Triggering Conservation of the Self's Regulatory Resources

Three experiments investigated people's motivation to conserve the self's limited regulatory resource after it is depleted by initial self-control exertion. Across the experiments, the results supported the idea of a conservation process. In Experiment 1, depleted participants' subsequent performance decreased when expecting to engage in a future self-regulation task compared to engaging in no task at all. In Experiments 2 and 3 we employed the “end-effect” pattern found in past vigilance research to further examine conservation. In Experiment 2, depleted and nondepleted participants who knew the study ran for 30 min performed similarly following 20 min of self-regulation, whereas 3 min or 10 min of self-regulation produced typical depletion effects. Likewise, the findings from Experiment 3 revealed this same conservation pattern using a shortened 6-min initial task. Specifically, when depleted participants believed the study was finished their task performance was better compared to those who believed the study would run for another 20 min. In short, the current findings support the idea of conservation—decrements in self-regulatory performance may represent an adaptive inclination to conserve the self's diminished resources rather than an inability to wield further self-control.     

The Influence of Culture, Community, and the Nested‐Self in the Stress Process: Advancing Conservation of Resources Theory

Conservation of Resources (COR) theory predicts that resource loss is the principal ingredient in the stress process. Resource gain, in turn, is depicted as of increasing importance in the context of loss. Because resources are also used to prevent resource loss, at each stage of the stress process people are increasingly vulnerable to negative stress sequelae, that if ongoing result in rapid and impactful loss spirals. COR theory is seen as an alternative to appraisal‐based stress theories because it relies more centrally on the objective and culturally construed nature of the environment in determining the stress process, rather than the individual's personal construel. COR theory has been successfully employed in predicting a range of stress outcomes in organisational settings, health contexts, following traumatic stress, and in the face of everyday stressors. Recent advances in understanding the biological, cognitive, and social bases of stress responding are seen as consistent with the original formulation of COR theory, but call for envisioning of COR theory and the stress process within a more collectivist backdrop than was first posited. The role of both resource losses and gains in predicting positive stress outcomes is also considered. Finally, the limitations and applications of COR theory are discussed.     

The Regulatory Easy Street: Self-Regulation Below the Self-Control Threshold Does not Consume Regulatory Resources

We present and test a theory in which self-control is distinguished from broader acts of self-regulation when it is both effortful and conscious. In two studies, we examined whether acts of behavioral management that do not require effort are exempt from resource depletion. In Study 1, we found that a self-regulation task only reduced subsequent self-control for participants who had previously indicated that completing the task would require effort. In Study 2, we found that participants who completed a self-regulation task for two minutes did not evidence the subsequent impairment in self-control evident for participants who had completed the task for four or more minutes. Our results support the notion that self-regulation without effort falls below the self-control threshold and has different downstream consequences than self-control.     

在建设生态文明中加强资源节约和环境保护

令人振奋的中共十七大,不仅为中国的未来发展描绘了一幅雄伟的发展蓝图,也开辟了中国马克思主义发展的新境界。我们认为,致力于研究中共十七大提出的重大理论与实践问题,对于当代中国学者,尤其是中国的马克思主义研究者来说,不仅是时代赋予的使命,也应该成为自觉的担当。本刊从本期开始,将陆续刊登这一方面的研究成果。希望学界同仁给予关注,并不吝赐稿。     

The Scientific Self: Reclaiming Its Place in the History of Research Ethics

How can the history of research ethics be expanded beyond the standard narrative of codification—a story that does not reach back beyond World War II—without becoming so broad as to lose all distinctiveness? This article proposes a history of research ethics focused on the “scientific self,” that is, the role-specific identity of scientists as typically described in terms of skills, competencies, qualities, or dispositions. Drawing on three agenda-setting texts from nineteenth-century history, biology, and sociology, the article argues that the “revolutions” these books sought to unleash were, among other things, revolts against inherited conceptions of scientific selfhood. They tried to redefine the scientific self in their respective fields of inquiry by advocating particular catalogs of virtues or character traits. These ideals of selfhood, their contested nature notwithstanding, translated into practice in so far as they influenced hiring and selection policies and found their way into educational systems. The project of reclaiming the scientific self as an important subject of study in the history of research ethics is not an antiquarian pursuit, but related to an ethical question faced by scientists today: How are their scientific selves being shaped by funding schemes, research evaluation protocols, and academic hiring policies?     

Effects of Parent‐Extension Similarity and Self Regulatory Focus on Evaluations of Brand Extensions

Research has shown that a similar extension of a brand is evaluated more favorably than a dissimilar one. In this research we demonstrate that self‐regulatory focus (promotion vs. prevention focus) significantly moderates the effect. Four experiments demonstrated that similar extensions were evaluated more favorably than less similar extensions when participants were chronically or momentarily prevention focused, whereas such effect was eliminated and sometimes even reversed when participants were chronically or situationally promotion focused. This discrepancy was attributed to different weights attached to the perceived risk and to the perceived hedonic value of the extension by promotion‐focused vs. prevention‐focused individuals.     

The Pre-reflective Situational Self

It is often held that to have a conscious experience presupposes having some form of implicit self-awareness. The most dominant phenomenological view usually claims that we essentially perceive experiences as our own. This is the so called “mineness” character, or dimension of experience. According to  this view, mineness is not only essential to conscious experience, it also grounds the idea that pre-reflective self-awareness constitutes a minimal self. In this paper, we show that there are reasons to doubt this constituting role of mineness. We argue that there are alternative possibilities and that the necessity for an adequate theory of the self within psychopathology gives us good reasons to believe that we need a thicker notion of the pre-reflective self. To this end, we develop such a notion: the Pre-Reflective Situational Self. To do so, we will first show how alternative conceptions of pre-reflective self-awareness point to philosophical problems with the standard phenomenological view. We claim that this is mainly due to fact that within the phenomenological account the mineness aspect is implicitly playing several roles. Consequently, we argue that a thin interpretation of pre-reflective self-awareness—based on a thin notion of mineness—cannot do its needed job within, at least within psychopathology. This leads us to believe that a thicker conception of pre-reflective self is needed. We, therefore, develop the notion of the pre-reflective situational self by analyzing the dynamical nature of the relation between self-awareness and the world, specifically through our interactive inhabitation of the social world.

     

The Self of the Counselor

The counselor generally finds more difficulty in examining his “self” than in looking at the self of other counselors or of clients. On the assumption that the best display of counselor self occurs during the counseling relationship, a number of counseling excerpts are examined in an attempt to illustrate the level of counselor freedom. Counselor freedom is viewed as being related to the ability of the counselor to establish an empathic relationship with the client, to his ability to operate within the client's frame of reference, and to his ability to be genuine and honest in his relationship with the client.     

The Mandala Model of Self

The research by Hendrich et al. (2010a, b, c) from the University of British Columbia has indicated that 96% of psychological samples published in the world’s top journals from 2003 to 2007 were drawn from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies, which house only 12% of the world’s population. Compared with the WEIRD samples, most of the world’s population is non-Weird. Therefore, the most important mission of Asian indigenous psychology is to initiate a scientific revolution by constructing various kinds of theoretical models to describe psychological phenomenon and behavior of people from non-Weird countries. Keeping this in view this paper tries to articulate a theoretical model of self which has potential to go beyond the western models.     

自我对话与情绪智力的关系:自我意识的中介作用

以389名大学生为被试,采用自我对话量表、自我意识量表和情绪智力量表,考察了三者之间的关系,以说明自我意识在自我对话与情绪智力的关系中所起的中介效应。结果表明,在中国大学生群体中,自我对话的自我激励维度得分最低,其次是社会评价维度,自我批判和自我管理维度得分最高;自我意识在自我对话和情绪智力的关系中起着完全中介作用;自我意识包含两个维度即私我意识与公我意识,私我意识在自我对话与情绪智力的关系中起着部分中介作用,公我意识在自我对话与情绪智力的关系中起着部分中介作用,并且私我意识的中介效应大于公我意识的中介效应。     

关系自我和集体自我在自我建构中的层级关系

三重自我建构认为,自我包含三个方面：个体自我,关系自我和集体自我。个体自我的核心地位已经得到诸多研究的证实,但关系自我和集体自我的层级关系还缺乏定论。越重要的自我,与积极信息的联系越紧密,以达到维持自尊、抵御自我威胁的目的。因此,采用内隐联想范式（IAT）验证对两种自我的积极联想,并对比两者积极联想程度以确定其层级关系。结果发现,相比非自我信息,被试对关系自我和集体自我均存在内隐的积极联想,从内隐的层面证实了关系自我和集体自我的存在。相比关系自我,被试对集体自我存在更强的积极联结,自我建构中的集体自我在内隐层面占据更为重要的位置。