People approach pleasure and avoid pain. To discover the true nature of approach-avoidance motivation, psychologists need to move beyond this hedonic principle to the principles that underlie the different ways that it operates. One such principle is regulatory focus, which distinguishes self-regulation with a promotion focus (accomplishments and aspirations)from self-regulation with a prevention focus (safety and responsibilities). This principle is used to reconsider the fundamental nature of approach-avoidance, expectancy-value relations, and emotional and evaluative sensitivities. Both types of regulatory focus are applied to phenonomena that have been treated in terms of either promotion (e.g., well-being) or prevention (e.g., cognitive dissonance). Then, regulatory focus is distinguished from regulatory anticipation and regulatory reference, 2 other principles underlying the different ways that people approach pleasure and avoid pain. It seems that our entire psychical activity is bent upon procuring pleasure and avoiding pain, that it is automatically regulated by the PLEASURE-PRINCIPLE. (Freud, 1920/1952, p. 365) People are motivated to approach pleasure and avoid pain. From the ancient Greeks, through 17th- and 18thcentury British philosophers, to 20th-century psychologists, this hedonic or pleasure principle has dominated scholars ' understanding of people's motivation. It is the basic motivational assumption of theories across all areas of psychology, including theories of emotion in psychobiology (e.g., Gray, 1982), conditioning in animal learning

: Social Sciences are increasingly interested in understanding the characteristics of Computer Mediated Communication and its effects on people, groups and organisations. The first effect of this influence is the revolution in the metaphors used to describe communication. After describing these changes, the paper outlines a framework for the study of computer-mediated communication and considers the three psychosocial roots of the process by which interaction between users is constructed -- networked reality, virtual conversation and identity construction. The paper also considers the implications of these changes for current research in communication studies, with particular reference to the role of context, the link between cognition and interaction, and the use of interlocutory models as paradigms of communicative interaction: communication is not only -- or not so much -- a transfer of information, but also the activation of a psychosocial relationship, the process by which interlo...

and Creative Modeling Modeling is not simply a process of response mimicry as commonly believed. Modeled judgments and actions may differ in specific content but embody the same rule. For example, a model may deal with moral dilemmas that differ widely in the nature of the activity but apply the same moral standard to them. Modeled activities thus convey rules for generative and innovative behavior. This higher level learning is achieved through abstract modeling. Once observers extract the rules underlying the modeled activities they can generate new behaviors that go beyond what they have seen or heard. Creativeness rarely springs entirely from individual inventiveness. A lot of modeling goes on in creativity. By refining preexisting innovations, synthesizing them into new ways and adding novel elements to them something new is created. When exposed to models of differing styles of thinking and behaving, observers vary in what they adopt from the different sources and thereby create ...

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It has long been assumed that people perceive in others qualities that they wish to deny in themselves, but empirical evidence for defensive projection is limited and controversial. A new model of projection is presented in this article. People might try to actively suppress thoughts about the possibility that they have undesirable personality traits, but it was hypothesized that this response to threat ultimately causes thoughts about the unwanted traits to become chronically accessible. As a result, those trait concepts will be used to interpret others ' behavior. Studies 1-4 showed that those people who both avoid thinking about having threatening personality traits and deny possessing them (repressors) also readily infer those traits from others ' behavior. Studies 5-6 provided experimental support for the model. Unfavorable traits were attributed to participants, who, when they were asked or predisposed to not think about the traits, subsequently projected them onto someone else. Why do so many people regard their rivals and opponents as exploitative and unscrupulous? Why are some people consumed with intense, irrational suspicions that their lovers are unfaith-ful? Why are gay people vilified and attacked by many hetero-sexuals? How do people form stereotypes of out-groups whose members they scarcely know? One traditional answer to such questions invokes the concept of projection (A. Freud, 1936; S. Freud, 1915/1957). According to this view, when people are motivated to avoid seeing certain faults in themselves, they contrive instead to see those same faults in others. In recent years, a number of researchers have analyzed and investigated the social-cognitive mechanisms underlying phe-nomena that have traditionally been associated with psychoana-lytic theory (e.g., Andersen & Cole, 1990; Bornstein, 1993;

The area of behavioral decision research, specifically the work on heuristics and biases, has had a tremendous influence on basic research, applied research, and application over the last twenty-five years. Its unique juxtaposition against economics has provided important benefits, but at the cost of leaving it disconnected from too much of psychology. This paper explores an expanded definition of behavioral decision research through the consideration of multiple levels of cognitive processing. Rather than being limited to how decision-makers depart from optimality, we offer a broader analysis of how decision-makers define the decision problem and link decisions to goals, as well as a more detailed focus on processes associated with implementing decisions. Over the past few decades the area of cognitive psychology has grown dramatically, social and developmental psychology have moved strongly in a cognitive direction, and behavioral decision research (BDR) has emerged as a new area of psychology. BDR is unique among psychological subfields in the impact that it has had on research outside of psychology - including its impact on economics, finance, public policy, law, medicine, marketing, organizational behavior, and negotiation. Unfortunately, BDR has also moved further away from many core areas of psychology, limiting its theoretical development and its integration with advances made in allied areas. Our central thesis is that the most well known part of BDR, the heuristics and biases approach, has been overly constrained by a focus on how people make mistakes at the point of decision. Research on heuristics and biases has implicitly assumed that the goal is known and that the details of implementing decisions are not part of the problem. The prescriptive goal is optim...

The internal working models concept is the foundation for understanding how attach-ment processes operate in adult relationships, yet many questions exist about the precise nature and structure of working models. To clarify the working models concept, the authors evaluate the empirical evidence relevant to the content, structure, operation, and stability of working models in adult relationships. They also identify 4 theoretical issues that are critical for clarifying the properties of working models. These issues focus on the central role of affect and goals in working models, the degree to which working models are individual difference or relational variables, and the definition of attachment relationships and felt security in adulthood. Each individual builds working models of the world and of himself in it, with the aid of which he perceives events, forecasts the future, and constructs his plans. In the working models of the world that anyone builds a key feature is his notion of who his attachment figures are, where they may be found, and how they may be expected to respond. Similarly, in the working model of the self that anyone builds a key feature is his notion of how acceptable or unacceptable he himself is in the eyes of his attachment figures. (Bowlby, 1973, p, 203) Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1979, 1980) has profoundly influenced research and theorizing about the nature of human rela-tionships across the life span. The primary as-sumption of attachment theory is that humans form close emotional bonds in the interest of survival. These bonds facilitate the develop-ment and maintenance of mental representa-tions of the self and others, or "internal working models, " that help individuals predict and un-derstand their environment, engage in survival-promoting behaviors such as proximity mainte-nance, and establish a psychological sense of The concept of attachment trajectory was developed in

This study concentrates on the dynamic interplay of affect and cognition in school mathematics learning. The aim of the study is to produce a systematic analysis and rich theoretical description of the functioning of affect and cognition in socio-culturally and contextually conditioned mathematics learning situations. The analysis and dynamic description are presented in close connection with the obtained research results of mathematics education and affect. The included meta-analysis or theoretical synthesis of previous research results is developed with respect to important recent conceptualizations of metacognition, self-regulation, and self-systems and to learning models applied in the scientific field of general educational psychology or within the psychological research of mathematics education. Various conceptualizations and models of affect, learning, and self-regulation are integrated in the study into a unified understanding of personal learning processes with affect and mathematics. The basic idea of the study consists of an emphasis laid on dynamic theoretical analyses and illustrations dealing with affect and mathematics learning or performances in the

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Anecdotal reports of the protective qualities of mentoring relationships for youth are corroborated by a growing body of research. What is missing, however, is research on the processes by which mentors influence developmental outcomes. In this article, we present a conceptual model of the mentoring process along with a delineation of some of the current research on what makes for more effective mentoring relationships. A set of recommendations for future research is offered. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Anecdotal reports of the protective qualities of mentoring relationships for youth are corroborated by a growing body of research. However, few researchers have explored the processes by which mentors influence developmental outcomes. In this article, we present a conceptual model of the mentoring process, drawing from theory and research on child and adolescent development and close relationships. Although we view the processes outlined in this model as generally applicable to mentoring relationships in childhood and adolescence, we recognize that the effects of mentoring are likely to depend upon the age and circumstance of the youth, as well as the quality and duration of the relationship. Accordingly, we discuss issues in the development and assessment of mentoring