Handbook of Personality and Self-Regulation
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Handbook of Personality and Self-Regulation

Rick H. Hoyle, Rick H. Hoyle

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Handbook of Personality and Self-Regulation

Rick H. Hoyle, Rick H. Hoyle

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About This Book

The Handbook of Personality and Self-Regulation integrates scholarly research on self-regulation in the personality, developmental, and social psychology traditions for a broad audience of social and behavioral scientists interested in the processes by which people control, or fail to control, their own behavior.

  • Examines self-regulation as it influences and is influenced by basic personality processes in normal adults
  • Offers 21 original contributions from an internationally respected group of scholars in the fields of personality and self-regulation
  • Explores the causes and consequences of inadequate self-regulation and the means by which self-regulation might be improved
  • Integrates empirical findings on basic personality traits with findings inspired by emerging models of self-regulation
  • Provides a comprehensive, up-to-date, and stimulating view of the field for students and researchers in a wide range of disciplines

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Year
2013
ISBN
9781118808641

1

Personality and Self-Regulation

Rick H. Hoyle*
Because people are not in complete control of the physical and social environments they encounter in daily life, it is inevitable that discrepancies arise between what their identities, goals, and preferences lead them to expect or desire in specific situations and what transpires in those situations. People generally find such discrepancies at least mildly and temporarily unsettling, because they call into question their understanding of how the world works (or could work) or their understanding of their own goals, motives, or behavior. When these discrepancies arise, they generally are met with swift and decisive actions aimed at aligning expectations or desires and reality. These actions, collectively referred to as self-regulation, are the natural, often automatic response of healthy individuals to salient discrepancies between expectation and reality as they perceive it. They may involve cognition or behavior, and almost always are attended by affect.
Effective self-regulation is the bedrock of healthy psychological functioning. People who routinely are successful at self-regulation benefit from a sense of psychological stability and personal control that allows them to manage their perceptions of themselves and how they are perceived by others. Their behavior typically reflects salient goals and adopted standards of behavior. Departures from these desired states are handled smoothly and effectively. People who routinely fail at self-regulation enjoy none of the psychological benefits that derive from a sense of psychological stability and control and struggle with mild to severe forms of psychopathology. Effective self-regulation, by which people control their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, is essential for adaptive functioning.
The recognition that self-regulation is of central importance in adaptive functioning has inspired a large literature on the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of effective and ineffective self-regulation. Contributors to this literature represent the full range of subdisciplines within psychological science as well as other disciplines concerned with human behavior (e.g., sociology, education). In the psychological sciences, different perspectives and streams of research on self-regulation have been showcased in a number of edited volumes published within the last decade (e.g., Baumeister & Vohs, 2004; Boekaerts, Pintrich, & Zeidner, 2000; Cameron & Leventhal, 2003; de Ridder & de Wit, 2006; Heckhausen & Dweck, 1998).
Despite the impressive size and breadth of the literature on self-regulation in psychological science and related disciplines, relatively little research or theorizing (especially in the adult literature) has targeted the intersection of self-regulation and personality processes. As such, research on personality structure and process rarely reflects the rich detail of models of self-regulatory processes, and research on the self-regulatory processes rarely addresses the fact that some portion of those processes is a reflection of stable tendencies of individuals. The primary aim of this handbook is to bridge the personality and process-oriented literatures on self-regulation by showcasing programs of research that draw from and speak to both perspectives.
In this opening chapter, I begin by discussing personality and information-processing perspectives on self-regulation. Next, I describe ways in which the personality and information-processing perspectives might be integrated. These range from methodological approaches, in which constructs representing the two perspectives are examined through integrated data-analytic strategies, to conceptual approaches, in which the two perspectives are unified in a holistic theoretical model of self-regulation. In the final section of the chapter, I preview the individual contributions that constitute the remainder of the handbook, which is organized in three conceptually coherent but overlapping parts: the emergence and early expression of variability in self-regulation; self-regulation as a process that plays out in the context of normal adult personality; and individual differences in the components, styles, and effectiveness of self-regulation.

Temperament and Personality Perspectives

The characteristic means by which people self-regulate and the routine success or failure they experience are reflected in personality traits. Many of these traits are rooted in temperament, which manifests early in life. Despite the obvious continuity between temperament and personality, the literatures on these two manifestations of personhood are relatively distinct; thus, they are summarized separately in this section.

Temperament Constructs

The basic elements of the self-system and the capacity to self-regulate begin to emerge early in life. For example, variation in the ability to inhibit behavior stabilizes by about one year of age (Kagan, 1997). The ego—the psychological structure and processes through which people relate to their social and physical environment—undergoes differentiation and change as young children mature (Loevinger, 1976). In terms of self-regulation, the developing individual becomes increasingly more able to delay gratification and increasingly less prone to act impulsively or in response to external pressure (Hy & Loevinger, 1996). With the emergence of self-awareness and internalized standards of behavior comes the capacity to self-regulate.
A temperament construct with clear implications for self-regulation is effortful control, defined as the “ability to inhibit a dominant response to perform a subdominant response, to detect errors, and to engage in planning” (Rothbart & Rueda, 2005, p. 169). Although specific constructs and labels vary across models of temperament, most include two broad factors that reflect the tendency toward a dominant response of approach or avoidance. Through the exercise of effortful control, children are able to inhibit these dominant responses when they would conflict with an activity in which they are engaged. Individual differences in effortful control begin to emerge by two years of age and by four years of age are temporally stable (Kochanska, Murray, & Harlan, 2000). Effortful control is a precursor to the constraint dimension in adult models of personality.
A related temperament construct is behavioral inhibition, which focuses on variation in children’s reactions to unfamiliar or unexpected stimuli. In the presence of such stimuli, children as young as one year of age who are behaviorally inhibited exhibit stress and behavioral restraint. The neurophysiology of behavioral inhibition indicates overactivity in brain regions associated with fear (Fox, Henderson, Marshall, Nichols, & Ghera, 2005). Thus behaviorally inhibited children are faced with the regulatory challenge of managing fear and anxiety in the face of the unexpected. Because a stimulus for self-regulation is unexpected feedback from the environment (Duval & Wicklund, 1972), behaviorally inhibited individuals face the challenge of managing such feedback while also managing the fear and anxiety such stimuli invoke.
These and other temperament constructs influence the emergence and development of self-regulation and underlie personality traits relevant to adult self-regulation. Although a large number of personality traits have some relevance for adult self-regulation, those that follow most clearly from temperament and are most likely to appear in major models of personality can be grouped under the general headings of conscientiousness and impulsivity.

Conscientiousness and Related Constructs

Among the higher-order dimensions of personality, conscientiousness is the most clearly relevant for self-regulation. Although defined somewhat differently in lexical and psychometric models, conscientiousness generally concerns the ways in which people characteristically manage their behavior. People who are high on conscientiousness are confident, disciplined, orderly, and planful, whereas people who are low on conscientiousness are not confident in their ability to control their behavior, and are spontaneous, distractible, and prone to procrastinate (Costa & McCrae, 1992). In research linking conscientiousness to behavior, the more narrowly focused facets underlying the domain are emphasized (Paunonen & Ashton, 2001). The facets—competence/self-efficacy, orderliness, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, and deliberation/cautiousness—reflect different behavioral tendencies characteristic of successful self-regulation (Roberts, Chernyshenko, Stark, & Goldberg, 2005).
A related higher-order dimension of personality is constraint, which reflects well the temperament trait of behavioral inhibition (Tellegen, 1982). Facets of constraint focus on the tendency to inhibit the expression of impulse and emotion (control), behavior at odds with social convention (traditionalism), and risk taking (harm avoidance). As with conscientiousness, in research on self-regulation constraint is best considered in terms of its facets.

Impulsivity and Related Constructs

As a trait, impulsivity is the tendency to act without thought or planning. It is evident in early childhood (Clark, 1993) and has a strong neurobiological signature (Spinella, 2004). Impulsive behaviors typically are quick, often inappropriate, and frequently risky. People who are highly impulsive are prone to a host of high-risk behaviors characterized by poor self-control (e.g., Hoyle, Fejfar, & Miller, 2000; Krueger, Caspi, Moffitt, White, & Slouthamer-Loeber, 1996; Wulfert, Block, Ana, Rodriguez, & Colsman, 2002). Although impulsivity can be assessed, and often is studied, as a trait, it also appears as a constituent of broader traits and domains of personality such as extraversion and psychoticism in the P-E-N model (Psychoticism, Extraversion, and Neuroticism; Eysenck, 1990), conscientiousness in the five-factor model (Costa & McCrae, 1992), impulsive sensation seeking in the alternative five-factor model (Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Joireman, Teta, & Kraft, 1993), and the behavioral approach system in Gray’s (1994) neurophysiological model. Impulsivity typically is cast as a behavioral liability; however, in conditions that do not allow for forethought or planning, impulsivity can be an asset (Dickman, 1990). In either case, behavior is not consciously regulated by the individual, and therefore the process models described below routinely do not apply.
The idea that self-control is not always adaptive is apparent in the ego control construct (Block & Block, 1980). Ego control is defined as the “expression or containment of impulses and desires” (Letzringa, Block, & Funder, 2004). An important feature of this conceptual model is the notion that individuals can be overcontrolled as well as undercontrolled. Individuals who are undercontrolled do not suppress emotional expression and behavior even when so doing would violate personal or social standards of appropriateness. In terms of self-regulation, they do not exercise self-denial, are emotionally unstable, and are easily distracted. Individuals who are overcontrolled excessively inhibit emotional expression and behavior. In terms of self-regulation, they are rigidly organized, likely to exercise self-denial when it is not necessary to do so, and persist at tasks when it is no longer productive to do so. According to the model, although the self-regulatory styles of undercontrolled and overcontrolled people ordinarily are maladaptive, under certain conditions they are advantageous. For instance, the self-discipline and persistence characteristic of overcontrolled people would be beneficial when productivity under pressure is required. The spontaneity and emotional expressiveness of undercontrolled people would play well in many social settings. On average, however, a measured degree of ego control results in the most adaptive self-regulation.
Related to impulsivity and ego control is the construct of disinhibition, the inability to control demands on attention, cognition, and behavior that interfere with desired behavior. Specifically, disinhibition involves an inability to prevent interference from competing stimuli, irrelevant thoughts or demands on attention, and reflexive and automatic behaviors. Alternatively, disinhibition can be viewed as a failure of the behavioral inhibition system, which evaluates the relevance of stimuli in terms of what is expected given the situation, responds to inhibitory signals associated with stimuli that are unexpected, and motivates behavior aimed at reducing the influence of those stimuli on cognition, motivation, and behavior (Gray, 1991). In terms of self-regulation, people high in disinhibition are likely to struggle to stay on track in the pursuit of important goals or outcomes.
This selective review of temperament and personality constructs relevant to self-regulation suggests how, and to some extent why, people vary in terms of how they self-regulate, how often they self-regulate, and the degree of success or failure at self-regulation they routinely experience. The personality perspective on self-regulation, exemplified by these constructs, suggests underlying neurophysiological influences and positions self-regulation in the broader context of differences in temperament and personality. With rare exception, however, the personality perspective provides little insight into the cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes that define a specific instance of self-regulation.

Information-Processing Perspective

An alternative perspective on self-regulation focuses on the specific processes by which information about the self is processed and the implications of that processing for motivation and behavior. The original model of this type, which is prototypic of models that take this perspective, was described within objective self-awareness theory (Duval & Wicklund, 1972). According to the theory, when attention is directed toward the self an evaluation ensues in which current self-representation is compared against internalized standards of correctness as reflected in an ideal self-representation. This comparison yields affect, typically negative affect stemming from the unfavorable discrepancy between current and ideal self-representations. The negative affect motivates behavior aimed at reducing the discrepancy, either through behavior designed to change current self-representation to more closely approximate ideal self-representation or to direct attention away from the self. Characteristics of this conceptualization that are apparent in other information-processing models of self-regulation include self-awareness, comparison of current self-representation with a behavioral standard, and the management of any unfavorable discrepancy between self-representation and the standard (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1981; Higgins, 1987; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987). In these models, self-regulation has succeeded when self-representation and the salient behavioral standard are reconciled and attention shifts from the self back to the environment.
Related models offer greater detail in terms of the process and its components. Perhaps the most influential of these models is the control-process model of self-regulation (Carver & Scheier, 1981). This model places less emphasis on self-awareness and negative affect and greater emphasis on sources of behavioral standards and the process by which the discrepancy between those standards and current self-representation are managed. Embellishments to the model focus on the awareness of the rate at which discrepancies are reduced and the implications of this awareness for affect (Carver & Scheier, 1990). Self-discrepancy theory focuses more specifically on sources of behavioral standards, distinguishing between ideal and ought self-representations and detailing the emotions that arise when each is contrasted with current self-representation (Higgins, 1987). As a group, these models offer a rich and detailed account of what people are doing and feeling when they are self-regulating.
Fundamental to these models is the assumption that self-regulation is conscious and effortful. The assumption of consciousness is particularly evident in models that accord self-awareness a central role in the process (e.g., Duval & Wicklund, 1972). The assumption of effort is evident in that all of the models assume an unsatisfactory state that typically is overcome through cognitive or behavioral strategies. This assumption is underscored and, to some extent, validated by accumulating evidence that people are less effective at self-regulation when their ability to expend effort on it has been compromised (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000).
The extent to which these assumptions are, in fact, fundamental has been called into question by a growing body of evidence indicating that some portion of people’s goal-oriented behavior is nonconscious and automatic (Bargh & Williams, 2006). Moreover, the influence of goals activated outside of consciousness on behavior may equal the influence of goals activated in a conscious manner (Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, & Troetschel, 2001). Whether the process initiated by nonconscious activation is similar to the conscious process described earlier is unclear. Furthermore, it is not clear whether activation of all behavioral standards would initiate nonconscious self-regulation, or whether goals are unique in this regard. Nonetheless, it is evident that, at least some of the time, the regulation of behavior requires neither consciousness nor effort.
Models of self-regulation in the information-processing tradition address important concerns regarding what the process of self-regulation entails. They describe stimuli that initiate the process, components of the process, how the process unfolds, and, ultimately, the conditions that cause the process to terminate. Although the information-processing perspective offers a detailed account of the process of self-regulation, it offers little in the way of explaining the developmental origins of this process and variation across people in the characteristic ways the process unfolds.

Integrating the Perspectives

Although the personality and information-processing perspectives on self-regulation have yielded important empirical and theoretical advances, each offers only a partial explanation of self-regulation. Personality accounts are generally decontextualized, and processing accounts generally ignore fundamental differences between people. A fuller account of self-regulation would be provided by an integration of these complementary perspectives. Elsewhere, I have presented a general framework for integrating trait and process variables in the study of behavior (Hoyle, 2000). In the remainder of this section I draw on that framework to suggest three ways in which the personality and information-processing perspectives on self-regulation could be integrated.

Distal–Proximal Approach

One means of integrating the personality and information-processing approaches focuses on the causal order of their influence on behavior. In this approach the initial focus is a personality–behavior association. Because personality traits are pre-existing characteristics of individuals, the assumption of this approach is that the influence of personality on a specific instance of behavior unfolds in a situated process. In such a model, personality traits are distal influences that operate on behavior through a proximal, online process. Research that exemplifies this approach is rare within the self-regulation literature (for an example, see Tobin, Graziano, Vanman, & Tassinary, 2000). To some extent, this relative lack of distal–proximal research is not surprising because of how studies inspired by the personality and information-processing perspectives typically are done. Research from the trait perspective typically relies on unsituated measurement of traits and summary measures of behavior. Research from the information-processing perspective typically concerns specific instances of a specific behavior in a controlled setting. Investigators working from the information-processing perspective are best situated to integrate perspectives using this approach, needing only to measure relevant traits, preferably before and in a different setting from the controlled setting in which processing and behavior are observed.

Conditional Influence Approach

An alternative means of integrating the two approaches is to examine self-regulatory processing at different levels of temperament or personality traits. For such studies to be successful, neither the self-regulatory process nor the trait on which it is conditioned need to have previously been linked to the behavior. Indeed, it is possible that the consideration of a link between self-regulation and behavior at different levels of a personality trait would reveal an association not evident when the link is evaluated in an unconditional model. In this integrative approach, the effect of the personality trait on the behavior is not of primary interest; thus, traits need not belong to the category of personality traits directly relevant to self-regulation (although frequently they will). An example of such a trait is self-monitoring. Individuals high in self-monitoring are more likely to experience public self-awareness and reference social standards, whereas individuals low in self-monitoring are more like...

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