Department of Social, Health and Organizational Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Appl Psychol Health Well Being. 2022 Feb;14(1):278-293. doi: 10.1111/aphw.12302. Epub 2021 Aug 18.
Despite having good intentions, people fail at times to self-regulate. Most of these instances of everyday self-regulation failure are in themselves trivial. However, the ensuing chain of attributions, thoughts, and subsequent behaviors that people experience after an instance of failure may be detrimental to their long-term self-regulation success. In two studies, we examined the potential of intervening in the aftermath of failure to prevent this so-called "setback effect" by instructing people that setbacks may occur and to attribute future incidents of failure to external causes. In Study 1, we tested whether the intervention indeed decreased the frequency of self-regulation failure in the context of dieting and procrastination. In Study 2, we aimed to replicate the findings from Study 1 in the context of procrastination, and we explored the mediating role of self-efficacy. In both studies, participants in the intervention condition experienced less self-regulation failure and more subjective self-regulation success in the days after the intervention. Study 2 demonstrated that this effect was partly mediated by an increase in self-efficacy. Taken together, findings suggest that a simple mindset manipulation promoting external attributions to failure may be effective in preventing a setback effect from occurring by protecting self-efficacy.
尽管人们有良好的意图，但有时他们会无法自我调节。大多数这些日常自我调节失败的例子本身都是微不足道的。然而，在失败发生后，人们经历的归因、思维和随后的行为链条可能会对他们的长期自我调节成功产生不利影响。在两项研究中，我们通过指示人们挫折可能会发生，并将未来的失败归因于外部原因，研究了在失败后进行干预以防止这种所谓的“挫折效应”的可能性。在研究 1 中，我们测试了干预措施是否确实减少了节食和拖延情况下的自我调节失败的频率。在研究 2 中，我们旨在复制研究 1 在拖延情况下的发现，并探索自我效能感的中介作用。在这两项研究中，干预条件下的参与者在干预后的几天内经历的自我调节失败较少，主观的自我调节成功感更多。研究 2 表明，这种效果部分是通过自我效能感的增加来介导的。总的来说，这些发现表明，一种简单的心态干预措施，通过将失败归因于外部因素，可能会通过保护自我效能感来有效地防止挫折效应的发生。
