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

NSF/SBE-BSF：测试内隐认知在自我控制中的作用

• 批准号: 1823903
• 负责人: Melissa Ferguson
• 金额: $ 38.19万
• 依托单位: Cornell University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-09-01 至 2021-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1823903&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; SBE; BSF; Testing; Role

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.

人们经常会根据自称的长期目标难以调节自己的行为。许多人热情地想实现广泛的目标，例如健康和健身，但难以实现这一目标所需的精力，消耗资源的行动。例如，许多强烈致力于增加身体健康的人可能会以每天早晨去健身房或上楼梯而不是电梯而付出一切认真的计划，但最终无法做到。这类自我控制失败很常见，对精神和身体健康产生了广泛的后果。心理科学表明，要了解自我控制，仅仅衡量人们对目标的想法和感觉到实现目标所需的行动是不够的。取而代之的是，还必须衡量人们对目标的自发性和无法控制的想法和感受以及实现这些目标的手段。这种隐性认知可以预测谁的愿望，谁可能不会成功地制定实现目标所需的困难活动。实验室实验和与高中生的实地研究将提高我们对人们在自我控制困境中如何增强，增强和增强其行为的理解。这项研究最终将在理解健康，教育和个人理财方面有应用。本项目研究了自我控制心理心理学的一个被忽视的方面：人们对手段重要性的内在信念。除了知道某人想要一个广泛的目标之外，还必须了解一个人对实现该目标所需的行动重要性的信念。例如，人们可能会非常渴望适应，但是除非他们认为要变得重要和批评所需的困难行动，否则他们可能不会实现这些行为。在该项目的研究中检验的假设是，人们对手段重要性的隐性信念将独特地预测他们在自我控制方面的成功。一些研究采用了既定的隐含重要性衡量标准。其他研究开发了一种创新的新措施，该措施捕捉了人们对目标相关行动重要性的无意识信念。研究还研究了大学和高中生的身体健康和学习成绩的自我控制领域。最终的研究包括在服务不足的社区中试图上大学的高中生。这项研究遵循了整个学年的这些学生，衡量了学生对与学校相关行为重要性（使用两种不同措施）重要性的隐性信念，并预测了诸如成绩和大学入学之类的关键成果。自我控制和目标骑行的领域可能会通过引入隐含重要性的作用来改变。通过专注于隐含重要性预测行为结果的证据，该项目提供了推进自我控制研究文献中欠发达话题的潜力。该项目得到了国家科学基金会与美国 - 以色列双国科学基金会之间的合作伙伴关系。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并认为使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响评估标准，认为值得通过评估来获得支持。