We present the Motivation, Action, Sacrifice, and Temptation (MAST) view of moral praiseworthiness and evaluate four components shaping judgments of an actor's morality: (a) How did the person act? (b) Why did the person act? (c) Did the person sacrifice something when acting? and (d) Was the person tempted to avoid the sacrifice? Across multiple moral domains, we evaluate moral impressions of hypothetical actors who acted ostensibly morally under different motivational, sacrificial, and temptational conditions. Across four studies (total > 1,200) and 150 morally relevant scenarios, all components shaped moral impressions, with motivational purity having the strongest impact. Exploring motivation more deeply via Self-Determination Theory, we found effects of internalized (vs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Many people want to build good habits to become healthier, live longer, or become happier but struggle to change their behavior. Gamification can make behavior change easier by awarding points for the desired behavior and deducting points for its omission.
Objective: In this study, we introduced a principled mathematical method for determining how many points should be awarded or deducted for the enactment or omission of the desired behavior, depending on when and how often the person has succeeded versus failed to enact it in the past.
Objective: What do people see as distinguishing the morally exceptional from others? To handle the problem that people may disagree about who qualifies as morally exceptional, we asked subjects to select and rate their own examples of morally exceptional, morally average, and immoral people.
Method: Subjects rated each selected exemplar on several enablers of moral action and several directions of moral action. By applying the logic underlying stimulus sampling in experimental design, we evaluated perceivers' level of agreement about the characteristics of the morally exceptional, even though perceivers rated different targets.
Background: Ecological momentary interventions open up new and exciting possibilities for delivering mental health interventions and conducting research in real-life environments via smartphones. This makes designing psychotherapeutic ecological momentary interventions a promising step toward cost-effective and scalable digital solutions for improving mental health and understanding the effects and mechanisms of psychotherapy.
Objective: The first objective of this study was to formatively assess and improve the usability and efficacy of a gamified mobile app, the InsightApp, for helping people learn some of the metacognitive skills taught in cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and mindfulness-based interventions.
Objective: This study investigated seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG antibodies, using the Abbott antinucleocapsid IgG chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay (CMIA) assay, in five prespecified healthcare worker (HCW) subgroups following the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Setting: An 800-bed tertiary-level teaching hospital in the south of Ireland.
Participants: Serum was collected for anti-SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid IgG using the Abbott ARCHITECT SARS-CoV-2 IgG CMIA qualitative assay, as per the manufacturer's specifications.
Two research objectives underlay the present research. First, we tested how frustrated psychological needs caused by the refugee-influx influence the endorsement and selection of refugee-relevant information. Second, we tested how information selection processes contribute to the development of exclusionary attitudes that counteract the integration of refugees into host countries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHealthy democracies require civic engagement (e.g., voting) from their citizens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe explore and explicate some promising points of integration between self-determination theory (SDT) and whole trait theory (WTT). Integrating SDT and WTT can offer an example for navigating challenges that have long confronted integrating trait-descriptive and motivational-explanatory views of personality. We review SDT and WTT in turn.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this introductory article, we first describe the impetus for this special issue. What made us think that self-determination theory (SDT) might provide a sort of foundation for the rest of personality psychology? For readers unfamiliar with SDT, we then provide a historical overview that covers the evolution of the six "mini-theories" that currently compose SDT: cognitive evaluation theory, causality orientations theory, organismic integration theory, basic psychological needs theory, goal contents theory, and relational motivation theory. Following each section are preliminary suggestions about how each mini-theory might be useful or informative in other branches of personality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIndividual differences that might moderate processes of value shifting during and after deliberating one's own death remain largely unexplored. Two studies measured participants' openness and relative intrinsic-to-extrinsic value orientation (RIEVO) before randomly assigning them to conditions in which they wrote about their own death or dental pain for 6 days, after which RIEVO was assessed again up to 12 days later. When participants confronted thoughts about their own death over a sustained period, high openness to experience helped them shift toward intrinsic values.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe hypothesis that people respond to reminders of mortality with closed-minded, ethnocentric attitudes has received extensive empirical support, largely from research in the Terror Management Theory (TMT) tradition. However, the basic motivational and neural processes that underlie this effect remain largely hypothetical. According to recent neuropsychological theorizing, mortality salience (MS) effects on cultural closed-mindedness may be mediated by activity in the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), which leads to passive avoidance and decreased approach motivation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA new set of hypotheses is presented regarding the cause of aggressive religious radicalization (ARR). It is grounded in classic and contemporary theory of human motivation and goal regulation, together with recent empirical advances in personality, social, and neurophysiological psychology. We specify personality traits, threats, and group affordances that combine to divert normal motivational processes toward ARR.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFABSTRACT. We test whether people with a relatively more intrinsic vs. extrinsic value orientation (RIEVO) are particularly likely to enact cooperative behavior in resource dilemmas when they are primed with relatedness goals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present studies examined whether implicit or explicit autonomy dispositions moderate the relationship between felt autonomy and well-being. Study 1 (N = 187 undergraduate students) presents an initial test of the moderator hypothesis by predicting flow experience from the interaction of autonomy need satisfaction and autonomy dispositions. Study 2 (N = 127 physically inactive persons) used vignettes involving an autonomy (un)supportive coach to test a moderated mediation model in which perceived coach autonomy support leads to well-being through basic need satisfaction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoc Cogn Affect Neurosci
August 2014
Neural processes that support individual differences in attachment security and affect regulation are currently unclear. Using electroencephalography, we examined whether securely attached individuals, compared with insecure individuals, would show a muted neural response to experimentally manipulated distress. Participants completed a reaction time task that elicits error commission and the error-related negativity (ERN)-a neural signal sensitive to error-related distress-both before and after a distressing insecurity threat.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFour studies investigated a goal regulation view of anxious uncertainty threat (Gray & McNaughton, 2000) and ideological defense. Participants (N = 444) were randomly assigned to have achievement or relationship goals implicitly primed. The implicit goal primes were followed by randomly assigned achievement or relationship threats that have reliably caused generalized, reactive approach motivation and ideological defense in past research.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFYersinia enterocolitica (Y. enterocolitica) is a known zoonotic pathogen and is often found in pig tonsils as the primary site of colonisation. In this study we investigated whether or not Y.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn 3 experiments, participants reacted with religious zeal to anxious uncertainty threats that have caused reactive approach motivation (RAM) in past research (see McGregor, Nash, Mann, & Phills, 2010, for implicit, explicit, and neural evidence of RAM). In Study 1, results were specific to religious ideals and did not extend to merely superstitious beliefs. Effects were most pronounced among the most anxious and uncertainty-averse participants in Study 1 and among the most approach-motivated participants in Study 2 (i.
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