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Mood plays an important role in our life which is illustrated by the disruptive impact of aberrant mood states in depression. Although vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) has been shown to improve symptoms of depression, the exact mechanism is still elusive, and it is an open question whether non-invasive VNS could be used to swiftly and robustly improve mood.
Methods
Here, we investigated the effect of left- and right-sided transcutaneous auricular VNS (taVNS) v. a sham control condition on mood after the exertion of physical and cognitive effort in 82 healthy participants (randomized cross-over design) using linear mixed-effects and hierarchical Bayesian analyses of mood ratings.
Results
We found that 90 min of either left-sided or right-sided taVNS improved positive mood [b = 5.11, 95% credible interval, CI (1.39–9.01), 9.6% improvement relative to the mood intercept, BF10 = 7.69, pLME = 0.017], yet only during the post-stimulation phase. Moreover, lower baseline scores of positive mood were associated with greater taVNS-induced improvements in motivation [r = −0.42, 95% CI (−0.58 to −0.21), BF10 = 249].
Conclusions
We conclude that taVNS boosts mood after a prolonged period of effort exertion with concurrent stimulation and that acute motivational effects of taVNS are partly dependent on initial mood states. Collectively, our results show that taVNS may help quickly improve affect after a mood challenge, potentially by modulating interoceptive signals contributing to the reappraisal of effortful behavior. This suggests that taVNS could be a useful add-on to current behavioral therapies.
In Section 1 of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume claims that those who deny the reality of morals are disingenuous. He notes that philosophy has had a history of disagreements about whether morals originate in reason or sentiment. Throughout his book, Hume applies an experimental method to find the “universal principles” from which morality is derived. Then, in Appendix 1, he argues for the origin of these principles in sentiment or taste, a product of “the human fabric.” Reason, Hume says, discovers objects “as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution.” Taste “has a productive faculty, and gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises, in a manner, a new creation.” How can the quest for universal principles find a satisfactory answer in taste, a “productive” faculty? How is the notion that morality is a “new creation” consistent with an insistence on the reality of moral distinctions? Are the deliverances of taste, which are prompts to virtue, also judgments that can be evaluated as true or false? This essay shows that, on a proper reading, the elements of Hume’s moral epistemology in the second Enquiry are largely consistent.
This chapter gives an overview of all sources written in Anatolian hieroglyphs, that is, seals and inscriptions. Whereas cuneiform was the strictly internal means of communication within the kingdom, the hieroglyphs were used whenever the population at large was addressed. Given the sociolinguistic situation hieroglyphic inscriptions were written in Luwian, not in Hittite.
I discuss Aristotle’s account of the psyche (soul) in book 1 chapter 13 of the Nicomachean Ethics, his further distinction between theoretical and practical thinking in Nicomachean Ethics VI 1, and the famous function argument of Nicomachean Ethics I 7. I also address Aristotle’s unclarity about how to characterize desire, and his skepticism about parts of the psyche in de Anima III 9. This leads to a brief discussion of Plato’s division of the psyche in Republic IV and the Phaedrus, and whether both Plato’s and Aristotle’s divisions lead to problems concerning the unity of motivation. This discussion begins to set the stage for my interpretation of Aristotelian prohairesis (often translated as “choice”), the characteristic motivation of the good person. As we shall see, the phenomenon of choice straddles different parts of the Aristotelian psyche in a way that Plato never envisaged in his own account of the psyche.
The emotion of pride appears to be a neurocognitive guidance system to capitalize on opportunities to become more highly valued and respected by others. Whereas the inputs and the outputs of pride are relatively well understood, little is known about how the pride system matches inputs to outputs. How does pride work? Here we evaluate the hypothesis that pride magnitude matches the various outputs it controls to the present activating conditions – the precise degree to which others would value the focal individual if the individual achieved a particular achievement. Operating in this manner would allow the pride system to balance the competing demands of effectiveness and economy, to avoid the dual costs of under-deploying and over-deploying its outputs. To test this hypothesis, we measured people's responses regarding each of 25 socially valued traits. We observed the predicted magnitude matchings. The intensities of the pride feeling and of various motivations of pride (communicating the achievement, demanding better treatment, investing in the valued trait and pursuing new challenges) vary in proportion: (a) to one another; and (b) to the degree to which audiences value each achievement. These patterns of magnitude matching were observed both within and between the USA and India. These findings suggest that pride works cost-effectively, promoting the pursuit of achievements and facilitating the gains from others’ valuations that make those achievements worth pursuing.
The chapter introduces core concepts to be explored throughout the book. The chapter begins by discussing the recent growth in public service motivation research and growth in related intellectual capital. In addition to a growth in research, more practical applications for examining public service values and motivations have emerged. The chapter subsequently addresses the continuing pressure being placed on traditional service systems. In the face of warnings about long-term mismanagement of human capital, governments around the world are under pressure. The chapter then outlines factors that tend to allow civil service systems to persist. Operating rules, which have rational origins as solutions to perceived problems, sensitize actors to values. The evolution of motivation is then discussed, with special attention towards New Public Management, contracting out, agentification, and high-powered incentives. Public service motivation is then proposed to be a foundation for reform. A comprehensive, coherent, evidence-based argument is outlined. The chapter concludes with a description of the organization of the book.
Human personality is the other main broad domain addressed within the general framework of individual differences. The chapter provides a brief description about the main approaches used in the study of human personality. Moreover, substantial questions addressed in this chapter include whether personality influences chess playing style, or whether chess player’s personality differs in some special way from that of other people uninvolved in chess. In addition, whether personality factors may interact in some way with cognitive abilities in chess players is another interesting and relatively novel topic. In contrast with intelligence, however, the body of research about the personality of chess players is rather scarce. Nevertheless, there have been some interesting findings in the latter years that are summarized within this chapter. The ending section of this chapter presents novel data about the interplay amongst personality, motivation, and emotional regulation in predicting chess skill.
This chapter discusses expatriate recruitment sources, methods, and the expatriates’ motivations to work abroad. Then it examines expatriate selection criteria, methods, and how expatriates are selected in practice. The chapter also presents the variety of expatriate preparation methods, discusses expatriate training effectiveness, and expatriate preparation in practice. It concludes by considering future avenues of research. Overall, in the area of selection and preparation for international assignments there is good material for researchers to build on and a growing understanding of the key issues. Nevertheless, there remains here a rich field for exciting research in the future.
Motivational factors are generally regarded as an important ingredient for change in therapy. However, there is currently a lack of available instruments that can measure clients’ readiness for change in therapy.
Aim:
The objective of this paper was to create an instrument, the Readiness for Therapy Questionnaire (RTQ), which could measure clients’ readiness for change.
Method:
The RTQ was created by researchers following analysis of themes drawn from a review of the literature and interviews with patients at the end of therapy. This included both people who completed therapy and those who dropped out. As part of the standard assessment process, the RTQ was administered to 349 participants (69.6% female and 30.4% male; mean age 37.1 years; 90.5% Caucasian) who were patients at a psychological therapy service for common mental health difficulties.
Result:
An initial 12-item scale was reduced to 6 items. This scale significantly correlated with post-therapy PHQ-9 and GAD-7 scores and changes in these scores across therapy. After controlling for baseline scores and demographic variables, a logistic regression showed that scores on this 6-item measure pre-therapy significantly predicted three outcome variables: completing therapy, being recovered on both PHQ-9 and GAD-7 post-therapy, and having a reliable change in both the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 post-therapy. However, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis showed the measure had poor sensitivity and specificity. Symptom severity did not have a significant impact on motivation to change.
Conclusion:
The RTQ is potentially a valid measure with useful clinical applications in treatment of common mental health difficulties.
A wide variety of events can function as reinforcers. The Premack principle provides a useful guide; activities that individuals engage in when given a free choice will probably be effective reinforcers. One factor is the delay between the response and reinforcer; we discount, or give less value, to rewards that are delayed. Effectiveness also depends on the schedule of reinforcement; partial reinforcement (reinforcing only some responses) produces greater persistence in extinction. Effectiveness also depends on how the reinforcer contrasts with past reinforcers—we value a reinforcer less if we are accustomed to more attractive reinforcers—and how long we have been deprived of it. The stimuli present during reinforcement are also important; we are more likely to repeat a response if we are in the same environment where we obtained it previously. Which elements of that environment will be important, though, can be difficult to predict, depending in part on attention and perceptual learning (with practice we can become better at distinguishing elements of a situation). The chapter ends with an application involving shaping—when a behavior is difficult to train, start by reinforcing the response closest to it, and then gradually reinforce closer approximations.
We used a survey to investigate some motives for drinking red, sparkling, and white wine among 3,433 Norwegian respondents. Respondents with interest in wine drank all types of wine more frequently than those with little interest. Interest in cultural activities, which often are associated with wine consumption, also increased the frequency of consumption of all types of wine. Respondents who scored high on conspicuous attitudes drank sparkling and white wine more frequently than respondents with low scores. However, conspicuous attitudes did not affect the frequency of red wine consumption. (JEL Classifications: D12, Q13).
This chapter might be euphemistically called a summary of the book “in pictures,” as it includes all of the key graphics used throughout the book to represent the core ideas of MST (including summaries of goal content themes, different kinds of emotion patterns, and personal agency belief patterns), TSP (including representations of the TSP Theory of Motivation and Optimal Functioning and the TSP Theory of Life Meaning), and principles for motivating self and others. This chapter was designed to provide readers with a quick summary of the book’s contents and an easy way to recall key ideas related to the challenge of motivating self and others.
This chapter provides a nontechnical introduction to the components of human motivation (goals, emotions, and personal agency beliefs) that capitalizes on the intuitive understandings that readers already have about motivation from their own everyday experience. This is done through thought questions that encompass motivation of both self and others. The concept of “motivation at its (human) best” – what we call Thriving with Social Purpose – is also introduced as an advance organizer for the chapters to follow.
The next step after getting a feel for what “personal goals” are and how they work is to understand the other two components of motivational patterns (emotions and personal agency beliefs) and how goals, emotions, and personal agency beliefs operate as a “leadership team” in motivational headquarters. Learning how these components of human motivational patterns (always) work together to direct, organize, and regulate thought and action provides the conceptual foundation for constructing a theory of motivation and optimal functioning that can inform efforts to help people be more successful and experience enhanced levels of well-being and life meaning. This chapter also introduces the concept of equipoise – a system-wide requirement for optimal functioning – while also explaining how MST concepts can be applied to motivation at the level of human collectives (Group Motivational Systems Theory).
This chapter analyzes migration timing. It begins by showing that there is substantial variation in civilian migration timing. Then, it explains how civilians develop motivation and opportunity to migrate. Finally, the chapter ends by showing how civilians may combine migration and community support strategies.
This chapter describes the theoretical argument in detail. It starts by discussing relevant features of civil wars, as well as scope conditions for an analysis of the Syrian civil war. Then, it discusses how civilian behavior during conflict is influenced by threat perceptions. Survival strategies are responses to threat perceptions specifically. Violent experiences in particular drive threat perceptions. These experiences are particularly likely when civilians have social proximity to perpetrators of violence. After that, it reviews existing understandings of PTSD and PTG. To connect these psychological processes to behavior, the chapter then turns to narratives and narrative ruptures. Next, it addresses how people develop opportunity to act safely. Finally, it shows how motivation and opportunity combine in order to allow civilians to select specific survival strategies.
This chapter begins by showing why armed groups perceive threats when civilians support community members. As armed groups respond, they make civilians perceive community support as dangerous. Then, it explains how civilians develop the motivation and opportunity to share information. Afterwards, it analyzes how and why civilians select specific conversation partners, particularly strong social ties, co-ethnics, and people with similar ideological views. Next, it discusses how civilians use code words when sharing information. Civilians perceive protection from this strategy of sharing information, even though the code words that they choose are often very easy to decipher.
The Introduction provides an overview of the theoretical argument and discusses the importance of the book as a whole. It opens with motivation for the book. Then, it introduces the crucial concepts of threat perceptions and repertoires of survival strategies. It then introduces the main source of evidence for the book, interviews with Syrian refugees in Jordan and Turkey. After that, it provides an overview of the book's theoretical and policy implications. Finally, it provides a road map for the book.
This chapter concludes the book. First, it summarizes the argument. It then discusses lessons for civilian protection. Next, it shows how the book's argument could extend to other cases and survival strategies. After that, it discusses how the book's argument regarding violent threat could be extended to environmental threat, as well as combinations of violent and environmental threat. Finally, the chapter ends by laying out what an overarching framework could look like that would incorporate violent and environmental threat.
This chapter provides an overview of research factors and interventions that facilitate delaying gratification in academic settings. In learning settings, academic delay of gratification refers to students’ postponement of immediately available opportunities to satisfy impulses in favor of pursuing important academic rewards or goals that are temporally remote but ostensibly more valuable. The first section of this chapter provides a brief overview and the theoretical underpinnings of Bandura’s (1997) social cognitive theory and Zimmerman’s (2013) self-regulated learning model, with an emphasis on delay of gratification. The second section focuses on how school psychologists can help educators to put in place schoolwide processes that help make it easier for students to delay gratification. The third section describes interventions that can be implemented by school psychologists, teachers, and administrators to assist students who struggle with delaying gratification. The final section provides recommendations for facilitating delaying gratification in school environments and suggests future research.