Beyond priming effects: The role of positive affect and discrepancies in implicit processes of motivation and goal pursuit

Hidden cues for approach and avoidance motivation: implicit cognitive associations among patients with Nonadherence to HIV treatment

Although patient motivation related to HIV treatment is widely acknowledged as a key factor related to consistent adherence and engagement with medical care, research has predominantly focused on explicit rather than implicit cognitive processes that underlie motivation. This study identified and examined implicit cognitive processes that influence approach and avoidance treatment motivation in a sample of 30 HIV patients with suboptimal adherence and poor engagement with medical care. Study participants were predominantly African American (87%) and gay/bisexual (63%). We examined 173 thought statements about treatment collected from patients during two previous studies. Thematic analysis described how implicit cognitive associations influenced patients to approach or avoid treatment and medical care. Findings revealed three major contextual categories of treatment-related thoughts: links with routines and habits, connections to physical changes and reactions, and interpersonal associations. Within each category, implicit cognitive associations about treatment in terms of these daily life events and experiences cued approach and avoidance motivational tendencies without the patient's awareness. Findings from this study support the need for interventions that use implicit, less effortful approaches aimed at promoting adherence and improving the retention of patients with poor engagement.

Beyond words: Conceptual framework for the study and practice of hypnotherapeutic imagery

This paper provides a conceptual framework for the study and clinical application of hypnotherapeutic imagery (HTI). Using the grounded theory method of conceptual analysis, a unified theoretical framework is constructed from a multidisciplinary review of literature (i.e., this new theory is based on the collection and analysis of independently sourced data). The aim is to enumerate the chorographical features of HTI simulations within the mental landscape, rather than seeking to predict them. This is achieved using a combination of ontological, epistemological, and methodological inquires. Because mental simulation is both symptomatic of mental disorders and a psychotherapeutic agent, used across various treatment modalities, an attempt is made to isolate those variables that differentiate HTI from other instances of mental simulation. Lastly, applied principles from multiple disciplines are used to formulate HTI methodology designed to effectively enhance intuitive understanding and unconscious problem-solving.

Battle of the primes - The effect and interplay of health and hedonic primes on food choice

People making food choices are often exposed to different cues that can activate relevant goals that influence the choice outcome. Hedonic goals are frequently primed by advertising while health policy enlists primes that activate health goals in the moment of food decision-making - e.g., healthy food labels. However, little is known about the effect of such goal-priming cues on the population level and how people respond when exposed to both types of primes simultaneously. The results of this study, based on a large, representative sample (N = 1200), show no effect of health-goal priming on healthy food choices. Being exposed to a sole hedonic prime, however, reduces healthy choices by 3%. This effect completely disappeared when both primes were presented at the same time. All effects remained insensitive to people's gender, hunger status, level of dietary restraint, and BMI. These findings cast doubt over the effectiveness of health goal primes as a tool to increase healthy food choices but suggest a protective effect against competing hedonic primes and could thereby prevent less healthy choices.

On the implicit influence of pain cues on cognitive effort: Evidence from cardiovascular reactivity

To extend previous findings on the impact of implicit affect on behavior, two experiments investigated the influence of priming pain cues on cognitive effort. Effort was assessed as cardiovascular reactivity (PEP, SBP, DBP, and HR) during an easy or difficult cognitive task integrating briefly presented and masked pain-related words. The control condition included neutral words (Experiment 1) or anger-related words (Experiment 2). The pain primes were expected to increase the perceived difficulty of the task and to result in stronger effort during the easy task, compared to the control condition, and to lower effort during the difficult task, due to disengagement. Overall, cardiovascular reactivity of both experiments supported the predictions. Moreover, pain primes increased self-reported subjective difficulty. Finally, most participants could not report the content of the primes. Findings are discussed regarding the influence of implicit processes in pain experience and regarding the self-regulatory consequences of the influence of pain on effort mobilization.

Untangling the complex relationships between symptoms of schizophrenia and emotion dynamics in daily life: Findings from an experience sampling pilot study

The unfolding of emotions over time (i.e., emotion dynamics) has been characterized by baseline, intraindividual variability and regulatory tendency (return time to baseline after deflection). Mounting evidence suggests that compared to healthy individuals, individuals with schizophrenia are characterized by a more negatively valenced baseline and a higher intraindividual variability. However, the regulatory tendency has not been investigated in schizophrenia so far. We hypothesize that the severity of positive symptoms is linked to increased emotional variability and that the severity of negative symptoms is associated with an increased regulatory tendency. Fifteen individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia took part in this pilot experience sampling study and reported their emotional state ten times a day. The dynamics of valence and arousal and their relationship with symptomatology were estimated with the DynAffect model. Regulatory tendency in valence and arousal was positively associated with negative symptom severity and negatively associated with positive symptom severity. However, the severity of positive symptoms was not credibly associated with the variability of valence. The study only partly corroborates findings on increased stress reactivity in schizophrenia, which might be due to the small sample size. However, results suggest that negative symptoms could stem from over-regulated emotion dynamics, which may impede goal-directed behavior.

The effect of psychological distance on automatic goal contagion

We investigated how psychological distance influences goal contagion (the extent to which people automatically adopt another person's goals). On the basis of construal-level theory, we predicted people would be more prone to goal contagion when primed with psychological distance (vs. closeness) because they would construe the other person's behavior in terms of its underlying goal. Alternatively, we predicted people primed with psychological closeness (vs. distance) would be more prone to goal contagion because closeness may increase the personal relevance of another's goals - a process not mediated by construal level. In two preregistered studies, participants read about a student whose behavior implied either an academic or a social goal. We manipulated (a) participants' level of mental construal with a mind-set task (Study 1) and (b) their social distance from another person who showed academic or social behaviors (Study 2). We measured performance on an anagram task as an indicator of academic goal contagion. For Study 1, we predicted that participants reading about academic (vs. social) behaviors would show a better anagram performance, especially when primed with an abstract mind-set. For Study 2, we predicted that construal level and relevance effects might cancel each other out, because distance triggers both high-level construal and less relevance. In contrast to the construal-level hypothesis, the mind-set manipulation did not affect goal contagion in Study 1. In accordance with the relevance hypothesis, psychological proximity increased goal contagion in Study 2. We discuss how the findings relate to previous findings on goal contagion and imitation.

Reduce temptation or resist it? Experienced temptation mediates the relationship between implicit evaluations of unhealthy snack foods and subsequent intake

A more negative implicit evaluation of unhealthy food stimuli and a more positive implicit evaluation of a weight-management goal have been shown to predict lower consumption of unhealthy food. However, the associations between these evaluations, temptation to indulge and consumption of unhealthy food remain unclear. The current study investigated whether temptation would mediate the relationship between implicit food and goal evaluations and consumption (resembling an antecedent-focused route to self-control of eating), or whether those evaluations would moderate the relationship between temptation and consumption (resembling a response-focused route). A sample of 156 women (17-25 years), who tried to manage their weight through healthy eating, completed two implicit association tasks assessing implicit food and goal evaluations, respectively. Intake of four energy-dense snack foods was measured in a task disguised as a taste test, and participants reported the strength of experienced temptation to indulge in the snacks offered. Negative implicit food evaluation was associated with lower snack intake, and temptation mediated this relationship. Implicit goal evaluation was unrelated to both temptation strength and snack consumption. The findings contribute to an understanding of how negative implicit unhealthy food evaluation relates to lower consumption, namely through the mediation of temptation to indulge in those foods.

Initiation of negotiation and its role in negotiation research

Most psychological studies about negotiation examine processes, strategies, and outcomes by providing a context with given roles, issues, and resources to the parties involved. We argue that this research is incomplete as psychological variables and processes, antecedent to the initiation of negotiation, are excluded. A theoretical model is developed which explains the initiation of negotiation by the key motivational process of discrepancy reduction, which arouses an emotional reaction. It integrates valence, expectancy and instrumentality considerations as moderating variables. The model serves as a research agenda for the psychological study of the prenegotiation phase, and for answering the questions of when and why people initiate (or suppress) negotiations, thereby offering grounds for probing how subsequent negotiations might be affected by characteristics of the prenegotiation phase. The overall aim is to foster our understanding about the psychological origins of negotiations to complement what is already known about the negotiation process.

Liking More Means Doing More: Dispositional Attitudes Predict Patterns of General Action

Dispositional attitudes are an individual difference in the tendency to form positive versus negative attitudes. As positive (negative) attitudes promote active (inactive) responses to stimuli, we predicted that dispositional attitudes would be positively correlated with patterns of general action. In Study 1, participants reported all activities they engaged in during a 1-week period using a structured time use survey. Dispositional attitudes were positively correlated with the number of unique behaviors participants engaged in and with the total number of behaviors reported for the entire week. Study 2 replicated Study 1 using a free response time use survey. Overall, the results demonstrated that dispositional attitudes predict general action, such that the tendency to form positive (negative) attitudes predicts the tendency to engage in many (few) behaviors in daily life. This pattern occurred for both low effort and high effort behaviors. Implications for understanding activity patterns are discussed.

The Addict in Us all

In this paper, we contend that the psychology of addiction is similar to the psychology of ordinary, non-addictive temptation in important respects, and explore the ways in which these parallels can illuminate both addiction and ordinary action. The incentive salience account of addiction proposed by Robinson and Berridge (1-3) entails that addictive desires are not in their nature different from many of the desires had by non-addicts; what is different is rather the way that addictive desires are acquired, which in turn affects their strength. We examine these "incentive salience" desires, both in addicts and non-addicts, contrasting them with more cognitive desires. On this account, the self-control challenge faced by addicted agents is not different in kind from that faced by non-addicted agents - though the two may, of course, differ greatly in degree of difficulty. We explore a general model of self-control for both the addict and the non-addict, stressing that self-control may be employed at three different stages, and examining the ways in which it might be strengthened. This helps elucidate a general model of intentional action.

Explaining adolescents' cigarette smoking: a comparison of four modes of action control and test of the role of self-regulatory mode

The present study compared how well four modes of action control (intentional, habitual, reactive and stereotype activation) explain adolescents' cigarette smoking, and examined whether individual differences in self-regulation (locomotion and assessment tendencies; Higgins, Kruglanski, & Pierro, 2003) moderate the behavioural impact of the respective modes. Findings from a prospective questionnaire survey showed that (a) willingness, prototype perceptions and past behaviour--but not intention--predicted smoking behaviour, and explained 63% of the variance, and (b) the assessment mode of self-regulation moderated the past behaviour-future behaviour relation such that past behaviour had less impact on future smoking behaviour at high levels of assessment. These findings suggest that adolescents' smoking is controlled by stereotype activation, habitual and reactive processes. Implications of the results for designing effective adolescent smoking cessation programmes are considered.

The Implicit “Go”

In this study, we examined the hypothesis that masked general action and inaction cues that are processed during a cognitive task directly mobilize effort exerted during the task. Participants were randomly assigned to an action-prime condition, an inaction-prime condition, or a control condition and performed a Sternberg short-term memory task. The intensity of effort the participants exerted during the task was estimated by measuring their heart responses (cardiac preejection period, PEP) during task performance. As expected, exposure to masked action cues resulted in stronger PEP reactivity than exposure to masked inaction cues. PEP reactivity in the control group fell in between reactivity when action cues were used and reactivity when inaction cues were used. Participants’ task performance revealed a corresponding pattern: Reaction times were the shortest in the action-prime condition, increased in the control condition, and increased further in the inaction-prime condition. These results show that masked action cues and inaction cues directly influence the intensity of effort exerted in the performance of a task.

The nonconscious cessation of goal pursuit: When goals and negative affect are coactivated

Extending on the recent investigation into the implicit affective processes underlying motivation and decision making, 5 studies examined the role of negative affect in moderating goal priming effects. Specifically, experimental effects on measures that typify motivational qualities of goal systems, such as keeping a goal at a heightened level of mental accessibility and exerting effort to work for a goal and experiencing desire to attain the goal, showed that the motivation and resultant operation of social goals cease when these goals are primed in temporal proximity of negatively valenced information. These goal cessation effects resulting from the mere coactivation of a goal and negative affect are discussed against the background of present research on nonconscious goal pursuit and the role of accessibility and desirability in the regulation of automatic goal-directed behavior.