CHAPTER 8
Self-Regulatory Perspectives on Personality
CHARLES S. CARVER AND MICHAEL F. SCHEIER
185BEHAVIOR AS GOAL DIRECTED
AND FEEDBACK CONTROLLED 186
Feedback Processes 186
Re-emergent Interest in Approach and Avoidance 188
HIERARCHICALITY AMONG GOALS 188
Differentiating Goals by Levels of Abstraction 188
Multiple Paths to High-Level Goals, Multiple Meanings
from Concrete Acts 190
Goals and the Self 190
FEEDBACK LOOPS AND CREATION OF AFFECT 190
Velocity Control 190
Research Evidence 191
Cruise Control Model 191
Affect from Discrepancy-Enlarging Loops 192
Merging Affect and Action 192
Comparison with Biological Models of Bases of Affect 193
RESPONDING TO ADVERSITY: PERSISTENCE
AND GIVING UP 194
Behavioral Manifestations 194
Is Disengagement Good or Bad? 194
Hierarchicality and Importance Can
Impede Disengagement 195
Watersheds, Disjunctions, and Bifurcations
Among Responses 195
SCALING BACK ASPIRATIONS AND RECALIBRATION
OF THE AFFECT SYSTEM 195
Shifts in Velocity Standards 195
Mechanism of Shift 196
Scaling Back on Behavioral Goals 197
CONFLICT AND RESTRAINT 197
Ironic Processes in Mental Control 197
Lapses in Self-Control 198
DYNAMIC SYSTEMS AND SELF-REGULATION 198
Nonlinearity 199
Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 199
Phase Space, Attractors, and Repellers 199
Another Way of Picturing Attractors 200
Goals as Attractors 201
CONNECTIONISM 201
Multiple Constraint Satisfaction 201
Self-Organization and Self-Regulation 202
CATASTROPHE THEORY 202
Hysteresis 203
An Application of Catastrophe Theory 203
CONCLUDING COMMENT 204
REFERENCES 205Personality is a difficult concept to pin down. By necessity it
is a very broad concept because personality impinges on vir-
tually all aspects of human behavior. This breadth is viewed
differently by different theorists, however. As a result, many
different approaches have been taken to thinking about and
conceptualizing personality. The diversity in focus among the
chapters in the first part of this volume attests very clearly to
that fact.
We were both trained as personality psychologists.
Throughout our careers, however, our research interest has
focused on a set of issues regarding the structure of behavior.
These issues link the concept of personality and its function-
ing to a set of themes that might be regarded as representing
the psychology of motivation. Our interest in how behav-
ior occurs has taken us into a number of specific research
domains—most recently health-related behavior and respon-
ses to stress (Carver & Scheier, 2001; Scheier, Carver, &
Bridges, 2001). However, these specific explorations have
almost always occurred in service to a more general interest
in the structure of behavior.
What we mean by “the structure of behavior” is reflected
in the issues underlying questions such as these: What is the
most useful way to think about how people create actions
from their intentions, plans, and desires? Once people have
decided to do something, how do they stay on course? What
is the relation between people’s values and their actions?Preparation of this chapter was facilitated by grants CA64710,
CA64711, CA62711, CA78995, and CA84944 from the National
Cancer Institute, and grants HL65111 and HL65112 from the Na-
tional Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.