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13 Self-Regulation and Quality of Life: Emotional and Non-Emotional Life Experiences E. Tory HitIgins) Heidi Grant) and James Shah The hedonic principle that people approach pleasure and avoid pain does not capture the fact that people 's life experiences have as much to do with how they regulate pleasure and pain as with the simple fact that they do. Individuals who experience the pleasure of joy and the pain of disappointment do not have the same life experiences as those who experience the pleasure ofrelaxation and the pain ofnervousness . Moreover, there is more to life experience than the pleasures and pains ofeffective and ineffective self-regulation. Motivational experiences ofstrategic states, such as feeling eager or cautious, are an important part of life as well. To discover the true nature of approach/avoidance experiences, we need to move beyond the hedonic principle to the principles that underlie the different strategic ways it operates. One such principle is regulatory focus, which distinguishes self-regulation with a promotion focus (accomplishments , aspirations) from self-regulation with a prevention focus (safety, responsibilities). This principle is used to reconsider the nature of emotional and non-emotional life experiences. IT IS NATURAL to define quality of life in terms of the hedonic principle. After all, the principle that people approach pleasure and avoid pain has been, and continues to be, the fundamental motivational principle. It has ancient roots that can be traced at least to Plato's Protagoras. In psychology, this principle underlies motivational models from the biological level of analysis distinguishing between the appetitive system involving approach and the aversive system involving avoidance (Gray 1982; Konorski 1967; Lang 1995) to the social level of analysis distinguishing between movements toward desired end-states and away from undesired end-states (Atkinson 1964; Bandura 1986; Carver and Scheier 1981, 1990; Lewin 1935, 1951; McClelland et al. 1953; Roseman 1984; Roseman, Spindel, and Jose 1990). But can we understand the pains and pleasures of emotional experiences through the hedonic principle alone? Indeed, can we understand quality of life by looking only at the pains and pleasures of emotional experiences? We propose that to understand emotional and non-emotional life experiences it is useful to consider the self-regulatory processes that underlie them (see also Higgins 1997). The chapter begins by distinguishing between three different selfregulatory principles-rl2Tulatory anticipation, rl2Tulatory reference, and regulatory focus (see Higgins 1997). Following this, evidence for the importance of regulatory focus in emotional experiences is reviewed . Next, a model of emotional experiences based on self-regulatory processes is proposed and compared to other models in the literature. Finally, non-emotional life experiences that might also influence quality of life are considered. SELF-REGULATORY PRINCIPLES According to the classic perspective on motivation , people approach pleasure and avoid pain. What the literature does not make sufficiently clear is that there are two distinct self-regulatory principles that can be described in this way. Regulatory Anticipation The first principle is regulatory anticipation. Based on past experiences of success or failure, people can anticipate future pleasure or future pain. Mowrer (1960), for example, proposed a theory of learning that distinguished between feeling "hope" when anticipating future pleasure and feeling "fear" when anticipating future pain. In his classic theory of achievement motivation, Atkinson (1964) distinguished between self-regulation in relation to "hope of success" and "fear of failure." Kahneman and Tversky's (1979) highly influential "prospect theory" distinguished between looking forward and mentally considering the possibility of experi- encing pleasure versus the possibility of experiencing pain. RegulatOlY anticipation, it should be noted, is not the same as a specific expectation of a particular outcome. Individuals with the same general anticipation can still have different specific expectations . Moreover, specific expectations can be situationally manipulated, as is commonly done in the achievement motivation literature (Atkinson and Raynor 1974). For example, individuals can be selected who anticipate or fear failure, but their specific expectation of failure will be greater when the task is described as difficult than when it is described as easy. Regulatory anticipation, then, is not expectation per se. Still, it does refer to imagining a future outcome that is pleasurable or painful . In the regulatory anticipation form of the hedonic principle, then, imagining a pleasurable future outcome induces approach motivation while imagining a painful future outcome induces avoidance motivation. Regulatory reference, considered next, involves a different form of the hedonic principle . Regulatory Reference Two persons might both imagine romantic love as a desired end-state, but one person might...

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