Shelly L. Gable, Ph.D. - US grants

The proposed program of research seeks to disentangle the effects of dispositional tendencies and daily events on well-being and to understand the interaction of these constructs as they relate to predicting psychological and physical health. Specifically, the studies described in this proposal were designed to investigate the relationships among people's dispositional sensitivities to approaching positive outcomes and avoiding negative outcomes, daily events, and well-being. The studies are aimed at increasing our understanding of how both between person differences and within-person-variability combine to predict psychological health and self-reported physical symptoms. The research design is aimed at assessing dispositional tendencies, measuring daily events and well- being for 21 days, and assessing psychological health and self-reported physical symptoms. The methods allow for simultaneous examination of trait and state factors involved in well-being, and data will be analyzed with statistical techniques designed for hierarchically nested data such as these.

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by investigator): From infancy to old age people are motivated to form and maintain social bonds, and the quality of their social bonds has important consequences for health and well-being. Research on motivation and goals has shown that the distinction between appetition (i.e., approach) and aversion (i.e., avoidance) is import for understanding motivational processes. The present application examines two types of social motives and goals, those focused on obtaining positive social outcomes, approach motives and goals; and those focused on preventing negative social outcomes, avoidance motives and goals. The distinction between approach and avoidance social motivation provides a framework for understanding the relationship between the basic motivation to form and maintain social bonds and mental and physical health. The overall aim of the research is to present and test three implications of an approach-avoidance model of social motivation. Broadly, the model implies that approach and avoidance social motivational systems i) are sensitive to different social stimuli and cues, ii) are associated with different dimensions of well-being and health, and iii) regulate behavior through different processes. The specific aims of the proposed program of research are to test the three predictions of the approach and avoidance model of social motivation 1) regarding change over time in social well-being (e.g., loneliness) and mental health, 2) in the context of everyday social interactions and daily fluctuations in well-being, and 3) in a controlled laboratory study of a single social interaction. Three studies were designed to systematically address the specific aims of the current application. Study 1 will be a 12-month longitudinal study of 120 new college students. Study 2 will enroll 100 participants in a fourteen-day, web-based interval-contingent daily experience study. Study 3 will be a laboratory study of 100 dyads in which participants' goals for a social interaction with another participant will be manipulated (approach/avoidance).

Good things happen to people every day. Some positive events are routine, such as passing a pop-quiz, finishing a project at work, or having lunch with your best friend. Other positive events are major, such as making the basketball team, landing your first job, or getting engaged. Research has shown that positive events occur about three times more often than negative events. Further, positive events contribute significantly to mental and physical health. Although much research has highlighted what people do when negative events occur, little is known about what people do when good things happen. Moreover, very little research has focused on how or why positive events are associated with better health and well-being. One thing that is known from past work is that an important way that people react to positive events is to share their good news with others, a process called capitalization. When others react supportively to capitalization attempts, the discloser experiences personal benefits (beyond the effect of the positive event itself), such as more positive emotions, higher subjective well-being and self-esteem, and decreased loneliness. In addition, receiving supportive capitalization responses is associated with increases in the quality of the relationship between the discloser and the responder (e.g., higher satisfaction, trust, and closeness). This project will investigate the idea that one reason why positive events affect health and well-being is because they increase people's ability to deal effectively with life's typical stressors.

Specifically, this work will test the idea that when people share positive events and receive supportive responses, they cope better with later negative events. This project is thus designed to understand the role that responses to capitalization disclosures play in shaping important coping resources: perceptions of the social support available during stressful times, perceptions of self-efficacy, and perceived control over one's outcomes. A key prediction is that receiving supportive responses to positive event disclosures will lead to increases in the perception of the availability of support for negative events, and increases in feelings of self-efficacy and control of life's stressors. In contrast receiving unsupportive responses to positive event disclosures will lead to decreases in these coping resources. The project balances the careful control offered in the laboratory with studies that occur in the natural context of everyday social interaction by employing diverse methods including a longitudinal study with a daily experience component, experimental laboratory studies, and a field experiment with daily experience methodology.

This project is important because the majority of people's life experiences are positive but scientists know very little about how people respond to them or how they regulate them. Even less research has examined how positive experiences contribute to people's ability to cope with stressors. The results have a high potential to benefit society because they will improve our understanding of these coping processes which have a documented impact on well-being, health and even mortality. The results have the potential to inform theoretical models of stress, coping, and close relationships, help understand the source of perceptions of social support and coping resources, and may provide the basis for effective interventions aimed at increasing coping resources and reducing stress.