Knowledge and Flexible Implementation of Construal Level in Self-Regulation

自律中解释水平的认识与灵活运用

• 批准号: 1626733
• 负责人: Kentaro Fujita
• 金额: $ 40.91万
• 依托单位: Ohio State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-08-01 至 2020-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1626733&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Knowledge; Flexible; Implementation; Construal; Level

Despite the best of their intentions, people often fail to act in a manner that is consistent with their important goals and values. These discrepancies between people's intentions and behavior have been implicated in some of society's most pressing problems, including obesity, substance abuse, discrimination, aggression, and poor financial decision-making. Self-regulation research attempts to understand who, when, and why some succeed--and others fail--in realizing their goals and values in their every day behavior. One important insight from this research is that self-regulation involves a number of distinct challenges that must each be addressed in unique ways. At times, self-regulation requires thinking about circumstances that extend beyond the immediate here-and-now. To illustrate, although students might be tempted to attend a week-night social gathering, it is their ability to think about the distant future rewards of studying that advances their academic goals. At other times, self-regulation requires attention to the details of the present context. Proof-reading for typographical errors, for example, requires students to narrowly focus their attention on the specifics of the task at-hand. The present work aims to test if people have developed unique thinking styles or mindsets that are tuned to help them address each of these two types of challenges--namely, high-level and low-level construal. Critically, the investigator tests the novel prediction that successful regulation requires flexibly matching the right mindset to the right challenge. That is, knowing when to engage in which psychological mindset may be the key reason why some people are able to attain their goals, and others are not.These questions are explored in six studies. The studies examine people's beliefs about what kinds of thinking will promote their goals under different circumstances. Those beliefs are compared to what research indicates will improve versus undermine self-regulation in those situations. In particular, the investigator tests the prediction that those who intuitively know what research reveals to be good versus bad for self-regulation will be better at attaining goals. Experiments also examine the factors that might explain why some are able, and others not, to engage in the right kinds of thinking styles at the right time. For example, some people may be more cognitively flexible--able to think about the same event from multiple perspectives--whereas others may not be so flexible. Studies examine to what extent cognitively flexible individuals may be better at self-regulation because of their ability to adopt the most advantageous thinking style at any given moment. To examine the practical implications of this work, a field study tests to what extent these hypotheses explain students' performance in a classroom context. Such a context is ideal in that it is a real-world situation known to present numerous self-regulation challenges. Understanding the factors that promote self-regulation may spur the development of new interventions and policies that enhance people's ability to behave in line with and eventually attain their valued goals.

尽管他们的意图是最好的，但人们往往不能以与他们的重要目标和价值观一致的方式行事。人们的意图和行为之间的这些差异与一些最紧迫的社会问题有关，包括肥胖、药物滥用、歧视、攻击和糟糕的财务决策。自我调节研究试图了解在日常行为中实现目标和价值观时，哪些人、何时以及为什么有些人成功了，而有些人却失败了。这项研究的一个重要见解是，自我调节涉及许多不同的挑战，每个挑战都必须以独特的方式解决。有时候，自我调节需要考虑到超越此时此地的环境。举例来说，尽管学生们可能会被诱惑去参加周末晚上的社交聚会，但正是他们思考遥远未来学习回报的能力，推动了他们的学术目标。在其他时候，自我调节需要注意当前环境的细节。例如，校对印刷错误要求学生将注意力集中在手头任务的细节上。目前的工作旨在测试人们是否已经形成了独特的思维方式或心态，以帮助他们解决这两种类型的挑战，即高层次和低层次的解释。至关重要的是，研究者测试了一个新的预测，即成功的监管需要灵活地将正确的心态与正确的挑战相匹配。也就是说，知道什么时候采用哪种心理状态可能是有些人能够实现目标而有些人却不能的关键原因。这些问题在六项研究中进行了探讨。这些研究考察了人们在不同情况下的信念，即什么样的思维方式会促进他们的目标。这些信念与研究表明的在这些情况下会改善或破坏自我调节的情况进行比较。特别是，研究人员测试了这样一种预测，即那些凭直觉知道研究表明什么对自我调节是好是坏的人，更容易实现目标。实验还检验了一些因素，这些因素可能解释了为什么有些人能够在正确的时间采用正确的思维方式，而有些人则不能。例如，有些人可能在认知上更灵活——能够从多个角度思考同一件事——而另一些人可能没有这么灵活。研究考察了认知灵活的个体在多大程度上可能更善于自我调节，因为他们有能力在任何给定的时刻采用最有利的思维方式。为了检验这项工作的实际意义，一项实地研究测试了这些假设在多大程度上解释了学生在课堂上的表现。这样的背景是理想的，因为它是一个已知存在许多自我调节挑战的现实世界的情况。了解促进自我调节的因素可能会刺激新的干预措施和政策的发展，从而提高人们的行为能力，使其符合并最终实现其有价值的目标。