Browsing by Author "Hoyle, Rick H"

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Despite the considerable influence of situational factors and the resulting variability in behavior, individuals maintain stable average ways of acting. The purpose of the studies presented in this paper was to investigate one possible explanation of this trait stability. It is hypothesized that contra-trait behaviors, those that are different from typical trait levels, demand more effort, or self-control, than do trait-typical behaviors. In Study 1, participants reported on the trait content of their behavior along with several other variables. In Study 2, participants completed several tasks in the lab and were instructed to act at contra-trait or trait-typical levels of conscientiousness. Support for the contra-trait effort hypothesis was found in Study 1: Participants reported that contra-trait behavior was more effortful than trait-typical behavior. In addition, habitual contra-trait behaviors, which do not require self-control, were exempt from this effect. In Study 2, no support was found for contra-trait hypotheses: Participants generally did not rate contra-trait behaviors as more effortful, and subsequent behaviors were not affected by contra-trait behaviors. The implications of the findings and the possible explanations of the non-findings are discussed.

Students hold a number of personal theories about education that influence motivation and achievement in the classroom: theories about their own abilities, knowledge, and the learning process. Therefore, college instructors have a great interest in helping to develop adaptive personal theories in their students. The current studies investigated whether specific messages that instructors send in college classroom might serve as a mechanism of personal theory development. Across 2 studies, 17 college instructors and 401 students completed surveys assessing their personal theories about education at the beginning and end of college courses. Students and instructors reported hearing and sending many messages in the classroom, including instructor help messages, conciliatory messages, uncertainty in the field messages, differential ability messages and generalized positive and negative feedback. Between-class and within-class differences in message reports were associated with students’ personal theories at the end of their courses, controlling for initial personal theories. Students’ initial personal theories were also related to the messages students reported hearing. The findings demonstrate the utility of assessing non-content messages in college classrooms as potential mechanisms for changing students’ personal theories in college. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

People value others’ good self-control when they feel their own self-control is inadequate or need help pursuing our goals. However, the process by which people distinguish good vs. poor self-control in others has not been examined. This study examined the behavioral evidence people use to judge others’ self-control. Participants (N=297) described the behaviors of two people they know with high and low self-control. Each behavior was coded for presence of successful/failed initiation of desired behaviors (e.g., going to the gym, missing work), successful/failed inhibition of undesired behaviors (e.g., not losing one’s temper, binge drinking), and behavioral domain. Eating and financial behaviors were the most frequently cited domains for both high and low self-control others, whereas other domains were more common in descriptions of high (exercise) or low (substance use) self-control. Successful initiation and inhibition behaviors were equally prevalent in high self-control descriptions, whereas low self-control descriptions were biased toward failures of inhibition. This pattern of results held regardless of relationship length and type (e.g., spouse, friend). The results suggest people either fail to recognize others’ failures to initiate or consider them less important when judging poor self-control others. The limitations of and future directions for this line of research will be discussed.

The current study assessed the relationship between licensing and self-control maintenance. Previous research on licensing has found mixed results for the effect of perceived progress on goal pursuit. Some studies find evidence that progress increases commitment and motivation to a goal, making licensing less likely, whereas other studies have found that progress leads to coasting and feelings of earned licensing. Previous work on managing food consumption has demonstrated that using a mental budget in tandem with a salient avoidance goal is an effective means of monitoring and limiting overindulgence. The current study used a mixed event-contingent and fixed-interval experience sampling design to examine the role of licensing in the eating domain and its effect on goal pursuit. Participants in the experimental condition were prompted with personalized commitment devices each day to assess if they promoted goal pursuit and appropriate licensing. We found that licensing occurs infrequently, but when it does occur, goal progress and goal commitment increase. The use of commitment device has little impact on licensing or goal pursuit.

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An abstract of a dissertation that examines the effect of practicing different forms of self-control, inhibition and initiation, on the occurrence of subsequent behaviors reflecting one or both types of self-control. Previous work based on the limited strength model of self-control has demonstrated that practicing small acts of self-control can improve self-control over time. However, past research involving self-control practice has operationalized self-control primarily as the inhibition of impulses. The current set of studies distinguishes between two forms of self-control: self-control by inhibition and self-control by initiation. This work also contributes to the self-control literature by treating self-control as an idiosyncratic process. Study 1 tested whether fluctuations in each form of self-control, aggregated at the daily level, would predict the degree to which people reported engaging in other self-control behaviors. Study 1 was a two-week experience sampling study in which 101 undergraduates reported several times daily on their self-control behaviors. The results of Study 1 support a distinction between self-control by inhibition and initiation. Moreover, the finding that participants actually studied more on days when they reported exerting more self-control by initiation seems to support a possible practice effect on self-control that may be specific to form. Study 2 introduced a practice manipulation, testing whether practicing one form of self-control (either inhibition or initiation) leads to improvement in only that type of self-control (but across domains), or across both forms. Study 2 was four weeks in total: two weeks of a practice manipulation (either inhibition, initiation, or a no-practice control) and two weeks of experience sampling. Analyses were carried out using multilevel modeling in SAS Proc Mixed and SAS Proc Glimmix. However, results indicated that there was no main effect of practice on subsequent self-control behaviors. Follow-up analyses revealed that the effect of practice varied across dependent variables and as a function of reported exertion of inhibition and initiation. Several effects from Study 1, including the effect of within-person exertion of initiation on subsequent self-control behaviors, were replicated. Possible explanations for the unexpected findings, including the strength of the practice manipulation, are discussed. Ideas for future research, including tailoring self-control practice to specific demands on self-control, are presented. Implications for the effect of practice on future self-control pursuits and a distinction between inhibition and initiation are also discussed.

Guided by an integrative conceptual framework, a meta-analysis was conducted to explore the relation between the capacity aspect of self-regulation and academic achievement across childhood and adolescence. This meta-analysis of over 150 studies draws upon diverse research traditions and approaches to test moderators of theoretical, methodological, and practical importance. In the theoretical moderator analyses, results were broken down by the specific self-regulation construct (e.g., emotion regulation, executive functions), students' grade level, and academic subject. Doing so permitted an exploration of developmental and domain differences in the relation between each self-regulation construct and achievement. In the methodological moderator analyses, results were broken down by the type of self-regulation measure (e.g., teacher-report, direct assessment) and the type of achievement measure (e.g., standardized test, course grade). Doing so permitted a formal test of how these measures relate to each other, which has garnered considerable debate among self-regulation researchers.

Findings from the five moderator analyses largely supported hypotheses. The average correlation with achievement was strongest for effortful control and composite measures of executive functions, with updating significantly exceeding both shifting and inhibiting. A strong correlation also emerged for self-control, though it differed significantly based on whether the construct was categorized by author labels or definitions. Composite measures of self-regulation revealed a stronger correlation with achievement than any of its domains, as expected. Across all self-regulatory capacities, correlations became significantly stronger after the transition to kindergarten but assumed different trajectories based on the specific construct during the rest of elementary and secondary school. Domain differences also emerged, favoring math and science for executive functions but not producing significant differences with language arts for effortful control. As expected, self-regulatory capacities with an indirect effect on achievement (e.g., effortful control, emotion regulation) had the strongest correlation with course grades while self-regulatory capacities with a direct effect on achievement (e.g., executive functions) had the strongest correlation with standardized tests. Finally, direct assessments and teacher reports produced significantly stronger correlations with academic performance than when students reported their own self-regulation. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of these findings are discussed alongside results.

A new meta-analytic method was also developed to identify and resolve inconsistencies in the way psychological constructs are labeled, defined, and measured. This new method provided needed conceptual clarity in the diverse and interdisciplinary literature on self-regulation. Implications for other literatures characterized by variation in the way constructs are labeled, defined, and measured are discussed.

Religious observance has been reliably shown to improve a wide variety of health outcomes across the lifespan. Significant work has already been done to find mediating processes that explain this relationship, but as yet no studies have been published that attempt to integrate these mediators into a single model to see if they all work together. The current study presents three possible mediators of the religiosity-health link: social support, self-control, and reliance on others. Participants were recruited from Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk worker system (N = 112) for a 14-day diary study in which all relevant constructs were measured on a daily basis, with daily health behaviors being the outcome. Social support, self-control, and reliance on others were all found to be simultaneous partial mediators of the religiosity-health link, though some questions remain as to the causal flow between religiosity and each of these mediators. It is concluded that each of these mechanisms is related to religiosity and in turn aid in the pursuit of superior health.

Judgment and decision-making in a healthcare context often involve complex information and difficult tradeoffs. In order to understand key concepts and receive help with difficult decisions, patients may turn to written materials, like informed consent forms. Unfortunately, these materials can actually increase confusion. This dissertation explores the relationship between written health materials and cognitive processes, specifically comprehension, memory, judgment, and decision-making. The first goal was to investigate how language and design affect cognition for informed consent forms. We developed a Standard informed consent form and two Enhanced versions that had simplified language and modified design, and compared comprehension and memory between the three versions. As written health materials undergo changes to make their content more accessible to readers, they also become more fluent. The second goal was to explore how this fluency affects judgments and decision-making, especially for materials that have a negative valence. This question was studied in the context of two competing fluency theories, the Hedonic Fluency Model and the Fluency Amplification Model. We manipulated the fluency of various materials, including medications, diseases, and risks, and asked participants to make several judgments about the fluent and disfluent materials. Our results highlight the complexities and nuances that characterize fluency’s effects.