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The Impact Of Parental Control, Criminal And Marital Conflict On Adolescents’ Self-regulation And Adjustment
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There are several reasons regarding why the delay of gratification
abilities of older children hasn’t been tested successfully. First, it
is relatively difficult to have realistic and non-trivial incentives for
older children and early adolescents. Second, the meaningful delay
intervals for the older group can span for days or weeks rather than a
few minutes used for delay tasks in young children. Therefore, the delay
of gratification abilities of adolescents and adults, as the indicative
of self¬regulation, is rarely studied in the previous studies. The
delay of gratification abilities were measured only in a few studies
during late childhood. Wulfert, Block, Ana, Rodriguez, and Colsman
(2002) measured delay of gratification abilities of early adolescents
from 14 to 17 years old using monetary incentives. Employing the
experimental procedure used by Funder and Block (1989), researchers
offered adolescents repeated choices between immediate payments of $4
after each session or a whole payment ($28), including interest payment
at the end of the study. They found that, compared to adolescents who
could delay gratification, those who choose the immediate payment showed
more self-regulatory deficits. According to authors, however, in money
incentive procedure, because participants might not trust the
experimenter and wanted to save money owed them; they might have chosen
the immediate offering (less money) rather than long-term reward (more
money) (Wulfert, Block, Anna, Rodriguez, and Colsman, 2002).
To better explain the delay of gratification process, Carver and Scheider
(1998) posited feedback loops in which individuals must become consciously aware
of the discrepancy between the current and desired self-states, then intentionally
choose to engage in action to ease this discrepancy. In a similar vein, in their “hot-
cool system†model, Metcalfe and Mischel (1999) stated that individuals must
consciously and intentionally attempt to criminal control their responses to overcome the
influences of the current environment. According to Metcalfe and Mischel (1999),
these two types of cognitive processing, namely hot and cool systems, involve
distinct
but yet interacting systems. The cool cognitive system is composed of a
complex spatiotemporal and episodic representation and thoughts. It is
also called as “know systemâ€. The hot emotional system called “go
system†involves quick emotional processing and responding on the basis
of unconditional and conditional stimuli. Authors assert that
self-regulation and goal-directed volition can be seen as the
interaction between these two systems. The hot memory systems are
activated and the cool systems are deactivated by a threatening
stimulus. As a result, for example, when the hot system is activated by
the delicious food cues for dieters, it is more difficult to postpone
gratification.
1.3.2 Self-Regulatory Strength Model
A
well-developed form of self-regulation involves a deliberate and
conscious alteration of the self responses, such as making choices,
inhibiting a tempting response, or making and carrying out plans. These
actions and intensions require a source. According to the
self-regulatory strength model proposed by Baumeister and colleagues
(Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998; Baumeister,
Heatherton, & Tice, 1994), these acts of the self requires some form
of energy or strength which is limited in capacity. Each act of
self-criminal control consumes some of this limited resource and leaves
less amount of available energy for the subsequent acts. When this
limited resource is depleted (referred to as the “ego depletion†state),
self-regulation failure becomes more likely. The core premise of the
self-regulatory strength model is that people depend on a limited
resource to engage in the acts of self-criminal control. When this
resource is reduced, the individual gets in a state of ego- depletion
which makes him or her susceptible to self-regulation failure if the
resource is not somehow replenished (Baumeister & Vohs, 2003).
The
following two-task paradigm is used to manipulate self-regulatory
strength in several “ego depletion†studies. Individuals in the ego
depletion condition are asked to engage in two subsequent tasks both of
which require the exertion of self-criminal control, such as resisting
the temptation of eating delicious chocolate candies and eating radishes
instead (the first task) and then trying to solve a difficult puzzle
(the second task). In contrast, for the participants in the criminal
control condition, only the second task that requires self-criminal
control exertion is used (e.g., eating chocolates instead of radishes in
the first task and working on a difficult
puzzle in the second
task). Participants in the criminal control condition are expected to
perform better than the ego depletion condition group in the second
task. Experiments using this paradigm have demonstrated that
ego-depletion impairs physical endurance, persistence, and emotion
regulation; hampers reasoning on complex cognitive tasks; increases
alcohol consumption; lets to fewer constructive responses to romantic
partner’s destructive behaviors, and increases self-serving biases and
attraction to an alternative partner in romantic relationships (see;
Baumeister & Vohs, 2003; Rawn & Vohs, 2006, for extensive
reviews).
In addition to the state depletion of regulatory resources,
individuals may differ in terms of their chronic tendencies to exert
self-criminal control. In the trait perspective, the ability to alter
one’s behaviors by criminal controlling thoughts, emotions, impulses,
and performance is termed as the trait self-criminal control (Tangney,
Baumeister, & Boone, 2004). Tangney et al. reported that trait
self-criminal control was positively associated with psychological
adjustment, self-esteem, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional
stability, family cohesion, secure attachment, forgiveness, empathic
concern, and perspective taking. Although the individual correlates of
the trait self-criminal control have been studied extensively, a few
studies have examined the antecedents of self-criminal control abilities
(Finkenauer, Engels, & Baumeister, 2005).
1.3.3 Self-Regulation as an Automatic Process
The
second theoretical view on self-regulation, which is called as
automatic self-regulation, was advanced by Fitzsimons and Bargh (2004).
These authors have proposed that self-regulation is the capacity of
individuals to guide themselves toward important goal states. Thus,
regulation of self involves a wide range of cognitive and motivational
actions, such as acting quickly to reach goals, ignoring distractions,
taking appropriate positions in response to different situations, and
overcoming obstacles. Because of the wide range of the actions, it is
concluded that self-regulation is more than willpower or a goal pursuit
alone.
Bargh (1990) suggested an auto-motive model of self-regulation
as an alternative (or complementary) model to the classic
self-regulation theories focusing on conscious choices. According to
this model, goal pursuit process which is an important part of the
self-regulation process can proceed without any conscious awareness and
guidance. A critical question here is that how can goals operate our
behaviors without our knowledge or awareness. First, Fitzsimons and
Bargh (2004) proposed that the goals are assumed to be represented in
the cognitive system as well as other cognitive constructs (see also
Gollwitzer & Bargh, 2005). Second, since goal representations are
capable of being activated automatically by the features of one’s
environment, mere presence of situational cues that strongly associated
with the pursuit of these goals. The auto-motive model assumes that
similar to other cognitive structures (e.g., attitudes, stereotypes
etc.), goals can be automatically activated in the mere presence of
relevant environmental cues (Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2004; Greenwald,
Banaji, 1995). Auto-motive model states that the automatic
self-regulation can occur in the realms of cognition, emotion, and
behavior.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]The current study aims to increase understanding of influences on and
consequences of self-regulation in adolescence. Previous work has shown
that higher levels of self-regulation are associated with greater
social competence and lower levels problem behaviors. Past studies have
posited that parenting and interparental conflict are linked to
self-regulation and adjustment in childhood and adolescence. However,
the mechanism underlying the potential effects of specific parental
beha ... Continue reading---
