Automatic self-regulation: from habit to goal pursuit

goals across long periods of time (Baumeister, Masicampo, & Vohs, 2011). Conscious planning has been shown to be useful for goal attainment, even when this requires a course of action that implies a diversion from one’s habitual behavior (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Holland, Aarts, & Langendam, 2006; Papies, Aarts, & de Vries, 2009). Furthermore, using conscious awareness in an effortful fashion, such as in mindfulness and meditation training, can facilitate self-regulation by strengthening the executive control processes required to effectively support one’s goal pursuit, and can reduce the temptation of attractive alternatives for one’s long term goals (e.g., Hasenkamp & Barsalou, 2012; Papies, Barsalou, & Custers, 2012; Papies, Pronk, Keesman, & Barsalou, 2015; van Dillen & Papies, 2014; Teper & Inzlicht, 2013). Despite the important role for consciousness, however, recent developments in the literature suggest that across situations in daily life, people can effectively pursue many of their goals effectively without necessarily having to rely on conscious awareness and control of their behavior. Approaching self-regulation from this perspective touches upon intriguing questions regarding the origin of control over such processes, and regarding the role of the “self” as the consciously active agent of regulation (see for example Bargh & Ferguson, 2000; Baumeister, 1998; Baumeister, Schmeichel, & Vohs, 2007). Specifically, whereas people often derive the sense of self-regulation (“It’s me who is doing the control”) from their conscious experiences of self-agency, recent research suggests that such self-agency experiences can originate in the unconscious and are the result of an inference that occurs fluently and perfunctorily after action performance. Thus, how do conscious experiences of agency relate to the fact that much of the regulation of behavior unfolds outside conscious awareness? We will briefly address this issue in the last part of this chapter. In the meantime, however, we will treat selfregulation as the regulation of cognition and behavior that occurs within a given individual in the service of goal pursuit. Chapter Overview In this chapter, we will examine automatic self-regulation by analyzing the ways in which we can pursue our goals without conscious awareness of the triggers and of the processes engaged in the pursuit of the goal at hand. Thus, we will start out by examining how goals are represented in order to determine which features of goal representations actually motivate human behavior nonconsciously. Here, we will show that both the accessibility of the specific content of the goal, as well as an affective cue signaling its desirability, are crucial for triggering nonconscious motivation to pursue the goal. Next, we You created this PDF from an application that is not licensed to print to novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) Automatic Self-Regulation 4 will discuss how goal pursuit can be triggered by environmental cues. Then, we will discuss how goal-directed behavior can be performed nonconsciously by addressing the role of habits both for selecting and executing goal-directed actions. We will then address how adaptive cognitive processes facilitate and protect goal pursuit in dynamic circumstances. These mechanisms include, among others, the active maintenance, shielding, and monitoring of one’s goals, changes in the perception of and attention to goal-relevant stimuli, and evaluative processes, all contributing to self-regulation without the need for conscious awareness. Finally, we will examine how nonconscious self-regulation relates to the experiences of self-agency that accompany much of human behavior and discuss how the desire to feel in control over one’s actions deals with instances of nonconscious goal pursuit. How goals are represented The goals that people pursue in their daily lives can differ widely in their level of abstractness: while socializing or having a slim figure are representations of complex goals that usually require a series of behaviors to be achieved, getting hold of a bottle of water or producing matching symbols on a slot machine are results which can be attained by a simple hand movement or a button press. Across such instances, goals can be conceptualized as mental representations of certain behaviors or outcomes that are desirable to engage in or to attain (Bargh, 1997; Custers & Aarts, 2005; Fishbach & Ferguson, 2007). Research in several domains of psychology has confirmed the original ideomotor notion of William James and shown that human actions are represented in the brain in terms of their observable effects, associated with the motor program needed to produce the effect (Hommel, Musseler, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2001; Jeannerod, 2001; Prinz, 1997; Vallacher & Wegner, 1987). As a consequence, merely thinking about a certain outcome can activate the behavioral program needed to achieve that outcome. In addition, representing actions in terms of their potentially desirable results allows people to direct their behavior by anticipating its effect. This way, goals can serve as the standard and reference point for behavior, making sure that the ongoing actions actually produce the desired results. However, not every behavior or outcome that is represented in terms of a result of concrete actions actually operates as a true goal for an individual. An outcome is much more likely to motivate behavior to attain it if it is perceived to be rewarding by the individual. How is the rewarding value of an outcome actually determined, and how is this is done in the absence of conscious deliberation? Following the conceptualization of a goal as a desired outcome or behavior, recent research into the underlying mechanisms of nonconscious goal You created this PDF from an application that is not licensed to print to novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) Automatic Self-Regulation 5 pursuit has focused on the role of positive affective signals as indicators that a given state is worth pursuing (e.g., Custers & Aarts, 2005; Ferguson, 2007; see also Förster, Liberman, & Friedman, 2007). Affective signals play a fundamental role in directing human behavior and are processed quickly and without the need for conscious awareness upon the perception of a stimulus (Chen & Bargh, 1999; Damasio, 1994; Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986; Zajonc, 1980). Positive affect has been shown to play a central role in incentive learning and the neurological mechanisms involved in reward processing and motivation (see Berridge, 2007), suggesting that positive affective signals may be crucial for conveying information about the desirability and thus the motivational value of a potential goal state. We conceptualize a goal, therefore, as consisting of the cognitive representation of an outcome or behavior, which can serve as a reference point for one’s actions, coupled with a signal of positive affect which indicates that this reference point is desirable to attain. In other words, the positive affective signal turns a behavior representation into a goal representation and helps to recruit resources toward actually pursuing it when the goal is