Self-handicapping, excuse making, and counterfactual thinking: consequences for self-esteem and future motivation

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.     

Coping with loneliness: adolescent online and offline behavior.

This study looked at the similarities between the way adolescents cope with loneliness both online and offline. There were 429 participants, ranging from 14 to 23 years old, who answered a questionnaire posted on the Internet. There was a strong relationship between avoidant coping strategies offline and Entertainment Internet use. In addition, adolescents who considered Communication as the most important use of the Internet also coped with loneliness through Emotion Expression and Social coping. Results suggest that online and offline coping behaviors are strongly related especially if they are avoidant.     

The influence of different therapists on functional analysis outcomes

Recently, researchers have demonstrated that certain antecedent variables can affect the results of a functional analysis. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of family members versus a direct‐care staff member on the occurrence of problem behaviors during three concurrently conducted functional analyses. The results of the functional analyses demonstrated that the participant's problem behaviors were maintained by positive reinforcement (i.e. access to tangible items) and negative reinforcement (i.e. escape from demands) when either his mother or stepfather was the therapist in the functional analysis; however, no problem behaviors were displayed when a direct‐care staff member was the therapist in the functional analysis. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

When mutations meet motivations: Attitude biases in counterfactual thought

The present research examines whether existing attitudes can spontaneously bias the content and direction of generated counterfactual thoughts, and whether these thoughts influence subsequent attitude-relevant judgments. Two experimental studies demonstrate that attitudes can bias the content of counterfactual thoughts, and that these biased thoughts in turn predict polarized attitudes. These effects were obtained regardless of whether explicit instructions for counterfactual generation were given. Furthermore, both studies demonstrate that these effects are mediated by judgments of future likelihood. Implications of these results for theories of counterfactual thinking and persuasion are discussed.     

Merleau–Ponty on the Body

The French philosopher Maurice Merleau–Ponty claims that there are two distinct ways in which we can understand the place of an object when we are visually apprehending it. The first involves an intentional relation to the object that is essentially cognitive or can serve as the input to cognitive processes; the second irreducibly involves a bodily set or preparation to deal with the object. Because of its essential bodily component, Merleau–Ponty calls this second kind of understanding 'motor intentional'. In this paper I consider some phenomenological, conceptual, and cognitive neuro–scientific results that help to elucidate and defend the distinction between intentional and motor intentional activity. I go on to argue that motor intentional activity has a logical structure that is essentially distinct from that of the more canonical kinds of intentional states. In particular, the characteristic logical distinction between the content and the attitude of an intentional state does not carry over to the motor intentional case.     

Competitive anxiety in young athletes: differentiating somatic anxiety, worry, and concentration disruption

The age-appropriate Sport Anxiety Scale-2 (SAS-2; Smith, Smoll, Cumming, & Grossbard, 2006) was used to assess levels of cognitive and somatic anxiety among male and female youth sport participants. Confirmatory factor analyses with a sample of 9-14 year old athletes (N=1038) supported the viability of a three-factor model of anxiety involving somatic anxiety, worry, and concentration disruption previously demonstrated in high school and college samples. Tests for factorial invariance revealed that the three-factor model was an equally good fit for 9-11 year olds and 12-14 year olds, and for both males and females. Gender and age were modestly related to anxiety scores. Worry about performing poorly was highest in girls and in older athletes, whereas boys reported higher levels of concentration disruption in competitive sport situations. Implications for emotional perception and for the study of competitive anxiety in young athletes are discussed.     

Pathway control in visual word processing: Converging evidence from recognition memory

The extent to which readers can exert strategic control over oral reading processes is a matter of debate. According to the pathway control hypothesis, the relative contributions of the lexical and nonlexical pathways can be modulated by the characteristics of the context stimuli being read, but an alternative time criterion model is also a viable explanation of past results. In Experiment 1, subjects named high- and low-frequency regular words in the context of either low-frequency exception words (e.g., pint) or nonwords (e.g., flirp). Frequency effects (faster pronunciation latencies for high-frequency words) were attenuated in the nonword context, consistent with the notion that nonwords emphasize the characteristics of the frequency-insensitive nonlexical pathway. Importantly, we also assessed memory for targets, and a similar attenuation of the frequency effect in recognition memory was observed in the nonword condition. Converging evidence was obtained in a second experiment in which a variable that was more sensitive to the nonlexical pathway (orthographic neighborhood size) was manipulated. The results indicated that both speeded pronunciation performance and memory performance were relatively attenuated in the low-frequency exception word context in comparision with the nonword context. The opposing influences of list context type for word frequency and orthographic neighborhood size effects in speeded pronunciation and memory performance provide strong support for the pathway control model, as opposed to the time criterion model.     

Motivational climate and changes in young athletes’ achievement goal orientations

Development of achievement-related motives in young athletes is believed to be influenced by the motivational climate created by coaches. In a longitudinal multilevel design utilizing 47 youth basketball teams, coach-initiated motivational climate was used to predict changes in 9–13 year old athletes’ achievement goal orientations over the course of a season. Mastery climate scores on the Motivational Climate Scale for Youth Sports were associated with significant increases in mastery goal orientation and decreases in ego orientation scores on the Achievement Goal Scale for Youth Sports. Ego motivational climate scores were significantly related to increases in ego goal orientation scores. These relations were not influenced by athletes’ age or gender. Intraclass correlations indicated low within-team consensus in athletes’ motivational climate scores, suggesting an individual- rather than team-level perceptual construct. These and other findings indicate that achievement goal orientation research can be extended downward to children below the age of 11.

Gender Roles and Empathic Accuracy: The Role of Communion in Reading Minds

Although empathic accuracy is considered a stable skill, few individual difference measures consistently predict performance on Ickes’ (e.g., 2001) empathic accuracy measure. Because past work has shown that women are more empathically accurate than men when female gender roles are made salient before an empathic accuracy task, we hypothesized that self-reported communion and related variables might predict empathic accuracy. Participants (194 undergraduates) from a northwestern U.S. university completed an empathic accuracy task and self-report measures of communion and empathy. Communion and empathic concern predicted greater empathic accuracy, but only after controlling for socially desirable responding. The role of communion in empathic inference is discussed, along with the need to include measures of social desirability when examining correlates of empathic accuracy.