Learning resistance to temptation through observation.

An adult model and 48 4–5 yr olds were tempted to deviate by a "talking table." On both an immediate and a delayed test, Ss who had seen the model yield deviated more quickly and for a longer period of time than control Ss who had not seen a model. Ss who had seen the model resist deviated less quickly and worked longer at a boring task. In a 2nd study with 80 5–8 yr olds, the tempting was done by a young woman. On several measures, only resisting models who rationalized their behavior were effective, and sometimes only with girls. Ss in the yielding model condition were less generous. It is argued that the procedures employed to study the effects of resisting and yielding models are important in determining their relative effectiveness. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Success, failure, and resistance to temptation.

78 8- and 9-yr-olds were randomly assigned to success, failure, and control conditions involving a test of intellectual ability. Subsequently, they were exposed to a resistance to temptation test involving play with a forbidden toy, and measures of latency were taken. As hypothesized, Ss who experienced success reported positive affect and resisted temptation for a longer time than Ss who experienced failure. Prior expectancy for self-control in resistance to temptation situations was significantly related to Ss' latency scores. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-control training: The effects of external control on children's resistance to temptation.

Studied the effects of extent and kind of external control during training on later resistance to temptation. 84 58-75 mo olds were trained not to turn around to look at a toy display. 4 groups heard recordings emphasizing the positive consequences of nontransgression. External control was varied by hearing the verbalizations in the voice of the E or the S and by having the E absent or present during training. 2 control groups for the effects of task-relevant verbalizations heard no recording. Effects of training were tested in a situation where the response to be controlled was turning around to look at a surprise (caged hamster). Presence of a task-relevant controlling response during training significantly increased Ss' self-control, but this effect was also dependent on the E's location during training, with decreased external control (E absent) resulting in better self-control. Sex differences were also obtained, with boys transgressing significantly more quickly than girls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Counteractive self-control in overcoming temptation.

How do anticipated short-term costs affect the likelihood of engaging in an activity that has long-term benefits. Five studies investigated the factors that determine (a) how anticipated short-term costs elicit self-control efforts and (b) how self-control efforts eventually diminish the influence of short-term costs on behavior. The studies manipulated short-term costs (e.g., painful medical procedures) and assessed a variety of self-control strategies (e.g., self-imposed penalties for failure to undergo a test). The results show that short-term costs elicit self-control strategies for self rather than others, before rather than after behavior, when long-term benefits are important rather than unimportant and when the costs are moderate rather than extremely small or large. The results also show that the self-control efforts help people act according to their long-term interests. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The self-control costs of fighting the temptation to drink.

Being exposed to the sight and smell of an alcoholic beverage and not drinking it should require self-control. On the basis of the self-control strength model (M. Muraven & R. F. Baumeister, 2000), exerting self-control should lead to poorer performance on subsequent self-control tasks. Using a cue exposure paradigm, the authors had 160 social drinkers alternately sniff water and alcohol. After each trial, the drinkers engaged in 2 self-control tasks: squeezing a handgrip and a self-stopping task. Performance on these tasks was worse after sniffing alcohol than after sniffing water. Mood and arousal did not mediate the effects; urge to drink was negatively related to outcomes. The effects were stronger for individuals high in trait temptation to drink. Resisting the temptation of drinking appears to undermine self-control capacity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Compliance, temptation, and conflicting instructions.

Examined compliance with prohibitive instructions persisting across time and situations. 88 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-grade males were initially placed in a temptation situation where instructional consistency, threat intensity, and experimenter surveillance were manipulated (Bender Gestalt Test for Young Children). 21–30 days later, instructional control was assessed in an ostensibly unrelated situation where an unfamiliar experimenter permitted Ss to emit the formerly forbidden behavior. Results show that the extension of prohibitive control across time was significantly reduced by contradictions between instruction-givers. Findings are interpreted in terms of an algebraic-summation model of discriminative functions combined with generalization. The crucial role of establishment of instructional control in the subsequent development of self-control is discussed. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Situational temptation scores and smoking cessation in general care.

The construct of self-efficacy, which is assessed either in confidence- or temptation-related instruments, presumably predicts transitions between the transtheoretical model stages of change and ultimately smoking cessation outcome. To elucidate its predictive potential for smoking cessation in a general care setting, we examined the association of baseline scores of the situational temptations inventory with month 12 smoking status in 577 heavy smokers participating in a cluster-randomized study of physician training and financial incentives for smoking cessation in Germany. At follow-up, abstinence could be validated in 56 patients. The temptation sub- and total scores were not bivariately associated with altered odds of smoking cessation, in contrast to established predictors like the Fagerstrom test of nicotine dependence and the stages of change. They were associated with the Fagerstrom scores, but not with the stages of change. Controlling for both cessation predictors, in particular the positive/social temptation subscore was associated with quitting. Additional studies are needed to fully understand how situational temptations relate to smoking cessation outcomes and explain variance beyond that of more established predictors of cessation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Delay of gratification, motivation for the prohibited gratification, and responses to temptation.

Yielding to temptation, in a situation in which attainment of achievement rewards is contingent upon deviant (cheating) behavior, was conceptualized to be a function of (a) the strength of the motivation to attain the prohibited gratification, and (b) the inability to delay immediate gratification. 6th-grade boys participated in an experimentally controlled "shooting gallery" game of skill in which attainment of achievement rewards (prizes) was contingent upon the child's falsifying his own scores. Motivation for the prohibited gratification was inferred from "n Achievement" scores: preference for immediate, smaller (ImR) or delayed, larger (DelR) rewards in choice situations was the index of the ability to delay gratification. Achievement motivation was related to the S's producing sufficiently deviant scores to obtain an achievement reward, and preference for DelR was related negatively to the amount of cheating and positively to the latency of cheating, i.e., the number of trials before the occurrence of the 1st deviation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cultural influence on conscience development: Resistance to temptation and guilt among Samoans and American Caucasians.

In this study (a) the socialization effects of a shame and a guilt culture on conscience development are compared with Samoan and American Caucasian children and (b) the relationships between resistance to temptation and guilt are investigated. Inferences about conscience strength were made from behavior in a real-life temptation situation and from responses to projective story completion items depicting transgressions. The results show that the Samoan Ss were significantly less likely than the mainland Ss to resist temptation and to show susceptibility toward remorse, confession, and restitution after transgression. The projective measures of guilt are shown to be highly interrelated but inconsistently related to temptation behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affect and adult self-regulation.

100 female undergraduates reviewed 1 of 5 sets of 45 self-statements representing manipulations of affect (positive somatic, positive self-evaluation, negative somatic, negative self-evaluation, or neutral) and then completed an ostensibly separate task involving self-regulation of difficult or easy mathematics problems to examine the influence of induced affect on Ss' self-regulated performance and related subjective responses. Before and after the affect induction, Ss completed several measures of affect and self-perception, including the Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist and the Subjective Probability Questionnaire. Following the performance phase, Ss observed their problem-solving activities, evaluated them, and made attributional and other responses. It was hypothesized that (1) somatic affect inductions would prove most potent, (2) affect would have greater impact in the low-task-mastery context, and (3) positive vs negative affect inductions would produce differential effects, dependent on task-mastery condition. The somatic inductions more substantially influenced subjective reports and performance, in accord with Hypothesis 1, and the positive somatic induction significantly improved self-regulation only in the low-mastery condition, in partial support of Hypotheses 2 and 3. Discussion focuses on the importance of the arousal dimensions of affect and concomitant shifts in attentional foci as determinants of adult self-regulation. (93 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affect and stereoscopic resolution.

A set of nonsense syllables were associated, by the method of anticipation, with pictures previously scaled with regard to pleasantness and unpleasantness. Syllables associated with pleasant and with unpleasant pictures were paired and presented in a stereoscopic binocular rivalry apparatus. Ss seeing relatively more "unpleasant" syllables scored significantly in the shallow-affect direction on a personality scale. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affect and the overjustification effect.

Studied the role of affect as a mediator of the overjustification effect and proposed that negative affect has a critical detrimental influence on intrinsic motivation, either as a reaction derived from self-perception and evaluation processes or as a factor that acts independently of these cognitive activities. Two studies, with 180 undergraduates, used the typical overjustification paradigm to test these hypotheses. In Exp I, the overjustification effect was successfully replicated for both behavioral and self-report measures of intrinsic motivation. It is important that the negative affect paralleled these results and was greatest in those conditions in which intrinsic motivation was predicted and found to be low (e.g., expected reward). In Exp II, affect was directly manipulated, independently of the cognitive manipulations. Results show that the induced positive affect erased the decrease in intrinsic motivation that was observed in Exp I. It is suggested that what determines the decrease in intrinsic interest in any activity is, in part, the amount of negative affect that becomes associated with the activity. (55 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affect intensity and cardiac arousal.

Investigated in 3 experiments the relationships between affect intensity and basal, evoked, and perceived cardiac arousal. Affect intensity was assessed using R. J. Larsen and E. Diener's (1987) Affect Intensity Measure (AIM). Cardiac arousal was evoked with exercise in the 1st study and with mental arithmetic in the 2nd and 3rd. Perceived cardiac arousal was measured under optimal conditions using a standard heartbeat discrimination procedure. Women as a group scored higher on the AIM. Affect intensity was unrelated to basal or evoked cardiac arousal and was negatively related to perceived cardiac arousal in all 3 studies. Data suggest that affect intensity, although unrelated to actual physiological arousal, is negatively related to the accuracy with which individuals perceive their own arousal. Results are discussed within the context of an expanded arousal-regulation model (J. Blascovich, 1990). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Daily Affect and Daily Beliefs.

Human resource directorate employees of a large United Kingdom public hospital (N=36) completed an initial questionnaire and then participated in a daily diary study. The questionnaire included measures of affect and beliefs about high work demands' influence on affect and work performance. The diary included measures of affect, extent of high work demands, and daily beliefs, corresponding to those measured in the questionnaire. Participants were required to complete the diary twice daily, before and after work over a 2-week period. Measures of affect after work were associated with beliefs concerning work demands' influence on work performance and on affect measured after work. Beliefs about work demands measured in the questionnaire were associated with subsequent daily assessments of beliefs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Curvilinear relationships among anticipated success, cheating behavior, temptation to cheat, and perceived instrumentality of cheating.

In Exp I, 45 undergraduates were informed that they could earn a $10 bonus by performing above average on a free-recall task. Following a pretest, they were given either a high-, a medium-, or a low-success message concerning their recall performance. During a subsequent test, half the words were left "carelessly" exposed in such a way that they could be copied. Cheating (copying) was related to anticipated success in a curvilinear fashion with medium success yielding the most cheating. Exp II, with 45 additional Ss, indicated that the success–failure messages did affect expectations concerning success, that success was not related to repugnance of hypothetical failure in a curvilinear fashion, and that success was related to both temptation to cheat and perceived instrumentality of cheating in a curvilinear manner. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Breast and ovarian cancer prone women and prophylactic surgery temptation

Aldosterone suppression by dexamethasone, and high 18-hydroxycortisol and 18-oxocortisol levels are used to differentiate glucocorticoid-remediable aldosteronism (GRA) from other forms of primary aldosteronism. These methods are time consuming, expensive, and impractical for large studies. Moreover, diagnosis of GRA requires a confirmatory genetic test. We evaluated 117 patients with primary aldosteronism referred to our centers by the use of a long PCR technique to reveal the chimeric gene of GRA. In 60 of 117 patients, the response of aldosterone to dexamethasone (2 mg/day for 4 days) was also assessed. None of our patients, including 2 pairs of siblings, was positive for the chimeric gene. The results of long PCR were confirmed by Southern blotting. Despite a negative genetic test, 6 patients (1 with aldosterone-producing adenoma and 5 with idiopathic hyperaldosteronism) had plasma aldosterone suppressed by dexamethasone (i.e. < or = 2 ng/dL). Of 117 patients, 43 were identified as having aldosterone-producing adenoma and 74 as having idiopathic hyperaldosteronism. In our experience, the long PCR technique is a reliable and simple test to at least exclude GRA in patients with primary aldosteronism. A short term dexamethasone suppression test of aldosterone can be misleading in identifying GRA. The prevalence of GRA in primary aldosteronism remains to be established.     

Leading us not into temptation: Momentary allurements elicit overriding goal activation.

The present research explored the nature of automatic associations formed between short-term motives (temptations) and the overriding goals with which they interfere. Five experimental studies, encompassing several self-regulatory domains, found that temptations tend to activate such higher priority goals, whereas the latter tend to inhibit the temptations. These activation patterns occurred outside of participants' conscious awareness and did not appear to tax their mental resources. Moreover, they varied as a function of subjective goal importance and were more pronounced for successful versus unsuccessful self-regulators in a given domain. Finally, priming by temptation stimuli was found not only to influence the activation of overriding goals but also to affect goal-congruent behavioral choices. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)