Self-regulation has been studied across levels of analysis; however, little attention has been paid to the extent to which self-report, neural, and behavioral indices predict goal pursuit in ...real-life. We use a mixed-method approach (N = 201) to triangulate evidence among established measures of different aspects of self-regulation to predict both the process of goal pursuit using experience sampling, as well as longer-term goal progress at 1, 3, and 6-month follow-ups. While self-reported trait self-control predicts goal attainment months later, we observe a null relationship between longitudinal goal attainment and ERPs associated with performance-monitoring and reactivity to positive/rewarding stimuli. Despite evidence that these ERPs are reliable and trait-like, and despite theorizing that suggests otherwise, our findings suggest that these ERPs are not meaningfully associated with everyday goal attainment. These findings challenge the ecological validity of brain measures thought to assess aspects of self-regulation.
Touch is central to mammalian communication, socialization, and wellbeing. Despite this prominence, interpersonal touch is relatively understudied. In this preregistered investigation, we assessed ...the influence of interpersonal touch on the subjective, neural, and behavioral correlates of cognitive control. Forty-five romantic couples were recruited (N = 90; dating >6 months), and one partner performed an inhibitory control task while electroencephalography was recorded to assess neural performance monitoring. Interpersonal touch was provided by the second partner and was manipulated between experimental blocks. A within-subject repeated-measures design was used to maximize statistical power, with our sample size providing 80% power for even small effect sizes (ds > .25). Results indicated that participants were not only happier when receiving touch, but also showed increased neural processing of mistakes. Further exploratory cognitive modeling using indirect effects tests and drift diffusion models of decision making revealed that touch was indirectly associated with both improved inhibitory control and increased rates of evidence accumulation (drift rate) through its influence on neural monitoring. Thus, beyond regulating emotion and stress, interpersonal touch appears to enhance the neurocognitive processes underling flexible goal-directed behavior.
Many everyday choices are based on personal, subjective preferences. When choosing between two options, we often feel conflicted, especially when trading off costs and benefits occurring at different ...times (e.g., saving for later versus spending now). Although previous work has investigated the neurophysiological basis of conflict during inhibitory control tasks, less is known about subjective conflict resulting from competing subjective preferences. In this pre-registered study, we investigated subjective conflict during intertemporal choice, whereby participants chose between smaller immediate versus larger delayed rewards (e.g., $15 today vs. $22 in 30 days). We used economic modeling to parametrically vary eleven different levels of conflict, and recorded EEG data and pupil dilation. Midfrontal theta power, derived from EEG, correlated with pupil responses, and our results suggest that these signals track different gradations of subjective conflict. Unexpectedly, both signals were also maximally enhanced when decisions were surprisingly easy. Therefore, these signals may track events requiring increased attention and adaptive shifts in behavioral responses, with subjective conflict being only one type of such event. Our results suggest that the neural systems underlying midfrontal theta and pupil responses interact when weighing costs and benefits during intertemporal choice. Thus, understanding these interactions might elucidate how individuals resolve self-control conflicts.
•Modeled conflict during intertemporal choice and measured EEG and pupil responses.•Midfrontal theta and pupil responses parametrically tracked subjective conflict.•But theta and pupil responses were also large when decisions were surprisingly easy.•These signals may implement adaptive control during value-guided choice.
Self-control is assessed using a remarkable array of measures. In a series of five data-sets (overall N = 2,641) and a mini meta-analysis, we explored the association between canonical ...operationalisations of self-control: The Self-Control Scale and two measures of inhibition-related executive functioning (the Stroop and Flanker paradigms). Overall, Bayesian correlational analyses suggested little-to-no relationship between self-reported self-control and performance on the Stroop and Flanker tasks. The Bayesian meta-analytical summary of all five data-sets further favoured a null relationship between both types of measurement. These results suggest that the field’s most widely used measure of self-reported self-control is uncorrelated with two of the most widely adopted executive functioning measures of self-control. Consequently, theoretical and practical conclusions drawn using one measure (e.g., the Self-Control Scale) cannot be generalised to findings using the other (e.g., the Stroop task). The lack of empirical correlation between measures of self-control do not invalidate either measure, but instead suggest that treatments of the construct of self-control need to pay greater attention to convergent validity among the many measures used to operationalize self-control.
Many clinical neuroscience investigations have suggested that trait anxiety is associated with increased neural reactivity to mistakes in the form of an event-related potential called the ...error-related negativity (ERN). Several recent meta-analyses indicated that the anxiety-ERN association was of a small-to-medium effect size, however, these prior investigations did not comprehensively adjust effect sizes for publication bias. Here, in an updated meta-analysis (k = 58, N = 3819), we found support for an uncorrected effect size of r = −0.19, and applied a range of methods to test for and correct publication bias (trim-and-fill, PET, PEESE, Peters' test, three-parameter selection model). The majority of bias-correction methods suggested that the correlation between anxiety and the ERN is non-zero, but smaller than the uncorrected effect size (average adjusted effect size: r = −0.12, range: r = −0.05 to −0.18). Moderation analyses also revealed more robust effects for clinical anxiety and anxious samples characterised by worry, however, it should be noted that these larger effects were also associated with elevated indicators of publication bias relative to the overall analysis. Mixed anxiety and sub-clinical anxiety were not associated with the amplitude of the ERN. Our results suggest that the anxiety-ERN relationship survives multiple corrections for publication bias, albeit not among all sub-types and populations of anxiety. Nevertheless, only 50% of the studies included in our analysis reported significant results, indicating that future research exploring the anxiety-ERN relationship would benefit from increased statistical power.
•Trait anxiety is associated with increased neural reactivity to mistakes in the form of an event-related potential called the error-related negativity (ERN)•Our updated meta-analysis supported an uncorrected correlation between anxiety and the ERN of r =-.19, and we applied a range of methods to test for and correct publication bias•Our bias-corrected effect sizes suggested that the association between anxiety and the ERN was non-zero, but smaller than the uncorrected effect size (average r = -.12)•These results suggest that theoretical accounts of the anxiety-ERN relationship should pay close attention to effect size in ongoing research
•When pursuing healthy eating, benefits are not realized immediately.•Being able to connect to our future selves may impact our daily eating decisions.•We conducted preregistered analyses showing ...links between self-continuity and healthy eating.•These associations were in part mediated by autonomous motivation.
In the pursuit of healthy eating, as with many other health goals, most benefits for one's health are not realized immediately, but instead occur after a person engages in consistent patterns of healthy eating across many weeks, months, and years. Thus, being able to represent temporally distant benefits when making seemingly trivial daily eating decisions (e.g., choosing fruit salad rather than ice cream for dessert) should be a key determinant of healthy eating. Here, we tested a priori, preregistered hypotheses in a large online sample of adults (N = 360) by examining the role of self-continuity in people's daily eating behaviors, as well as the relationship between self-continuity and motivational factors behind people's decisions to eat healthy. We also examined the moderating influence of self-continuity on training in self-regulatory strategies intended to promote healthy eating. Overall, we garnered support for our hypotheses, as there were links between self-continuity measures, autonomous motivation levels, and daily eating of healthy and unhealthy foods, with participants’ ability to consider future consequences associated with unhealthy eating measures, and participants’ connectedness to their future selves associated with healthy eating measures. Taken together, the present findings suggest that continuity with one's future self is an important factor underlying daily eating decisions and successful goal pursuit in the eating domain.
Recent years have witnessed calls for increased rigour and credibility in the cognitive and behavioural sciences, including psychophysiology. Many procedures exist to increase rigour, and among the ...most important is the need to increase statistical power. Achieving sufficient statistical power, however, is a considerable challenge for resource intensive methodologies, particularly for between-subjects designs. Meta-analysis is one potential solution; yet, the validity of such quantitative review is limited by potential bias in both the primary literature and in meta-analysis itself. Here, we provide a non-technical overview and evaluation of open science methods that could be adopted to increase the transparency of novel meta-analyses. We also contrast post hoc statistical procedures that can be used to correct for publication bias in the primary literature. We suggest that traditional meta-analyses, as applied in ERP research, are exploratory in nature, providing a range of plausible effect sizes without necessarily having the ability to confirm (or disconfirm) existing hypotheses. To complement traditional approaches, we detail how prospective meta-analyses, combined with multisite collaboration, could be used to conduct statistically powerful, confirmatory ERP research.
•Meta-analyses can be used to pool results and increase statistical power in psychophysiological research•Retrospective meta-analyses are often undermined by bias in the primary literature and in the meta-analyses themselves•Open science methods and post hoc statistical procedures can counter and prevent bias in the production of meta-analyses•The combination of prospective meta-analyses with team science approaches could facilitate well-powered confirmatory tests of ERP hypotheses
Objective
What strategies do people use to resist desires in their day‐to‐day life? How effective are these strategies? Do people use different strategies for different desires? This study addresses ...these questions using experience sampling to examine strategy use in daily life.
Method
Participants (N = 197, Mage = 20.4, 63% female) reported on their use of six specific strategies (situation modification, distraction, reminding self of goals, promise to give in later, reminder of why it is bad, willpower) to resist desires (4,462 desires reported over a week).
Results
Participants reported using at least one strategy 89% of the time, and more than one strategy 25% of the time. Goal reminders and promises to give in later were more likely to be used for stronger desires. People also preferred different strategies for different types of desires (e.g., eating vs. leisure vs. work, etc.).
Conclusion
In contrast to recent theoretical predictions, we find that many strategies, including inhibition, are similarly effective and that using multiple strategies is especially effective.
Tattoos present a diagnostic challenge for dermatologists. Various reactions to tattoo have been identified in the literature ranging from allergic, to infectious, to neoplastic. Of the neoplastic ...cases identified, it is unclear whether the tattoo ink was directly causative, or if the cases were merely coincidence, as the number of cutaneous malignancies has also been on the rise. We present a novel case of two desmoplastic intradermal Spitz nevi arising within red tattoo ink.
It has recently been suggested that gratitude can benefit self-regulation by reducing impulsivity during economic decision making. We tested if comparable benefits of gratitude are observed for ...neural performance monitoring and conflict-driven self-control. In a pre-post design, 61 participants were randomly assigned to either a gratitude or happiness condition, and then performed a pre-induction flanker task. Subsequently, participants recalled an autobiographical event where they had felt grateful or happy, followed by a post-induction flanker task. Despite closely following existing protocols, participants in the gratitude condition did not report elevated gratefulness compared to the happy group. In regard to self-control, we found no association between gratitude--operationalized by experimental condition or as a continuous predictor--and any control metric, including flanker interference, post-error adjustments, or neural monitoring (the error-related negativity, ERN). Thus, while gratitude might increase economic patience, such benefits may not generalize to conflict-driven control processes.
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