Cognitive Processes in Response to Goal Failure: A Study of Ruminative Thought and its Affective Consequences.
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2013-05-01
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Failure to make progress toward personal goals can lead to negative affective states, such as depression and anxiety. Past research suggests that rumination in response to goal failure may prolong and intensify those acute emotional responses, but that process remains unclear. We examined ruminative thought processes following experimentally manipulated exposure to past failures to attain advancement (promotion) goals and safety (prevention) goals. We predicted that priming of past promotion and prevention goal failures would lead individuals to think repetitively about these failures and that negative affect would be evoked by their recognition of their failures. Further, we predicted that when people experience a sufficient magnitude of negative affect, ruminative thought would intensify and prolong the negative affect associated with that type of goal failure. Results yielded strong support for our predictions regarding promotion goal failure and modest support for those regarding prevention goal failure.
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Jones, NP, AA Papadakis, CA Orr and TJ Strauman (2013). Cognitive Processes in Response to Goal Failure: A Study of Ruminative Thought and its Affective Consequences. J Soc Clin Psychol, 32(5). 10.1521/jscp.2013.32.5.482 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/13851.
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Timothy J. Strauman
Professor Strauman's research focuses on the psychological and neurobiological processes that enable self-regulation, conceptualized in terms of a cognitive/motivational perspective, as well as the relation between self-regulation and affect. Particular areas of emphasis include: (1) conceptualizing self-regulation in terms of brain/behavior motivational systems; (2) the role of self-regulatory cognitive processes in vulnerability to depression and other disorders; (3) the impact of treatments for depression, such as psychotherapy and medication, on self-regulatory function and dysfunction in depression; (4) how normative and non-normative socialization patterns influence the development of self-regulatory systems; (5) the contributory roles of self-regulation, affect, and psychopathology in determining immunologically-mediated susceptibility to illness; (6) development of novel multi-component treatments for depression targeting self-regulatory dysfunction; (7) utilization of brain imaging techniques to test hypotheses concerning self-regulation, including the nature and function of hypothetical regulatory systems and characterizing the breakdowns in self-regulation that lead to and accompany depression.
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