Self-Regulation of Health Behavior Mann, Traci; de Ridder, Denise; Fujita, Kentaro
Health psychology,
05/2013, Volume:
32, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Objective:
The goal of this article is to review and highlight the relevance of social psychological research on self-regulation for health-related theory and practice.
Methods:
We first review ...research on goal setting, or determining which goals to pursue and the criteria to determine whether one has succeeded. We discuss when and why people adopt goals, what properties of goals increase the likelihood of their attainment, and why people abandon goals. We then review research on goal striving, which includes the planning and execution of actions that lead to goal attainment, and the processes that people use to shield their goals from being disrupted by other competing goals, temptations, or distractions. We describe four types of strategies that people use when pursuing goals.
Results:
We find that self-regulation entails the operation of a number of psychological mechanisms, and that there is no single solution that will help all people in all situations. We recommend a number of strategies that can help people to more effectively set and attain health-related goals.
Conclusions:
We conclude that enhancing health behavior requires a nuanced understanding and sensitivity to the varied, dynamic psychological processes involved in self-regulation, and that health is a prototypical and central domain in which to examine the relevance of these theoretical models for real behavior. We discuss the implications of this research for theory and practice in health-related domains.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ, UPUK
This study was designed to examine the roles of emotional reactivity, self‐regulation, and pubertal timing in prosocial behaviors during adolescence. Participants were 850 sixth graders (50 percent ...female, mean age = 11.03, standard deviation = .17) who were followed up at the age of 15. In hierarchical regression models, measures of emotional reactivity, self‐regulation, pubertal timing, and their interactions were used to predict (concurrently and over time) adolescents' prosocial behaviors in the home and with peers. Overall, the findings provide evidence for pubertal and temperament‐based predictors of prosocial behaviors expressed in different contexts. Self‐regulation was positively related to both forms of prosocial behavior, concurrently and longitudinally. Emotional reactivity showed moderately consistent effects, showing negative concurrent relations to prosocial behavior with peers and negative longitudinal relations (4 years later) to prosocial behavior at home. Some curvilinear effects of temperament on prosocial behaviors were also found. Effects of pubertal timing were found to interact with gender, such that boys who were early maturers showed the highest levels of prosocial behavior at home concurrently. Discussion focuses on the role of temperament‐based mechanisms in the expression of prosocial behaviors in different contexts in adolescence.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Self-control helps to align behavior with long-term goals (e.g., exercising to stay fit) and shield it from conflicting hedonic goals (e.g., relaxing). Decades of research have shown that ...self-control is associated with numerous positive outcomes, such as well-being. In the present article, we argue that hedonic goal pursuit is equally important for well-being, and that conflicting long-term goals can undermine it in the form of intrusive thoughts. In Study 1, we developed a measure of trait hedonic capacity, which captures people’s success in hedonic goal pursuit and the occurrence of intrusive thoughts. In Studies 2A and 2B, people’s trait hedonic capacity relates positively to well-being. Study 3 confirms intrusive thoughts as major impeding mechanism of hedonic success. Studies 4 and 5 demonstrate that trait hedonic capacity predicts successful hedonic goal pursuit in everyday life. We conclude that hedonic goal pursuit represents a largely neglected but adaptive aspect of self-regulation.
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NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
— This article considers the effects of psychosocial stress on child development and describes mechanisms through which early stress in the context of poverty affects the functioning of neural ...networks that underlie executive functions and self‐regulation. It examines the effects of early experience on glucocorticoid and catecholamine levels that influence neural activity in areas of the brain associated with executive functions, primarily as studied in animal models. Finally, it considers the strengths and limitations of this research, its relevance to understanding stress reactivity from the perspective of biological sensitivity to context, and the implications for the study of risk and resilience processes and early intervention to prevent developmental delays.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Background and Aims
With governments relying increasingly upon the alcohol industry's self‐regulated marketing codes to restrict alcohol marketing activity, there is a need to summarize the findings ...of research relevant to alcohol marketing controls. This paper provides a systematic review of studies investigating the content of, and exposure to, alcohol marketing in relation to self‐regulated guidelines.
Methods
Peer‐reviewed papers were identified through four literature search engines: SCOPUS, Web of Science, PubMed and PsychINFO. Non‐peer‐reviewed reports produced by public health agencies, alcohol research centers, non‐governmental organizations and government research centers were also identified. Ninety‐six publications met the inclusion criteria.
Results
Of the 19 studies evaluating a specific marketing code and 25 content analysis studies reviewed, all detected content that could be considered potentially harmful to children and adolescents, including themes that appeal strongly to young men. Of the 57 studies of alcohol advertising exposure, high levels of youth exposure and high awareness of alcohol advertising were found for television, radio, print, digital and outdoor advertisements. Youth exposure to alcohol advertising has increased over time, even as greater compliance with exposure thresholds has been documented.
Conclusions
Violations of the content guidelines within self‐regulated alcohol marketing codes are highly prevalent in certain media. Exposure to alcohol marketing, particularly among youth, is also prevalent. Taken together, the findings suggest that the current self‐regulatory systems that govern alcohol marketing practices are not meeting their intended goal of protecting vulnerable populations.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, FSPLJ, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VSZLJ
Transformational leadership is associated with a range of positive outcomes. Yet, according to substitutes for leadership theory, there may be circumstances under which it is difficult, if not ...impossible, for leaders to inspire and challenge their employees. Therefore, we hypothesize that transformational leadership behaviors as well as employee self-leadership strategies contribute to employee work engagement and job performance. Furthermore, we hypothesize that transformational leadership behaviors are more effective when employees have a high need for leadership, whereas self-leadership strategies are more effective when employees have a low need for leadership. A sample of 57 unique leader–employee dyads filled out a quantitative diary survey at the end of each week, for a period of five weeks. The results of multilevel structural equation modeling showed that employees were more engaged in their work and received higher performance ratings from their leader when leaders used more transformational leadership behaviors, and when employees used more self-leadership strategies. Furthermore, we showed that transformational leadership behaviors were more effective when employees had a high (vs. low) need for leadership and that the opposite was true for employee self-leadership. These findings contribute to our understanding of the role of employees in the transformational leadership process.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NMLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Objective
Can having too much self‐control make people unhappy? Researchers have increasingly questioned the unilateral goodness of self‐control and proposed that it is beneficial only up to a ...certain point, after which it becomes detrimental. The little empirical research on the issue shows mixed results. Hence, we tested whether a curvilinear relationship between self‐control and subjective well‐being exists.
Method
We used multiple metrics (questionnaires, behavioral ratings), sources (self‐report, other‐report), and methods (cross‐sectional measurement, dayreconstruction method, experience sampling method) across six studies (Ntotal = 5,318).
Results
We found that self‐control positively predicted subjective well‐being (cognitive and affective), but there was little evidence for an inverted U‐shaped curve. The results held after statistically controlling for demographics and other psychological confounds.
Conclusion
Our main finding is that self‐control enhances subjective well‐being with little to no apparent downside of too much self‐control.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Most theoretical models of arousal/regulatory function emphasise the maintenance of homeostasis; consistent with this, most previous research into arousal has concentrated on examining individuals’ ...recovery following the administration of experimentally administered stressors. Here, we take a different approach: we recorded day‐long spontaneous fluctuations in autonomic arousal (indexed via electrocardiogram, heart rate variability and actigraphy) in a cohort of 82 typically developing 12‐month‐old infants while they were at home and awake. Based on the aforementioned models, we hypothesised that extreme high or low arousal states might be more short‐lived than intermediate arousal states. Our results suggested that, contrary to this, both low‐ and high‐arousal states were more persistent than intermediate arousal states. The same pattern was present when the data were viewed over multiple epoch sizes from 1 s to 5 min; over 10–15‐minute time‐scales, high‐arousal states were more persistent than low‐ and intermediate states. One possible explanation for these findings is that extreme arousal states have intrinsically greater hysteresis; another is that, through ‘metastatic’ processes, small initial increases and decreases in arousal can become progressively amplified over time. Rather than exclusively using experimental paradigms to study recovery, we argue that future research should also use naturalistic data to study the mechanisms through which states can be maintained or amplified over time.
We recorded naturalistic fluctuations in autonomic arousal in 12‐month‐olds while they were at home. We found that, across multiple time‐scales, extreme high‐ or low‐arousal states were more persistent than intermediate arousal states. One explanation for this is that extreme arousal states may have intrinsically greater hysteresis; another is that, through ‘metastatic’ processes, small initial increases and decreases in arousal can become progressively amplified over time.
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DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The common sense model of illness self-regulation outlines the dynamic processes by which individuals perceive, interpret, and respond to health threats and illness-related information. An extended ...version of the model is proposed, which specifies additional constructs and processes to explain how lay perceptions of health threats impact coping responses and health-related outcomes. The extended model provides detail on: (a) the mediating process by which individuals' illness representations relate to illness outcomes through adoption of coping procedures; (b) how illness representations are activated by presentation of health-threatening stimuli; (c) behavioral and treatment beliefs as determinants of coping procedures and illness outcomes alongside illness representations; and (d) effects of moderators of relations between cognitive representations, coping procedures, and illness outcomes. The extended model sets an agenda for future research that addresses knowledge gaps regarding how individuals represent and cope with health threats, and may inform effective illness-management interventions. We identify the kinds of research required to provide robust evidence for the extended model propositions. We call for research that employs incipient illness samples, utilizes designs that capture dynamic processes in the model such as cross-lagged panel and intervention designs, and adopts illness-specific measures of coping procedures rather than relying on generic instruments.
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BFBNIB, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Scholars are paying increasing attention to the “dark side” of citizenship behavior. One aspect of this dark side that has received relatively scant attention is “helping pressure”—an employee's ...perception that s/he is being encouraged to, or otherwise feels that s/he should, enact helping behavior at work. Drawing from theory associated with work stress, we examine affective and cognitive mechanisms that potentially explain why helping pressure, counterintuitively, may lead employees to engage in deviant behavior instead. Beyond examining these possible mechanisms, we also answer calls to identify a potential buffer to these effects. Drawing from self‐determination theory, we examine how an employee's intrinsic motivation for citizenship may lessen the deleterious consequences of helping pressure at work. In two studies (a within‐individual experience‐sampling study and a two‐wave between‐individual study), we find consistent evidence that helping pressure has a positive indirect relationship with deviant behavior through increased negative affect. Further, we find evidence that intrinsic motivation for citizenship weakens the positive relationship of helping pressure with negative affect, buffering the indirect effect on subsequent deviant behavior. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings for the study of helping pressure at work are discussed.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
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