The Motivation Theory of Role Modeling suggests that role models can serve three functions for role aspirants -being inspirational, behavioral guides, or representing what is possible. To date, however, no measure exists which can distinguish between these functions or test predictions from this theory. In the current investigation, we conducted four studies (total n = 1,448) to develop such a measure and use it to test predictions in first-generation and continuing-generation college students. Consistent with the theory, items describing these three functions could be distinguished in factor analyses, and first-generation students reported lower availability of academic role models serving all three functions. Availability of academic models serving these three functions was related to greater academic achievement and commitment. Support for nuanced predictions from this theory was mixed, however, with associations for the inspirational model scale being the most supported. Inspirational models appeared to indirectly contribute to benefits theorized to result from other functions, possibly because inspiration is a precondition to those benefits. Broadly, the four studies' results support the continued relevance of the theory, develop measures to assess availability of each role model type and support relationships of role model availability's importance for understanding first-generation college students' reduced commitment to academic goals.

Deaths of despair (DoD; i.e., suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related deaths) have drastically increased among non-Hispanic Whites since 1999. Beyond the established honor-suicide association, there are several reasons to suspect that U.S. honor cultures also exhibit higher DoD rates given similarities in the socioecological factors underlying both outcomes and that substance use increases risk for suicide. We examined this possibility at both the state and individual levels. Using two indices of honor culture, Study 1 examined statewide differences in DoD rates among non-Hispanic Whites and non-Whites between 1999-2019 by age group and sex. Among non-Hispanic Whites, we found honor- (v. dignity-) oriented states exhibited significantly higher overall DoD rates, suicide rates, drug overdose rates (only among females), and alcohol-related death rates, and that rates typically peaked in middle-age. The collective pattern of evidence indicated that honor culture is not related to DoD among non-Whites. Using a large sample of non-Hispanic Whites (paralleling the target population from Study 1), Study 2 (N = 1686) examined associations between individual-level endorsement of gendered honor norms and thoughts and behaviors that might precipitate despair-related deaths. Results indicated that honor endorsement significantly predicted suicidal ideation, but not binge drinking or illicit drug use. However, the effect of honor endorsement on these latter two outcomes was significant among men but not women. Collectively, this work extends prior research on the honor-suicide association by showing that the cultural ideology of honor affects a wider range of death outcomes. We discuss theoretical, health, and policy implications.

Self-determination theory has long held that the reasons why an individual chooses to pursue a goal influence whether the goal is achieved. Generally, more internalized motivation (i.e., intrinsic and identified motivation) are theorized to facilitate goal attainment. In the current study we sought to determine how internalized motivation facilitates goal achievement. We did this by simultaneously testing several hypothesized mediators derived from past studies. Using ecological momentary assessment, we measured these motivational and self-regulatory processes in a sample of 58 college students as they pursued a total of 228 goals at 670 distinct moments in time. This allowed us to determine how variations in motivation at both the goal and state-level of analysis influence goal progress. Our results suggest that identified motivation (or believing a goal is personally-important) facilitates goal progress by facilitating planning and self-control-related processes (at both levels of analysis). Intrinsic motivation (or enjoyment of a goal) did not influence progress at the goal-level, but it did impact goal achievement at the state-level by motivating self-control. These results outline the self-regulatory processes that more internalized forms of motivation facilitate, and they illustrate the importance of examining motivation at multiple levels of analysis.

Understanding the nature of the values and superordinate goals is both fascinating and highly consequential. Yet, existing taxonomies diverge in numerous respects, creating a barrier to scientific progress. To come to a fuller understanding, we conducted an integrated empirical analysis. We systematically gathered value-descriptive phrases from numerous past influential measures and item sets, standardized them to a common format, and eliminated redundancies, resulting in 359 items. We then asked two large samples of American adults to rate their commitment to these values, including a convenience sample (n = 312) and census-matched sample (n = 506). Analyses indicated that their structure can be parsimoniously described in terms of five broad domains: individual mastery, social rank, interpersonal relatedness, cultural conventionality, and universal justice. This solution was robust across samples and across many variations in analytic technique. Further analyses suggested that 13 more specific facets can be located within and between these domains, providing a more detailed description. This provides an organizing framework that should allow researchers examining different theories to more easily compare their findings. Further research is certainly needed to examine the generalizability of this structure across cultures. Nonetheless, the current investigation provides an important initial step by providing an integrated description of the structure of values in a Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic cultural context from which many prior models originated. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

When a person indicates they are "liberal" or "conservative," an important part of what they are communicating is their goals for how they would like society to be structured. However, past theories have described these goals in dramatically different fashions, suggesting that either conservativism or liberalism reflects a divisive or unifying goal. To help overcome this impasse, we systematically compared a broad, representative sample of all possible higher-order goals (drawn a previous lexical investigation of more than 1,000 goals) to the political ideology of American adults (total n = 1,588). The results of five studies suggested that proposals from competing theories are all partially correct. Conservativism simultaneously reflects the unifying "value" of Tradition, as well as the divisive "vice" of Elitism; while Liberalism simultaneously reflects the unifying "value" of Inclusiveness, and the divisive "vice" of Rebellion. These results help to integrate proposals from previous competing theories into a single framework.

We know little about what constitutes “typical” testimony offered by psychological experts in capital sentencing trials. Experts may address mitigating factors to the jury during the penalty phase, but the mitigators typically offered, as well as the evidence presented to support the relevance of the mitigators, remains poorly understood. A sample of 94 capital trial transcripts were content analyzed. Findings suggest that expert presence was unrelated to sentencing judgments. Analysis of testimony content revealed that testimony concerning childhood abuse, mental illness, and family issues (i.e., a parent in prison or witnessing domestic violence) occurred in over 50% of the cases involving experts and that intelligence tests and personality assessments were the most frequently used assessment tools. The type of mitigating evidence presented (i.e., whether the testimony focused on the individual’s characteristics or the environmental factors that influenced the individual during development) varied considerably across cases. Implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

We investigated the interactive effect of attorney anger expression and attorney gender on juror decision-making. Jury eligible Amazon MTurk participants (N = 455) were recruited. They listened to an audio recording of a male or female prosecutor delivering a closing statement with varying levels of authenticity (authentic, inauthentic or no anger). Then, they rendered a verdict. After the verdict, participants filled out various measures: guilty verdict confidence, current feelings of anger, and perceptions of prosecutor trust and competence. We found that the prosecutor's authentic displays of anger provoked anger in the participants, which, subsequently, increased the odds of a guilty verdict and guilty verdict confidence. Moreover, authentic displays of anger improved perceptions of the prosecutor's competence, which also increased the odds of a guilty verdict. However, perceptions of the prosecutor's trustworthiness did not vary, and attorney gender did not play a moderating role. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The relation between posttrauma symptoms and aggression is an area of growing interest in the larger clinical literature. The current project looked to examine the impact of primed hostility on aggressive responding in men and women with and without a history of prior trauma. Experimental aggression paradigm assessed in a 2 (Group) × 2 (Sex) × 2 (Prime) mixed factorial ANOVA. Trauma-naïve participants ( N  = 52) and survivors reporting active symptoms ( N  = 43) were exposed to hostile and neutral lexical primes in what was presented as a reaction time task played against an unseen ‘opponent’. In actuality, ‘wins’ and ‘losses’ during the task were assigned by an automated system. The intensity of an aversive sound blast delivered by participants to the supposed opponent in trials the participant ‘won’ served as an index of behavioural aggression. Repeated-measures ANOVA identified a between-by-within interaction of exposure group and lexical prime ( p  = .010; η p 2  = .070), with trauma-exposed participants ( p  = .002, Δ = .30), but not controls ( p  = .159, Δ = .11), demonstrating elevations in aggression subsequent to hostile priming. A sex by prime interaction ( p  = .001; η p 2  = .117) similarly indicated elevated aggression following hostile priming in men ( p  = .007, Δ = .58) as compared to women ( p  = .062, Δ = .10). Results offer preliminary support for the association of situationally primed hostility and biological sex with aggressive responding in survivors reporting active symptoms.

Many theorists have stressed the benefits of goal-conducive habits. However, past research has not yet demonstrated that habits benefit goal-pursuit in daily life independently of more effortful forms of goal-pursuit. Additionally, it is unclear if habits are triggered independently of conscious self-regulatory processes. To address these issues, we conducted three intensive experience sampling studies. We found that habitual behaviours facilitated goal-progress independently of effortful goal-directed behaviours. Additionally, we evaluated three sets of predictions regarding the relationship between habits and other effortful self-regulatory processes. The goal-independent account suggests that habits function independently of planning and testing processes. The goal-dependent account suggests that habits are influenced by these processes, and the hybrid account suggests that these processes indirectly influence habits through their association with contextual cue exposure. The results were consistent with the hybrid account, in that planning and testing were associated with habit enactment, but this association was mediated by contextual cue exposure. Collectively, our results suggest that one must consider both conscious self-regulatory processes and automatic cue-response associations to understand how the benefits of goal-conducive habits are realized in daily life.

Objectives The relation between posttrauma symptoms and aggression is an area of growing interest in the larger clinical literature. The current project looked to examine the impact of primed hostility on aggressive responding in men and women with and without a history of prior trauma. Design Experimental aggression paradigm assessed in a 2 (Group) x 2 (Sex) x 2 (Prime) mixed factorial ANOVA. Methods Trauma-naive participants (N = 52) and survivors reporting active symptoms (N = 43) were exposed to hostile and neutral lexical primes in what was presented as a reaction time task played against an unseen 'opponent'. In actuality, 'wins' and 'losses' during the task were assigned by an automated system. The intensity of an aversive sound blast delivered by participants to the supposed opponent in trials the participant 'won' served as an index of behavioural aggression. Results Repeated-measures ANOVA identified a between-by-within interaction of exposure group and lexical prime (p = .010; eta p2$$ {\eta}_p<^>2 $$ = .070), with trauma-exposed participants (p = .002, Delta = .30), but not controls (p = .159, Delta = .11), demonstrating elevations in aggression subsequent to hostile priming. A sex by prime interaction (p = .001; eta p2$$ {\eta}_p<^>2 $$ = .117) similarly indicated elevated aggression following hostile priming in men (p = .007, Delta = .58) as compared to women (p = .062, Delta = .10). Conclusions Results offer preliminary support for the association of situationally primed hostility and biological sex with aggressive responding in survivors reporting active symptoms.

In recent years, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has become a pivotal source for participant recruitment in many social-science fields. In the last several years, however, concerns about data quality have arisen. In response, CloudResearch developed an intensive pre-screening procedure to vet the full participant pool available on MTurk and exclude those providing low-quality data. To assess its efficacy, we compared three MTurk samples that completed identical measures: Sample 1 was collected prior to the pre-screening’s implementation. Sample 2 was collected shortly following its implementation, and Sample 3 was collected nearly a full-year after its implementation. Results indicated that the reliability and validity of scales improved with the implementation of this prescreening procedure, and that this was especially apparent with more recent versions. Thus, this prescreening procedure appears to be a valuable tool to help ensure the collection of high-quality data on MTurk.

Objectives Past taxonomies of goal-content have focused (either exclusively or predominantly) on generally-desirable values, and they suggest that some values oppose other values. However, many goals are generally-undesirable (i.e., the average person is committed to avoiding them), and these "vices" have been under-studied. This is an important gap because other models suggest that the "opposite" of a value is actually a vice. Methods To fill this gap, we conducted a lexical investigation. Two large samples (involving 504 undergraduates & 257 online participants) first rated their commitment to approaching or avoiding a large number of goals from the English lexicon. Results Analyses indicated that vices can be summarized in terms of Elitism, Rebellion, and Disrepute, which appear opposite from Inclusiveness, Tradition, and Prominence values (respectively) in MDS models. In Study 3 (involving 280 undergraduates) and Study 4 (involving 261 online participants), we found that Schwartz values of Universalism, Tradition, and Self-Enhancement actually appeared opposite from Elitism, Rebellion, and Disrepute (respectively) in MDS models, rather than from other values. Conclusions This investigation develops an instrument which can distinguish between different vices at a holistic level, and it suggests that they are actually the opposite of select values.

What do people want? Few questions are more fundamental to psychological science than this. Yet, existing taxonomies disagree on both the number and content of goals. Thus, we adopted a lexical approach and investigated the structure of goal-relevant words from the natural English lexicon. Through an intensive rating process, 1,060 goal-relevant English words were first located. In Studies 1-2. two relatively large and diverse samples (total n = 1,026) rated their commitment to approaching or avoiding these goals. Principal component analyses yielded 4 replicable components: Prominence, Inclusiveness, Negativity Prevention, and Tradition (the PINT Taxonomy). Studies 3-7 (total n = 1,396) supported the 4-factor structure of an abbreviated scale and found systematic differences in their relationships with past goal-content measures, the Big 5 traits, affect, and need satisfaction. This investigation provides a data-driven taxonomy of higher-order goal-content and opens up a wide variety of fascinating lines for future research.

In this investigation, the Generalized Approach, attainMent, Maintenance, and Avoidance (GAMMA) Motivation Scale was developed and validated. This scale measures approach and avoidance motivation in any domain of goal pursuit, thus overcoming the limitations of past domain-specific measures. Perhaps more importantly, it can distinguish maintenance from attainment forms of approach motivation. It was initially developed in a large sample reporting on a relatively heterogeneous sample of goals. Its factor structure was refined and confirmed in three samples reporting on healthy-eating, social-relationship, and academic-achievement goals, respectively. It is internally-consistent and its relationships with measures of domain-specific motivation, BIS/BAS, affective traits, motivational constructs from other theories, and successful goal pursuit all support its construct validity across domains. We therefore suggest that the GAMMA Motivation Scale is a useful tool for understanding and researching approach, avoidance, and maintenance motivation.

Self-control is often thought to be reactive and focused solely on the inhibition of responses elicited by temptations. In two studies, we assessed whether self-control can instead (a) be planned and (b) target the antecedents of the response to temptation. We assessed self-control planning, four antecedent-focused self-control strategies (i.e., situation-selection, situation-modification, distraction, and reappraisal) and one response-focused strategy (i.e., response-inhibition). In both studies, we found that self-control planning predicted the initiation of self-control independently of temptation. Each antecedent-focused self-control strategy uniquely predicted goal-progress. Response-inhibition did not produce consistent effects on goal-progress. These studies provide evidence that people proactively initiate self-control by targeting the antecedents of temptation and that doing so supports goal-progress.

The Defective Self Model of self-injury (Hooley, Ho, Slater, & Lockshin, 2010) asserts that individuals choose to self-injure to gratify the desire for self-punishment associated with a self-critical cognitive style. Specifically, self-injury is used to regulate negative self-directed thoughts and emotions and is made accessible via the belief that the individual deserves punishment. This study sought to test primary assumptions of the Defective Self Model using a 2-week daily diary protocol. It was hypothesized that trait self-criticism would predict daily self-injury urge intensity and behaviors directly, as well as indirectly, through daily thoughts about deserving punishment. We also posited that guilt would predict self-injury urge intensity and behaviors beyond sadness, hostility, and fear. Support for primary hypotheses was mixed. Self-criticism did not directly predict self-injury outcomes, but did indirectly predict urge intensity through daily thoughts about punishment. Daily guilt predicted self-injury urge intensity beyond daily sadness, hostility and fear and was the only type of negative affect associated with self-injury behavior. Results are primarily contextualized through a social cognitive lens in which self-injury urge is precipitated by the activation of a self-critical schema in daily life. Alternatively, self-criticism may serve as a gateway to initial self-injury but lack the sensitivity to predict individual self-injury episodes. Treatments designed to reduce self-critical thoughts and bolster self-compassion may decrease self-injury urge intensity, thereby affecting the frequency of self-injury episodes.

Past studies indicate that angry facial expressions automatically activate an aggressive response, seeming to support the view that humans possess an inborn, automatic tendencies to aggress. However, the current authors drew on influential models from evolutionary game theory to suggest that experiences of defeat may modulate this tendency. To examine this, four experiments were conducted to explore how defeat may modulate this aggressive response. In each study, participants executed simulated fight or flight responses based a computerized opponent's facial expression. Across studies, participants were typically faster to initiate fight (than flight) responses against an angry opponent. Simply losing simulated fights (Experiment 1) or experiencing aversive, white noise following simulated losses (Experiment 2) did not eliminate this tendency. However, when aversive noise was specifically experienced after losing to an angry opponent, the automatic aggressive response was eliminated (Experiment 3). This result was directly replicated (Experiment 4). Thus, these studies isolate the cues which automatize submissive behavior and show that fighting experience can modulate even our automatic aggressive responses to others' anger displays.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES:Theoretical models propose that PTSD symptoms and subjective anger are indirectly associated through hostile attribution bias, physiological reactivity, and aggressive psycho-motor scripts (Chemtob, Novaco, Hamada, Gross, & Smith, 1997). Originally developed to account for symptoms observed in military personnel, proposed anger mechanisms have received limited attention in civilian populations. The current study looked to evaluate the generalizability of Chemtob et al.'s model in trauma-exposed university students (N = 152). METHODS:Trauma exposure and corresponding symptoms were assessed during an initial screening procedure. Hostile attributions and aggressive scripts were examined prior to a laboratory-based anger induction procedure. Physiological reactivity was monitored throughout the provocation task. Ratings of subjective anger and anger recovery were completed following the induction period. Relations of post-trauma symptoms with subjective anger through hypothesized anger processes were examined using bootstrapped estimates of indirect effects. RESULTS:A significant indirect effect of PTSD severity on state-level anger was noted for hostile attribution bias (ab = 0.020, 95% CI [0.002, 0.041]) and a marginal effect through aggressive inclinations (ab = 0.015, 95% CI [-0.001, 0.039]). Data failed to provide evidence for physiological reactivity as an intervening variable. Trauma symptoms did not moderate anger recovery following the provocation task. LIMITATIONS:Induction of anger in a sub-clinical sample may limit tests of hypothesized effects and the generalizability of the present findings. CONCLUSIONS:Results indicate the proposed model may be applicable beyond combat trauma samples and suggest potential anger-related targets for PTSD treatment.