When the going gets tough, the differentiated keep going: cybernetic self-determination, daily obstacles, and persistent goal pursuit

Cybernetic theories of self-regulation contend that an individual's goal system may work best to the extent it is differentiated. The present investigation pioneered an assessment of goal differentiation in relation to an important feature of goals--intrinsic motivation--and quantified the extent to which intrinsic motivation systematically increased from low- to mid- to high-level goals, the resulting individual difference termed cybernetic self-determination. In Study 1 (n = 106), it was found that frustrating daily events precipitated motivations to quit at low, but not high, levels of cybernetic self-determination. In Study 2 (n = 111), it was found that negative feedback was associated with reduced goal persistence at low, but not high, levels of cybernetic self-determination. The findings therefore converge on the idea that individual differences in cybernetic self-determination are consequential in buffering reactions to obstacles in daily life. Implications for personality, motivation, and self-regulation literatures are discussed.

Responsiveness to the Negative Affect System as a Function of Emotion Perception: Relations Between Affect and Sociability in Three Daily Diary Studies

Perceiving emotions clearly and accurately is an important component of emotional intelligence (EI). This skill is thought to predict emotional and social outcomes, but evidence for this point appears somewhat underwhelming in cross-sectional designs. The present work adopted a more contextual approach to understanding the correlates of emotion perception. Because emotion perception involves awareness of affect as it occurs, people higher in this skill might reasonably be expected to be more attuned to variations in their affective states and be responsive to them for this reason. This novel hypothesis was pursued in three daily diary studies (total N = 247), which found systematic evidence for the idea that higher levels of daily negative affect predicted lesser sociability particularly, and somewhat exclusively, among people whose emotion perception skills were high rather than low. The results support a contextual understanding of individual differences in emotion perception and how they operate.

Toward a cognitive view of trait mindfulness: distinct cognitive skills predict its observing and nonreactivity facets

Dispositional variations in mindfulness and its facets have garnered considerable recent interest in the clinical and personality literatures. Theoretically, high mindful individuals have been characterized as more attuned to momentary sensations and perceptions and/or better able to execute behavior in a controlled manner, yet data of this relatively cognitive type have not been reported. In addition, perceptual attunement and executive control are distinct skills that may underlie, or at least correlate with, distinct facets of mindfulness. In 3 studies involving college students (N = 297), support for the latter idea was found. Individuals high in the observing (but not nonreactivity) facet of mindfulness demonstrated superior perceptual abilities in visual working memory (Study 1) and temporal order (Study 2) tasks. On the other hand, individuals high in the nonreactivity (but not observing) facet of mindfulness exhibited greater cognitive control flexibility (Study 3). Implications for understanding the cognitive basis of mindfulness facets are discussed.

The big chill: interpersonal coldness and emotion-labeling skills

Interpersonally cold (relative to warm) individuals may be less skilled in inferring the emotional states of others, a factor that should contribute to their poorer social relationships. Systematic support for this hypothesis was obtained in 4 studies (total N = 434 undergraduates) involving diverse emotion- and affect-decoding tasks. Specifically, relatively cold individuals exhibited lower accuracy in decoding emotional facial expressions (Study 1), in labeling the emotions of others from audio and video clips (Study 2), in predicting the emotions of others from social scenario descriptions (Study 3), and in the normative accuracy of their word evaluations (Study 4). Altogether, the results demonstrate that cold individuals appear broadly deficient in linking emotion and affect to relevant environmental stimuli. Implications of the findings for understanding the nature and correlates of interpersonal coldness are discussed.

Extraversion and reward-related processing: probing incentive motivation in affective priming tasks

Based on an incentive motivation theory of extraversion (Depue & Collins, 1999), it was hypothesized that extraverts (relative to introverts) would exhibit stronger positive priming effects in affective priming tasks, whether involving words or pictures. This hypothesis was systematically supported in four studies involving 229 undergraduates. In each of the four studies, and in a subsequent combined analysis, extraversion was positively predictive of positive affective priming effects, but was not predictive of negative affective priming effects. The results bridge an important gap in the literature between biological and trait models of incentive motivation and do so in a way that should be informative to subsequent efforts to understand the processing basis of extraversion as well as incentive motivation.

Neuroticism and responsiveness to error feedback: adaptive self-regulation versus affective reactivity

Responsiveness to negative feedback has been seen as functional by those who emphasize the value of reflecting on such feedback in self-regulating problematic behaviors. On the other hand, the very same responsiveness has been viewed as dysfunctional by its link to punishment sensitivity and reactivity. The present 4 studies, involving 203 undergraduate participants, sought to reconcile such discrepant views in the context of the trait of neuroticism. In cognitive tasks, individuals were given error feedback when they made mistakes. It was found that greater tendencies to slow down following error feedback were associated with higher levels of accuracy at low levels of neuroticism but lower levels of accuracy at high levels of neuroticism. Individual differences in neuroticism thus appear crucial in understanding whether behavioral alterations following negative feedback reflect proactive versus reactive mechanisms and processes. Implications for understanding the processing basis of neuroticism and adaptive self-regulation are discussed.

Integrating trait and social-cognitive views of personality: neuroticism, implicit stress priming, and neuroticism-outcome relationships

The trait perspective of personality emphasizes the broad role of traits in outcome prediction, whereas the social-cognitive perspective emphasizes the importance of if-then intrapsychic associations. Three studies (N = 188) were conducted to reconcile these alternative views of personality in the context of stress-related behaviors. Implicit priming tasks were used to quantify the extent to which stress primes activated thoughts of aggression (Studies 1 and 2) or eating (Study 3), and trait levels of neuroticism were also assessed. Neuroticism did not consistently predict stress-related implicit associations, consistent with the independence of these predictors. Of more importance, such implicit associations predicted problematic outcomes (e.g., physical aggression), but only to the extent that relevant individuals were also high in neuroticism. The results highlight an interface of trait and social-cognitive views of personality and do so in the context of understanding stress-reactivity processes, a topic of importance to multiple literatures.

Personality Dominance and Preferential Use of the Vertical Dimension of Space

Previous research has shown that dominant individuals frequently think in terms of dominance hierarchies, which typically invoke vertical metaphor (e.g., “upper” vs. “lower” class). Accordingly, we predicted that in spatial attention paradigms, such individuals would systematically favor the vertical dimension of space more than individuals low in dominance. This prediction was supported by two studies (total N = 96), which provided three tests involving two different spatial attention paradigms. In all cases, analyses controlling for speed of response to horizontal spatial probes revealed that more dominant individuals were faster than less dominant individuals to respond to probes along the vertical dimension of space. Such data support the metaphor-representation perspective, according to which people think in metaphoric terms, even in on-line processing tasks. These results have implications for understanding dominance and also indicate that conceptual metaphor is relevant to understanding the cognitive-processing basis of personality.

Neuroticism and Affective Priming: Evidence for a Neuroticism-Linked Negative Schema

Neuroticism has been hypothesized to systematically relate to semantic memory networks favoring negative affect, but no studies using affective priming tasks have established this link. The present two studies, involving 145 undergraduate participants, sought to provide initial evidence along these lines. Study 1 used a task in which participants were asked to judge their emotions in the past, whereas Study 2 used a perceptual identification task in which participants merely had to identify the word in question. In both studies, neuroticism was positively correlated with negative affective priming, but not positive affective priming. The studies suggest that neuroticism systematically relates to the inter-connectivity of negative affect with semantic memory systems, whether involving the self-concept (Study 1) or not (Study 2). These results are novel and important in understanding individual differences in neuroticism and their affective processing correlates.