NSF/SBE-BSF: Testing the Role of Implicit Cognition in Self-Control

人们常常很难根据自己宣称的长期目标来调整自己的行为。许多人都热切地想要实现广泛的目标，比如健康和健身，但却很难付诸行动，而这些行动需要付出努力、消耗资源。例如，许多强烈致力于增强身体素质的人可能会非常认真地计划每天早上去健身房，或者走楼梯而不是乘电梯，但最终却失败了。这些类型的自我控制失败是常见的，对心理和身体健康有广泛的影响。心理科学表明，要理解自我控制，仅仅衡量人们对一个目标的想法和感受，以及达到这个目标所需的行动，是不够的。相反，还需要衡量人们对目标和实现这些目标的手段的自发的和无法控制的想法和感受。这种类型的内隐认知可以预测谁将会和谁可能不会成功地完成实现目标所需的困难活动。实验室实验和对高中生的实地研究将提高我们对人们如何在自我控制困境中构建、加强和支持他们的行为的理解。这项研究最终将应用于理解健康、教育和个人财务。这个项目研究了自我控制心理学中一个被忽视的方面：人们对手段重要性的内隐信念。除了知道一个人有多渴望一个远大的目标外，还需要知道一个人对实现这个目标所需行动的重要性的信念。例如，一个人可能非常渴望保持健康，但除非他们认为保持健康所需的困难动作是重要和关键的，否则他们可能不会采取这些行为。在这个项目的研究中测试的假设是，人们对手段重要性的内隐信念将唯一地预测他们在自我控制方面的成功。有些研究使用了既定的隐性重要性衡量标准。其他研究开发了一种创新的新测量方法，捕捉人们对目标相关行动重要性的无意识信念。研究还考察了大学和高中学生的身体健康和学习成绩的自我控制领域。最后一项研究包括在服务不足的社区试图进入大学的高中生。这项研究对这些学生进行了一学年的跟踪调查，测量了学生对学校相关行为重要性的内隐信念（使用两种不同的测量方法），并预测了诸如成绩和大学入学等关键结果。引入内隐重要性可能会改变自我控制和目标追求的领域。通过关注内隐重要性预测行为结果的证据，本项目提供了在自我控制研究文献中推进一个不发达主题的潜力。该项目由美国国家科学基金会和美以两国国家科学基金会合作资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

People often have trouble regulating their behavior according to their professed long-term goals. Many people enthusiastically want to meet broad goals, such as health and fitness, but have trouble enacting the effortful, resource-consuming actions that are required to do so. For example, many people who are strongly committed to increasing their physical fitness may plan with all earnestness on getting to the gym every morning or taking the stairs instead of the elevator, but ultimately fail to do so. These kinds of self-control failures are common and have wide-scale consequences for mental and physical health. Psychological science has shown that to understand self-control, it is not enough to merely measure what people say they think and feel about a goal and the actions needed to get to that goal. Instead, it is necessary to also measure people's spontaneous and uncontrollable thoughts and feelings about goals and the means for achieving those goals. This type of implicit cognition can predict who will and who may not end up successfully enacting the difficult activities required to reach their goals. Laboratory experiments and a field study with high school students will improve our understanding of how people frame, strengthen, and bolster their behaviors in self-control dilemmas. The research will ultimately have applications in understanding health, education, and personal finances.This project examines a neglected aspect of the psychology of self-control: people's implicit beliefs about the importance of means. In addition to knowing how much someone desires a broad goal, it is also necessary to know a person's beliefs about the importance of the actions needed to reach that goal. For example, one might greatly desire to be fit, but unless they regard the difficult actions required to become fit as important and critical, they may not enact those behaviors. The hypothesis tested across the studies in this project is that people's implicit beliefs about the importance of means will uniquely predict their success at self-control. Some of the studies use an established measure of implicit importance. Other studies develop an innovative new measure that captures people's nonconscious beliefs about the importance of goal-relevant actions. The studies also examine the self-control domains of physical fitness and academic performance among college and high school students. A final study includes high school students in underserved communities who are trying to get into college. This study follows these students across a school year, measures the students' implicit beliefs about the importance of school-related actions (using two different measures), and predicts critical outcomes such as grades and college entry. The fields of self-control and goal-pursuit might be transformed by introducing the role of implicit importance. By focusing on evidence that implicit importance predicts behavioral outcomes, this project offers the potential to advance an underdeveloped topic in the research literature on self-control. This project is supported by a partnership between the National Science Foundation and the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.