A new task goal elicits a feeling of pride in individuals with a subjective history of success, and this achievment pride produces anticipatory goal reactions that energize and direct behavior to approach the task goal. By distinguishing between promotion pride and prevention pride, the present paper extends this classic model of achievement motivation. Regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997) distinguishes between a promotion focus on hopes and accomplishments (gains) and a prevention focus on safety and responsibilities (non-losses). We propose that a subjective history of success with promotion-related eagerness (promotion pride) orients individuals toward using eagerness means to approach a new task goal, whereas a subjective history of success with prevention-related vigilance (prevention pride) orients individuals toward using vigilance means to approach a new task goal. Studies 1±3 tested this proposal by examining the relations between a new measure of participants' subjective histories of promotion success and prevention success (the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire (RFQ)) and their achievement strategies in different tasks. Study 4 examined the relation between participants' RFQ responses and their reported frequency of feeling eager or vigilant in past task engagements. Study 5 used an experimental priming technique to make participants temporarily experience either a subjective history of promotion success or a subjective history of prevention success. For both chronic and situationally induced achievement pride, these studies found that when approaching task goals individuals with promotion pride use eagerness means whereas individuals with prevention pride use vigilance means. Copyright # 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.According to McClelland and Atkinson's classic theory of achievement motivation (e.g. Atkinson, 1964;McClelland, 1951McClelland, , 1961McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1953), over time a new achievement task elicits the feelings associated with past task engagements. For individuals with a subjective history of success, for example, a new achievement task elicits a feeling of pride. This achievement pride produces anticipatory goal reactions that energize and direct behavior to approach

Two experiments examined the psychological operations that enable individuals to process negative emotions and experiences without increasing negative affect. In Study 1, type of self-perspective (self-immersed vs. self-distanced) and type of emotional focus (what vs. why) were experimentally manipulated following the recall of an anger-eliciting interpersonal experience. A why focus on emotions from a self-distanced perspective (distanced-why strategy) was expected to enable "cool," reflective processing of emotions, in which individuals can focus on their experience without reactivating excessive "hot" negative affect. Findings were consistent with this hypothesis. Study 2 replicated these findings and furthermore demonstrated that (a) the degree to which individuals construe their recalled experience in abstract versus concrete terms mediates the effect of the distanced-why strategy and (b) the status of the recalled experience (resolved vs. unresolved) does not moderate the effectiveness of the distanced-why strategy. These findings help disentangle the mechanisms that may allow adaptive working through from those that lead to rumination.

We examined the neural basis of self-regulation in individuals from a cohort of preschoolers who performed the delay-ofgratification task 4 decades ago. Nearly 60 individuals, now in their mid-forties, were tested on "hot" and "cool" versions of a go/ nogo task to assess whether delay of gratification in childhood predicts impulse control abilities and sensitivity to alluring cues (happy faces). Individuals who were less able to delay gratification in preschool and consistently showed low self-control abilities in their twenties and thirties performed more poorly than did high delayers when having to suppress a response to a happy face but not to a neutral or fearful face. This finding suggests that sensitivity to environmental hot cues plays a significant role in individuals' ability to suppress actions toward such stimuli. A subset of these participants (n = 26) underwent functional imaging for the first time to test for biased recruitment of frontostriatal circuitry when required to suppress responses to alluring cues. Whereas the prefrontal cortex differentiated between nogo and go trials to a greater extent in high delayers, the ventral striatum showed exaggerated recruitment in low delayers. Thus, resistance to temptation as measured originally by the delay-of-gratification task is a relatively stable individual difference that predicts reliable biases in frontostriatal circuitries that integrate motivational and control processes.reward | behavioral suppression | functional MRI | inferior frontal gyrus | longitudinal T he ability to resist temptation in favor of long-term goals is an essential component of individual, societal, and economical success. Developmentally, this ability has been assessed by measuring how long a young child can resist an immediate reward (e.g., a cookie) in favor of a larger, later reward (e.g., two cookies) (1). Even as adults we vary in our ability to resist temptations. Alluring situations can diminish our control (2-4); what serves as an alluring situation that requires a capacity to control our impulses, however, changes as a function of age (e.g., from cookies to social acceptance). In the present study we examined the extent to which individual differences in delay of gratification assessed when participants were in preschool and in their 20s and 30s predict control over impulses and sensitivity to social cues at the behavioral and neural level when the participants were in their 40s.Delay of gratification depends importantly on cognitive control (5). Cognitive control refers to the ability to suppress competing inappropriate thoughts or actions in favor of appropriate ones (6-11). Previously, we have shown that performance on the delay-of-gratification task in childhood predicts the efficiency with which the same individuals perform a cognitive control task (the go/nogo task) as adolescents and young adults (5). Individuals who as preschoolers directed their attention toward rewarding aspects of the classic delay-of-gratification situation, such as focusing on the cookie...

Two studies examined the psychological processes that facilitate adaptive emotional analysis. In Study 1, participants recalled a depression experience and then analyzed their feelings from either a self-immersed (immersed-analysis) or self-distanced (distanced-analysis) perspective. Participants in the distanced-analysis group focused less on recounting their experience and more on reconstruing it, which in turn led to lower levels of depressed affect. Furthermore, comparisons to a distraction group indicated that distanced-analysis was as effective as distraction in reducing depressed affect relative to the immersed-analysis group. Study 2 replicated these findings and showed that both 1 day and 7 days after the experimental manipulations, participants in the distanced-analysis group remained buffered against depressed affect and reported experiencing fewer recurring thoughts about their depression experience over time compared to both the immersed-analysis and distraction groups.

In the 1960s, Mischel and colleagues developed a simple 'marshmallow test' to measure preschoolers' ability to delay gratification. In numerous follow-up studies over 40 years, this 'test' proved to have surprisingly significant predictive validity for consequential social, cognitive and mental health outcomes over the life course. In this article, we review key findings from the longitudinal work and from earlier delay-of-gratification experiments examining the cognitive appraisal and attention control strategies that underlie this ability. Further, we outline a set of hypotheses that emerge from the intersection of these findings with research on 'cognitive control' mechanisms and their neural bases. We discuss implications of these hypotheses for decomposing the phenomena of 'willpower' and the lifelong individual differences in self-regulatory ability that were identified in the earlier research and that are currently being pursued.