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Human beings are agents: They may exert influence over their own fate. They initiate their actions, experience a considerable degree of freedom and control in their mundane activities, and respond adversely to external constraints to their agency; they are able to monitor and modify their moti vation, affective states, and behavior. Since the sixties, the notion of person-as-agent has become increas ingly accepted in scientific psychology. Nowadays, personal control is a standard topic in research on personality, motivation, and social behavior. The most popular approach identifies personal control with a feeling or judgment: To have control means to perceive the self as a source of causa tion. Within this perspective, such consciously accessible contents like perceived freedom and self-determination, feelings and expectations of control, or perceived self-efficacy and competence emerge as natural tar gets of research (see e.g., Alloy, Clements, & Koenig, 1993; Bandura, 1977; OeCharms, 1968; Oeci & Ryan, 1985; Harvey, 1976; Rotter, 1966; Thomp son, 1993; Wortman, 1975).
List of contents
I: The Person as an Agent of Control.- 1 Personal Control from the Perspective of Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory.- 2 Dynamics in the Coordination of Mind and Action.- 3 Opening versus Closing Strategies in Controlling One's Responses to Experience.- 4 A Terror Management Perspective on the Psychology of Control: Controlling the Uncontrollable.- 5 Personal Goals and Personal Agency: Linking Everyday Goals to Future Images of the Self.- II: Affective and Cognitive Mechanisms of Executive Agency.- 6 The Emotional Control of Behavior.- 7 Mood Management: The Role of Processing Strategies in Affect Control and Affect Infusion.- 8 Ability Perception and Cardiovascular Response to Behavioral Challenge.- 9 Confirmation Bias: Cognitive Error or Adaptive Strategy of Action Control?.- 10 Intrusive Thoughts, Rumination, and Incomplete Intentions.- 11 Decision Making and Action: The Search for a Dominance Structure.- 12 Improving Efficiency of Action Control through Technical and Social Resources.- III: Threatened Personal Control: Mobilization Versus Demobilization.- 13 To Control or Not to Control.- 14 Interpersonal Power Repair in Response to Threats to Control from Dependent Others.- 15 Control Motivation, Depression, and Counterfactual Thought.- 16 Uncontrollability as a Source of Cognitive Exhaustion: Implications for Helplessness and Depression.- 17 Intellectual Helplessness: Domain Specificity, Teaching Styles, and School Achievement.
Summary
Presents research developments on personal control and self-regulation. This book provides a brief synopses of each chapter as introductions to its three major sections. These sections cover the person as an agent of control, affective and cognitive mechanisms of executive agency, and reactions to threatened control.
