Depression and generalized anxiety, separately and as comorbid states, continue to represent a significant public health challenge. Current cognitive-behavioral treatments are clearly beneficial but there remains a need for continued development of complementary interventions. This manuscript presents two proof-of-concept studies, in analog samples, of “microinterventions” derived from regulatory focus and regulatory fit theories and targeting dysphoric and anxious symptoms. In Study 1, participants with varying levels of dysphoric and/or anxious mood were exposed to a brief intervention either to increase or to reduce engagement in personal goal pursuit, under the hypothesis that dysphoria indicates under-engagement of the promotion system whereas anxiety indicates over-engagement of the prevention system. In Study 2, participants with varying levels of dysphoric and/or anxious mood received brief training in counterfactual thinking, under the hypothesis that inducing individuals in a state of promotion failure to generate subtractive counterfactuals for past failures (a non-fit) will lessen their dejection/depression-related symptoms, whereas inducing individuals in a state of prevention failure to generate additive counterfactuals for past failures (a non-fit) will lessen their agitation/anxiety-related symptoms. In both studies, we observed discriminant patterns of reduction in distress consistent with the hypothesized links between dysfunctional states of the two motivational systems and dysphoric versus anxious symptoms.

Our research tested two predictions regarding how likelihood can have motivational effects as a function of how a probability is expressed. We predicted that describing the probability of a future event that could be either A or B using the language of high likelihood (“80% A”) rather than low likelihood (“20% B”), i.e., high rather than low expressed likelihood, would make a present activity more real and engaging, as long as the future event had properties relevant to the present activity. We also predicted that strengthening engagement from the high (vs. low) expressed likelihood of a future event would intensify the value of present positive and negative objects (in opposite directions). Both predictions were supported. There was also evidence that this intensification effect from expressed likelihood was independent of the actual probability or valence of the future event. What mattered was whether high versus low likelihood language was used to describe the future event.

Scarcity has been found to intensify value, positive or negative, rather than simply enhancing it. Some researchers have proposed that scarcity affects value by increasing how much attention is paid to a stimulus. We conceptualized sustained attention as stronger engagement and operationalized a situation of scarcity by telling participants who were choosing between two objects that the object that was chosen would then be replaced (Replenish) or not replaced (Scarce). To distinguish sustained attentionstronger engagement in a situation of scarcity from grabbing attention (salience from distinctiveness), the choice was between one option with a single instance (solitaryhigh salience) and a second option with several duplicates (abundant-low salience). We predicted that stronger engagement from a situation of scarcity would, first, intensify the value of the chosen item regardless of whether it was solitary or abundant, with positive items becoming more positive and negative items becoming more negative, and second, the stronger engagement from the situation of scarcity would transfer intensification to another separate object in the same setting. The results of Studies 1 and 2 supported both of these predictions. Study 3 tested a boundary condition for these scarcity-engagement effects in terms of how real participants experienced the choice items to be, where 'realness' is another source of engagement strength. As expected, the scarcity-engagement effect on intensifying value was replicated for participants who experienced the activity as real but was eliminated for those who did not.

No abstract

No abstract