Regulatory flexibility, defined as the ability to use strategies in accordance with contextual demands, is thought to be central to psychological health. In the current research, we test the boundaries of this claim by examining: (1) how broadly does regulatory flexibility relate to different facets of psychological health?, and (2) is more flexibility always better? Across six samples, participants (N = 2,939) reported their ability to use strategies flexibly when managing impulses (e.g., temptations) and completed indicators of ill-being and well-being. Findings indicated that people who are more flexible report not only less anxiety and depression but also more positive functioning, including more life satisfaction, meaning, thriving, and positive mental health. There was some goal-to-goal variation, but the same pattern held when controlling for goal-specific covariates and replicated in both meta-analytic and mega-analytic approaches. Interestingly, there was a significant quadratic association between flexibility and well-being but not ill-being. This suggested diminishing returns, such that being more flexible was beneficial for well-being, but only to a certain point. Overall, these findings suggest that having the ability to use strategies flexibly has no apparent downside.

Examine the role of income, perceived healthy foods availability, and consumption as mediators of rural–urban health disparities. Pre-registered simple mediation models with post hoc multi-mediator models were tested using national- and state-level survey data. Oregon data was collected in an online Qualtrics survey between October 8 and November 9, 2021 using CloudResearch; Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) 5, a nationally representative dataset, was collected over 4 cycles from 2017 to 2020. Oregon residents (n = 771; rural = 313, urban = 458) self-reported online: income, perceived fruits and vegetable (FV) availability, FV consumption, and BMI measures (height, weight). HINTS respondents (rural n = 1235; urban n = 13,912) self-reported the same variables of interest without FV availability, and with an additional self-rated health variable detailed below. The effect of rurality on BMI (b = 0.012, SE = 0.005, p = 0.01) and self-rated health (b = 0.003, SE = 0.001, p = 0.008) when combining datasets was mediated by a series of income, perceived FV availability, and FV consumption. To address rural–urban health disparities, individual (cognition, behavior), social (household income), and community (healthy food availability) factors should be targeted together.

Objective: We conducted a large (N = 204) randomized, clinical trial to test the efficacy of parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) on observed parenting, two key drivers of maladaptive parenting-self-regulation and social cognitions, and child behavior outcomes in a sample of child welfare-involved families. Method: Participants were randomly assigned to standard PCIT (n = 120) or services-as-usual (SAU; n = 84). The sample was characterized by low household income, significant exposures to adverse childhood experiences, and substance abuse. Intention-to-treat analyses were conducted on multiply imputed data followed by secondary per-protocol analyses. Results: Significant PCIT effects emerged on (a) increased positive parenting, reduced negative parenting and disruptive child behavior (small-to-medium intention-to-treat effects and medium-to-large per-protocol effects); (b) gains in parent inhibitory control on the stop-signal task (small-to-medium effects); (c) gains in parent-reported emotion regulation and (d) positive, affirming self-perceptions (small-to-medium effects), relative to the SAU control group. PCIT's effects on gains in parent emotion regulation were mediated by reductions in observed negative parenting. No differences in rates of parent commands or child compliance were observed across conditions. Harsh child attributions moderated treatment impact on parenting skills acquisition. PCIT parents who held harsher attributions displayed greater gains in use of labeled praises and declines in negative talk/criticism with their child, than control group parents. Conclusions: This randomized trial presents the first evidence that PCIT improves inhibitory control and emotion regulation in a child welfare parents and replicates other published trials documenting intervention gains in positive parenting and child behavior in child welfare families.

How people respond to desires varies substantially across time and situations. Building on recent theoretical developments, we propose that motivation plays a central role in the dynamics of self-control as it unfolds across time. We illustrate the role of motivation in self-control by highlighting evidence that pursuing goals for intrinsic (vs. extrinsic) reasons plays a key role in shaping when and how people engage in self-control in service to their goals. We then expand this framework by outlining several promising directions for future research, specifically emphasizing the dynamic interplay between motivation and self-control at various stages in the regulation process. Ultimately, we posit that motivation is a key factor in helping people flexibly regulate desires in accordance with situational demands.

Financial scarcity, both real and imagined, is associated with impaired executive functions and present-focused economic decisions. What is the mechanism that connects the lack of financial resources to these cognitive and behavioral effects? The present work will test the hypothesis that the experience of financial stress contributes to these deficits by reducing executive functions related to self-control and causing present-focused, real-world economic decisions. In a preliminary experiment (N = 215), we found support for the hypothesis that financial stress (as compared to social stress) causes a reduction in inhibitory control performance. In a registered study, we will recruit participants from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and assess their inhibitory control performance before and after a financial stress manipulation, and assess their economic preferences via both a survey and real-world measure of temporal discounting. Similar results in the proposed study would provide evidence that financial stress can help explain SES-based differences in self-control.

Models of addiction have identified deficits in inhibitory control, or the ability to inhibit inappropriate or unwanted behaviors, as one factor in the development and maintenance of addictive behaviors. Current literature supports disruption of the prefrontal circuits that mediate reactive inhibitory control processes (i.e. inhibition in response to sudden, unplanned changes in environmental demands) in substance use disorders, however, the relationship between disorders of addiction, such as nicotine dependence, and planned inhibitory processes is unclear. The goal of the present study was to examine the extent to which reactive and planned inhibitory processes are differentially disrupted in nicotine dependent individuals. To this aim, we employed a novel stop signal task that explicitly separates planned and reactive inhibitory processes and assessed (1) group differences in task performance between smokers and non- smokers and (2) the relationship between task performance and smoking behaviors within the smoking group. We found significant differences in stop times for both trial between groups as well as within groups. Analyses of stopping behavior in the smoking group revealed an inverse correlation between stop times on planned stop trials and a measure of nicotine dependence derived from the Fagerstrom Test of Nicotine Dependence and, surprisingly, showed that greater daily average consumption of nicotine was inversely related to stop times for both trial types. Finally, we found that recency of the last cigarette smoked was unrelated to stopping behavior.

Substance use disorders are a common and treatable condition among pregnant and parenting people. Social, self, and structural stigma experienced by this group represent a barrier to harm reduction, treatment utilization, and quality of care. We examine features of research dissemination that may generate or uphold stigmatization at every level for pregnant and parenting individuals affected by substance use disorder and their children. We explore stigma reduction practices within the research community that can increase uptake of evidence-based treatment programs and prevent potential harm related to substance use in pregnant and parenting people. The strategies we propose include: (1) address researcher stereotypes, prejudice, and misconceptions about pregnant and parenting people with substance use disorder; (2) engage in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations that engage with researchers who have lived experience in substance use; (3) use community-based approaches and engage community partners, (4) address stigmatizing language in science communication; (5) provide contextualizing information about the social and environmental factors that influence substance use among pregnant and parenting people; and (6) advocate for stigma-reducing policies in research articles and other scholarly products.

Background and aim:We examined error-driven learning in fMRI activity of 217 subjects in a stop signal task to obtain a more robust characterization of the relation between behavioral measures of learning and corresponding neural learning signals than previously possible. Methods:The stop signal task is a two-alternative forced choice in which participants respond to an arrow by pressing a left or right button but must inhibit that response on 1 in 7 trials when cued by an auditory "stop signal." We examined post-error learning by comparing brain activity (BOLD signal) and behavioral responses on trials preceded by successful (correct stop) vs. failed (failed stop) inhibition. Results:There was strong evidence of greater bilateral striatal activity in the period immediately following correct (vs. failed) stop trials (most evident in the putamen; peak MNI coordinates [-26 8 -2], 430 voxels, p < 0.001; [24 14 0], 527 voxels, p < 0.001). We measured median activity in the bilateral striatal cluster following every failed stop and correct stop trial and correlated it with learning signals for (a) probability and (b) latency of the stop signal. In a mixed-effects model predicting activity 5-10 s after the stop signal, both reaction time (RT) change (B = -0.05, t = 3.0, χ2 = 11.3, p < 0.001) and probability of stop trial change (B = 1.53, t = 6.0, χ2 = 43.0, p < 0.001) had significant within-subjects effects on median activity. In a similar mixed model predicting activity 1-5 s after the stop signal, only probability of stop trial change was predictive. Conclusions:A mixed-effects model indicates the striatal activity might be a learning signal that encodes reaction time change and the current expected probability of a stop trial occuring. This extends existing evidence that the striatum encodes a reward prediction error signal for learning within the stop signal task, and demonstrates for the first time that this signal seems to encode both change in stop signal probability and in stop signal delay.

Background. People in rural (vs. urban) places have worse health outcomes. We examined the role of healthy food availability and consumption in this health disparity. Method. We surveyed rural (n=313) and urban (n=458) Oregon residents online, and analyzed data from rural (n=1 235) and urban (n=13 912) respondents in the U.S. nationally representative Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS). We followed up pre-registered simple mediation models with post-hoc multi-mediator models combining the datasets. Results. As pre-registered, healthy food availability mediated the rurality-BMI relationship in the Oregon survey (8% proportion mediated, 95% CI [2%, 48%], p<0.05). In HINTS, we found fruit and vegetable consumption mediated the relationships between rurality and self-rated health (ACME=0.03 [0.02, 0.04], p<0.001), high blood pressure (ACME=0.004 [0.002, 0.01], p<0.001), and metabolic health (0.008, [0.004, 0.01], p<0.001). In a hybrid model, the effect of rurality on BMI (ACME=0.0119 [0.0043, 0.0227], p=0.0292) and health outcomes (ACME=0.0029 [0.0011, 0.0054], p=0.0083) was mediated by a combination of income and perceived fruit and vegetable availability and consumption. Conclusion. Nationwide data demonstrate rural-urban disparities in cardiometabolic health, self-rated health, and BMI are mediated by a series of two factors: income, and fruit and vegetable consumption. Oregon data suggests those factors in turn are mediated by a third factor, fruit and vegetable availability, and overall, the three factors together appear to mediate the rural-urban disparities. To address rural-urban health disparities, individual health behaviors, household income, and community healthy food availability should be targeted together.

This Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences article reviews trials that evaluated an obesity treatment that combines response-inhibition training with high-calorie foods and training designed to reduce attention for high-calorie foods. Two randomized controlled trials suggest that food-response inhibition and attention training produced significant body-fat loss, along with a reduction in valuation of, and reward-region response to, high-calorie foods. However, these effects did not emerge in a third trial, potentially because this trial used more heterogeneous food images, which reduced inhibition learning and attentional learning. Collectively, results suggest that food-response inhibition and attention training can devalue high-calorie foods and result in weight loss, but only if a homogeneous set of high-calorie and low-calorie food images is used.

The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic’s wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon—an event that hinges on human-to-human contact—we focus on socially relevant subfields of psychology. We highlight specific psychological phenomena that have likely shifted as a result of the pandemic and discuss theoretical, methodological, and practical considerations of conducting research on these phenomena. After this discussion, we evaluate metascientific issues that have been amplified by the pandemic. We aim to demonstrate how theoretically grounded views on the COVID-19 pandemic can help make psychological science stronger—not weaker—in its wake.

Objective: We conducted a large (N = 204) randomized, clinical trial to test the efficacy of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) on observed parenting and two key drivers of maladaptive parenting— self-regulation skills and harsh social cognitions—in a sample of child welfare-involved families. Method: Participants were randomly assigned to receive standard PCIT (n = 120) or services-as-usual (SAU; n = 84). The sample was characterized by low household income and significant exposures to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and substance abuse. Intention-to-treat analyses were conducted on multiply-imputed data followed by secondary per-protocol analyses. Results: Significant PCIT effects emerged on (a) increased positive parenting and reduced negative parenting (small-to-medium ITT effects and medium-to-large per-protocol effects); (b) gains in inhibitory control performance on the stop-signal task (small-to-medium ES); (c) gains in parent-reported emotion regulation and (d) positive, affirming self-perceptions (small-to-medium ES), relative to SAU control. The effects of PCIT on gains in parent emotion regulation were mediated by reductions in observed negative parenting. No main effects were observed on parent RSA scores or child attributions. Harsh child attributions moderated treatment response: PCIT parents who held the harshest child attributions displayed the greatest gains in labelled praises and declines in negative talk/criticism. Conclusions: This randomized trial presents the first evidence that PCIT improves inhibitory control and emotion regulation in child welfare-involved parents and provides independent replication of other published trials documenting gains in observed parenting.

Practicality was a valued attribute of academic psychological theory during its initial decades, but usefulness has since faded in importance to the field. Theories are now evaluated mainly on their ability to account for decontextualized laboratory data and not their ability to help solve societal problems. With laudable exceptions in the clinical, intergroup, and health domains, most psychological theories have little relevance to people’s everyday lives, poor accessibility to policymakers, or even applicability to the work of other academics who are better positioned to translate the theories to the practical realm. We refer to the lack of relevance, accessibility, and applicability of psychological theory to the rest of society as the practicality crisis. The practicality crisis harms the field in its ability to attract the next generation of scholars and maintain viability at the national level. We describe practical theory and illustrate its use in the field of self-regulation. Psychological theory is historically and scientifically well positioned to become useful should scholars in the field decide to value practicality. We offer a set of incentives to encourage the return of social psychology to the Lewinian vision of a useful science that speaks to pressing social issues.

BACKGROUND Functional MRI (fMRI) tasks are increasingly being used to advance knowledge of the etiology and maintenance of obesity and eating disorders. Thus, understanding the test-retest reliability of BOLD signal contrasts from these tasks is important. OBJECTIVES To evaluate test-retest reliability of responses in reward-related brain regions to food receipt paradigms (palatable tastes, anticipated palatable tastes), food picture paradigms (high-calorie food pictures), a monetary reward paradigm (winning money and anticipating winning money), and a thin female model picture paradigm (thin female model pictures). METHOD We conducted secondary univariate contrast-based analyses in data drawn from 4 repeated-measures fMRI studies. Participants (Study 1: N = 60, mean [M] age = 15.2 ± 1.1 y; Study 2: N = 109, M age = 15.1 ± 0.9 y; Study 3: N = 39, M age = 21.2 ± 3.7 y; Study 4: N = 62, M age = 29.7 ± 6.2 y) completed the same tasks over 3-wk to 3-y test-retest intervals. Studies 3 and 4 included participants with eating disorders and obesity, respectively. RESULTS Test-retest reliability of the food receipt and food picture paradigms was poor, with average ICC values ranging from 0.07 to 0.20. The monetary reward paradigm and the thin female model picture paradigm also showed poor test-retest reliability: average ICC values 0.21 and 0.12, respectively. Although several regions demonstrated moderate to good test-retest reliability, these results did not replicate across studies using similar paradigms. In Studies 3 and 4, but not Study 1, test-retest reliability in visual processing regions was moderate to good when contrasting single conditions with a low-level baseline. CONCLUSIONS Results underscore the importance of examining the temporal reliability of fMRI tasks and call for the development and use of well-validated standardized fMRI tasks in eating- and obesity-related studies that can provide more reliable measures of neural activation. The trials were registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02084836, NCT01949636, NCT03261050, and NCT03375853.

With cases of COVID-19 still spreading in America, and vaccines still inaccessible or undesired by many, individual mitigation behaviors, such as mask-wearing, remain critical defenses against this deadly virus. This study assessed whether approach-versus-avoidance message framing and goal-orientation affect people's intentions to follow COVID-19 preventative procedures. N = 832 subjects were randomly assigned to view mitigation messaging with either approach or avoidance framing, and either self-protective or altruistic goal-orientation. We observed a significant effect of goal-orientation, such that altruistic (versus self-protective) goal-orientations in messaging lead to stronger intentions to follow mitigation procedures. No significant effect of approach or avoidance framing was found on intentions to follow mitigation procedures. These results suggest an immediate need to address the wording of our public health messages. Adjusting the framing of COVID-19 preventative communications to reflect altruistic goals might increase the effectiveness of communications to protect at-risk populations.

Neural patterns associated with viewing energy-dense foods can predict changes in eating-related outcomes. However, most research on this topic is limited to one follow-up time point, and single outcome measures. The present study seeks to add to that literature by employing a more refined assessment of food craving and consumption outcomes along with a more detailed neurobiological model of behavior change over several time points. Here, a community sample of 88 individuals (age: M = 39.17, SD = 3.47; baseline BMI: M = 31.5, SD = 3.9, range 24-42) with higher body mass index (BMI) performed a food craving reactivity and regulation task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. At that time—and 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months later—participants reported craving for and consumption of healthy and unhealthy foods via the Food Craving Inventory (FCI) and ASA24 (N at 6 months = 52-55 depending on the measure). A priori hypotheses that brain activity associated with both viewing and regulating personally-desired unhealthy, energy-dense foods would be associated with self-reported craving for and consumption of unhealthy foods at baseline were not supported by the data. Instead, regression models controlling for age, sex, and BMI demonstrated that brain activity across several regions measured while individuals were regulating their desires for unhealthy food was associated with the self-reported craving for and consumption of healthy food. The hypothesis that vmPFC activity would predict patterns of healthier eating was also not supported. Instead, linear mixed models controlling for baseline age and sex, as well as changes in BMI, revealed that more regulation-related activity in the dlPFC, dACC, IFG, and vmPFC at baseline predicted decreases in the craving for and consumption of healthy foods over the course of 6 months.

There is an active debate regarding whether the ego depletion effect is real. A recent preregistered experiment with the Stroop task as the depleting task and the antisaccade task as the outcome task found a medium-level effect size. In the current research, we conducted a preregistered multilab replication of that experiment. Data from 12 labs across the globe ( N = 1,775) revealed a small and significant ego depletion effect, d = 0.10. After excluding participants who might have responded randomly during the outcome task, the effect size increased to d = 0.16. By adding an informative, unbiased data point to the literature, our findings contribute to clarifying the existence, size, and generality of ego depletion.