Symposium: AFFECTIVE SELF-REGULATION

Affective self-regulation depends on emotional attitudes to life-goals, including defensive needs. Therefore, studies concern  1)The influence of promotion vs. prevention focus, and positive vs. negative approach to events (BAS vs. BIS), on decision making and pragmatic thinking.  2) Self-regulation in telic activity as a set of automatic evaluations (positive and negative affects). 3) Specific functions of basic (quasi-automatic) vs. reflective emotions in goal reaching 3) The regulatory focus characteristics for repressors  vs. defensive high anxious , and a difference in automatic vs. control impact on two kinds of defensive information processing.

1. Marta Roczniewska (Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sopot Faculty, Poland) & Alina Kolańczyk (Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sopot Faculty, Poland)

Automatic Evaluation as a Function of Regulatory Focus and Goal Pursuit

Ferguson and Bargh (2004) demonstrated that objects related to current goal pursuit are rated as more positive which allows to include them into attention and action. We hypothesized that the above relevance is assigned differently depending on  regulatory states. In his theory of self-regulation Higgins (1997) distinguishes between promotion (ideals and aspirations) and prevention (responsibility and safety) focus which strongly influence individual’s cognition, emotion and decision making processes. In two studies we aimed to test the impact of regulatory focus on goal pursuit, namely – the affect that is assigned to objects of different relation to the goal. We manipulated regulatory state and goal activation, and tested attitudes towards objects implicitly via affective priming paradigm (Fazio, 2011). The studies showed, that both preventive and promotive participants rated objects that fulfill task criteria as more positive. While prevention is associated with vigilance, preventive participants expressed positive attitude towards impediments to the goal. The latter group devaluated stimuli irrelevant to goal pursuit (cognitive noise). In third study, we aim to verify the above effect with regard to chronic promotion vs prevention focus. We are looking for a link between liking and doing, as in this study we will also be able to observe participants’ behaviour towards objects of different relation to the task (approach vs avoidance). We expect the pattern of behaviour to reflect affective judgments.

2. Agata Wytykowska (Warsaw School of Social Science and Humanities, Poland) & Maria Lewicka (University of Warsaw, Poland)

Who is your enemy and who is your friend? Category learning motivated by approach and avoidance

People tend to maximize gains (approaching the source of gains) and minimize losses  (avoiding harmful events). Such basic affective evaluation regulates the process of testing hypothesis reflected in use of different cognitive strategies. The learning process of negative category (e.g. “unfriendly people”) is motivated by the tendency to eliminate any negative events. Such tendency is primarily realized by the strategy to minimize the errors of omission. Omission the signal of negative events can be very costly mistake. On the contrary, the learning process of positive category (e.g. “friendly people”) is related to the tendency to eliminate the false alarm errors. Taking someone as a friend while he or she is not indeed can make trouble. Both kinds of cognitive strategy fulfill the adaptation aims. In two experiments this relation was tested.  Additionally, the individual differences in BIS/BAS were controlled. Results confirmed the dependency of the use of cognitive strategy on different motivational conditions. The individual differences modified the previous relationship mainly in positive (gains) category learning conditions. The affective evaluation hypothesis is proposed to explain the obtained results.

3. Dorota Jasielska (University of Warsaw, Poland)

Reflective vs automatic emotions and social and personal expectations regarding life goals

Presented data concern the relationship between the role of reflective emotions and perception of subject’s life goals. Participants were asked to evaluate the role of various automatic emotions (primary affective reactions, of homeostatic or hedonic genesis)  and reflective emotions (resulting from the deliberative thinking, self-standards and axiological concepts) in achieving happiness. Then their task was to generate life goals and to assess, to what extent achievement of each goal is important for them and for other people. Results showed that evaluation of reflective emotions was related to the role of social expectations in achieving goals. Participants, for whom reflective emotions had a bigger role in achieving happiness rated their personal goals as important not only for them, but also for others. Collected data are preliminary for future studies about a relationship between purposeful activity and experiencing reflective emotions.

4. Marta Kwaśnik (Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sopot Faculty, Poland) & Alina Kolańczyk (Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sopot Faculty, Poland)

Processing self-evaluative information as a preconscious defensive self-regulation

In two experiments we tested defensive reaction (defined as mental operations towards threat, when i.e. negative self-evaluative information are presented) as a mechanism of preconscious self-regulation, depending on levels of information processing (repression means early, automatic ignoring of negative information, Eysenck, Derakshan, Myer, 2007, while high-anxiety defense means focusing of attention on threatening information and negation of it). In Experiment 1 participants evaluated neutral visual targets primed with words (positive, negative self-evaluative – advantages, disadvantages and neutral; exposure time: 40 and 75 msec). In Experiment 2, participants made – as quick as possible – lexical or affective decisions (target: positive, negative and neutral words and non-words). In each experiment we used mirror to intensify accessibility of self-concept. Finally, participants completed STAI and KAS (Polish version of Social Desirability Scale),to be separated into four types of defensive reactions: low-anxiety, high-anxiety, repressors, defensive high-anxiety-DHA. Results showed that at an early level (40 ms) repressors ignore negative self-evaluative information (they evaluated neutral stimuli, primed with disadvantages as more attractive). Due to the blockade for negativity they displayed longer RT when evaluating targets primed with negative stimuli. On the contrary, DHA subjects engaged their attention in negative prime and elaborated on it at this level. At the later stage (75 ms), DHA disengaged attention from negative self-evaluative information and finally negated its meaning.  Supporting these results, lexical decision task revealed higher reaction threshold (longer RT)for repressors than high-anxious when negative self-evaluative words were presented.

5. Alina Kolańczyk (Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sopot Faculty, Poland)

When does self-esteem  play defensive role?

Looking for the answer to the above (?) we tested a covariance of defense style, regulatory focus and implicit-explicit self-esteems relationship. There were four groups of participants  in each study, low anxious (LA), high anxious (HA), repressors (REP) an defensive high anxious (DHA), identified on the basis of STAI and Social Desirability Scale (KAS). Standards and ways of self-control  were indicators of regulatory focus, obtained in Promotion – Prevention  Self-control Scale (PPSS). Repressors manifest stronger promotive standards and balanced promotive-preventive control, while DHA are consistently preventive. In three other studies we tested relations between implicit and explicit self-esteem for each of four groups. In accordance with automatic blocking of negativity, implicit self-esteem of REP interacts with their explicit self-esteem. Implicit and explicit self-esteem of DHA are coherent (non-defensive).  As repression is attributed to somatoform disorders,  we compared self-esteem and defensiveness  (KAS scores) of somatoform and control group. REP’s explicit self-esteem is lower in somatoform group, especially when the defensiveness breaks down. To interpret these results , we conducted the last study.  Four groups of participants assessed their experiences of  somatic changes and behavioral tendency after watching positive and negative films (laughing children & killing of seals). Although REP are significantly less aware of negative arousal , they experience the strongest tendency to avoid watching (compared to LA, HA and DHA) and stronger positive arousal than LA.  Somatic receptivity could lead either to repression and defensive self-esteem or to somatic symptoms, where somatic signals received are too salient to ignore.