Self-Regulation, Ego Depletion, and Motivation

Motivation is underappreciated in self-regulation theories (as is true in social personality psychology at large). This paper reviews the role of motivation in the context of the strength, or limited-resource, model of self-control in several domains. Sacrificing one desire in order to pursue another is more difficult when the incipient response is strongly motivated, a notion that highlights the struggle between urges and restraints. A reduction in ego resources can be temporarily overcome by strong motivation – nevertheless, ego depletion is not solely a loss of motivation: Recent experiments indicate that regulatory resources are rooted in physical energy stores. Motivational conflicts, especially the clash between selfish motives and behaviors that promote social acceptance, set the stage for the necessity of self-regulation and the circumstances in which ego depletion is most likely.     

The Role of Self-Regulation Training in Developing the Motivation Management Capabilities of Salespeople

Time management, goal setting, goal attainment strategies, prioritization techniques! These are some of the self-regulation skills that today’s sales organizations are attempting to develop in a sales force through self-regulation training. This study empirically investigates self-regulation training and how it can facilitate salesperson performance. Findings suggest that self-regulatory training can enhance salesperson self-regulation capabilities, decrease role ambiguity, and thereby aid sales performance. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the value of self-regulation training may not be uniform across all sales trainees. Specifically, self-regulation training may be more beneficial to salespeople after they have developed a level of mastery over fundamental core selling capabilities.     

Self-Regulation for Sustaining Happiness and Well-being: An Indian Perspective

An important paradox of the well-being literature is the apparent disconnect between the external materialistic strivings such as money and the experience of well-being, referred to as the American Paradox. Additionally, it has been studied that the pursuit of happiness itself may result in paradoxical effects; the more people pursue it, the less likely are they able to obtain it. Happiness and well-being thus understood from the Western perspective as the presence of pleasure and absence of pain lack sustainability theoretically as well as practically. It is deficit driven, externally directed, object dependent and culturally biased. The focus of the paper is to understand the notion of happiness from an indigenous perspective. Against the hedonistic concept of well-being advocated by Western researches, the Indian perspective holds important consequences for the individual as well as the social well-being. The paper argues that the indigenous perspective on happiness and well-being is sustainable across time and situations for the classes as well as the masses.     

The Executive Functions and Self-Regulation: An Evolutionary Neuropsychological Perspective

Neuropsychology Review - Neuropsychology has customarily taken a molecular and myopic view of executive functioning, concentrating largely on those proximal processes of which it may be comprised....     

Exploring Lawyer Misconduct: An Examination of the Self-Regulation Process

Although white-collar professionals are often held in high esteem, sometimes persons in privileged positions engage in misconduct. Unfortunately, very little is known about the correlates associated with professional misconduct and even less is known about the sanctioning process among lawyers who are licensed by state bar associations and therefore subject to the bar rules regulating their professional conduct. We examine 213 complaints filed in one fiscal year with the Florida Bar, alleging attorney misconduct and evaluate the factors that influence whether the complaint continued through, or was discarded at, each stage of the self-regulated grievance process. Using selection models that examine both the staff’s decision to send a case forward to the grievance committee as well as the grievance committee’s recommendation about sanctioning the lawyer, results show that both legal and extra-legal variables are related to these two processes.     

An Alternative Framework for Defining Mediation

The present article provides an alternative framework for evaluating mediated relationships. From this perspective. a mediated process is a chain reaction, beginning with an independent variable that affects a mediator that in turn affects an outcome. The definition of mediation offered here, presented for stage sequences, states three conditions for establishing mediation: (a) the independent variable affects the probability of the sequence no mediator to mediator to outcome; (b) the independent variable affects the probability of a transition into the mediator stage; (c) the mediator affects the probability of a transition into the outcome stage at every level of the independent variable. This definition of mediation is compared and contrasted with the well-known definition of mediation for continuous variables discussed in Baron and Kenny (1986), Judd and Kenny (1981), and Kenny, Kashy, and Bolger (1997). The definition presented in this article emphasizes the intraindividual, time-ordered nature of mediation.     

Virtue of Self-Regulation

This paper proposes the idea of thinking about practical rationality in terms of self-regulation and defends the thesis that self-regulation is a virtue, insofar as we have reason to think it is our highest form of practical rationality. I argue that understanding self-regulation as a virtuous form of practical reasoning is called for given the kinds of limitations we face in developing agency and pursuing our goals, and presents us with several advantages over traditional understandings of practical rationality.     

An Integrated Model for the Study of Teacher Motivation

Des recherches récentes ont montré que les enseignants souffraient plus que d’autres groupes professionnels d’un manque de motivation au travail. Une compréhension globale de la motivation des enseignants exige un modèle adéquat. L’objectif principal de cette recherche était de proposer et de mettre à l’épreuve un modèle de la motivation des enseignants qui intégre des concepts de plusieurs théories cognitivo‐motivationelles. Le modèle intégré s’appuie sur la schéma expectation‐valence et celui de l’incapacité acquise, mais surmonte quelques‐unes de leurs imperfections. L’échantillon était composé de 272 enseignants des écoles élémentaires et secondaires du Portugal. Ils ont répondu à une série d’inventaires destinés à mesurer leurs expectations de contrôle, de succès et d’efficacité, leurs attributions, leur motivation intrinsèque, la valence de leurs buts perçus et comment tout ceci interagit pout agir sur l’engagement professionnel (la variable exogène du modèle). Les analyses des coefficients de pistes et de la variance des variables endogènes valident le modèle intégré proposé ici et suggèrent des stratégies de formation pour accroître la motivation des enseignants. Recent studies show that teachers suffer more than other professional groups from the occupational lack of motivation. A global understanding of teacher motivation requires an adequate framework for its study. The main goal of the current research was to propose and test a model of teacher motivation that integrates constructs from several cognitive‐motivational theories. This integrative model starts from the perspectives of Expectancy‐Value and Learned Helplessness but overcomes some of the limitations of each. The participants were 272 elementary and secondary teachers in Portugal. They responded to a series of inventories designed to measure their expectancies of control, success and efficacy, attributions, intrinsic motivation and perceived goal value levels, and how these interact to influence professional engagement (the model's exogenous variable). Analyses of path coefficients and the variance of endogenous variables support the proposed integrated model and suggest strategies for teacher education that may increase teacher motivation.     

An Evolutionary Life History Framework for Psychopathology

In this article, I outline a general framework for the evolutionary analysis of mental disorders based on the concepts of life history theory. I synthesize and extend a large body of work showing that individual differences in life history strategy set the stage for the development of psychopathology. My analysis centers on the novel distinction between fast spectrum and slow spectrum disorders. I describe four main causal pathways from life history strategies to psychopathology, argue that psychopathology can arise at both ends of the fast–slow continuum of life history variation, and provide heuristic criteria for classifying disorders as fast or slow spectrum pathologies. I then apply the fast–slow distinction to a diverse sample of common mental disorders: externalizing disorders, schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, eating disorders, and depression. The framework integrates previously disconnected models of psychopathology within a common frame of reference and has far-reaching implications for the classification of mental disorders.     

An Ethical Framework for Evaluating Experimental Technology

How are we to appraise new technological developments that may bring revolutionary social changes? Currently this is often done by trying to predict or anticipate social consequences and to use these as a basis for moral and regulatory appraisal. Such an approach can, however, not deal with the uncertainties and unknowns that are inherent in social changes induced by technological development. An alternative approach is proposed that conceives of the introduction of new technologies into society as a social experiment. An ethical framework for the acceptability of such experiments is developed based on the bioethical principles for experiments with human subjects: non-maleficence, beneficence, respect for autonomy, and justice. This provides a handle for the moral and regulatory assessment of new technologies and their impact on society.     

青少年期的意向性自我调节

意向性自我调节是指个体以增强个体功能或优化自我发展为目标, 积极协调情境中的要求、资源与个人目标之间关系的一系列行动过程, 其主要理论基础是SOC(选择、优化和补偿)理论。研究发现青少年期是意向性自我调节发展的关键时期, 意向性自我调节既能直接影响青少年发展, 又能与家庭、社区等情境因素以及活动经验等近端过程交互作用, 从而间接影响青少年发展。未来研究应该在意向性自我调节的测量方法、过程观的研究范式、发展规律和培养途径等方面进一步深入。     

Self-Regulation and Performance in High-Fidelity Simulations: An Extension of Ego-Depletion Research

This article extends the research literature related to “ego-depletion.” Although numerous studies have focused on the self-regulatory failure associated with ego-depletion, the extant literature is generally characterized by relatively simple behavioral manipulations and dependent measures. Two studies are described that extend previous ego-depletion findings by employing a high-fidelity, customer service simulation as an ego-depleting manipulation (Study 1) and by using performance on a cognitively demanding naval combat simulator as a dependent measure (Study 2). Results of both studies show the generalizability of the effects of ego-depletion; the implications for self-regulatory failure in more naturalistic settings are discussed.     

Individual Differences in Work Motivation: Further Explorations of a Trait Framework

Empirical evidence on the conceptual and construct validity of the motivational trait taxonomy proposed by Kanfer and Heggestad is presented. 228 adults completed a shortened form of the Motivational Trait Questionnaire (MTQ), along with a battery of personality and ability measures. Relationships of the MTQ with personality measures show evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for trait constructs of Personal Mastery, Competitive Excellence, and Motivation Related to Anxiety. In addition, MTQ scale scores were generally unrelated to composite measures of fluid and crystallised intelligence. Examination of age differences showed a pattern of developmental decline in the achievement trait complex, but not the anxiety complex.     

New Frontiers for Self-Regulation Research in IO Psychology

Vancouver et Day (2005) font une analyse critique de l’état d’avancement des recherches sur l’autorégulation en psychologie industrielle/organisationnelle (IO). Ils soulèvent des problèmes de validité interne et de construction pour certains concepts clés, tels que le nivcau du but, l’efficacité personnelle, le feedback et la divergence; ils mentionnent aussi qu’il est difficile de préciser quelles sont les facteurs à l’origine des résultats obtenus par les interventions relevant des principes de l’autorégulation. Leurs suggestions concernant les élaborations théoriques, la mesure et la structuration des études sont pertinentes et, si on les met en ?uvre, elles permettront à la psychologie IO d’échapper aux problèmes qu’est susceptible de soulever l’élaboration, sur des bases insuffisantes, d’un corpus de connaissances appliquées. A travers leur approche critique, Vancouver et Day font nécessairement un choix dans la littérature qu’ils analysent et ils ne proposent pas de schéma d’ensemble des recherches sur l’autorégulation en psychologie IO. Vancouver and Day (2005 ) present a critical analysis of the current state of self‐regulation research within IO psychology. Their analysis identifies problems of construct and internal validity for certain key constructs, including goal level, self‐efficacy and feedback discrepancy, and difficulties in detecting the sources of effects in studies of interventions based on self‐regulatory principles. Their suggestions regarding theory development, measurement, and study design are timely and, if implemented, will help IO psychology avoid the potential problems of building a body of applied knowledge based on weak foundations. In their critical approach, Vancouver and Day are necessarily selective in the literature they discuss and they do not provide a comprehensive framework of self‐regulation research in IO psychology.     

An Historical Framework for Cohort Differences in Intelligence

This article reviews key issues regarding the controversy on the direction and magnitude of cohort differences in intelligence. Data from the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS) illustrate why differences must be studied across multiple cohorts and multiple chronological ages. Differential cohort patterns for multiple dimensions of intelligence are described. A conceptual framework is suggested for the identification of historical influences important for developmental study of cohort differences.