Charles S. Carver
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Description of Book
Carver publications
Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1998).
On the Self-Regulation of Behavior.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/psychology/social-psychology/self-regulation-behavior?format=PB
Complete Table of Contents:
1. Introduction and Plan
WHAT MAKES BEHAVIOR HAPPEN?
Some Limitations and Some Grandiosity
Observations and Origins
THE BOOK’S PLAN
Goal-Directed Action
Emotion
Confidence and Doubt, Persisting and Giving
Up
Problems in Behavior
Newer Themes: Dynamic Systems and
Catastrophes
Control versus Emergence of Behavior
Goal Engagement and Life
2. Principles of Feedback Control
CYBERNETICS, FEEDBACK, AND CONTROL
Negative Feedback
An Example: The Ubiquitous Thermostat
ADDITIONAL ISSUES IN FEEDBACK CONTROL
Sloppy versus Tight Control
Lag Time
Intermittent Feedback
DISTINCTIONS AND FURTHER CONSTRUCTS
Positive Feedback Loops
Open Loop Systems
Feedforward
INTERRELATIONS AMONG FEEDBACK PROCESSES
Interdependency
Reference Value and Input Function:
How Do They Differ?
Hierarchies
CONCLUDING COMMENT
3. Discrepancy-Reducing Feedback Processes in Behavior
FEEDBACK CONTROL IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Early Applications of Feedback Principles
Our Starting Points
Self-Directed Attention and Comparison with
Standards
Self-Directed Attention and Conformity to
Standards
Brain Functioning, Self-Awareness, and
Self-Regulation
How Does Attention Shift to the Self in
Ordinary
Life?
BROADENING THE APPLICATION OF FEEDBACK PRINCIPLES
Sources and Nature of Feedback of the Effects
of One's Behavior
Use of Feedback for Self-Verification
Social Comparison and Feedback Control
SUMMARY
4. Discrepancy-Enlarging Loops, and Three Further Issues
DISCREPANCY-ENLARGING FEEDBACK LOOPS IN BEHAVIOR
Downward Social Comparison
Negative Reference Groups
Feared Self and Unwanted Self
Positive Feedback Process Constrained by
Negative
Feedback Process
The Ought Self
Reactance
FURTHER ISSUES
Feedback Loops in Mutual Interdependence
The Search for Discrepancies
The Issue of Will
5. Goals and Behavior
GOALS
An Overview of Broad Goal Constructs
Task-Specific Goals
HIERARCHICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOALS
Basic Premise: Goals Can Be Differentiated
by Levels of Abstraction
A Control Hierarchy
Hierarchical Functioning Is Simultaneous
Action Identification
COMPARISONS OUTSIDE PERSONALITY-SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Hierarchical Plans
Hierarchical Models of Motor Control
COMPARISONS FROM PERSONALITY-SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Relations to Goal Models Outlined Earlier
Hierarchicality behind Task Efforts
Hierarchicality in Other Models
SUMMARY
6. Goals, Hierarchicality, and Behavior: Further Issues
CHALLENGES TO HIERARCHICALITY
Hierarchies, Heterarchies, and Coalitions
Are the Qualities of the Proposed Hierarchy
the Wrong Sorts?
Responsibility for Details
FURTHER ISSUES REGARDING HIERARCHICAL FUNCTIONING
Which Level Is Functionally Superordinate
Can Vary
Multiple Paths to High-Level Goals, Multiple
Meanings in Concrete Action
Goal Importance
Approach Goals and Avoidance Goals within
a Hierarchy
Approach and Avoidance Goals and Well-Being
MULTIPLE SIMULTANEOUS GOALS
Conflict and Scheduling
Multiple Goals Satisfied in One Activity
PROGRAMS SEEM DIFFERENT FROM OTHER GOALS
Analog versus Digital Functioning
Opportunistic Planning and Stages in Decision
Making
GOAL HIERARCHIES AND TRAITS
Traits and Goals
Viewing Others in Terms of Traits versus
Actions
Traits and Behaviors in Memory
GOALS AND THE SELF
Self-Determination Theory and the Self
7. Public and Private Aspects of the Self
ASPECTS OF SELF
Further Distinctions
Recent Statements
Aspects of Self and Classes of Goal
BEHAVIORAL SELF-REGULATION AND PRIVATE VERSUS SOCIAL GOALS
Formation of Intentions
Differential Valuation of Personal and Social
Goals
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-AWARENESS IN SELF-REGULATION
Anticipating Interaction
Conformity
Attitudes, Subjective Norms, and Behavior
Private Preferences and Subjective Norms Vary
in Their Content
8. Control Processes and Affect
GOALS, RATE OF PROGRESS, AND AFFECT
Discrepancy Reduction and Rate of Reduction
Progress Toward a Goal versus Completion of
Subgoals
EVIDENCE ON THE AFFECTIVE CONSEQUENCES OF PROGRESS
Hsee and Abelson
Lawrence, Carver, and Scheier
Brunstein
Affleck and Colleagues
QUESTIONS
Is This Really a Feedback System?
Does Positive Affect Lead to Coasting?
A Cruise-Control Model of Affect
CHANGES IN RATE: ACCELERATION AND DECELERATION
Subjective Experience of Acceleration and
Deceleration
Surprise
Research
AFFECT FROM DISCREPANCY-ENLARGING LOOPS
Doing Well, Doing Poorly
Activation Asymmetry between Dimensions
AFFECT AND BEHAVIOR
Affect in the Absence of Action
Affect from Recollection or Imagination
Potential for Affect and Levels of Abstraction
Merging Affect and Action
Two Systems in Concert in Other Applications
BREADTH OF APPLICATION
9. Affect: Issues and Comparisons
META-LEVEL STANDARDS
Meta-Level Standards Vary in Stringency
Influences on Stringency
Changing Meta-Level Standards
FURTHER ISSUES
Stress as the Disruption of Goal-Directed
Activity
Goal Attainment and Negative Affect
Conflict and Mixed Feelings
Time Windows for Input to Meta-Monitoring
Can Vary
Are There Other Mechanisms that Produce
Affect?
RELATIONSHIPS TO OTHER THEORIES
Affect and Reprioritization
Self-Discrepancy Theory
Positive and Negative Affect
Biological Models of Bases of Affect
10. Expectancies and Disengagement
AFFECT IS LINKED TO EXPECTANCY
Feelings and Confidence
Mood and Decision Making
Confidence and Brain Function
INTERRUPTION AND FURTHER ASSESSMENT
Interruption
Assessment of Expectancies
Generality and Specificity of Expectancies
EFFORT VERSUS DISENGAGEMENT
Theory
Research: Comparisons with Standards
Research: Responses to Fear
Research: Persistence
Mental Disengagement, Impaired Task
Performance,
and Negative Rumination
Self-Focus, Task Focus, and Rumination
EFFORT AND DISENGAGEMENT: THE GREAT DIVIDE
Is Disengagement Good or Bad?
11. Disengagement: Issues and Comparisons
SCALING BACK GOALS AS LIMITED DISENGAGEMENT
Problems with Limited Disengagement
Scaling Back Goals as Changing Velocity
Reference
Value
WHEN GIVING UP IS NOT A TENABLE OPTION
Hierarchicality and Importance Can Impede
Disengagement
Inability to Disengage and Responses to Health
Threats
Helplessness
WATERSHEDS, DISJUNCTIONS, AND BIFURCATIONS AMONG RESPONSES
Other Disjunctive Motivational Models
DOES DISENGAGEMENT IMPLY AN OVERRIDE MECHANISM?
Disengagement, or Competing Motives?
Loss of Commitment
FURTHER THEORETICAL COMPARISONS
Efficacy Expectancy and Expectancy of Success
The Sense of Personal Control
ENGAGEMENT AND DISENGAGEMENT IN OTHER LITERATURES
Goal Setting
Social Facilitation
Upward and Downward Social Comparison
Self-Verification
Performance Goals and Learning Goals
Curiosity
Stress and Coping
SUMMARY
12. Applications to Problems in Living
REGULATING WITH THE WRONG FEEDBACK
Automatic Distortion of Feedback
GOALS OPERATING OUT OF AWARENESS
DOUBT AS A ROOT OF PROBLEMS
Automatic Use of Previously Encoded Success
Expectancies
PREMATURE DISENGAGEMENT OF EFFORT
Test Anxiety
Social Anxiety
FAILURE TO DISENGAGE COMPLETELY WHEN DOING SO IS THE RIGHT RESPONSE
“Hanging On” Is Related to Distress
WHEN IS DISENGAGEMENT THE RIGHT RESPONSE?
LIVES OUT OF BALANCE
Complexity of the Self
RUMINATION
Rumination as Problem Solving and Attempted
Discrepancy Reduction
Rumination as Dysfunctional
13. Hierarchicality and Problems in Living
LINKS BETWEEN CONCRETE GOALS AND THE CORE VALUES OF THE SELF
Hierarchicality as an Impediment to
Disengagement
Problems as Conflicts among Goals
Problems as Absence of Links from High to
Low Levels
Reorganization of the Self
MAKING LOW LEVELS FUNCTIONALLY SUPERORDINATE
Reduction of High-Level Control by
Deindividuation
and Alcohol
Relinquishing or Abandoning High-Level Control
as Escape from the Self
Relinquishing or Abandoning High-Level Control
as Problem Solving
Further Comparisons
Failure of High-Level Override: Symmetry
in Application
RESIDING TOO MUCH AT HIGH LEVELS
14. Chaos and Dynamic Systems
DYNAMIC SYSTEMS
Nonlinearity
Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions
Phase Space, Attractors, and Repellers
Another Way of Picturing Attractors
Variability and Phase Changes
SIMPLE APPLICATIONS OF DYNAMIC SYSTEMS THINKING
Goals as Attractors
Shifts among Attractors and Motivational
Dynamics
Variability in the Construing of Social
Behavior
Variability and Consciousness
Consciousness, Attractors, and Importance
in Day-to-Day Life
Chaotic Variation as Frequency Distributions
Variability of Behavior in Iterative Systems
15. Catastrophe Theory
THE CUSP CATASTROPHE
Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions
Hysteresis
Catastrophes in Physical Reality
Variability
APPLICATIONS OF CATASTROPHE THEORY
Perception
Dating and Mating
Relationship Formation and Dissolution
Groups
Persuasion and Belief Perseverance
Rumination versus Action
Expectancies
EFFORT VERSUS DISENGAGEMENT
Importance or Investment as a Critical Control
Parameter
16. Further Applications to Problems in Living
CATASTROPHES AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
A Remedy: Care Less
Chaotically Caring
Further Possible Manifestations of the Cusp
Catastrophe
DYNAMIC SYSTEMS AND THE CHANGE PROCESS
Attractors, Minima, Stability, and Optimality
Stability, Adaptation, and Optimality
Minima in Specific Problems
Therapy
Destabilization and the Metaphors of Dynamic
Systems
EXTENSIONS
Destabilization, Reorganization, and
Beneficial
Effects of Trauma
Psychological Growth
17. Is Behavior Controlled or Does It Emerge?
COORDINATION AND COMPLEXITY EMERGENT FROM SIMPLE SOURCES
Some Apparent Complexity Need Not Be Created
Properties Emergent from Social Interaction
Does Emergence of Some Imply Emergence of
All?
Two Modes of Functioning?
CONNECTIONISM
Need Everything Be Distributed?
Planning and Goal-Relevant Decisions
Dual-Process Models
TWO-MODE MODELS IN PERSONALITY-SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory
Deliberative and Implemental Mindsets
Comparisons among Theories
Two Automaticities
AUTONOMOUS ARTIFICIAL AGENTS
Complexity and Coordination
Another View of Goals in Autonomous Agents
Comparison with Two-Mode Models of Thinking
CONCLUSIONS
18. Goal Engagement, Life, and Death
CONCEPTUALIZATION
Goal Engagement and Well-Being
DISENGAGEMENT AND DEATH
Doubt, Disengagement, and Self-Destructive
Behavior
Disengagement and Passive Death
DISENGAGEMENT, DISEASE, AND DEATH
Disengagement and Disease Vulnerability
Doubt, Disengagement, and Adverse Responses
to Disease
Disengagement, Recurrence, Disease
Progression,
and Death
Conclusions
DYNAMICS AND ENGAGEMENT
Aging and the Reduction of Importance