publications

2024

1. The role of conflict representation in abstinence versus moderation in self-control

   Phuong Q. Le, Abigail A. Scholer, and Kentaro Fujita

   Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2024

   Abs Website

   Self-control-the prioritization of valued global goals over immediate local rewards-is typically conceptualized and studied as isolated decisions. Goal pursuit, however, generally requires people to make repeated self-control decisions across contexts. We adopt a higher order, strategic level of analysis of self-control and explore, for the first time, people’s preferences for abstinence (a pattern of choices in which one never indulges) versus moderation (a pattern of choices in which one indulges when doing so does not harm one’s goals or even helps promote the pursuit of those goals). To understand when and why people may opt for one over the other, the present work explores one psychological feature that may support these strategy preferences: the representation of self-control conflicts as inherent (i.e., choice options are mutually contradictory) versus situational (i.e., choice options compete for limited resources). We present eight studies in the main text and three in the online Supplemental Materials documenting that people associate inherent and situational conflict representations with abstinence and moderation, respectively. By documenting that strategy preferences may differ as a function of conflict representations, this work questions the assumption of abstinence as the primary indicator of self-control success, raises methodological and conceptual questions about how best to assess these strategy preferences, and calls for greater understanding of self-control as a recurrent decision-making process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

2. The metamotivation approach: Insights into the regulation of motivation and beyond

   Kentaro Fujita, Phuong Q. Le, Abigail A. Scholer, and David B. Miele

   Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2024

   Abs Website

   Researchers across theoretical traditions have long recognized the need for people to monitor and modulate certain aspects of their subjective experiences (such as their thoughts and feelings) in response to situational challenges that interfere with the attainment of important goals. Comparatively less attention has been devoted to understanding the beliefs and mechanisms necessary to regulate motivational states—i.e., metamotivation, even though motivational states are often integral to people’s subjective experiences of events. As particular types of motivational states are more adaptive in some contexts than in others, flexibly instantiating the right motivational state at the right time may be key to achieving one’s goals. The current paper reviews the principles of the metamotivational approach to studying motivation regulation and briefly reviews supporting research. In addition, we highlight metamotivation research conducted in the context of self-affirmation theory to demonstrate the generative potential of this approach for researching phenomena that have traditionally been treated as separate from self-regulation. We conclude by discussing some of the novel questions that the metamotivational approach has prompted, both in and outside of the self-regulatory domain.

2019

1. When a small self means manageable obstacles: Spontaneous self-distancing predicts divergent effects of awe during a subsequent performance stressor

   Phuong Q. Le, Thomas L. Saltsman, Mark D. Seery, Deborah E. Ward, Cheryl L. Kondrak, and Veronica M. Lamarche

   Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2019

   Abs Website

   The emotion of awe occurs when one feels small relative to something vaster than the self; it leads to benefits such as care for others. However, because awe elicits the experience of a “small self,” it is unclear to what extent awe positively versus negatively affects responses to subsequent stressors. If personal obstacles seem trivial in comparison to awe-inspiring stimuli, stressors should seem either manageable or unimportant, but if one’s capabilities seem comparatively insignificant, stressors should seem unmanageable. We hypothesized that awe would have a generally positive effect on responses during a subsequent performance stressor, but that this would further depend on whether people tended to spontaneously take on a self-distanced versus self-immersed perspective. In the face of awe, focusing less on the self (self-distanced perspective) should make obstacles in particular seem trivial, whereas focusing more on the self (self-immersed) should lead one’s capabilities to seem insignificant. Using the biopsychosocial model of challenge/threat, we found that spontaneous self-distancing significantly moderated awe’s effects on responses during a subsequent performance stressor (speech task): For participants who self-distanced, the awe condition led to cardiovascular responses consistent with greater challenge than the neutral control condition (reflecting evaluating the stressor as more manageable); for participants who self-immersed, awe predicted relative threat (less manageable stressor). There was no support for awe making people care less about the stressor (as reflected in cardiovascular responses consistent with task engagement). This offers insight into how awe can have divergent effects on people’s experiences during performance stressors.