by Piers Steel
12 World Organization of the Scout Movement (1998). Scouting: An educational system. Geneva, Switzerland: World Scout Bureau.
13 Gestdottir, S., & Lemer, R. M. (2007). Intentional self-regulation and positive youth development in early adolescence: Findings from the 4-H study of positive youth development. Developmental Psychology, 43(2), 508–521.
Jelicic, H., Bobek, D., Phelps, E., Lerner, R., & Lerner, J. (2007). Using positive youth development to predict contribution and risk behaviors in early adolescence: Findings from the first two waves of the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 31(3), 263–273.
Radhakrishna, R., & Sinasky, M. (2005). 4-H experiences contributing to leadership and personal development of 4-H alumni. Journal of Extension, 43(6). Retrieved from: http://www.joe.org/joe/2005december/rb2.php
14 Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An over-view. Theory into Practice, 41(2), 64–70.
15 Early efforts to combat procrastination often focused on just this one step, using cognitive therapy to challenge people’s self-limiting beliefs. It was notably used by the late Albert Ellis, whose approach is being continued by his co-author, William Knaus.
Ellis, A., & Knaus, W. J. (1977). Overcoming procrastination: Or how to think and act rationally in spite of life’s inevitable hassles. Institute for Rational Living.
16 Schunk, D., & Meece, J. (2006). Self-efficacy development in adolescences. In F. Pajares & T. Urdan (Eds.), Self-efficacy beliefs of adolescents (pp. 71–96). Greenwich CT: Information Age.
17 This includes the leaders we follow as much as the spouses we choose (e.g., “Behind every great man/woman, there is a great woman/man”). Aside from role models and comparison groups being key determinants of self-efficacy, what others believe (that is, normative beliefs and subjective norms) play a major role in forming an intention to act.
Aarts, H., Dijksterhuis, A., & Dik, G. (2008). Goal contagion: Inferring goals from others' actions—and what it leads to. In J. Y. Shah & W. L. Gardner (Eds.), Handbook of motivation (pp. 265–280). New York: Guilford Press.
Armitage, C., & Conner, M. (2001). Efficacy of the theory of planned behaviour: A meta-analytic review. British Journal of Social Psychology, 40(4), 471–499.
Rivis, A., & Sheeran, P. (2003). Descriptive norms as an additional predictor in the theory of planned behaviour: A meta-analysis. Current Psychology, 22(3), 218–233.
van Knippenberg, D., van Knippenberg, B., De Cremer, D., & Hogg, M. (2004). Leadership, self, and identity: A review and research agenda. The Leadership Quarterly, 15(6), 825–856.
18 Vitale, J., & Hibbler, B. (2006). Meet and grow rich: How to easily create and operate your own “Mastermind” group for health, wealth, and more. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
19 Metta, G., Sandini, G., Natale, L., Craighero, L., & Fadiga, L. (2006). Understanding mirror neurons. Interaction Studies, 7(2), 97–232.
Weinberg, R. (2008). Does imagery work? Effects on performance and mental skills. Journal of Imagery Research in Sport and Physical Activity, 3(1), 1–21.
20 Achtziger, A., Fehr, T., Oettingen, G., M. Gollwitzer, P., & Rockstroh, B. (2008). Strategies of intention formation are reflected in continuous MEG activity. Social Neuroscience, 4(1), 1–17.
Oettingen, G., Mayer, D., Thorpe, J. S., Janetzke, H., & Lorenz, S. (2005). Turning fantasies about positive and negative futures into self-improvement goals. Motivation and Emotion, 29(4), 236–266.
Oettingen, G., & Thorpe, J. S. (2006). Fantasy realization and the bridging of time. In L. A. Sanna, & E. C. Chang (Eds.), Judgments over time: The interplay of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (pp. 120–143). Oxford: Oxford University Press. But also: Kavanagh, D. J., Andrade, J., & May, J. (2005). Imaginary relish and exquisite torture: The elaborated intrusion theory of desire. Psychological Review, 112(2), 446–467.
Pham, L. B., & Taylor, S. E. (1999). From thought to action: Effects of process- versus outcome-based mental simulations on performance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 250–260.
21 It may also be a bad idea to promote a pattern of thinking that puts a person at increased risk for a wide variety of mental illnesses. In compensation, though, those who are extremely fantasy-prone can enjoy imagined food as much as the real and can imagine themselves to orgasm without physical stimulation.
Levin, R., & Spei, E. (2004). Relationship of purported measures of pathological and nonpathological dissociation to self-reported psychological distress and fantasy immersion. Assessment, 11(2), 160–168.
Rhue, J., & Lynn, S. (1987). Fantasy proneness: The ability to hallucinate “as real as real.” British Journal of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis, 4, 173–180.
Schneider, S. L. (2001). In search of realistic optimism. Meaning, knowledge, and warm fuzziness. American Psychologist, 56(3), 250–263.
Waldo, T. G., & Merritt, R. D. (2000). Fantasy proneness, dissociation, and DSM-IV axis II symptomatology. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 109(3), 555–558.
22 Johnson, D. D. P. (2004). Overconfidence and war: The havoc and glory of positive illusions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
23 Armor, D., & Taylor, S. (2002). When predictions fail: The dilemma of unrealistic optimism. In T. Gilovich, D. Griffin & D. Kahneman (Eds.), Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment (pp. 334–347). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Asterbro, T., Jeffrey, S., & Adomdza, G. K. (2007). Inventor perseverance after being told to quit: The role of cognitive biases. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 20(3), 253–272.
Lovallo, D., & Kahneman, D. (2003). Delusions of success. How optimism undermines executives' decisions. Harvard Business Review, 81(7), 56–63.
Moore, D., & Healy, P. (2007). The trouble with overconfidence. Unpublished manuscript, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh.
24 Baker, W., & O'Malley, M. (2008). Leading with kindness: How good people consistently get superior results. New York: AMACOM/American Management Association.
Whyte, G., Saks, A., & Hook, S. (1997). When success breeds failure: The role of self-efficacy in escalating commitment to a losing course of action. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 18(5), 415–432.
25 Camerer, C. F., & Lovallo, D. (1999). Overconfidence and excess entry: An experimental approach. American Economic Review, 89(1), 306–318.
Koellinger, P., Minniti, M., & Schade, C. (2007). “I think I can, I think I can”: Overconfidence and entrepreneurial behavior. Journal of Economic Psychology, 28(4), 502–527.
Hmieleski, K., & Baron, R. (2009). Entrepreneurs' optimism and new venture performance: A social cognitive perspective. Academy of Management Journal, 52(3), 473–488.
Shepherd, D. A., Wiklund, J., & Haynie, J. M. (2009). Moving forward: Balancing the financial and emotional costs of business failure. Journal of Business Venturing, 24(2), 134–148.
26 Day, V., Mensink, D., & O'Sullivan, M. (2000). Patterns of academic procrastination. Journal of College Reading and Learning, 30(2), 120–134.
Sigall, H., Kruglanski, A., & Fyock, J. (2000). Wishful thinking and procrastination. Journal of Social Behavior & Personality, 15(5), 283–296.
27 Though having several critics, such as the influential psychologist Albert Ellis, and accused of being a confidence (con) man, Peale’s popularity still remains strong.
Hilkey, J. (1997). Character is capital: Success manuals and manhood in Gilded Age America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Meyer, D. (1988). The positive thinkers: Popular religious psychology from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale and Ronald Reagan. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Weiss, R. (1988). The American myth of success: From Horatio Alger to Norman Vincent Peale. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
28 Barbara Held, a psychology professor at Bowdoin College, describes it this way: “The positive attitude has—in some of its manifestations—become tyrannical, i
n that Americans have come to live not only with a historically/culturally grounded inclination for optimism but with the expectation, with the demand, that they maintain a positive attitude at all times and at all costs.”
De Raeve, L. (1997). Positive thinking and moral oppression in cancer care. European Journal of Cancer Care, 6(4), 249–256.
Ehrenreich, B. (2009). Bright-sided: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Fineman, S. (2006). On being positive: Concerns and counterpoints. The Academy of Management Review, 31(2), 270–291.
Gilovich, T. (2005). The perceived likelihood of events that “tempt fate.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology, New Orleans.
Held, B. (2002). The tyranny of the positive attitude in America: Observation and speculation. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58(9), 965–991.
Recken, S. L. (1993). Fitting-in: The redefinition of success in the 1930s. Journal of Popular Culture, 27(3), 205–222.
Woolfolk, R. L. (2002). The power of negative thinking: Truth, melancholia, and the tragic sense of life. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 22(1), 19–27.
29 Nenkov, G. Y., Inman, J. J., & Hulland, J. (2008). Considering the future: The conceptualization and measurement of elaboration on potential outcomes. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(1), 126–141.
Pearson, C. M., & Clair, J. A. (1998). Reframing crisis management. The Academy of Management Review, 23(1), 59–76.
Schneider, S. L. (2001). In search of realistic optimism. Meaning, knowledge, and warm fuzziness. American Psychologist, 56(3), 250–263.
Yordanova, G. S. (2006). Effects of the pre-decision stage of decision making on the self-regulation of behavior. Unpublished PhD, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PN.
30 Jones, F., Harris, P., Waller, H., & Coggins, A. (2005). Adherence to an exercise prescription scheme: The role of expectations, self-efficacy, stage of change and psychological well-being. British Journal of Health Psychology, 10, 359–378.
Nordgren, L. F., Harreveld, F. V., & Pligt, J. V. D. (2009). The restraint bias: How the illusion of self-restraint promotes impulsive behavior. Psychological Science, 20, 1523–1528.
Norcross, J. C., Mrykalo, M. S., & Blagys, M. D. (2002). Auld Lang Syne: Success predictors, change processes, and self-reported outcomes of New Year’s resolvers and nonresolvers. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58(4), 397–405.
Norcross, J. C., Ratzin, A. C., & Payne, D. (1989). Brief report ringing in the New Year: The change processes and reported outcomes of resolutions. Addictive Behaviors, 14, 205–212.
Polivy, J., & Herman, C. P. (2002). If at first you don’t succeed: False hopes of self-change. American Psychologist, 57(9), 677–689.
31 Aspinwall, L. G. (2005). The psychology of future-oriented thinking: From achievement to proactive coping, adaptation, and aging. Motivation and Emotion, 29(4), 203–235.
Aspinwall, L. G., & Taylor, S. E. (1997). A stitch in time: Self-regulation and proactive coping. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 417–436.
Baumeister, R. F., Heatherton, T. F., & Tice, D. M. (1994). Losing control: How and why people fail at self-regulation. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, Inc.
Klassen, R. M., Krawchuk, L. L., & Rajani, S. (2008). Academic procrastination of undergraduates: Low self-efficacy to self-regulate predicts higher levels of procrastination. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 33(4), 915–931.
Schwarzer, R. (2008). Modeling health behavior change: How to predict and modify the adoption and maintenance of health behaviors. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 57(1), 1–29.
32 Known as the abstinence violation effect.
Larimer, M. E., Palmer, R. S., & Marlatt, G. A. (1999). Relapse prevention: An overview of Marlatt’s cognitive-behavioral model. Alcohol Research & Health, 23(2), 151–160.
33 Howard Rachlin gives a similar account under the rubric of “restructuring” and Jeong-Yoo Kim considers the same phenomenon from an economic perspective. Another pair of economists, Benabou and Tirole, discuss how it is best to assume that you don’t have the self-control to resist possible addictions, even if there is a good chance you could use without risk. Interestingly, Buddhists actually use an enhanced form of this technique by believing bad choices (i.e., karma) will not only negatively impact your future self but also your future reincarnations.
Ainslie, G. (1992). Picoeconomics: The strategic interaction of successive motivational states within the person. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ainslie, G. (2001). Breakdown of the will. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Benabou, R., & Tirole, J. (2004). Willpower and personal rules. Journal of Political Economy, 112(4), 848–886.
Kim, J.-Y. (2006). Hyperbolic discounting and the repeated self-control problem. Journal of Economic Psychology, 27(3), 344–359.
Rachlin, H. (2000). The science of self-control. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
34 Gosling, J. (1990). Weakness of the will. New York: Routledge.
35 Silver, M., & Sabini, J. (1981). Procrastinating. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 11(2), 207–221.
Chapter Eight
1 Fried, Y., & Ferris, G. R. (1987). The validity of the Job Characteristics Model: A review and meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 40(2), 287–322.
Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16, 250–279.
Humphrey, S., Nahrgang, J., & Morgeson, F. (2007). Integrating motivational, social, and contextual work design features: A meta-analytic summary and theoretical extension of the work design literature. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(5), 1332–1356.
2 Others were involved, such as Frank and Lillian Gilbreth who pioneered time and motion studies. The Gilbreths' work and life were chronicled in a book, Cheaper by the Dozen, written by two of their twelve children (Frank Jr. and Ernestine). Lillian was arguably the first of my kind—an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist—getting a PhD in management psychology (as well as receiving twenty-two other honorary degrees). The book became a film in 1950, not to be confused with the 2003 feature by the same name. This later version, starring Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt, has some changes. Instead of Industrial/Organizational Psychology, this adaptation centers around a football coach because apparently there just aren’t enough movies produced each year featuring football.
Kanigel, R. (1997). The one best way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the enigma of efficiency. New York: Viking Penguin.
3 Furthermore, the harder employees worked, the less they were paid for each unit they produced. This is the typical outcome of most piece-rate systems, whereby you get paid for what your produce. Paradoxically, it is an inherent temptation for managers to reduce incentives as employees provide the very performance they were trying to incent. Known as the rachet effect, only a very few companies, like Lincoln Electric, have the discipline to avoid it and make the piece-rate system work.
Handlin, H. (1992). The company built upon the golden rule: Lincoln Electric. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 12, 151–163.
Billikopf, G. (2008). Designing an effective piece rate. Retrieved from: http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/7research/7calag06.htm
4 Campion, M., Mumford, T., Morgeson, F., & Nahrgang, J. (2005). Work redesign: Eight obstacles and opportunities. Human Resource Management, 44(4), 367–390.
5 Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2000). Evolutionary psychology and the emotions. In M. Lewis & J. Haviland (Eds.), Handbook of Emotions (2 ed., pp. 91–115). New York: Guilford Press.
6 Science studies the malleable nature of value under the term “psychophysics,” with research emphasizing, as here, that value is constructed (that is, dependent on how it is presented) and relative (i.e., dependent on what it is being compared to).
Weber, E. (2003). Perception mat
ters: Psychophysics for economists. In I. Brocas & J. D. Carrillo (Eds.), The Psychology of Economic Decisions (Vol. II). New York: Oxford University Press.
7 Sansone, C., Weir, C., Harpster, L., & Morgan, C. (1992). Once a boring task always a boring task? Interest as a self-regulatory mechanism? Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 63(3), 379–390.
8 Csíkszentmihályi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper and Row.
9 Johnny Carson of “The Tonight Show” invited her as a guest and pretended to eat her prized Elvis Presley chip. CNN (January 24, 2005). Your Johnny Carson memories. Retrieved from: http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/23/your.memories/index.html
10 Miller, R. B., & Brickman, S. J. (2004). A model of future-oriented motivation and self-regulation. Educational Psychology Review, 16(1), 9–33.
Schraw, G., & Lehman, S. (2001). Situational interest: A review of the literature and directions for future research. Educational Psychology Review, 13(1), 23–52.
Wolters, C. A. (2003). Understanding procrastination from a self-regulated learning perspective. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(1), 179–187.
11 Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78.
12 Lonergan, J. M., & Maher, K. J. (2000). The relationship between job characteristics and workplace procrastination as moderated by locus of control. Journal of Social Behavior & Personality, 15(5), 213–224.
Miller, R. B., & Brickman, S. J. (2004). A model of future-oriented motivation and self-regulation. Educational Psychology Review, 16(1), 9–33.
Shah, J., & Kruglanski, A. (2000). The structure and substance of intrinsic motivation. In C. Sansone & J. M. Harackiewicz (Eds.), Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: The search for optimal motivation and performance (pp. 106–130). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
13 I like Franklin Jones' quote to this effect: “Nothing makes it easier to resist temptation than a proper bringing-up, a sound set of values—and witnesses.”