Browsing by Author "Strauman, Timothy J"

Higgins' regulatory focus theory (1997) postulates two cognitive/motivational systems for pursuing desired end states: the promotion and prevention systems. The theory predicts that failure in each system is discriminantly associated with dysphoric and anxious affect respectively; and that significant failure in these systems creates vulnerability to depression and anxiety. This study tested these hypotheses among adolescents who took part in the longitudinal Wisconsin Study of Families and Work. We found partial support for the theory's predictions. Specifically, the original adult Selves Questionnaire (SQ), which was administered at age 13, did not demonstrate the expected discriminant associations with dysphoric and anxious affect and symptoms. However, the Selves Questionnaire - Adolescent Version, which was administered at age 15, yielded partial support for the theory. Ideal self-discrepancy was discriminantly associated with depressive affect but ought self-discrepancy was not discriminantly associated with anxious affect. However, feared self-discrepancy was discriminantly associated with anxious affect, which adds to the literature suggesting that feared self-discrepancy might be a better construct to use in measuring prevention failure among adolescents. The association between self-discrepancy and affect was found cross-sectionally but not longitudinally. The study also tested recently formulated predictions of regulatory focus theory which state that significant failure in one regulatory system is likely to negatively impact the other system (Klenk, Strauman, & Higgins, 2011). No support for this prediction was found. Implications of the findings, and aspects of the study that may have reduced our ability to test the hypotheses of interest, are discussed.

Utilizing data from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), the current study examined the relationship between cultural values, coping behavior, and HIV risk behaviors among African-American/Black and Hispanic/Latino adolescents (N = 437). The goal of this research was to provide the first step towards testing the construct validity of a theoretical model in which values and cultural context contribute to coping behaviors and coping, in turn, mediates the association between values and HIV risk profile. African-American participants endorsed higher levels of Africentric and religious values than did Hispanic participants and endorsed higher utilization of religious coping. Cultural values including familismo and religiosity were associated with more adaptive coping behavior and lower sexual and substance use risk behaviors across racial/ethnic groups. Results for other cultural values were inconsistent. Coping behavior predicted substance use risk behaviors but was not associated with sexual risk behaviors. Mediation was not supported except in the case of religious coping and religiosity. Implications for HIV prevention and directions for future research are discussed.

Theories of self-regulation address the continuous process in which individuals compare their behavior to salient goals or standards. Two well-known theories of self-regulation, self-discrepancy theory (SDT) and regulatory focus theory (RFT), each make distinctions regarding the types of standards and goals in reference to which individuals self-regulate. Authenticity--the idea of being one's true self--has the potential to influence the kinds of goals or standards that individuals come to possess and may have implications for understanding the outcomes of self-regulatory processes. This research links the construct of authenticity with SDT and RFT, emphasizing how individual differences in authenticity could influence the motivational and affective consequences of self-regulation predicted within each theory. Individual differences in authenticity were expected to influence the nature of the goals and standards that individuals hold, as well as the acute and chronic affective consequences of discrepancies between the actual self and the ideal and ought self-guides respectively. Specifically, individual differences in authenticity were expected to predict magnitude of actual:ideal and actual:ought self-discrepancy as well as the intensity of distress that individuals report (acutely as well as chronically) in association with self-discrepancies. More importantly, self-discrepancies were expected to be less prevalent among individuals high in authenticity, but more distressing among high-authenticity individuals than among individuals with lower levels of authenticity. The results of this research suggest that individual differences in authentic behavior do have a direct influence on both acute and chronic affect. Authenticity was found to interact with self-discrepancies in predicting chronic affect. Authenticity has a unique role in the process of self-regulation, distinct from the contributions of SDT and RFT.

Regulatory focus theory (RFT) proposes two different social-cognitive motivational systems for goal pursuit: a promotion system, which is organized around strategic approach behaviors and "making good things happen," and a prevention system, which is organized around strategic avoidance and "keeping bad things from happening." The promotion and prevention systems have been extensively studied in behavioral paradigms, and RFT posits that prolonged perceived failure to make progress in pursuing promotion or prevention goals can lead to ineffective goal pursuit and chronic distress (Higgins, 1997).

Research has begun to focus on uncovering the neural correlates of the promotion and prevention systems in an attempt to differentiate them at the neurobiological level. Preliminary research suggests that the promotion and prevention systems have both distinct and overlapping neural correlates (Eddington, Dolcos, Cabeza, Krishnan, & Strauman, 2007; Strauman et al., 2013). However, little research has examined how individual differences in regulatory focus develop and manifest. The development of individual differences in regulatory focus is particularly salient during adolescence, a crucial topic to explore given the dramatic neurodevelopmental and psychosocial changes that take place during this time, especially with regard to self-regulatory abilities. A number of questions remain unexplored, including the potential for goal-related neural activation to be modulated by (a) perceived proximity to goal attainment, (b) individual differences in regulatory orientation, specifically general beliefs about one's success or failure in attaining the two kinds of goals, (c) age, with a particular focus on adolescence, and (d) homozygosity for the Met allele of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val158Met polymorphism, a naturally occurring genotype which has been shown to impact prefrontal cortex activation patterns associated with goal pursuit behaviors.

This study explored the neural correlates of the promotion and prevention systems through the use of a priming paradigm involving rapid, brief, masked presentation of individually selected promotion and prevention goals to each participant while being scanned. The goals used as priming stimuli varied with regard to whether participants reported that they were close to or far away from achieving them (i.e. a "match" versus a "mismatch" representing perceived success or failure in personal goal pursuit). The study also assessed participants' overall beliefs regarding their relative success or failure in attaining promotion and prevention goals, and all participants were genotyped for the COMT Val158Met polymorphism.

A number of significant findings emerged. Both promotion and prevention priming were associated with activation in regions associated with self-referential cognition, including the left medial prefrontal cortex, cuneus, and lingual gyrus. Promotion and prevention priming were also associated with distinct patterns of neural activation; specifically, left middle temporal gyrus activation was found to be significantly greater during prevention priming. Activation in response to promotion and prevention goals was found to be modulated by self-reports of both perceived proximity to goal achievement and goal orientation. Age also had a significant effect on activation, such that activation in response to goal priming became more robust in the prefrontal cortex and in default mode network regions as a function of increasing age. Finally, COMT genotype also modulated the neural response to goal priming both alone and through interactions with regulatory focus and age. Overall, these findings provide further clarification of the neural underpinnings of the promotion and prevention systems as well as provide information about the role of development and individual differences at the personality and genetic level on activity in these neural systems.

The present series of studies offers a perspective on how a particular functional genetic polymorphism, COMT Val158Met, interacts with individual differences in self-regulation to affect the mechanisms underlying successful versus unsuccessful goal pursuit. Individual differences in the mechanisms that underlie self-regulation can be understood as more or less beneficial for goal pursuit depending on the context. For example, relatively high levels of cognitive flexibility can facilitate self-regulation in certain situations (e.g., where a new strategy needs to be employed) but can be detrimental in others (e.g., where excessive flexibility results in distraction from continuing efforts needed to attain the goal). The functional role of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism can also be conceptualized as a trade-off where the adaptiveness of the Val- or Met-like dopaminergic signaling profiles is determined by features of the environment as well as by the individual's goals. By integrating across biological and behavioral levels of analysis, we can expand our understanding of individual differences in tendencies for successful versus unsuccessful self-regulation. In particular, COMT by self-regulation interactions constitute a particularly fruitful line of investigation to better understand goal pursuit, mood, and vulnerability.

Self-regulation is a theoretical construct that can be used to integrate behavioral findings with research on neurobiological processes and genetic variation, particularly COMT, in order to more fully examine behavior across multiple levels of analysis. Individual differences in self-regulation have been shown to have reliably identifiable neural correlates (e.g., Eddington, Dolcos, Cabeza, Krishnan, & Strauman, 2007), and many of the factors contributing to successful or dysfunctional goal pursuit have their basis in psychological processes directly affected by COMT. Some of these processes under investigation here include responding to rewards, utilizing feedback, and flexibly changing a pattern of responses under motivationally challenging conditions. There are also trait-like differences in neural network connectivity based on the interaction between COMT and self-regulatory variables.

The three studies that comprise this dissertation examined how COMT genotype can moderate the effect of previous regulatory experiences (i.e., success or failure at achieving one's personal goals) on behavior and brain function, using regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997) as a model of self-regulation. The first study (Goetz, Hariri, Pizzagalli, & Strauman, 2013) examined how one's experience of successful goal pursuit moderated the impact of COMT genotype on reward responsive behavior. This experiment utilized a probabilistic reward task to measure the participants' ability to alter their behavior in response to reinforcement, which serves as an index of their sensitivity to environmental feedback of success. This responsiveness was seen particularly for those individuals who have had previous experiences of success pursuing rewarded goals if they also had the COMT Val/Val genotype, which is associated with more flexible behavior.

The second study (Davis, Tharp, Hariri, & Strauman, in preparation) used priming to create a motivationally salient context of either promotion (related to ideal goals) or prevention (related to ought goals) in order to assess genotype group differences on a cognitive control task. The results showed that relatively flexible Val/Val individuals exhibited behavioral slowing when challenged by a motivational context that requires vigilance, i.e., after priming by a prevention failure. By contrast, relatively rigid Met/Met individuals exhibited behavioral slowing in response to a context that demands eagerness and openness to opportunities for positive feedback, i.e., after priming by a past promotion failure experience.

The third study explored how the interaction of COMT and regulatory focus variables may reveal insights into resting state neural network connectivity, ultimately leading to a deeper understanding of individual differences in goal pursuit behavior. Several nodes within the executive control and default mode networks show different patterns of connectivity based on previous goal pursuit success, COMT genotype, and their interaction. Because the neural networks that underlie successful goal pursuit are also moderated by COMT genotype, we can conclude that behaviors relevant to goal pursuit, such as the reward responsive and cognitive control behaviors explored in the previous studies, are likely supported by trait-like systems instantiated at the level of the brain. This provides further justification for exploring the interplay between COMT genotype and the promotion and prevention self-regulation systems, and points to several future directions of behavioral and fMRI investigation.