How Want vs Need Self-Talk Facilitates Goal-Directed Behavior

<p>Exercising self-control can be a challenge, whether it involves avoiding temptations or striving toward long-term goals. When attempting to exert self-control, the way people address themselves (e.g., self-talk) is important. This study examined how self-talk strategies want and need affected behavioral self-control outcomes in a temptation situation using a 2 (self-talk strategy: want vs need) x 2 (goal emphasis: temptation vs long term goal) factorial design. Participants’ own cell phones served as the temptation and a computer task designed to portray a career-relevant emotional intelligence training served as the long-term goal. Participants were randomly assigned toward either the long-term goal or the temptation, and primed with either want or need self-talk, via a handwriting task. Participants then had the opportunity to spend 20 minutes however they chose (emotional intelligence training, cell phone use, doing nothing, any combination of activities); this segment of the experimental session was video recorded to determine the amount of time participants dedicated to each task. Results revealed that neither goal emphasis nor self-talk strategy significantly affected the amount of time participants spent engaged in the long-term goal task or the temptation task. Additionally, there was no interaction between goal emphasis and self-talk strategy. Interestingly, for participants in the need self-talk condition, those oriented toward the temptation thought they spent substantially more time engaged in the long-term goal task than participants who were actually oriented toward the long-term goal. Finally, self-control predicted less desire to engage in the temptation for participants who wanted /needed the temptation, and participants who wanted the long-term goal; but for participants who needed the long-term goal, self-control predicted greater desire for the temptation. </p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts in Psychology (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Year dc:date.available

2018

Author dc:creator

• Baker, Danielle Elyse

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Veilleux, Jennifer C.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ham, Lindsay S.
• Eidelman, Scott H.

• Long-term Goal
• Self-regulation
• Self-talk
• Temptation
• Clinical Psychology
• Social Psychology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/2632

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.uark.edu:etd-4181