research examines the antecedents and underlying mechanisms that facilitate successful goal pursuit over time. Email: kaitlyn.werner@carleton.ca, address: Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Loeb 550, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1S 5B6.Werner, K. M., Milyavskaya, M., Foxen-Craft, E., & Koestner, R. (2016). Some goals just feel easier: Self-concordance leads to goal progress through subjective ease, not effort. Personality and Individual Differences, 96, 237-242. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.03.002The objective of the present study was to examine whether subjective ease of goal pursuit would mediate the relation between an individual's motivation for pursuing a goal and their subsequent goal progress. Toward the beginning of a university semester, participants (n=176) identified three goals they planned to pursue throughout the semester and reported their motivation for pursuing each of them. Participants then indicated, at two monthly follow-ups, how easy and natural it felt to pursue these goals and how much effort they were putting into attaining them. At the end of the semester, participants reported on their goal progress. Within-person analyses indicated that self-concordant goals were perceived as being easier to pursue relative to an individual's other goals. Using multilevel structural equation modelling, results indicated that subjective ease, but not effort, mediated the relation between motivation and goal progress, such that people were more likely to successfully accomplish self-concordant goals because pursuing those goals was perceived as being more effortless, and not because more effort was exerted.Discussion focuses on the implications and future directions for research on subjective effort and goal pursuit.
Objective To examine the relative association between daily change in pain, fatigue, depressed mood, and cognitive function, and four outcomes (positive affect and well-being, ability to participate in social roles and activities, upper extremity (UE) functioning, and lower extremity (LE) functioning). Design Repeated-measures observational study including a baseline lab visit, followed by seven days of home monitoring that included ecological momentary assessment (EMA) of symptoms (pain, fatigue, depressed mood, and cognitive function) and end-of-day diary surveys of outcomes of interest. Multilevel mixed models were used to test study hypotheses. Setting General community. Participants Ambulatory adults (n=102) with MS recruited through [masked] and the surrounding community. Interventions Not applicable. Main Outcome Measure(s) Customized short-forms of the Neuro-QOL Positive Affect and Well-Being, Upper Extremity Functioning, and Lower Extremity Functioning item banks and the PROMIS Ability to Participate in Social Roles and Activity item banks, adapted for daily use and administered as end-of-day diaries. Results Above and beyond the effects of demographic and clinical covariates, daily pain was associated with three of the four outcomes; days of higher pain were related to lower same-day social participation (B=−1.00, p=0.002), UE functioning (B=−1.04, p=0.01), and LE functioning (B=−0.71, p=0.04). Daily fatigue and depressed mood were independently related to daily positive affect and well-being; days of worse fatigue (B=−0.54, p=0.006) and depressed mood (B=−1.17, p<0.0001) were related to lower same-day well-being. Conclusions Results demonstrate the role of fluctuations in symptoms in daily functioning and quality of life of individuals with MS. Daily increases in pain intensity are related to social and physical functioning, whereas increases in fatigue and depressed mood is related to daily lower levels of well-being. Findings implicate a person-centered approach to monitoring and treating symptoms.
Chronic pain is often associated with sexual dysfunction, suggesting that pain can reduce libido. We find that inflammatory pain reduces sexual motivation, measured via mounting behavior and/or proximity in a paced mating paradigm, in female but not male laboratory mice. Pain was produced by injection of inflammogens zymosan A (0.5 mg/ml) or -carrageenan (2%) into genital or nongenital (hind paw, tail, cheek) regions. Sexual behavior was significantly reduced in female mice experiencing pain (in all combinations); male mice similarly treated displayed unimpeded sexual motivation. Pain-induced reductions in female sexual behavior were observed in the absence of sex differences in pain-related behavior, and could be rescued by the analgesic, pregabalin, and the libido-enhancing drugs, apomorphine and melanotan-II. These findings suggest that the well known context sensitivity of the human female libido can be explained by evolutionary rather than sociocultural factors, as female mice can be similarly affected.
Objectives: Pediatric patients with chronic musculoskeletal conditions such as idiopathic scoliosis awaiting surgical correction can experience pain that interferes with their daily functioning. Reports of this interference are commonly gathered from patients through the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Pain Interference Scale and through parent-proxy scores. However, the child and parent/caregiver reports vary. To provide appropriate treatment for young patients with pain, the nature of the discrepancies and under which circumstances the reports differ needs to be understood. This report offers new information on the level of concordance among parent and child report of pain interference within this patient population, and which parent and child characteristics may influence concordance rates. Methods: Youth (age=10 to 17 y) with a history of musculoskeletal disorders, including idiopathic scoliosis, under consideration for surgical correction of that scoliosis and parent/caregiver dyads (n=103) completed the PROMIS Pain Interference Scale during an orthopedic presurgical visit. The current data was taken from a larger study examining postsurgical pain among patients undergoing orthopedic surgical procedures to correct scoliosis. The purpose of the current study was to measure the degree of agreement between parent and child reports of pain interference and discovery of relationships among predictors of pain interference score correspondence among dyads. Results: Correspondence between parent/caregiver and child reports of pain interference was modest (intraclass correlation coefficient=0.530). In total, 46% of dyads had similar pain interference scores, whereas 24% of parents reported higher pain interference in comparison to their child, the remaining 30% reported lower pain interference in relation to their child’s report. Among children where discrepancies appeared, using logistic regression models, only child catastrophizing scores were associated with differences in parent and child estimation of child’s pain interference scores. No parental characteristics predicted discrepancies between dyad pain interference reports. Discussion: Parent-proxy and child reports generally correspond, but when discrepant, 24% of parents reported higher pain interference in relationship to the child report of pain interference and 31% noted less intense pain interference than their child’s pain interference. Given these results, care should be taken when interpreting parent reports of child pain interference, especially when a child reports higher degrees of pain interference.
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