Comfort Zone Orientation: Moving Beyond One’s Comfort Zone
Abstract
Although people often talk about behaviors or experiences being “out of their comfort
zone,” no research has examined the relationship between people’s comfort zones and
how they react to situations that fall outside them. Three studies examined comfort
zones and the value that some people place on pushing themselves out of their comfort
zones, termed comfort zone orientation (CZO). Study 1 showed that people are able
to answer questions about their comfort zones and that comfort zones are related to
the emotions that people expect to experience in threatening situations. Study 2 validated
a measure of CZO, showing that correlations between CZO and personality measures were
consistent with its conceptualization. Study 3 was a laboratory experiment that revealed
that CZO related to participants’ responses to an actual anxiety-producing task and
that participants who valued pushing themselves out of their comfort zone were more
confident that they could make themselves perform a threatening task. This research
extends our understanding of the psychological basis of comfort zones and demonstrates
that the Comfort Zone Orientation Scale is a valid measure of the degree to which
people value pushing themselves out of their comfort zone.
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
Psychology and NeurosciencePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16710Citation
Kiknadze, Nona (2018). Comfort Zone Orientation: Moving Beyond One’s Comfort Zone. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16710.Collections
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