Value from hedonic experience and engagement

Recognizing that value involves experiencing pleasure or pain is critical to understanding the psychology of value. But hedonic experience is not enough. I propose that it is also necessary to recognize that strength of engagement can contribute to experienced value through its contribution to the experience of motivational force--an experience of the intensity of the force of attraction to or repulsion from the value target. The subjective pleasure/pain properties of a value target influence strength of engagement, but factors separate from the hedonic properties of the value target also influence engagement strength and thus contribute to the experience of attraction or repulsion. These additional sources of engagement strength include opposition to interfering forces, overcoming personal resistance, using the right or proper means of goal pursuit, and regulatory fit between the orientation and manner of goal pursuit. Implications of the contribution of engagement strength to value are discussed for judgment and decision making, persuasion, and emotional experiences.     

Exploring the complexities of value creation: The role of engagement strength

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 of value intensity. We discuss the ways in which engagement, in this model, can be distinguished from arousal, motivation to act, and experienced difficulty. We distinguish between the mechanisms and predictions made by regulatory engagement theory versus cognitive dissonance theory and a goal systems approach. We also describe the complexities and conditions under which some sources of engagement strength (e.g., regulatory fit) may relate to value creation. For instance, while regulatory fit has more typically been associated with increased engagement strength, regulatory nonfit may also sometimes increase engagement by serving as an obstacle to be overcome. We review existing evidence and highlight open questions related to the role of engagement strength in creating value.     

Buying Life Experiences for the “Right” Reasons: A Validation of the Motivations for Experiential Buying Scale

Although numerous studies have demonstrated the hedonic benefits of spending money on life experiences instead of material possessions, there has been no attempt to determine how different motivations for experiential consumption relate to psychological need satisfaction and well-being. Across five studies (N = 931), guided by self-determination theory, we developed a reliable and valid measure of motivation for experiential consumption—the Motivation for Experiential Buying Scale—to test these relations. Those who spend money on life experience for autonomous reasons (e.g., “because they are an integral part of my life”) report more autonomy, competence, relatedness, flourishing, and vitality; however, those who spend money on life experiences for controlled (e.g., “for the recognition I’ll get from others”) or amotivated reasons (e.g., “I don’t really know”) reported less autonomy, competence, and relatedness. These results demonstrated that the benefits of experiential consumption depend on why one buys life experiences.     

Broadening the Contours of Attachment Experience and Implicit Relational Knowledge: Reply to Commentaries by Dr. Kaplan and Dr. Nahum

Replies to Dr. Kaplan and Dr. Nahum (this issue) focus on the complexly layered aspects of both attachment dimensions and clinical engagement. Attachment is looked at in the context of multiple self states. Thus, despite the predominant annihilation anxiety that accompanies disorganized attachment, there may also be self experiences of shame and humiliation generated by dependency needs. In response to the Boston Change Process Study Group, the paper proposes the idea that there is “something more” than implicit relational knowledge— something that is not subsumed under that theoretical paradigm. In keeping with the theme of multiple self states, “dissociation” and “enactment” are believed to be useful concepts in providing a path for transformative relational experience.     

Discovery and Revitalization of “Feeling of Hometown” from a Disaster Site Inhabitant's Continuous Engagement in Reconstruction Work: Ethnographic Interviews with a Radiation Decontamination Worker Over 5 Years Following the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident1

After hometown loss due to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident, many radiation decontamination workers started to engage in the reconstruction of their hometown. However, little is known regarding the meaning of experience of engaging in such work. We describe the process of such experience through a series of ethnographic interviews over 5 years with a radiation decontamination worker. The process was classified into the following three periods: “recovery of lost land by inhabitants' own hands,” “goal loss and semiotic trap in pursuit of recovery,” and “revitalization of feeling of hometown.” Consequently, the informant overcame the contradiction theorized as a “semiotic trap” that radiation decontamination for physical recovery would make his return to home impossible, and updated his narrative to the revitalization of “feeling of hometown” through continuous engagement in the work by creating a sense for transplacement, in which the individual focuses on the psychological aspects of his/her hometown instead of the physical aspects. Psychological reconstruction for disaster victims requires the discovery and revitalization of feeling of hometown rather than the completion of physical reconstruction.     

Disorders of Temporality and The Subjective Experience of Time: Unresponsive Objects and the Vacuity of the Future

This paper explores how the personal sense of time—temporality—is organized and experienced in different clinical situations. It uses examples from infancy observations to draw links between caregivers’ response to infants’ capacities for motor activity and emotional communication and the development of the senses of personal security, vital intersubjectivity and temporality, that is, the feeling of a meaningful self and an open future. In illustrations from both early child–parent interaction and an extended case, it suggests how moment-to-moment interactions reflect and sustain these core, highly personal experiences of what it feels like to live in the world, that is, how an accretion of “micro” interactions can contribute to and help us understand the “macro” structures that analysts usually describe, such as intersubjectivity, the sense of self, and here, the senses of time.

With that in mind, the paper evokes a few specific “disorders of temporality.” One group of these involves the blurring of past and present, especially following trauma. Much of the paper, though, is concerned with a basic deficit in the sense of time that can be observed, when the patient presents without the hope that new experiences can emerge, however fitfully, with the feeling of a forward-moving future. In an imaginative move, the paper links this image with the experience of an infant with an unresponsive parent, one who does not afford that infant the most basic senses of personal agency that come from having her feelings and gestures recognized and responded to in a way that gives her the feeling that she is having some effect on her world. Clinical implications are drawn, often demonstrating how brief moments of analytic interaction reflect the macrocosms of the broader analytic relationship and the patient’s psychological organization.     

Preparing for uncertain careers: How youth deal with growing occupational uncertainties before the education-to-work transition

Recent changes in labor market and working conditions have rendered youth's education-to-work transitions and career prospects more uncertain. This study investigated how youth, while still in education or training, deal with perceived growing occupational uncertainties in terms of goal engagement (i.e., investing active effort in goal pursuit; surmounting obstacles) and goal disengagement (i.e., distancing from unattainable goals; protecting the self against failure experiences). Analyses with two closely matched samples of youth aged 16–25 years from Germany (N = 529) and Poland (N = 530) revealed high levels of goal engagement and a clear preference of engagement over disengagement. Whereas levels of engagement were comparable across countries, disengagement was considerably higher in Polish youth. Regarding the sources of individual differences in engagement and disengagement, sociodemographic factors had very limited effects in both countries. Compared to sociodemographic factors, the level of perceived growing occupational uncertainties, and especially youth's primary and secondary appraisals thereof, were more strongly and consistently associated with engagement and disengagement, especially in Germany, pointing to the prominence of perceptions and appraisals in shaping youth's responses to growing occupational uncertainties. We offer cultural and economic explanations for these findings and discuss implications for interventions aimed at fostering youth's engagement in preparing for their future careers under today's uncertain conditions.     

Emotional Knowing: the Role of Embodied Feelings in Affective Cognition

The emotions play a crucial role in our apprehension of meaning, value, or significance — and their felt quality is intimately related to the sort of awareness they provide. This is exemplified most clearly by cases in which dispassionate cognition is cognitively insufficient, because we need to be emotionally agitated in order to grasp that something is true. In this type of affective experience, it is through a feeling of being moved that we recognize or apprehend that something is the case. And that is why our emotions are epistemically indispensable: namely, because they give us access to significant truths. In this essay, I explain how the phenomenally felt character of an emotion is intimately linked with its intentionality. Intellectual activity divorced from affective feeling is profoundly lacking — not only in its qualitative feel, but also in its epistemic import, or its ability to inform us about matters of significance. A better appreciation of how the living body is involved in affective experience should help us to understand the distinctive kind of embodied cognition that emotional responses involve. It also ought to resolve confusions about phobic responses and other “recalcitrant” emotions, which are not divorced from cognition as many have claimed.     

Happiness,inspiration and the fully functioning person: Separating hedonic and eudaimonic well-being in the workplace

The study investigates the idea that feeling good and functioning well-being are regulated by two different mechanisms: hedonic and eudaimonic. At the state level it is assumed that happiness is a hedonic feeling typically experienced when life is easy or a goal is reached. Inspiration is a eudaimonic feeling typically experienced when facing challenges in the process of goal attainment. At the trait level, we assume that personal growth is connected with eudaimonic rather than hedonic mechanisms. These assumptions were confirmed with data from 465 employees of the Occupational Health Services in Norway using day reconstruction method. Multilevel analyses showed that complex work situations increased inspiration and decreased happiness. Personal growth had a stronger effect on inspiration than on happiness. Our results support the idea that pleasant feelings (hedonia) and optimal functioning (eudaimonia) have different roles to play in the regulation of behavior, and therefore need to be distinguished from one another.     

Effective Challenge Regulation Coincides with Promotion Focus-Related Success and Emotional Well-Being

Beyond a hedonic model of the good life—approach pleasure and avoid pain—evidence is accumulating across species that well-being depends on potentially painful goal pursuit processes, like effort, engagement, and discovery. We hypothesized that daily challenges may provide a unique opportunity to fulfill such processes and that challenges would be more relevant within the promotion (gain-focused) than prevention (nonloss-focused) motivational system. Accordingly, we predicted that: (1) individuals who tend to be successful versus unsuccessful in achieving promotion-type goals would be better at managing daily challenges; and (2) challenge dysregulation would undermine promotion-related well-being (depressive symptoms) more than prevention-related well-being (anxiety symptoms). Across three studies, we find evidence in support of these hypotheses. Notably, as we find consistent evidence that too many and too few challenges may be damaging to mental health, we conclude that effective challenge regulation—not minimization—is likely to be a necessary component of optimal well-being.     

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi: Historian of German Jewry

This article draws attention to a rarely considered dimension of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s scholarship and teaching, namely, his engagement with the history of German Jewry. It examines the manner in which Yerushalmi approached this subject—generally through the twin poles of antisemitism and Wissenschaft des Judentums—and suggests that analyzing it with reference to the Arendtian categories of “pariah” and “parvenu” provides us with a key to unlocking some of the motivations that drove Yerushalmi’s particular interests. The article concludes with some speculation as to why, by contrast, Yerushalmi seemed to avoid the history of Eastern European Jewry, in spite of his oft-repeated pride in and intimacy with his own personal heritage.     

Marrying Mr. Rochester: Redeeming the Negative Father Complex

Injurious childhood experiences with one's personal father form the psychic bedrock of a negative father complex: never good enough. This complex has a part that is exciting and uses hope as its hook, and a part that disappoints and persecutes. The negative father complex can be imaged as the ghostly lover, as depicted in the fairy tale “The Singing, Springing Lark” and in Charlotte Brontë's life and famous novel, Jane Eyre. The ghostly lover holds a woman's creative energies hostage to the tantalizing possibility of being the special one who can redeem the negative masculine and win his love.

To heal a complex, its contents must be personified, or imaged, so that an individual can come into conscious relationship with it. The tale of the “Singing, Springing Lark” illustrates collective roots and images of healing a wounded relationship with the masculine. Charlotte Brontë transformed her relationship with the ghostly lover through her novel Jane Eyre, with Mr. Rochester as the image of her own wounded, bewitching masculine energy. Brontë herself was subsequently able to marry, despite her father's objection, overcoming her negative father complex. The fairy tale, novel, and Brontë's life show that several attempts are usually necessary to bring the complex to light. Although consciousness seeks redemption through its pursuit of the masculine, the complex also—mysteriously—seeks its own transformation. Ego alone cannot fulfill the mission of individuation; the Self must aid the process.     

Can Multimodal and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy be Reconciled?

The purpose of this article is to determine whether two distinct modes of cognitive-behaviour therapy—Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) and Multimodal Therapy (MMT)—can be reconciled. This quest in the spirit of integrationism is pursued along three lines of inquiry: Do we talk about schools, approaches, or techniques? A reconciliation between MMT and REBT as systems seems not to be feasible, just because of the simple fact that MMT is not a new school with an idiosyncratic theory, whereas REBT is. However, REBT is also a congenial approach consisting of various eclectic techniques, as is MMT. It is explained how the A-B-C format and firing orders of the BASICI.D. modalities stem from an S-O-R model. Furthermore, the circular character of the various modalities (thinking, feeling, and behaving) is recognised both in MMT and in REBT. The techniques used in REBT and MMT overlap for 65–80%, according to a comparative perusal of Ellis's and Lazarus's presentations of preferred techniques. This means that MMT and REBT, as an approach with distinct techniques, “must” be very similar in practice. The conclusion is that philosophically Ellis and Lazarus see eye-to-eye and that MMT and REBT overlap a great deal. But a fusion is not yet at hand. At best the two can be described as two sides of one coin. “When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what's the first thing you say to yourself?” “What's for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?” “I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It's the same thing,” he said. “What's that?” the Unbeliever asked. “Wisdom from a Western Taoist,” I said. “It sounds like something from Winnie-the Pooh,” he said. “It is,” I said. From The Tao of Pooh Benjamin Hoff (1982)     

The function of value in self‐regulation

This commentary argues for a functional perspective of the value–engagement relationship, proposing that evaluation determines engagement. I compare this causal direction—from value to engagement—to regulatory engagement theory, which proposes that engagement determines evaluation. I demonstrate the functional view in self-control research, which finds that people overcome obstacles for goal pursuit, including low probabilities of success, by increasing the value of adhering to an overriding goal. I further suggest that whereas both causal directions—from value to engagement and from engagement to value—are theoretically plausible, empirical studies should provide better ways to distinguish between these conceptually different underlying models.     

On modeling the creativity and the concept of Chef-D’oeuvre

The problem of modeling the creativity is shown to be entirely connected with another mysterious challenge — the “Explanatory Gap” between the concepts of “Brain” and “Mind”. We use the Natural Constructive Cognitive Architecture, with its important feature being the combination of two subsystems, for generation of new information and for its conservation. “Brain” is considered as records of the raw images of real objects (individual objective information), while “Mind” refers to individual subjective information created inside the cognitive system (symbols). We argued that creativity can be treated as “an effort to bring a piece of personal “Brain” into the “Mind” and World”. Specific thinking mode (intellectual panic or throes of creativity) is shown to enhance the creative work resulting in over-mobilization and even enriching personal deep inside (“Brain”) experience. It is simulated by chaotic jumps of the noise amplitude around abnormally high value. The nature of Aesthetic Emotions and the concept of Chef-D’oeuvre are analyzed. It is shown that they are caused by the “recognition paradox”: an object seems both, familiar but unusual. This occurs if the “Brain” does see its subtle features, while the “Mind” does not realize. Bright aesthetic emotions (goosebumps) are caused by irregular excitation of implicit associations provided by weak (“gray”) connections of the halo neurons (simulating the subconsciousness). General formula for Chef-D’oeuvre in science and art could be expressed as “condensed capacity to see the invisible, to combine the incompatible”.     

The reward value of near-miss situations

Svartdal, F. (2011). The reward value of near‐miss situations. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology52, 209–217. What is a “positive” outcome? Clearly, obtaining something attractive is regarded as positive, but so is avoiding something negative. The present paper compared these two types of situations in scenario‐type evaluations. Participants rated positive (P), avoiding negative (AN), and negative (N) outcomes in terms of luck (Experiment 1) and overall positive/negative evaluations (Experiments 2 and 3). The results demonstrated that evaluations of P and AN outcomes were judged as equally positive, but the emotional basis for these evaluations was very different: The feeling of relief was the dominating emotion in AN situations, whereas joy was the dominating emotion in P situations. Overall, these results indicate that avoidance‐induced reward value may be important as a motivating factor in cognition and action.     

The role of goal pursuit in the interaction between psychosocial work environment and occupational well-being

The relation of the core components of the Effort–Reward Imbalance model (ERI; Siegrist, 1996) to goal pursuit was investigated. Goal pursuit was studied through categories of goal contents – competency, progression, well-being, job change, job security, organization, finance, or no work goal – based on the personal work goals of managers (Hyvönen, Feldt, Salmela-Aro, Kinnunen, & Mäkikangas, 2009). The study focused on the contribution of the ERI components (effort, reward, effort–reward imbalance, OVC) to goal contents, as well as on the mediating and moderating effects of goal contents between the ERI components and occupational well-being (burnout, work engagement) among young Finnish managers (N = 747, age range 23–35 years). First, multinomial regressions showed that effort, reward, and effort–reward imbalance contributed to the membership of the goal categories. Secondly, hierarchical GLM (General Linear Model) indicated that the goal categories mediated the relationship between the ERI components and occupational well-being. Effort, reward, and effort–reward imbalance had an indirect effect through goal categories on burnout and work engagement, but overcommitment only on burnout. In addition, the goal categories moderated the relationship between reward and work engagement. Taken together, psychosocial work environment contributes to the contents of personal work goals, which also function as mediators, particularly between the work environment and occupational well-being.     

Valuing time: Moderate download times can improve online goal pursuit

This research examines how the length of time for which a goal is interrupted affects goal pursuit, in an online context. Goal interruption duration in the form of long download time duration has been identified as a significant impediment to electronic commerce. It is believed that a faster download time is always better to motivate web users to keep surfing. We challenge this belief. In three studies, we find that, under certain circumstances, longer rather than shorter download times motivate web users to keep surfing longer. The counterintuitive pattern of effects can be explained by web users' fit experiences (Higgins, 2000) while surfing. In particular, our findings suggest that when online surfing “feels right”, web users think that online information is right.     

Life Satisfaction is not a Balanced Estimator of the Good Life: Evidence from Reaction Time Measures and Self-Reported Emotions

A widespread belief in happiness research is that measures of life satisfaction capture the variety of an individual’s experiences along a single favorable—unfavorable dimension. The current article points to a possible violation of this assumption. With a combination of data and theory it argues that life satisfaction is not a balanced reflection of subjective experiences because the evaluation that drives judgments of life satisfaction is tilted towards pleasure and away from engagement. We postulate that feelings of pleasure are overrated in statements of life satisfaction, whereas feelings of engagement are underrepresented. Feelings of engagement and interest are further supposed to be indicators of personal growth. Measures of personal growth and life satisfaction should thus be unrelated. Empirical evidence for our model is provided by self-report and reaction time data from a Norwegian convenience sample (N = 30). Detection latencies for pleasant stimuli correlated significantly with life satisfaction but not with measures of personal growth. Life satisfaction correlated significantly with pleasant experiences, but not with engagement. Personal growth correlated significantly with feelings of engagement. Life satisfaction and personal growth were uncorrelated.     

Dignity in Context,and Out: Discussion of Lynne Jacobs’ “On Dignity,a Sense of Dignity,and Inspirational Shame”

ABSTRACT

Dr. Lynne Jacobs’ “On Dignity, a Sense of Dignity, and Inspirational Shame” is an interdisciplinary integration of a priori ethics and a phenomenology of dignity. She contends that the human person’s engagement with other people—writ large in the therapeutic encounter—is inherently ethically situated. Moreover, she avers an inherent content to this ethics, namely, mutual respect for distinctively human value—dignity—between and among people. Her ethics of dignity informs her psychoanalytic exploration of experiences of dignity, indignity, and her notion of inspirational shame, among others. I join in Jacobs’ advocacy for therapeutic facilitation of a person’s sense of inherent worth, as well as her opposition to relational contexts of devaluation and degradation. However, the primordiality Jacobs grants to her ethics of dignity often obscures the constitutively cultural, familial, and personal contextuality of, first, her—and in my view, any—ethical conviction; second, what she describes as the experience of being human; third, the alleged indignity of human vulnerability; and finally, the claim that shame is the natural reaction to one’s failure to live up to personal ideals. In the end, and subject to certain clinical concerns, Jacobs’ article integrates into psychoanalysis primordial ethical duties that she and others claim inhere in us as human beings.