Attentional Bias And Goal Striving Under Threat:an Action Control Account

From a broad point of view, self-regulation refers to psychological processes that allow people to adjust their thoughts, actions, and feelings in line with their standards, goals, and values. Determine the factors that hindering the successful goal striving is necessary for individual goal attainment. The ability initiate action toward goal attainment plays a central role in self-regulation, which is also as a function of self-regulation capacities. The area study of self-regulation nearly cover all kinds of human behaviour, such as planning and decision-making, learning and achievement, mental health and health, addictive behavior, interpersonal relationship, Psychological adaptation and well-being, criminal behavior and so on. Consequently, it has an important practical significance to study on self-regulation.Kuhl and colleagues develop Action control theory to shed light on individual differences in self-regulation capacities. This research orientation elucidates mechanisms that facilitate and impede the enactment of intentions. According to Kuhl’s theory, translate goals and intentions into behavior in face of obstacle is crucial to successful goal attainment. Originated from volitional action control theory, action orientation refers to a personality that facilitates the goal striving process, which is the fulfillment of action plans and goals, even under threatening or demanding situations. In failure related situations, there were certain difference between state-oriented people and action oriented people in cognition, emotion and behavior. And also there are some models to interpret the differences. However, we don’t know whether there remain some differences in the attentional component and its mechanisms to threat information of subjects with different action control kinds(the foundation of cognitive level), and we want to know whether state-oriented people and action oriented people are affected by threat information and lead to the difference in goal selection, and whether the reason given for the different volitional abilities between the action-state oriented people were caused by internalization process(social cognitive level). Because Kuhl’s theory do not interpret these issues, we explore the difference of attentional bias and goal striving between the action-state oriented people under threat by combining questionnaires and experimental method,and specify a mechanism from theory. This dissertation mainly included three parts.Part 1 consists of two experiments. In study 1, college students assessed the degree of threat and arousal from IAPS. Study 2 revised the Chinese Version of ACS-90 sacle.Part 2 tried to explore the differences of attentional bias and its mechanisms of subjects with different action control kinds which consists of three experiments. Study 3 used dot-probe task to investigate the differences of attentional bias under threat of subjects with different action control kinds. Study 4(SOA=500ms;SOA=100ms) used cue-target task to further explore the mechanism of attentional bias under threat between state-oriented people and action oriented people respectively. Study 5 tried to explore the brain mechanism of attentional bias under threat between state-oriented people and action oriented people by cue-target task.Part 3 consists of two experiments which to examine whether the hesitated or preoccupied people(state-oriented people) have different goal content and motive, compared to the initiative or disengaged people(action-oriented people). Study 6 tried to explore the differences of goal content between the two kinds of people which were found in the case of some psychological threat, such as existential threat, economic threat, and interpersonal threat and explored the differences in the case of non psychological threat. Study 7 was to investigate whether the two kinds of people have different goal motives in different goal content.The main results of present study were drawn as follows:Firstly, attentional bias towards threat is a common phenomenon both in the state-oriented people and action oriented people which used dot-probe task. Compared to the low threat stimulus, attentional bias is more marked towards the high threat stimulus.But we did not find the difference of attentional bias towards threat between the two kinds of people.Secondly, at the exposure of 100 ms, attentional bias towards threat is a common phenomenon both in the state-oriented people and action oriented people which used cue-target task. However, the two potential cognitive mechanisms of attentional bias in the two kinds of people are not clear.Thirdly, we analysed the amplitude and latency of cue-evoked and target-evoked ERP at the exposure of 500 ms and 100 ms. The results showed that in action-oriented people,the occipitoparietal P1 amplitude was enhanced and P3 latency was shorted when targets appeared at the same location as high threat stimulus relative to the low threat and neutral pictures. Thus action-oriented people were vigilant to the high threat stimulus at the exposure of 100 ms.Fourthly, state-oriented people were related to pursue extrinsic goal, action oriented people were related to pursue intrinsic goal in the case of some psychological threat, such as existential threat, economic threat, and interpersonal threat. However there was no differences in the case of non psychological threat between the two kinds of people.Furthermore, in the case of non psychological threat, there was no difference in the pursuiting of the intrinsic goals between the state-oriented people and action oriented people when the dependent variable was the degree of happiness. And compared to action-oriented people, state oriented people were related to pursue extrinsic goal and felt happier. While when the dependent variable was REVIO, there was a positive correlation between goal content and AOT scale. It showed that the more action oriented individual, more inclined to pursue intrinsic goal, and the more state oriented individual, more inclined to pursue extrinsic goal.Finally, the results showed that the action-orientated people had higher autonomous motive than state-oriented people in intrinsic goal, but not for extrinsic goal.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:Whatever from the foundation of cognitive level and the social cognitive level, there were difference between state-oriented people and action oriented people under threat condition. First of all, attentional bias towards threat is a common phenomenon both in the state-oriented people and action oriented people which used dot-probe task and cue-target task, but we did not find the difference between the two kinds of people. However ERP results showed that action-oriented people were vigilant to the high threat stimulus at the exposure of 100 ms. Secondly, the results confirmed that the two kinds of people have different goal motives in different goal content which makes some individuals more likely to hesitating or acting than others.In summary, we explored the difference of attentional bias and goal striving between the action-state oriented people under threat by combining questionnaires and experimental method, and specify a mechanism from theory. The study provided experimental evidence for characteristics and correlates of individual differences in cognitive, emotional and behavioral aspects of action-state orientation, by studing the differences of autonomous motivation which was the core mechanism of the difference between state-oriented people and action oriented individual. In additon, our study enrich and develop the theoretical framework of action control theory and propose a new future of the application of action-state oriented people.