SELF REGULATORY PROCESSES IN PERSONALITY

This proposal seeks to continue and deepen our program of research to further clarify the nature and development of self-control and related self-regulatory functions. Our general approach will continue to involve a series of laboratory experiments and correlational studies supplemented by observation of children and adults in various waiting and working situations plus interviews and choice procedures to explore subjects' knowledge, understanding, and self-monitoring of their own cognitive processes and social behavior in self-control situations. Variables that seem to be associated with effective self-regulation on the basis of the observational studies and interviews and tested more precisely in controlled experiments. Our general objectives include an increasingly fine grain analysis of the processes underlying sustained waiting, working, and other future-oriented activity for the sake of chosen long-term goals and delayed outcomes; resistance to temptations and to distraction while working or waiting; evaluative and emotional self-reactions (e.g., self-reward for adequate achievement, self-denial or punishment for failure to meet internal standards), and selective processing of positive and negative information about oneself and others. Each of these activities will be studied more deeply to further clarify and variables most significant for its development, organization, maintenance, and (in selected cases), therapeutic or educational modification. We will focus especially on the role of organization of self-instructions, self-monitoring, rules, plans, and cognitive transformations to overcome "stimulus control" (situational contraints and pressures) and to achieve greater self-control, competence, and mastery. We also want to examine interactions with selected person variables in each of the self-control paradigms; to explore the nature and bases of characteristics relevant to effective behavioral and emotional self-regulation; and to investigate the role of affect in self-regulation and self-evaluation especially as it bears on depression.