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Grit, Self-Control, and the Fear of Failure
Abstract
Research on self-handicapping, producing barriers to personal success to reduce the meaningfulness of failure, has focused mostly on the short-term benefits of maintaining self-esteem and reducing the crushing emotional blow of failure. Nevertheless, there are long-term costs to self-handicapping. Specifically, self-handicapping interferes with psychological processes such as self-reflection and assessment that accompany the experience of failure and assist in long-term self-regulatory processes. As such, those who choose to self-handicap reduce the likelihood of future improvement. Those interested in long-term success may therefore see less benefit in self-handicapping. Two studies were conducted to test the moderating role of grit (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelley, 2007) and trait self-control (Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, 2004) on self-handicapping behaviors. A correlational study did find strong negative relationships between reported self-handicapping and both grit and trait self-control. A follow-up study examining actual behavior failed to confirm this finding, however. Although males high in grit appeared to challenge themselves in a non-evaluative situation, there were no differences between those high versus low on these individual differences in their likelihood to engage in self-handicapping behaviors.
... Self-discipline is also integral to grit, because it helps a person stay focused on a goal and not get distracted by things that might keep one from accomplishing that goal. Gitter (2008) found that people high in grit may avoid self-handicapping behaviors, which is related to selfdiscipline. Finally, Doskoch (2005) included optimism in the mix, a belief that "in the end that they're going to win, and until they do, they're just going to keep on pushing" (p. ...
... Duckworth (Perkins-Gough, 2013) pointed to research being done by Dweck in areas like growth mindset that may be promising in demonstrating that grit can be taught. Terms often used as synonyms for grit include resilience, passion, self-discipline, and optimism (Doskoch, 2005;Gitter, 2008;Hersh et al., 2008). ...
This study examined persistence to graduation at a public Midwestern university from the perspective of the constructs of spirituality and grit, using historical demographic, academic, and survey data from nine cohorts of students. Significant correlation between spirituality and grit was found, leading to the development of the SPIRIT theory and working model. Significant correlation between spirituality, grit, and persistence to graduation was also found, and the SPIRIT theory was applied to persistence to graduation, accounting for both progress towards the graduation goal, as well as for times when some cohorts showed negative correlation for some factors. Development of the SPIRIT theory offers insights into the psychological attributes that have been identified by previous scholars as relevant to persistence to graduation.
Önleyici rehberlik, psikolojik danışma ve psikolojinin nihai amaçlarından
birinin koruyucu faktörleri oluşturmak, varsa arttırmaktır. Unutmamak gerekir
ki bir koruyucu ve risk faktörünün de başka koruyucu ve risk faktörleri olabilir.
Yukarıda yaşam kalitesini ve öznel iyi oluşu arttıran en önemli birkaç koruyucu
faktör açıklanmaya çalışılmıştır, fakat bunlardan daha fazla koruyucu faktörler
vardır. İyi oluşu arttıran ya da pozitif ilişkiye sahip tüm değişkenler koruyucu faktör
olabilir. Okul merkezli önleyici psikolojik danışma genelde imkân, olanaklar
ve zaman açısından pek de mümkün olmamaktadır. Dolayısyla önleyici psikolojik
danışmada etkili koruyucu faktörlerle yola çıkılırsa hem uzmanın işi kolaylaşak,
hem de zamandan tasarruf edilecek ve danışma hizmetlerinin kalitesi artacaktır.
Procrastination is variously described as harmful, innocuous, or even beneficial. Two longitudinal studies examined procrastination among students. Procrastinators reported lower stress and less illness than nonprocrastinators early in the semester, but they reported higher stress and more illness late in the term, and overall they were sicker. Procrastinators also received lower grades on all assignments. Procrastination thus appears to be a self-defeating behavior pattern marked by short-term benefits and long-term costs.
Throughout elementary, middle, and high school, girls earn higher grades than boys in all major subjects. Girls, however, do not outperform boys on achievement or IQ tests. To date, explanations for the underprediction of girls' GPAs by standardized tests have focused on gender differences favoring boys on such tests. The authors' investigation suggests an additional explanation: Girls are more self-disciplined, and this advantage is more relevant to report card grades than to achievement or aptitude tests. Eighth-grade girls at an urban magnet school were more self-disciplined than their male counterparts according to delay of gratification measures and self-report, teacher, and parent ratings. Whereas girls earned higher grades in all courses, they did only marginally better on an achievement test and worse on an IQ test. Mediation analyses suggested girls earned higher GPAs at least in part because they were more self-disciplined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Developed and validated the Need for Cognition Scale (NCS). In Study 1, a pool of items was administered to 96 faculty members (high-need-for-cognition group) and assembly line workers (low-need-for-cognition group). Ambiguity, irrelevance, and internal consistency were used to select items for subsequent studies. Factor analysis yielded one major factor. In Study 2, the NCS and the Group Embedded Figures Test were administered to 419 undergraduates to validate the factor structure and to determine whether the NCS tapped a construct distinct from test anxiety and cognitive style. The factor structure was replicated, and responses to the NCS were weakly related to cognitive style and unrelated to test anxiety. In Study 3, 104 undergraduates completed the NCS, the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, and a dogmatism scale. Results indicate that need for cognition was related weakly and negatively to being closeminded, unrelated to social desirability, and positively correlated with general intelligence. Study 4 (97 undergraduates) furnished evidence of the predictive validity of the NCS. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Based on a theory of objective self awareness three experiments were conducted with undergraduates to test the hypothesis that self-focused attention can alter self esteem levels. In Experiments I and II subjects were exposed either to the sound of their own voices or to the sound of another's voice, and while listening to the tape-recording they filled out a self esteem measure. Consistent with the theory, subjects whose attention was focused upon themselves by means of exposure to their own tape-recorded voices showed lower self esteem than subjects who heard another's voice. The impact of the self awareness manipulation on self esteem was greatest when it was first introduced. In Experiment III the variable of positive-negative feedback on a fictitious personality trait was added to the self-focused attention variable. An interaction resulted such that self-focused attention lowered self esteem given negative feedback, while there was a tendency toward the opposite result given positive feedback.
The theoretical framework presented in this article explains expert performance as the end result of individuals' prolonged efforts to improve performance while negotiating motivational and external constraints. In most domains of expertise, individuals begin in their childhood a regimen of effortful activities (deliberate practice) designed to optimize improvement. Individual differences, even among elite performers, are closely related to assessed amounts of deliberate practice. Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 yrs. Analysis of expert performance provides unique evidence on the potential and limits of extreme environmental adaptation and learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The present research extends previous functional accounts of counterfactual thinking by incorporating the notion of reflective and evaluative processing. Participants generated counterfactuals about their anagram performance, after which their persistence and performance on a second set of anagrams was measured. Evaluative processing of upward counterfactuals elicited a larger increase in persistence and better performance than did reflective processing of upward counterfactuals, whereas reflective processing of downward counterfactuals elicited a larger increase in persistence and better performance than did evaluative processing of downward counterfactuals. Moreover, path analyses indicated that whereas the relationship between counterfactual thinking and persistence was accounted for by emotional responses following upward and downward counterfactual generation, the relationship between counterfactual thinking and performance was accounted for by enhanced persistence following reflective processing of downward counterfactuals, but was accounted for by both enhanced persistence and strategic thinking following evaluative processing of upward counterfactuals.
The greater power of bad events over good ones is found in everyday events, major life events (e.g., trauma), close relationship outcomes, social network patterns, interpersonal interactions, and learning processes. Bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. The self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones. Various explanations such as diagnosticity and salience help explain some findings, but the greater power of bad events is still found when such variables are controlled. Hardly any exceptions (indicating greater power of good) can be found. Taken together, these findings suggest that bad is stronger than good, as a general principle across a broad range of psychological phenomena.
Why do people's impulse controls break down during emotional distress? Some theories propose that distress impairs one's motivation or one's ability to exert self-control, and some postulate self-destructive intentions arising from the moods. Contrary to those theories, Three experiments found that believing that one's bad mood was frozen (unchangeable) eliminated the tendency to eat fattening snacks (Experiment 1), seek immediate gratification (Experiment 2), and engage in frivolous procrastination (Experiment 3). The implication is that when people are upset, they indulge immediate impulses to make themselves feel better, which amounts to giving short-term affect regulation priority over other self-regulatory goals.
In 2 experiments, college student Ss were instructed to choose between a drug that allegedly interfered with performance and a drug that allegedly enhanced performance. This choice was the main dependent measure of the experiment. The drug choice intervened between work on soluble or insoluble problems and a promised retest on similar problems. In Exp I with 68 males and 43 females, all Ss received success feedback after their initial problem-solving attempts, thus creating one condition in which the success appeared to be accidental (noncontingent on performance) and one in which the success appeared to be contingent on appropriate knowledge. Males in the noncontingent-success condition were alone in preferring the performance-inhibiting drug, presumably because they wished to externalize probable failure on the retest. The predicted effect, however, did not hold for female Ss. Exp II, with 87 Ss, replicated the unique preference shown by males after noncontingent success and showed the critical importance of success feedback. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Helpless children show marked performance decrements under failure, whereas mastery-oriented children often show enhanced performance. Current theories emphasize differences in the nature of the attributions following failure as determinants of response to failure. Two studies with 130 5th-grade children explored helpless vs mastery-oriented differences in the nature, timing, and relative frequency of a variety of achievement-related cognitions by continuously monitoring verbalizations following failure. Results reveal that helpless children made the expected attributions for failure to lack of ability; mastery-oriented children made surprisingly few attributions but instead engaged in self-monitoring and self-instructions. That is, helpless children focused on the cause of failure, whereas the mastery-oriented children focused on remedies for failure. These differences were accompanied by striking differences in strategy change under failure. The results suggest that in addition to the nature of the attribution one makes, the timing or even occurrence of attributions may be a critical individual difference. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Patterns of human self-defeating or self-destructive behavior are examined in relation to several hypothesized causes. Threatened egotism appears to be a major, pervasive cause: Self-defeating responses are especially common when people feel that others may perceive them less favorably than the people desire. Self-regulation failure is also a common element in most self-defeating behavior. Emotional distress is often a precipitating factor. Several causal processes, including foolish risk taking and escapist responses, link emotional distress to self-defeat.
Explored the impression-management underpinnings of the self-handicapping strategy of S. Berglas and E. E. Jones (see record 1979-05889-001). 64 male undergraduates were given success feedback after completing soluble or insoluble analogies. While anticipating a 2nd test, Ss were allowed to choose between drugs that would enhance or encumber their performance. Ss who had worked on insoluble problems chose the debilitating drug, but only when the experimenter (E) witnessed the choice. They were most likely to choose the debilitating drug when the E was present and when they believed that the E would have access to their score on the anticipated 2nd test. The data are cautiously interpreted as consistent with an impression management view of self-handicapping. The authors suggest that although it appears that self-handicapping is an impression management strategy at least under some circumstances, the exact nature of the strategy needs further specification. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Explores the hypothesis that alcohol use and underachievement may serve as strategies to externalize the causation of poor performance and to internalize the causation of good performance. Such a strategy may be prominently used especially by those who have a precarious but not entirely negative sense of self-competence. The etiology of this strategic preference may follow either of two scenarios. The child may attach desperate importance to this competence image because competence is the condition for deserving parental love. Or the child may have been rewarded for accidental attributes or performances that do not predict future success, thus leaving him in a position of one who has reached a status he fears he cannot maintain through his own control. The linkage of alcohol appeal to underachievement strategies is stressed; both are seen as expressions of the same overconcern with competence.
Jones and Berglas (1978) have described self-handicapping as a set of behavioral strategies enacted before a performance that permits the individual to externalize failure and internalize success. Two field studies that investigated individual differences in self-handicapping among competitive athletes are reported. Several potential self-handicapping behaviors, such as practice effort, physical problems, and outside commitments were examined. In the first study, high self-handicapping intercollegiate swimmers withheld practice effort relative to low self-handicappers prior to competitions that posed a threat to self-esteem. This finding was replicated in a second study with professional golfers. In neither study did athletes differently utilize health problems as self-handicapping strategies. These findings are discussed in terms of the implications of an individual difference approach for the study and modification of self-handicapping behavior.
This experiment examined the effects of public self-focus on individuals' behavioral self-handicapping tendencies. When faced with a threatening evaluation, a person may choose to self-handicap behaviorally. Men, more than women, and trait self-handicappers have been shown to self-handicap behaviorally. How do situational factors such as self-focus interface with these personal characteristics to affect such actions? Self-focus of attention was expected to make the self-evaluation implications of an upcoming performance more salient and to cause the self-focused performer to self-handicap behaviorally. Persons who were low or high in habitual self-handicapping were presented with an important intellectual evaluation and were allowed to practice for the upcoming test. Results showed that men self-handicap more by practicing less when they are self-focused, but women do not self-handicap under selffocus and self-handicapping instruction conditions. The implications of these findings for understanding the antecedent conditions of self-handicapping are discussed in the context of other recent work.
Discusses the interpersonal motivations associated with different levels of self-esteem (SE). Although SE refers to an intrapsychic attitude, SE scales often measure self-presentational orientation. High SE scores are associated with a tendency to present one's self in a self-enhancing fashion characterized by willingness to accept risks, focus on outstandingly good qualities, strategic ploys, and calling attention to one's self. Low SE scores are associated with a tendency to present one's self in a self-protective fashion characterized by unwillingness to accept risks, focus on avoiding outstandingly bad qualities, avoidance of strategic ploys, and reluctance to draw attention to one's self. Evidence shows that most people rate themselves as above average on SE scales. Measures emphasizing social SE may be more sensitive to interpersonal and self-presentational issues than nonsocial SE measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
examine in detail the proposed association between perfectionism and procrastination / a multidimensional approach to the study of perfectionism is adopted to clarify the link between perfectionism and procrastination / examine the similarities and differences between dimensions of perfectionism and procrastination at a conceptual level / present a review of existing empirical data on perfectionism and procrastination / a multidimensional approach to the study of perfectionism is utilized to demonstrate that procrastination is a response to a form of social evaluation that involves the perceived imposition of unrealistic expectations on the self / directions for future investigation in this area are discussed (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Variations of the self-imposed delay-of-gratification situation in preschool were compared to determine when individual differences in this situation may predict aspects of cognitive and self-regulatory competence and coping in adolescence. Preschool children from a university community participated in experiments that varied features of the self-imposed delay situation. Experimental analyses of the cognitive–attentional processes that affect waiting in this situation helped identify conditions in which delay behavior would be most likely to reflect relevant cognitive and attentional competencies. As hypothesized, in those conditions, coherent patterns of statistically significant correlations were found between seconds of delay time in such conditions in preschool and cognitive and academic competence and ability to cope with frustration and stress in adolescence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Experiments testing the self-serving bias (SSB; taking credit for personal success but blaming external factors for personal failure) have used a multitude of moderators (i.e., role, task importance, outcome expectancies, self-esteem, achievement motivation, self-focused attention, task choice, perceived task difficulty, interpersonal orientation, status, affect, locus of control, gender, and task type). The present meta-analytic review established the viability and pervasiveness of the SSB and, more important, organized the 14 moderators just listed under the common theoretical umbrella of self-threat. According to the self-threat model, the high self-threat level of each moderator is associated with a larger display of the SSB than the low self-threat level. The model was supported: Self-threat magnifies the SSB. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Considers the conditions which cause the consciousness to focus on the self as an object. The theory that self-awareness has motivational properties deriving from social feedback is discussed and considered with relation to conformity, attitude-behavior discrepancies, and communication sets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A review of the evidence for and against the proposition that self-serving biases affect attributions of causality indicates that there is little empirical support for the proposition in its most general form. Some support was found for the contention that individuals engage in self-enhancing attributions under conditions of success, but only minimal evidence suggested that individuals engage in self-protective attributions under conditions of failure. Moreover, it was proposed that the self-enhancing effect may not be due to motivational distortion, but rather to the tendency of people to (a) expect their behavior to produce success, (b) discern a closer covariation between behavior and outcomes in the case of increasing success than in the case of constant failure, and (c) misconstrue the meaning of contingency. (60 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Four studies sought to differentiate between self-enhancement and self-protection as motivations self-handicapping. High-self-esteem participants self-handicapped to enhance success, whereas low-self-esteem participants self-handicapped to protect against the esteem-threatening implications of failure. This was supported with 2 different forms of self-handicapping and corroborated by attributional statements regarding the implications of handicaps for performance outcomes. Thus, different people use the same (self-handicapping) strategy for different reasons. Also, patterns of social motivation vary with level of trait self-esteem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A theory of how people detect and correct their own performance errors during skill practice is proposed. The basic principles of the theory are that errors are caused by overly general knowledge structures, that error detection requires domain-specific declarative knowledge, that errors are experienced as conflicts between what the learner believes ought to be true and what he or she perceives to be the case, and that errors are corrected by specializing faulty knowledge structures so that they become active only in situations in which they are appropriate. A computer simulation model that embodies the theory learns cognitive skills in ecologically valid domains. The theory generates novel and testable predictions about error correction. It is also consistent with learning phenomena that are seemingly unrelated to errors, including transfer of training and the learning curve. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Two experiments with 108 female undergraduates tested a theoretical model of behavioral self-regulation, which makes predictions about the effect of failure on a person's subsequent efforts. This model holds that degree of effort will be a product of 2 things: expectancy of being able to redress the failure and degree of self-attention. In the experiments, a failure pretreatment was used to create large within-self discrepancies among Ss. It was predicted that (a) negative outcome expectancies regarding a subsequent task would lead to decreased persistence on that task, (b) positive outcome expectancies for the subsequent task would lead to increased persistence on that task, and (c) both of these tendencies would be mediated by self-directed attention. Results support the predictions. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Investigated the effects on choice among achievement tasks of achievement motive and 2 task characteristics: difficulty and informational value about one's own ability. 102 male undergraduates, whose achievement motive was assessed by the Mehrabian Achievement Scale, were given a choice among tasks varying in difficulty and informational value. As expected, tasks of high informational value were preferred to tasks of low informational value, and this preference was more pronounced for Ss high in achievement motive than for Ss low in achievement motive. Further, neither the high-motive group nor the low-motive group preferred tasks of intermediate difficulty over easy and hard ones. It is concluded that the informational value rather than the affective value of performance outcomes determines choice among tasks: the stronger the achievement motive, the stronger the tendency to seek information about one's own capabilities. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Notes that learned helplessness-the interference with instrumental responding following inescapable aversive events-has been found in animals and man. The present study tested for the generality of the debilitation produced by uncontrollable events across tasks and motivational systems. 4 experiments with a total of 96 college students were simultaneously conducted: (a) pretreatment with inescapable, escapable, or control aversive tone followed by shuttlebox escape testing; (b) pretreatment with insoluble, soluble, or control discrimination problems followed by anagram solution testing; (c) pretreatments with inescapable, escapable, or control aversive tone followed by anagram solution testing; and (d) pretreatments with insoluble, soluble, or control discrimination problems followed by shuttlebox escape testing. Learned helplessness was found with all 4 experiments: Both insolubility and inescapability produced failure to escape and failure to solve anagrams. It is suggested that inescapability and insolubility both engendered expectancies that responding is independent of reinforcement. The generality of this process suggests that learned helplessness may be an induced "trait." (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
given that people in general employ self-handicapping strategies in order to protect self-esteem, are there individual differences in people's tendencies to choose this strategy / approach this question from several perspectives
examine individuals' proclivities to rely on what will be termed domain-strategy-specific self-handicaps
describe attempts to assess more general and pervasive individual differences in self-handicapping tendencies
examination of other individual differences that are relevant to different self-handicapping motivations, such as self-esteem protection and self-presentational concerns
consideration then will be given to the subject of sex differences in self-handicapping behavior (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Helpless children show marked performance decrements under failure, whereas mastery-oriented children often show enhanced performance. Current theories emphasize differences in the nature of the attributions following failure as determinants of response to failure. Two studies with 130 5th-grade children explored helpless vs mastery-oriented differences in the nature, timing, and relative frequency of a variety of achievement-related cognitions by continuously monitoring verbalizations following failure. Results reveal that helpless children made the expected attributions for failure to lack of ability; mastery-oriented children made surprisingly few attributions but instead engaged in self-monitoring and self-instructions. That is, helpless children focused on the cause of failure, whereas the mastery-oriented children focused on remedies for failure. These differences were accompanied by striking differences in strategy change under failure. The results suggest that in addition to the nature of the attribution one makes, the timing or even occurrence of attributions may be a critical individual difference. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Although the Fear of Negative Evaluation (FNE) Scale has widespread applicability to many areas of research in personality and social psychology, its utility is sometimes limited by its length. This article presents a brief, 12-item version of the FNE that correlates very highly (f96) with the original scale and that demonstrates psychometric properties that are nearly identical to those of the full-length scale.
ABSTRACT In two experiments we investigated the causes of low preparatory effort (minimal practicing for an upcoming event that is to be evaluated), a possible form of self-handicapping Experiment 1 found that people with high self-esteem practiced less than people with low self-esteem, although a prior experience of success eliminated this difference Experiment 2 showed that people with high self-esteem practiced less only when the practice duration was publicly known, indicating that they were using a strategic self-presentational ploy rather man responding to superior confidence This difference may reflect a desire to maximize the self-presentation of high ability by appearing to succeed despite minimal preparatory effort These results suggest that this form of self-handicapping is a strategy used by highly confident individuals in uncertain situations to make a favorable impression on others
The relative effectiveness of reward and punishment on the development of response inhibition was evaluated developmentally. Forty kindergarten and forty second-graders received response inhibition training with half of each group rewarded for inhibiting and half punished for not inhibiting. Reward involved the presentation of positive reinforcers, whereas punishment involved their removal. Punishment produced more inhibition at both age levels than did reward. Transfer of inhibition training was evaluated in two tasks. Transfer effects were observed only on one of the two tasks. Reinforcement contingencies and age did not differentially influence the magnitude of transfer.
Research has consistently found that men engage in more behavioral self-handicapping than do women. We first review evidence suggesting that these gender differences result from women placing more importance on displaying effort than do men. We then present the results of two studies seeking to develop measures of beliefs about effort that might explain these gender differences in behavioral self-handicapping. Women, across a wide range of measures, placed more importance on effort than did men. However, only a new measure of more personalized effort beliefs, dubbed the Worker scale, uniquely explained gender differences in dispositional tendency to behaviorally self-handicap. The Worker scale also predicted academic performance, consistent with the notion that these effort beliefs would predict engagement in actual behavioral self-handicaps that undermine performance.
Two experiments were conducted to test the proposition that attribution of causality will be determined by the focus of attention. In Expt I Ss responded to 10 hypothetical situations, each presenting the possibility that either the S or someone else might be the cause of a negative consequence. After each situation was presented, the S was asked to estimate in percentages the extent to which he was causal in bringing about the negative consequence. In order to reduce experimentally the degree of attention focused toward the self, approximately half of the Ss were required to engage in a motor activity while replying to the questions. The procedure of Expt II differed from the first in two respects: (1) There were five hypothetical situations with positive consequences as well as five with negative consequences, and (2) for approximately half of the Ss a stimulus was introduced that would direct their attention to themselves, rather than to the environment. The results of both experiments indicated that attribution of causality to the self was greater when attention was focused on the self, and in the second experiment it was found that this effect operates independently of whether the consequences are good or bad.
A new questionnaire, named the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, has been constructed, measuring nine cognitive coping strategies people tend to use after having experienced negative life events. A test–retest design was used to study the psychometric properties and relationships with measures of depression and anxiety among 547 high school youngsters. Principal component analyses supported the allocation of items to subscales, while alphas of most subscales exceeded 0.80. Cognitive coping strategies were found to play an important role in the relationship between the experience of negative life events and the reporting of symptoms of depression and anxiety. The results suggest that cognitive coping strategies may be a valuable context of prevention and intervention
The current work draws upon the theoretical framework of deliberate practice in order to clarify why the amount of study by college students is a poor predictor of academic performance. A model was proposed where performance in college, both cumulatively and for a current semester, was jointly determined by previous knowledge and skills as well as factors indicating quality (e.g., study environment) and quantity of study. The findings support the proposed model and indicate that the amount of study only emerged as a significant predictor of cumulative GPA when the quality of study and previously attained performance were taken into consideration. The findings are discussed in terms of the insights provided by applying the framework of deliberate practice to academic performance in a university setting.
The 3 major self-evaluation motives were compared: self-assessment (people pursue accurate self-knowledge), self-enhancement (people pursue favorable self-knowledge), and self-verification (people pursue highly certain self-knowledge). Ss considered the possession of personality traits that were either positive or negative and either central or peripheral by asking themselves questions that varied in diagnosticity (the extent to which the questions could discriminate between a trait and its alternative) and in confirmation value (the extent to which the questions confirmed possession of a trait). Ss selected higher diagnosticity questions when evaluating themselves on central positive rather than central negative traits and confirmed possession of their central positive rather than central negative traits. The self-enhancement motive emerged as the most powerful determinant of the self-evaluation process, followed by the self-verification motive.
If self-regulation conforms to an energy or strength model, then self-control should be impaired by prior exertion. In Study 1, trying to regulate one's emotional response to an upsetting movie was followed by a decrease in physical stamina. In Study 2, suppressing forbidden thoughts led to a subsequent tendency to give up quickly on unsolvable anagrams. In Study 3, suppressing thoughts impaired subsequent efforts to control the expression of amusement and enjoyment. In Study 4, autobiographical accounts of successful versus failed emotional control linked prior regulatory demands and fatigue to self-regulatory failure. A strength model of self-regulation fits the data better than activation, priming, skill, or constant capacity models of self-regulation.
Researchers interested in counterfactual thinking have often found that upward counterfactual thoughts lead to increased motivation to improve in the future, although at the cost of increased negative affect. The present studies suggest that because upward counterfactual thoughts indicate reasons for a poor performance, they can also serve as excuses. In this case, upward counterfactual thoughts should result in more positive self-esteem and reduced future motivation. Five studies demonstrated these effects in the context of self-handicapping. First, upward counterfactual thinking was increased in the presence of a self-handicap. Second, upward counterfactual thoughts indicating the presence of a self-handicap protected self-esteem following failure. Finally, upward counterfactual thoughts that protect self-esteem reduced preparation for a subsequent performance as well as performance itself. These findings suggest that the consequences of upward counterfactuals for affect and motivation are moderated by the goals of the individual as well as the content of the thoughts.
In two closely related experiments, college student subjects were instructed to choose between a drug that allegedly interfered with performance and a drug that allegedly enhanced performance. This choice was the main dependent measure of the experiment. The drug choice intervened between work on soluble or insoluble problems and a promised retest on similar problems. In Experiment 1, all subjects received success feedback after their initial problem-solving attempts, thus creating one condition in which the success appeared to be accidental (noncontingent on performance) and one in which the success appeared to be contingent on appropriate knowledge. Males in the noncontingent-success condition were alone in preferring the performance-inhibiting drug, presumably because they wished to externalize probable failure on the retest. The predicted effect, however, did not hold for female subjects. Experiment 2 replicated the unique preference shown by males after noncontingent success and showed the critical importance of success feedback.
Four experiments were conducted to study the effect of self-focused attention on affective reactions. In addition, the research was also intended to help resolve the controversy over attentional versus arousal explanations of self-awareness research. In Experiment 1, undergraduate men were asked to view and rate slides of nude women in the presence of a mirror or with no mirror. In Experiment 3, subjects were either exposed or not exposed to a mirror and read a set of mood statements which became either increasingly positive or increasingly negative. Experiments 2 and 4 conceptually replicated Experiments 1 and 3 by selecting subjects on the basis of private self-consciousness. In each study, self-focused attention increased the person's responsiveness to his transient affective state. The convergence between mirror-manipulated self-awareness and private self-consciousness was offered as support for an attentional interpretation of the findings. The implications of the research for self-awareness theory are discussed.
Delay of gratification, assessed in a series of experiments when the subjects were in preschool, was related to parental personality ratings obtained a decade later for 95 of these children in adolescence. Clear and consistent patterns of correlations between self-imposed delay time in preschool and later ratings were found for both sexes over this time span. Delay behavior predicted a set of cognitive and social competencies and stress tolerance consistent with experimental analyses of the process underlying effective delay in the preschool delay situation. Specifically, children who were able to wait longer at age 4 or 5 became adolescents whose parents rated them as more academically and socially competent, verbally fluent, rational, attentive, planful, and able to deal well with frustration and stress. Comparisons with related longitudinal research using other delay situations help to clarify the important features of the situations and person variables involved in different aspects of delay of gratification.
Two studies were conducted to assess the spontaneous self-focusing tendencies of depressed and nondepressed individuals after success and failure. Based on a self-regulatory perseveration theory of depression, it was expected that depressed individuals would be especially high in self-focus after failure and low in self-focus after success. The results of Experiment 1 suggested that immediately after an outcome, both depressed and nondepressed individuals are more self-focused after failure than after success. This finding led us to hypothesize that differences between depressed and nondepressed individuals in self-focus following success and failure emerge over time. Specifically, immediately following an outcome, both types of individuals self-focus more after failure because of self-regulatory concerns. However, over time, depressed individuals persist in higher levels of self-focus after failure than after success, whereas nondepressed individuals shift to the opposite, more hedonically beneficial pattern. The results of Experiment 2 provided clear support for these hypotheses. Theoretical implications of these results were discussed.
In this article, the hypothesis that some individuals confronted with an intellectual evaluation use a lack of preparation as a "self-handicapping" strategy (Jones & Berglas, 1978) was studied. Sex and both level and certainty of self-esteem were examined in regard to the self-handicapping strategy of lack of effort. Subjects were 54 men and 54 women, certain and uncertain, high and low self-esteem college students, who believed that the experiment was designed to update local norms for a nonverbal test of intellectual ability. After subjects' level of state anxiety was assessed, they were instructed in the benefits of practicing for the evaluation. Subsequently, subjects' state anxiety and preparatory efforts (the primary dependent variables) were measured. Subjects' practice, self-protective attributions, and related affect supported a self-handicapping interpretation for uncertain males but not for uncertain females.
This investigation was based on the contention that high self-esteem persons are generally more responsive to success experience than to failure, while lows show the opposite effects. College students were divided into 4 groups, consisting of high or low self-esteem Ss, receiving success or failure treatments. The hypothesized interaction effect of self-esteem levels and treatments upon a measure of responsiveness, i.e., the degree to which the S attended to some aspects of the experimental condition, was demonstrated beyond the .05 level of significance and was considered supported.
In a longitudinal study of 140 eighth-grade students, self-discipline measured by self-report, parent report, teacher report, and monetary choice questionnaires in the fall predicted final grades, school attendance, standardized achievement-test scores, and selection into a competitive high school program the following spring. In a replication with 164 eighth graders, a behavioral delay-of-gratification task, a questionnaire on study habits, and a group-administered IQ test were added. Self-discipline measured in the fall accounted for more than twice as much variance as IQ in final grades, high school selection, school attendance, hours spent doing homework, hours spent watching television (inversely), and the time of day students began their homework. The effect of self-discipline on final grades held even when controlling for first-marking-period grades, achievement-test scores, and measured IQ. These findings suggest a major reason for students falling short of their intellectual potential: their failure to exercise self-discipline.