Mechanisms of behavioural maintenance: Long-term effects of theory-based interventions to promote safe water consumption

Theory-based interventions can enhance people’s safe water consumption, but the sustainability of these interventions and the mechanisms of maintenance remain unclear. We investigated these questions based on an extended theory of planned behaviour. Seven hundred and ten (445 analysed) randomly selected households participated in two cluster-randomised controlled trials in Bangladesh. Study 1 promoted switching to neighbours’ arsenic-safe wells, and Study 2 promoted switching to arsenic-safe deep wells. Both studies included two intervention phases. Structured interviews were conducted at baseline (T1), and at 1-month (T2), 2-month (T3) and 9-month (T4) follow-ups. In intervention phase 1 (between T1 and T2), commitment-based behaviour change techniques – reminders, implementation intentions and public commitment – were combined with information and compared to an information-only control group. In phase 2 (between T2 and T3), half of each phase 1 intervention group was randomly assigned to receive either commitment-based techniques once more or coping planning with reminders and information. Initial well-switching rates of up to 60% significantly declined by T4: 38.3% of T2 safe water users stopped consuming arsenic-safe water. The decline depended on the intervention. Perceived behavioural control, intentions, commitment strength and coping planning were associated with maintenance. In line with previous studies, the results indicate that commitment and reminders engender long-term behavioural change.     

COGNITIVE THEISM: SOURCES OF ACCOMMODATION BETWEEN SECULARISM AND RELIGION

Abstract. Religion persists, even within enlightened secular society, because it has adaptive functions. In particular, Ralph Wendell Burhoe's theory holds that religion is the repository of cultural wisdom that most encourages mutual altruism among nonkin, long-term social survival, and human progress. This article suggests a variant of Burhoe's rationalized naturalistic view. Cognitive theism is a proposal that secularists sometimes take religion on its own terms by suspending disbelief about God. If we consider particular human capacities and limitations in memory, perception, personality, and motivation, the regulated “mind expansion” of cognitive theism may help us to evaluate, coordinate, and invigorate things in a modern environment. In this environment, communicative and travel technologies have led to a high loading of consciousness with a historically unusual diverse range of experiences and responsibilities, a high rate of cultural change relative to biological evolution, and a tendency to factionalize. Burhoe's extension of the concept of symbiosis to the coevolution of culture and genes is modified here in recognition of individual differences and of individuals' potential for choosing strategies, recombining in groups, and learning. In human biocultural symbiont pools, cultural phenomena can evolve while changing partners in a dance with genetic substrates, a dance that broadly supports these substrates. In the context of diversity and incessant change in a large predominantly secular community, Judeo-Christian monotheism can have a valuable advisory unifying function.     

目标倾向的理论研究述评

本文系统地回顾了目标倾向及其理论结构的研究,当代流行的成就动机观点认为,在成就目标上,个体的目标倾向可以分为学习目标倾向和统政目标价向。学习目标倾向的特征是寻求挑战,掌握新知识,面对失败时会付出更大的努力必政目标价向的特征是寻求良好的能力评价,避免不良的能力评价,回避挑战,遇到障碍、失败时绩效下降。目前多数研究认为,学习目标倾向和绩效目标倾向是相互独立的结构,而非同一结构的两极。目标倾向主要属于个体的心理特质,同时也受到环境因素的影响。     

上海地区中学教师心态之初步调查

本文采用问卷调查的形式,研究了上海中学教师的进修心态。调查表明．教师认为进修能够增加知识和提高教学水平,进修时心情比较愉快．即使碰到心情不好也能坚持去进修;听课时能记笔记,希望多讲少考．多采取开卷考试,在阅卷考试时．希望考前复习的“透明度”越高越好;教师对其注意力、记忆和理解力的自我评价比较积极,他们的进修动机主要是满足个人的求知欲和提高教学水平。     

5至7岁儿童道德判断依据的研究

本研究分别用动机错误程度差异增大与后果严重程度差异缩小的两个系列改编对偶故事对5至7岁儿童的道德判断依据进行了研究。结果表明,在上述两种情况下,儿童由原来的后果判断转为动机判断的人数均达显著性水平。儿童的年龄越大,转变的人数就越多。据此可以认为,这个时期的儿童在进行道德判断时会受到行为后果与行为动机两个方面的影响,只不过是行为后果的影响作用要大大超于行为动机;而随着年龄的增大,两者的相对影响作用逐步会此消彼长。皮亚杰的有关结论应予以补充与修正。     

Deci and Ryan's cognitive evaluation theory of intrinsic motivation: A set of common sense theorems

Cognitive evaluation theory as put forward by Deci and Ryan (1985) is examined. The theory, which deals with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, has inspired considerable amount of empirical research in the last two decades. However, contrary to the mainstream view and that of its authors, it is argued here that the theory consists of necessary truths of common sense (folk) psychology, rather than contingent and empirically testable hypotheses. As such the theory spells out what must necessarily be the case in human motivation and the empirical evidence amassed to test its validity is irrelevant. Such testing should be abandoned if its purpose is to appraise the truth value of the theory's propositions. To empirically test necessary true propositions is not only redundant in such cases, but also a waste of time and resources.     

The temporal organization of behavior on periodic food schedules.

Various theories of temporal control and schedule induction imply that periodic schedules temporally modulate an organism's motivational states within interreinforcement intervals. This speculation has been fueled by frequently observed multimodal activity distributions created by averaging across interreinforcement intervals. We tested this hypothesis by manipulating the cost associated with schedule-induced activities and the availability of other activities to determine the degree to which (a) the temporal distributions of activities within the interreinforcement interval are fixed or can be temporally displaced, (b) rats can reallocate activities across different interreinforcement intervals, and (c) noninduced activities can substitute for schedule-induced activities. Obtained multimodal activity distributions created by averaging across interreinforcement intervals were not representative of the transitions occurring within individual intervals, so the averaged multimodal distributions should not be assumed to represent changes in the subject's motivational states within the interval. Rather, the multimodal distributions often result from averaging across interreinforcement intervals in which only a single activity occurs. A direct influence of the periodic schedule on the motivational states implies that drinking and running should occur at different periods within the interval, but in three experiments the starting times of drinking and running within interreinforcement intervals were equal. Thus, the sequential pattern of drinking and running on periodic schedules does not result from temporal modulation of motivational states within interreinforcement intervals.     

Missed opportunities: Psychological ramifications of counterfactual thought in midlife women

Counterfactual thinking entails the process of imagining alternatives to reality—what might have been. The present study examines the frequency, content, and emotional and cognitive concomitants of counterfactual thinking about past missed opportunities in midlife women. At age 43, nearly two-thirds of the sample of educated adult women reported having missed certain opportunities at some time in their lives. Most of the counterfactual thoughts concerned missed opportunities for greater challenge in work. Emotional distress at age 33 did not predict later counterfactual thought. Instead, counterfactual thinking at age 43 was associated with concurrent emotional distress. However, acknowledging counterfactual thinking about the past was also associated with envisioning ways to change things for the better in the future. This suggests the possibility that the negative appraisal often entailed in counterfactual thinking may be associated with emotional distress in the short run but with motivational benefits in the long run, at least for middle-aged women.     

Economics, ecologics, and mechanics: The dynamics of responding under conditions of varying motivation

The mechanics of behavior developed by Killeen (1994) is extended to deal with deprivation and satiation and with recovery of arousal at the beginning of sessions. The extended theory is validated against satiation curves and within-session changes in response rates. Anomalies, such as (a) the positive correlation between magnitude of an incentive and response rates in some contexts and a negative correlation in other contexts and (b) the greater prominence of incentive effects when magnitude is varied within the session rather than between sessions, are explained in terms of the basic interplay of drive and incentive motivation. The models are applied to data from closed economies in which changes of satiation levels play a key role in determining the changes in behavior. Relaxation of various assumptions leads to closed-form models for response rates and demand functions in these contexts, ones that show reasonable accord with the data and reinforce arguments for unit price as a controlling variable. The central role of deprivation level in this treatment distinguishes it from economic models. It is argued that traditional experiments should be redesigned to reveal basic principles, that ecologic experiments should be redesigned to test the applicability of those principles in more natural contexts, and that behavioral economics should consist of the applications of these principles to economic contexts, not the adoption of economic models as alternatives to behavioral analysis.