Roy F. Baumeister - US grants

The proposed research will study the processes by which people respond to evaluations that threaten their favorable concepts of themselves. Its particular focus will be on how the interpersonal context alters the processing of this personally relevant information. Identical evaluations will be given to people in either public or private contexts, and the proposed studies will examine how these differences affect the way people attend to (vs. ignore) the threatening information, how well they recall it later, how they discriminate among different parts of it, how they think about it and construct possible refutations, and how these evaluations affect how they plan an interaction strategy. In short, it will examine the cognitive, motivational, and interpersonal aspects of responding to a self-concept threat. Repression and self-deception have long been identified as central factors in mental illness, while the maintenance of self-esteem is vital to adjustment and mental health. The proposed work will look at the processes involved in maintaining self-esteem in the face of threat, including repressive defenses. The proposed research is divided into four sections. The first project will examine immediate cognitive responses to threatening feedback in terms of various defensive options, aided by comparison of repressors with non-repressors. The second project will examine alternative forms of presenting evaluative feedback and of allowing people to peruse this feedback, and it will study how defensive motivations and interpersonal contexts alter the narration of past personal experiences. The third project will look at interpersonal aspects and consequences of these various defensive responses to threat, focusing on how people set up their interactions with others after receiving threatening feedback. The final project will test the hypothesis that some people respond to threat b a rejection of meaningful thought (as suggested by evidence about suicidal individuals), and it will examine defenses against recall of threatening material.

Self-defeating behavior patterns constitute a formidable barrier to healthy, adaptive functioning, as well as impairing one's ability to compete effectively and manage one's affairs in a rational, successful fashion. Moreover, insofar as self-defeating behavior runs counter to the rational pursuit of self-interest, it challenges psychology's basic assumptions about human nature. Decades of research have confirmed beyond a doubt that people do engage in systematic patterns of self-defeat, yet these patterns have failed to conform to preliminary theories based on death wishes, desire for punishment, or self-destructive motives. The proposed research will explore two major causes of self-defeating behavior, namely overcommitment arising from self-aggrandizing responses and risk-prone judgment styles elicited by emotional distress. The first part of the proposed work investigates the hypothesis that people sometimes defeat themselves by committing themselves to goals and obligations that exceed their capabilities. Often people can choose their goals and obligations; setting excessively high goals can lead to disaster. The pervasive human tendency to overestimate one's capabilities and strengths increases the likelihood of this costly mistake. In particular, people who have high self-esteem but receive some esteem- threatening news, such as an initial failure or setback, tend to respond by taking an extremely self-aggrandizing pattern that can lead into unrealistic commitments. Goals that exceed one's capabilities will by definition lead to failure; in addition, very high goals may increase the sense of performance pressure which may in turn hamper the person's ability to perform effectively, thus constituting a further obstacle to effective and healthy functioning. This research will also provide a much-needed counterweight to the predominant tendency to view high self- esteem as an unmitigated benefit and as a foundation of healthy adjustment. Both laboratory experiments and first-person accounts of actual experiences will be used in this research. The second part of the proposed research will show how emotional distress alters patterns of judgment and risk appraisal, leading to a tendency to make poor, nonoptimal decisions that increase the likelihood of bad outcomes. More precisely, unpleasant emotional states foster a preference for high-payoff gambles that carry an increased risk of misfortune. In such states, people seem drawn toward activities that offer a chance (however small) of a very positive outcome, presumably because these outcomes might help the person to escape from the bad mood. Unfortunately, people in such a state appear to discount or ignore the likelihood of bad outcomes, and so many of the choices they make will lead to grief, which would perhaps intensify the emotional distress. Emotional suffering may therefore become part of self-perpetuating cycle which would make health, happiness, and adjustment impossible. Again, both laboratory simulations and first-person accounts of actual experiences will be used to do this research.

The proposed studies are designed tovarify and build on preliminary evidence that all the self's acts of volition-choice, responsibility, initiative, self-regulation, controlled processing - draw on the same very limited resource, which is easily depleted by self-control or decision-making. Once depleted, this aspect of the self is then of ten unable or disinclined to cope with furthe demands or choices, and the results may include a passive reluctance to face up to decisions as well as broad failures of self-control. Passivity and self-control failure are central to many health and adjustment problems, including addiction, failure to take prescribed medication, procrastination, burnout, and binge eating. The first section of this proposal seeks to verify and extend preliminary evidence that self-control is a limited resources subject to depletion or fatigue. After people exert self-control, are they less able to control themselves in a second, seemingly unrelated sphere? Laboratory experiments will examine successive self-control exertions in unrelated spheres for evidence of fatigue or depletion. The second section moves from the relatively narrow focus on self-control to the broader concern with the self's choice-making activity in general. The key theoretical question is whether that limited resource used for self-control is the same resource or energy that the self uses for making all its decisions and choices, for initiating action, and for taking responsibility. If so, then that stock of energy is indeed one of the most central and important features of the self. The research plan is to show that active choice-making impairs subsequent self-control, and vice versa. The third section of the proposal addresses a key theoretical question surrounding this vital aspect of the self. Is the drop in self-control after an initial exertion due to a loss of motivation or of ability? Our model suggests that the self responds to depletion of its regulatory energy by trying to conserve what energy is left, even though it could make another exertion if necessary. Passivity and inaction may thus be strategic and even adaptive. The fourth section will explore several implications and applications of the depletion of self: vulnerability to loss of self-esteem from ego threat; prejudice; procrastination; and overeating.

DESCRIPTION (provided by investigator): Social rejection and exclusion from social groups have been widely suggested as contributing to a broad range of societal and mental health problems, including aggression, drug abuse, suicide, and anxiety. The proposed research begins with a recognition of the pervasively social nature of adolescent and young adult human beings, a nature that includes a powerful motivation by excluding such people from social groups may therefore elicit an assortment of abnormal, antisocial, undesirable, and even pathological responses. The proposed research will employ primarily laboratory manipulations of social rejection and exclusion to investigate the direct consequences of this common but often highly aversive experience. People will be exposed by random assignment to experiences of social acceptance and social rejection, such as hearing that no other member of an ad hoc group expressed a preference to work with them individually, or a diagnostic forecast that they will be alone later in life. The first part of the application proposes to study how social exclusion causes a shift toward antisocial behaviors (including aggression) and away from prosocial behaviors (such as affiliating and helping). The second part will investigate inner psychological processes that may contribute to these behavioral manifestations. The inner processes affected by exclusion may include self-regulation and volition, emotion, and passivity. Rejection may promote depression and impair people's control over attention. The third application will pull the first two parts together to show that the impairments in self-regulation mediate the antisocial responses. The fourth part of the application will examine possible gender differences in the effects of social exclusion in terms of the basis for rejection, internalizing versus externalizing responses, and the social sphere implicated in the exclusion. The fifth project will examine social exclusion outside the laboratory, in order to elucidate how exclusion affects people in everyday life.

NIH Roadmap Initiative tag; behavioral /social science research tag; locus of control