. Regulatory fit can influence persuasion by:...

In this chapter, we argue that one cannot fully answer the question of what it means to approach and avoid without considering the different levels at which approach and avoidance occur. Though the interest in approach and avoidance motivations has a long and rich history, there has been considerable variability in the ways that researchers have ap...

Not all first impressions have equal longevity. Which kinds of impression have the greatest mobility—downward and upward—over the course of acquaintanceships? In this article, we propose an inferential account of impression maintenance across Big Five trait domains. With data from field and laboratory studies, we provide evidence that positive impr...