Trajectories of depression and anxiety symptoms over time in the transition to university: Their co-occurrence and the role of self-critical perfectionism.

Little is known about how mental health symptoms develop during the transition to university. Most anxiety and depression research fails to consider how symptom development differs over time across different individuals, and how symptom co-occurrence influences the severity of mental health problems. Students (N = 658) completed online surveys on mental health prior to starting university and every 2 months until April. To better understand mental health problems during this transitional period, latent class growth curve analyses were run to determine how anxiety and depressive symptoms co-develop over time, as well, if self-critical perfectionism was a transdiagnostic risk factor for more severe symptom trajectories in this transition. About 40% of students experienced depression and anxiety symptoms prior to entering/during the transition to university. There is substantial variation between students in terms of how they experience depression and anxiety symptoms, and research needs to take this heterogeneity into account to properly identify which students might benefit most from resources. Self-critical perfectionism was a transdiagnostic risk factor, such that students higher in this trait experienced more severe anxiety and depressive symptom trajectories during this transition. This research further implicates the importance of understanding and studying individual differences in symptom development.

Longitudinal evidence that Event Related Potential measures of self-regulation do not predict everyday goal pursuit.

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.

Autonomous motivation, goal-facilitating behaviours, and dietary goal progress in individuals transitioning to a veg*n diet: A longitudinal study.

Previous studies have consistently shown that autonomous motivation - pursuing goals because one wants to, rather than has to - is associated with greater behaviour maintenance in the context of healthy eating, exercise, and diet maintenance. The present study used a 7-wave longitudinal design to examine how autonomous motivation is related to dietary goal progress in individuals (N = 222) transitioning to a veg*n (i.e., vegetarian or vegan) diet. We hypothesized that when people reported more autonomous motivation (compared to their own average) they would be more successful in reaching their dietary goals. We also explored the role of goal-facilitating behaviours in this process. We found no directional effects of relative autonomous motivation on goal progress or goal-facilitating behaviours, although the concurrent relations were significant. There were also no within-person effects of behaviours on progress. These findings shed light onto the relationship between autonomous motivation, behaviours, and goal progress both at the same time and over time, and highlight the importance of examining within-person fluctuations over time.

More Effort, Less Fatigue: The Role of Interest in Increasing Effort and Reducing Mental Fatigue.

People generally prefer easier over more difficult mental tasks. Using two different adaptations of a demand selection task, we show that interest can influence this effect, such that participants choose options with a higher cognitive workload. Interest was also associated with lower feelings of fatigue. In two studies, participants (N = 63 and N = 158) repeatedly made a choice between completing a difficult or easy math problem. Results show that liking math predicts choosing more difficult (vs. easy) math problems (even after controlling for perceived math skill). Two additional studies used the Academic Diligence Task (Galla et al., 2014), where high school students (N = 447 and N = 884) could toggle between a math task and playing a video game/watching videos. In these studies, we again find that math interest relates to greater proportion of time spent on the math problems. Three of these four studies also examined perceived fatigue, finding that interest relates to lower fatigue. An internal meta-analysis of the four studies finds a small but robust effect of interest on both the willingness to exert greater effort and the experience of less fatigue (despite engaging in more effort).

Perfectionism predicts disordered eating and gambling via focused self-concept among those high in erroneous beliefs about their disordered behavior.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Perfectionism, a focused self-concept, and erroneous beliefs have been implicated in the development and maintenance of various disordered behaviors. However, researchers have yet to examine how these factors combine to explain different disordered behaviors. Herein, we addressed this gap and hypothesized a moderated-mediation model whereby perfectionism fosters the development of disordered behaviors through a focused self-concept. Critically, the effect of a focused self-concept on disordered behaviors is specific to people with erroneous beliefs about their disordered behaviors. The model was tested in the contexts of disordered gambling and disordered eating, particularly dietary restraint. METHOD: In Study 1, participants were community members who gamble (N = 259). In Study 2, participants were university women (N = 219). In both studies, participants completed self-report measures of all constructs that are both reliable and valid. RESULTS: In Study 1, as expected, there was a positive association between perfectionism and disordered gambling, which was mediated by financially focused self-concept. This mediation was only observed among participants who scored high on illusion of control and belief in luck. Likewise, in Study 2, there was a positive association between perfectionism and dietary restraint, which was mediated by appearance focused self-concept. The mediation effect was only observed among participants who believed that maladaptive dietary restraint behaviors were safe and efficacious. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: The findings support the transdiagnostic utility of our model, which may help explain an array of disordered behaviors, including other addictive behaviors as well as behaviors that involve rigid adherence to rules and control.

Self-control in daily life: Prevalence and effectiveness of diverse self-control strategies.

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.

Reward sensitivity following boredom and cognitive effort: A high-powered neurophysiological investigation.

What do people feel like doing after they have exerted cognitive effort or are bored? Here, we empirically test whether people are drawn to rewards (at the neural level) following cognitive effort and boredom. This elucidates the experiences and consequences of engaging in cognitive effort, and compares it to the consequences of experiencing boredom, an affective state with predicted similar motivational consequences. Event-related potentials were recorded after participants (N = 243) were randomized into one of three conditions - boredom (passively observing strings of numbers), cognitive effort (adding 3 to each digit of a four-digit number), or control. In the subsequent task, we focused on the feedback negativity (FN) to assess the brain's immediate response to the presence or absence of reward. Phenomenologically, participants in the boredom condition reported more fatigue than those in the cognitive effort condition, despite reporting exerting less effort. Results suggest participants in the boredom condition exhibited larger FN amplitude than participants in the control condition, while the cognitive effort condition was neither different from boredom nor control. The neural and methodological implications for ego depletion research, including issues of replicability, are discussed.

How do passion for video games and needs frustration explain time spent gaming?

Research applying self-determination theory and the dualistic model of passion (DMP) has shown video games may satisfy basic psychological needs (i.e., competence, autonomy, and relatedness) and be identified as a passion. The DMP distinguishes between healthy or harmonious passion and problematic or obsessive passion (OP), with the latter reflecting an overreliance towards one's passion to obtain needs satisfaction. The experience of daily obstructions to needs satisfaction, or needs frustration (NF), may facilitate such an overreliance. This study explored how NF and both types of passion explain the amount of time that university students spend gaming. The overall association between NF and time spent gaming was not significant. However, for video game users with low levels of OP for gaming, there was a significant negative association between NF and time spent gaming. Additionally, evidence of a mutually reinforcing association between NF and OP for gaming indicates that a vicious cycle exists, whereby a strong OP for gaming predicts and is reinforced by greater NF. The theoretical implications are discussed.

Health goals among American adults: Prevalence, characteristics, and barriers.

Although numerous factors have been demonstrated in laboratory settings to lead to more successful health goal attainment, their actual use in daily goal pursuit is unknown. This study examines spontaneously reported health goals and their characteristics in a sample of 557 American adults. Participants responded to questions about health and health goals, with items assessing motivation, social support, and implementation intentions. In all, 66 percent of respondents had a health goal, 26 percent of participants had implementation intentions, and 47 percent received support from close others. Results suggest that interventions should focus on encouraging goal setting, teaching implementation intentions, and educating close others in providing support.

The emotive nature of conflict monitoring in the medial prefrontal cortex.

The detection of conflict between incompatible impulses, thoughts, and actions is a ubiquitous source of motivation across theories of goal-directed action. In this overview, we explore the hypothesis that conflict is emotive, integrating perspectives from affective science and cognitive neuroscience. Initially, we review evidence suggesting that the mental and biological processes that monitor for information processing conflict-particularly those generated by the anterior midcingulate cortex-track the affective significance of conflict and use this signal to motivate increased control. In this sense, variation in control resembles a form of affect regulation in which control implementation counteracts the aversive experience of conflict. We also highlight emerging evidence proposing that states and dispositions associated with acceptance facilitate control by tuning individuals to the emotive nature of conflict, before proposing avenues for future research, including investigating the role of affect in reinforcement learning and decision making.

Motivational and neural correlates of self-control of eating: A combined neuroimaging and experience sampling study in dieting female college students.

Self-regulation is a critical ability for maintaining a wide range of health behaviors, especially in preventing overeating and weight gain. Previous work has identified various threats to self-control in the eating domain, chief among which are desire strength and negative affect. In the present study, we examined individual differences in college-aged dieters' experiences of these threats as they encountered temptations to eat in their daily lives, and tested whether these differences characterized sub-groups of dieters with divergent self-control outcomes. Specifically, 75 dieting females (age range: 18-23) participated in a combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and experience sampling study. Participants passively viewed food cues during a fMRI session, and then reported their daily eating behaviors for one week via ecological momentary assessment. We examined the characteristics of dieters who exhibited the most favorable combination of the aforementioned factors (i.e., low desire strength and positive mood) and who were thus most successful at regulating their eating. These dieters endorsed more autonomous reasons for their self-regulatory goals, and during the food cue reactivity task more readily recruited the inferior frontal gyrus, a brain region associated with inhibitory control. We suggest that these motivational and neural correlates may also be implicated in self-regulation of other important health behaviors.

What does cognitive control feel like? Effective and ineffective cognitive control is associated with divergent phenomenology.

Cognitive control is accompanied by observable negative affect. But how is this negative affect experienced subjectively, and are these feelings related to variation in cognitive control? To address these questions, 42 participants performed a punished inhibitory control task while periodically reporting their subjective experience. We found that within-subject variation in subjective experience predicted control implementation, but not neural monitoring (i.e., the error-related negativity, ERN). Specifically, anxiety and frustration predicted increased and decreased response caution, respectively, while hopelessness accompanied reduced inhibitory control, and subjective effort coincided with the increased ability to inhibit prepotent responses. Clarifying the nature of these phenomenological results, the effects of frustration, effort, and hopelessness-but not anxiety-were statistically independent from the punishment manipulation. Conversely, while the ERN was increased by punishment, the lack of association between this component and phenomenology suggests that early monitoring signals might precede the development of control-related subjective experience. Our results indicate that the types of feelings experienced during cognitively demanding tasks are related to different aspects of controlled performance, critically suggesting that the relationship between emotion and cognitive control extends beyond the dimension of valence.

Saying "no" to temptation: Want-to motivation improves self-regulation by reducing temptation rather than by increasing self-control.

Self-regulation has been conceptualized as the interplay between controlled and impulsive processes; however, most research has focused on the controlled side (i.e., effortful self-control). The present studies focus on the effects of motivation on impulsive processes, including automatic preferences for goal-disruptive stimuli and subjective reports of temptations and obstacles, contrasting them with effects on controlled processes. This is done by examining people's implicit affective reactions in the face of goal-disruptive "temptations" (Studies 1 and 2), subjective reports of obstacles (Studies 2 and 3) and expended effort (Study 3), as well as experiences of desires and self-control in real-time using experience sampling (Study 4). Across these multiple methods, results show that want-to motivation results in decreased impulsive attraction to goal-disruptive temptations and is related to encountering fewer obstacles in the process of goal pursuit. This, in turn, explains why want-to goals are more likely to be attained. Have-to motivation, on the other hand, was unrelated to people's automatic reactions to temptation cues but related to greater subjective perceptions of obstacles and tempting desires. The discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for self-regulation and motivation.

Goal internalization and persistence as a function of autonomous and directive forms of goal support.

Two prospective studies examined the relations of autonomy support and directive support to goal internalization and goal persistence over a year. Study 1 examined the role of support and internalization in semester-long goals set by college students and whether the goals were reset in the following semester. Study 2 examined semester-long goals and long-term developmental goals. Study 1 showed that autonomy support was not only significantly associated with greater internalization and goal success in the fall semester, but it was also significantly associated with actually resetting and subsequently succeeding at goals that one had failed to reach. Study 2 showed that autonomy support was significantly associated with progress for short-term goals over the semester, whereas directive support was unrelated to progress. For long-term goals, autonomy support was significantly related to greater internalization of goals and to greater goal satisfaction, whereas directive support was significantly negatively related to these outcomes. These studies point to the beneficial effects of autonomy support on goal internalization and resilient persistence. The effects of directive support (null vs. negative) were moderated by the timeline of the goals.

Where Do Self-Concordant Goals Come From? The Role of Domain-Specific Psychological Need Satisfaction.

Previous research has shown that self-concordant goals are more likely to be attained. But what leads someone to adopt a self-concordant goal in the first place? The present research addresses this question by looking at the domains in which goals are set, focusing on the amount of psychological need satisfaction experienced in these domains. Across three experimental studies, we demonstrate that domain-related need satisfaction predicts the extent to which people adopt self-concordant goals in a given domain, laying the foundation for successful goal pursuit. In addition, we show that need satisfaction influences goal self-concordance because in need-satisfying domains people are both more likely to choose the most self-concordant goal (among a set of comparable choices), and are more likely to internalize the possible goals. The implications of this research for goal setting and pursuit as well as for the importance of examining goals within their broader motivational framework are discussed.

Distinguishing autonomous and directive forms of goal support: their effects on goal progress, relationship quality, and subjective well-being.

Three studies examined the relations of autonomy support and directive support to goal progress over 3 months. Autonomy support was defined in terms of empathic perspective-taking, whereas directive support was defined in terms of the provision of positive guidance. Results from Study 1 revealed that autonomy support between romantic partners was significantly positively related to goal progress over 3 months, and that the beneficial effect of autonomy support was mediated by enhanced autonomous goal motivation. Study 2 involved female friend dyads and extended the goal progress results to include both self-reports and reports by peers. Study 3 showed that autonomy support similarly promoted progress at vicarious goals. Across three studies, autonomy support was also significantly associated with improved relationship quality and subjective well-being. Directive support was marginally associated with better goal progress across the three studies and unrelated to relationship quality or well-being.

Restoration process of the need for autonomy: the early alarm stage.

Autonomy is described by self-determination theory as a basic psychological need, essential for individuals' well-being. While basic needs are generally thought to induce a restorative response when thwarted, evidence for such a process is lacking for autonomy. To date, most evidence indicates that autonomy deprivation leads to disaffection of this need in favor of other motives. A temporal model based on the general adaptation syndrome was adapted to reconcile this seeming contradiction. Specifically, it is hypothesized that an early alarm response aimed at restoring the satisfaction of the need for autonomy should precede the later relinquishment and compensation of this need that would result from a prolonged deprivation. Three studies provide support for this model by showing the existence of the immediate autonomy restorative response. Using a controlling situation to manipulate autonomy deprivation, the authors demonstrate in Experiments 1 and 2 that a controlling context leads to enhanced accessibility and an approach bias for autonomy-related stimuli. Experiment 3 indicates that the urge to restore autonomy can also affect personal judgment, leading individuals to make more independent judgments, exercising a nonreactive form of autonomy. Integration of this model within self-determination theory is discussed.

The effects of self-criticism and self-oriented perfectionism on goal pursuit.

Five separate studies examined the associations of self-criticism and self-oriented perfectionism with goal pursuit across a variety of domains. Although self-criticism has previously been shown to be related to diminished goal progress, a controversy remains regarding the potential association between aspects of "positive perfectionism," such as self-oriented perfectionism, and enhanced goal progress. The results of the five studies demonstrated a consistent pattern of negative association between self-criticism and goal progress. The results also showed a positive association between self-oriented perfectionism and goal progress when self-criticism was controlled. The important role of self-criticism for understanding the impact of perfectionistic concerns is highlighted by these results. Implications for the debate concerning the possible positive effects of perfectionistic strivings are also discussed.

Seeking social connectedness: interdependent self-construal and impression formation using photographic cues of social connectedness.

Impression formation research has traditionally focused on either the characteristics of the target or of the participant, failing to examine their interplay. In the present study, we explored the role of interdependent self-construal on ratings of others who are portrayed as alone or connected. We hypothesized that participants with an interdependent view of the self would prefer others who are portrayed as socially connected, while the opposite would be true for participants low on interdependence. Results showed that college students high on interdependence rated a university professor photographed with another person relatively more positively than a professor photographed alone. This pattern was reversed for participants low on interdependence.

Balance across contexts: importance of balanced need satisfaction across various life domains.

Self-determination theory posits that satisfaction of three basic psychological needs-autonomy, competence, and relatedness-are required for psychological well-being, and a recent study showed that the balance in the satisfaction of these three needs independently affects well-being. The present investigation builds on these findings by examining the balance of adolescents' need satisfaction across distinct life contexts. The results of three studies show that adolescents who experience a balance of need satisfaction across important life contexts, including at school, at home, with friends, and in part-time jobs, reported higher well-being and better school adjustment. This finding emerged consistently across four countries and across multiple measures of school adjustment, including teacher reports. Together, these results support previous research that highlights the importance of consistency for psychological functioning.