Experimentally manipulated achievement goal state fluctuations regulate self-conscious emotional responses to feedback

Self-conscious emotions, such as pride and shame, have important implications for performance in competence pursuits. Emotions and motivation are strongly linked and it may be that achievement goals play a role in regulating self-conscious emotions. This study investigated the effects of between-person achievement goal orientations and within-person fluctuations in achievement goal states on pride and shame responses to feedback. Undergraduate students (N = 58) completed a 24-round game of Tetris. Before each round, scoring criteria prompts were provided to manipulate achievement goals and participants rated their goals. After each round, participants received experimentally manipulated feedback and rated their pride and shame. A set of hierarchical linear models revealed that performance achievement goal states moderated the effects of feedback on pride and shame at a within-person level. These results suggest coaches and teachers may be able to use contextual cues to influence motivation and selfconscious emotions of their athletes and students during competence pursuits

Achievement motivation processes

The pursuit of competence is fundamental to physical activity, regardless of whether that activity occurs in organized competitive sport or in less structured leisure-time pursuits. People naturally strive to feel effective in their physical activities, but such competence can be pursued in a variety of ways with different consequences. Achievement motivation theories attempt to explain the processes that energize and orient these competence strivings. This chapter reviews the psychometric properties of measures used to assess the most common and relevant achievement motivation processes for people engaged in sport and exercise activities

Using the EZ-diffusion model to score a single-category implicit association test of physical activity

Objective: The Single-Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT) has been used as a method for assessing automatic evaluations of physical activity, but measurement artifact or consciously held attitudes could be confounding the outcome scores of these measures. The objective of these two studies was to address these measurement concerns by testing the validity of a novel SC-IATscoring technique. Design: Study 1 was a cross-sectional study, and study 2 was a prospective study. Method: In study 1, undergraduate students (N = 104) completed SC-IATs for physical activity, flowers, and sedentary behavior. In study 2, undergraduate students (N = 91) completed a SC-IAT for physical activity, self-reported affective and instrumental attitudes toward physical activity, physical activity intentions, and wore an accelerometer for two weeks. The EZ-diffusion model was used to decompose the SC-IAT into three process component scores including the information processing efficiency score. Results: In study 1, a series of structural equation model comparisons revealed that the information processing score did not share variability across distinct SC-IATs, suggesting it does not represent systematic measurement artifact. In study 2, the information processing efficiency score was shown to be unrelated to self-reported affective and instrumental attitudes toward physical activity, and positively related to physical activity behavior, above and beyond the traditional D-score of the SC-IAT. Conclusions: The information processing efficiency score is a valid measure of automatic evaluations of physical activity

Implicit attitudes and explicit motivation prospectively

Background: Contemporary approaches to physical activity motivation and promotion focus on explicit motivational processes which regulate intentional physical activity. Less is known about the role of implicit processes, which may be instrumental in regulating habitual aspects of unintentional (i.e., incidental) physical activity (PA).PurposeTo test the proposition that the routine nature of unintentional PA makes it amenable to control by implicit processes. Methods: Participants (N = 201) completed measures of explicit motivation (i.e., efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations, behavioral intentions, perceived behavioral control) and implicit attitudes toward physical activity, and then wore a pedometer for 1 week.ResultsImplicit attitudes positively predicted PA after controlling for well-established predictors of intentional physical activity. Conclusions: PA motivation involves both explicit and implicit processes, and PA promotion efforts may be enhanced by attending to relevant implicit motivation processes

The independence of implicit and explicit attitudes toward physical activity : introspective access and attitudinal concordance

ObjectiveThis study investigated relations between implicit and explicit attitudes toward physical activity, as well as the role of individual differences in introspective access as a possible moderator of implicit–explicit attitudinal concordance.DesignThe design was non-experimental and involved self-report and behavioral measures.MethodUndergraduate students (N = 203) completed explicit measures of attitudes toward physical activity and its outcomes. They also completed a Single-Category Implicit Association Test adapted to assess implicit evaluative attitudes toward physical activity.ResultsImplicit and explicit attitudes toward physical activity were unrelated and neither private self-consciousness nor private body consciousness moderated the relation.ConclusionsThese findings support the theory that implicit and explicit attitudes toward physical activity are independent systems. We discuss the implications of these findings for physical activity promotion effort

Tethering theory to method : using measures of lntraindividual variability to operationalize individuals' dynamic characteristics

Within-person changes in behavior that manifest on relatively short timescales are indicative of, and can be used to, measure and model a variety of dynamic constructs. In particular, observations obtained from the same individuals at closely spaced intervals (e.g., seconds, minutes, hours,days, weeks) can be used as indicators of individuals' inherent capacity for change, or dynamic characteristics, and systematic patterns of change that describe behavioral transformations, or dynamic processes (Ram & Gerstorf,2009). Intensive repeated-measures data are a central feature of diary, ecological momentary assessment (EMA), ambulatory, and other intensive longitudinal study designs wherein multiple reports or assessments are obtained over a relatively short span of time (e.g., Bolger, Davis, & Rafaeli,2003; Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1987; Shiffman, Stone, & Hufford, 2008;Walls & Schafe r, 2006). In this chapter, we illustrate how quantifications of intraindividual variability, as summaries of intensive repeated-measures data, can be used to examine dynamic characteristics. First, we introduce a set of theories/ constructs (i.e., lability, diversity, polarity, complexity) that can be used to articulate individuals' capacity for change in many domains of inquiry (e.g., emotional experience, interpersonal behavior). Second, we review a set of methods/ mathematical descriptions that, when applied to intensive repeated-measures data, can be used to quantify intraindividual variability. Third, we introduce a set of empirical data and illustrate how the set of theoretical constructs can be explicitly tethered to the mathematical descriptions of those data to examine individuals' dynamic characteristics. Finally, we highlight aspects of theory and study design that hold particular import for the tethering of dynamic constructs to intensive repeated measures data

Bursts of self-conscious emotions in the daily lives of emerging adults

Self-conscious emotions play a role in regulating daily achievement strivings, social behavior, and health, but little is known about the processes underlying their daily manifestation. Emerging adults (n = 182) completed daily diaries for 8 days and multilevel models were estimated to evaluate whether, how much, and why their emotions varied from day to day. Within-person variation in authentic pride was normally distributed across people and days, whereas the other emotions were burst-like and characterized by zero-inflated, negative binomial distributions. Perceiving social interactions as generally communal increased the odds of hubristic pride activation and reduced the odds of guilt activation; daily communal behavior reduced guilt intensity. Results illuminated processes through which meaning about the self in relation to others is constructed during a critical period of development

Unpacking the feel-good effect of free-time physical activity : between- and within-person associations with pleasant-activated feeling states

Physical activity is a widely accessible and effective tool for improving well-being. This study aimed to unpack the feel-good effects of free-time physical activity. Multilevel models were applied to repeated measures of daily free-time physical activity and four types of feeling states obtained from 190 undergraduate students. Physical activity was not associated with pleasant-deactivated, unpleasant- activated, or unpleasant-deactivated feelings. People who were more physically active overall had higher pleasant-activated feelings than people who were less physically active, and on days when people were more physically active than was typical for them, they reported higher levels of pleasant-activated feelings. Both the between- and within-person associations remained significant after controlling for day of week, sleep quality, and carryover effects of previous day free-time physical activity and feeling states. Results suggest that both increases in overall levels and acute bouts of free-time physical activity are associated with increases in feelings of pleasant-activation

The dynamic nature of physical activity intentions : a within-person perspective on intention-behavior coupling

The intention-behavior gap has proven to be a vexing problem for theorists and practitioners interested in physical activity. Intention stability is one factor which moderates this gap. This study articulated and tested contrasting views of intention stability as (a) a dynamic characteristic of people that influences assessment error (and therefore the predictive power of intentions) and (b) the product of a dynamic process that unfolds within people over time. Using an ecological momentary assessment design, young adults (N = 30) rated weekly physical activity intentions for 10 weeks and wore pedometers for the first 4 weeks of the study. Substantial within-person variability existed in intentions over both 4- and 10-week intervals, and this variability was not a function of time exclusively. Multilevel modeling revealed that overall intention strength (across weeks) and weekly deviations in intention strength interacted to predict weekday (but not weekend) physical activity. These findings indicate that the person and context interact to selectively couple or decouple intentions from daily physical activity

Habit strength moderates the strength of within-person relations between weekly self-reported and objectively-assessed physical activity

ObjectivesPhysical activity (PA) habit strength influences how people control their PA and may also influence how people encode, store, or recall their PA. This study evaluated whether individual differences in PA habit strength moderated the magnitude of within-person associations between weekly self-reported PA and step counts.DesignLongitudinal.MethodAfter an initial assessment of PA habit strength, university students wore pedometers for four weeks and completed four self-reports of weekly mild, moderate, and strenuous PA.ResultsOn average, people's weekly step counts and self-reported PA across time were weakly-to-moderately associated, but there was substantial variability in the magnitude of these associations across people. People with strong PA habits had weaker within-person associations between deviations from their average self-reported PA and step counts than those with weak PA habits.ConclusionsThese results may indicate that PA habit strength influences the sensitivity of self-report PA measures to change in objectively-measured PA