I did a study for my doctoral thesis on self-efficacy in particular on heatlh goals using the common-sense model of self regulation. The model explains the way individuals reach their goals, that is, through the parallel processing of problem-focused and emotion-focused goals, using both cognitive and behavioural processes to control the objective health problem and regulate emotional distress (Cameron & Leventhal, 2003). Hope this helps.

Johana, thanks for the input. Interesting work. So did you find that self-efficacy determined the goal level and persistence in achieving those goals? Or was that beyond the scope? My key issue is to relate self-efficacy beliefs with not just the goals people set, but with the way they deal with achievement situations. In other words, do people focus on mastery or looking good to others (or both) and is that determined by self-efficacy beliefs? Or is it the other way around?

So to apply this to your study (if I understand it correctly), as an individual sets a health related goal, does the individual set the level of the goal because of SE beliefs? And if an individual encounters a set-back, when does an individual give up, or adjust the effort downward? Or perhaps it all is more complex that this? :-)

Hi, ¿ have you read about Mindfulness? is a very interesting topic and has a better evidence. I recommend you read Sara Lazar, Britta Holstein or Norman Farb. May be this link can help http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/scan/most_cited_2011.html.

bye

I would think it is a bit more complicated than that. Especially since Motivation and goal fulfillment mechanisms must work together to advance behavior towards a particular goal. For instance Depression reduces Motivation, thus reducing the chance that you will advance far enough to win a particular goal.

So, lets look at this wider structure:

The parallel emotive strand consists of: 1. Homeostatus Information (How you feel healthwise) 2. Libido (Your drive to succeed) 3. The percieved Payoff (How you expect to feel) 4. The expected Cost (How much this is going to hurt)

The parallel Goal Directed strand consists of: 1. How remote is the goal 2. How many steps are needed to achieve it. 3. Is there a benefit to the goal 4. How remote is the benefit.

So the problem being should I gamble or not...

emotively I feel good when I gamble (It's fun)

emotively I really want to succeed

emotively I really want the payoff

emotively each gamble has a relatively low cost

Goal Directed the goal is remote

Goal Directed I only need to win once

Goal Directed I will get LOTS of money

Goal Directed I only pay $5.00

Who wouldn't gamble?

Now lets look at a depressed persons view

emotively I feel lousy all the time

emotively Sometimes I just can't afford to care whether I succeed

emotively I could use the payoff

emotively each gamble upsets me, because I can't predict that I will win or lose

Goal directed the goal is remote

Goal directed Winning is not all that useful you usually only win about 2-10 dollars

Goal Directed If I do win big it will destabilize my income

Goal Directed I don't feel good about investing even $5.00 because the odds are so bad.

Who would gamble?

So if we are talking about health promotion, and we are talking to someone who is depressed they are going to be a lot less likely to believe that there will be lasting health benefits for the pain they have to do through. It is not just what they believe it is the whole way their brain is wired, but mostly it is the loss of libido, they can't see the benefit, because they can't feel good about it.

Hi Bogdan, I am not sure if my information is good for you, but I had a chance to make an interview with prof. Richard McNally, Harvard, USA which is trained in behavioral psychology but what really made me happy about was his new approach (or at least new for me as a non-scientist) was his adds never before released to the public here in Romania and I had uploaded the video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4ylXMIMB5I&list=UUiWn4tgcWDup6_5Q-iMhc9Q&index=6&feature=plcp

Thanks all for responding.

I think as with any research question, we need to narrow it down. Let's assume for the purpose of this talk that we are not talking about abnormal personality so depression is not an issue. In an achievement situation a normal person has set a certain goal. According to Bandura this goal will reflect the person's self-efficacy belief in that specific context. Because the goal is involved there is an issue of goal level, and persistence at some level of effort. Bandura states that both depend on SE beliefs, and in turn the progress towards and achievement of the goal will affect SE beliefs. The problem is uniting this theory with the theory of goal orientation which suggests that some people adopt a mastery goal orientation vs performance goal orientation in any goal situation. Mastery would suggest that people are motivated by mastering a given task, rather than looking good to others (performance orientation). Both orientations determine the way people deal with obstacles and negative feedback. So mastery oriented people will persist despite negative feedback, while performance oriented people will give up and set lower standards for future or withdraw from the task completely. So the question is how to reconcile goal orientation theory with self-efficacy beliefs?

Bandura believes that a person is more likely to achieve their goal where high efficacy expectations exist compared with low efficacy. The self-efficacy on goal setting is the basis of self-regulation models. My field is in the area of health and Bandura's SE is the basis for the self-regulation of health and illness. However there is an argument that health goals are slightly different from other goals because it is less voluntary. When you're faced with options between life and death situations or living in pain or pain free life, or because your doctor tells you so then you're more likely to change your behaviour, eg. quit smoking, healthy diet, exercise. But I think it is similar in other settings where people will need to overcome problems when attaining goal. In this health setting, the Leventhal's common-sense model of self-regulation (CSM) focused on regulating cognitions and emotions in goal attainment. This is an on-going process because you receive new information or when you cope with the emotions arised. It's not about the goal but it's how you get there. The more complex the goal is (higher goals), the more problems you will need to overcome using both cognitive for information processing and coping skills to deal with these problems. Coping strategies you adopt in dealing with emotions can either be adaptive or maladaptive depending on the situations, but Lazarus believes there is no good or bad coping. The best example is emotion-focused coping of denial after having an angina. Those who use this avoidance coping stabilise twice as fast and have less anxiety in the first month but are not doing so well if they continue to adopt this coping after 6 and 12 months (van Elderen et al, 1999).

There are also individual and cultural differences influencing coping and goal attainment. For example, people in the east are more likely to use spiritual coping than the westerners. Studies also found that prevention focus is more likely to be adopted in Eastern culture (see Lockwood et al., 2005). As you probably know, promotion focused people have approach motivation with more expectancies following feedback because they value reaching goals and the prevention focused people have an avoidance motivation bias with decreasing expectancies following feedback on failure because they value correct rejections. It's a bit confusing but promotion focused people have more sensitivity to the presence and absence of positive outcomes (hope of success) and the prevention focused on negative outcomes (fear of failure, avoiding pain). You can find out more in the works of Bagozzi et al. and Higgins' et al. I did this part of research during my MSc so you probably could find more recent findings.

I hope this answers your questions.

I still think the model is over-simplified, especially since people who are sick, do have abnormal states or they wouldn't be considered sick, but I think the assumption that mastery implies greater success is also skewed.

The people who only want to look good, are easier to motivate than those who want mastery, if only because they aren't aiming so high. They can be motivated by group motivational aspects, while the mastery oriented types have to be motivated individually. They are not as easily motivated because they don't motivate to group standards.

In Ryle's understanding the achivement of a goal for someone depends on to overcome his neurotic procedures(traps,dillemas,snags).So the scope in Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) is for the therapist to illuminate with patient his neurotic procedures and make alternatives ones.

I think the assumption that the traps dilemnas and snags are neurotic, is part of the problem with this approach in high functioning people who are analytical. Often the traps, dilemnas, and snags do not seem neurotic to the individual, but are compromises that they have come to, with respect to aspects of their lives that are intractable where common usage would have them easily dealt with.

When this is the case, they may question the neurotic aspect of the assumption or balk at changing something, not because they feel it is not maladaptive, but because they don't accept that it is neurotically maladaptive.

Of course, this places them into the realm of the special case, which a high functioning analytical mind, in extremis should be considered anyway.

Thanks for your comments all.

Johanna, yes the prevention-promotion motivations is where it's rooted I believe. Ultimately all research on goal orientations is based on the premise that mastery/task oriented people will deal better with negative feedback and failure. While performance/ego oriented individuals, which may be rooted in prevention focus developed in childhood, will give up in face of failure and only set goals they can actually achieve given their ability.

Bandura's research explains all of this just in terms of self-efficacy though, without consideration of goal orientations. His argument is that self-efficacy beliefs determine goal difficulty/level. Kanfer argues that goal-orientations affect self-efficacy, while other studies suggest that self-efficacy influences goal orientations.

Ultimately, if I were to reason through this in basic example (using your context) it would go something like this. I want to achieve some health related goal, like achieving a certain level of cholesterol. For this I would have to assess my abilities based on past performance (one source of self-efficacy) and/or look at similar others (modeling source of self-efficacy). Based on these assessments I would decide whether I can achieve my goal or if my goal is too difficult. Once I start working towards the goal I will now switch to another mechanism that will guide me through this achievement situation - goal orientation. So if I am performance goal-oriented I will compare myself to others a lot, if I fail I will consider my ability as fixed, and I will probably give up or adjust the goal downwards. If I am performance goal oriented, I will rely on feedback as a source of constructive information, use failures as learning opportunities and will not base my judgments of progress on normative information. So, self-efficacy aside, I will progress toward the goal using these mechanisms. As I reach the goal or not I will adjust my self-efficacy beliefs, which will affect my goal level next time I set a goal, and the cycle continues.

So what do you think, where are the holes in this? Again, let's not worry for the time being about other factors like novelty of the task, context demands, the distal or proximal nature of the goal, etc.

Thanks

Perseverance will have a lot to do with how long you repeat the same actions before you decide you have failed.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and motivational theories, yoga, meditation combined workshop/orientation kind of intensive training would bring self-regulatory skills.