Research Seminar

Towards unveiling the process dynamics underlying individual differences in situation selection/avoidance


Sofie Frederickx


KU Leuven

Abstract: People are actively involved in the selection and avoidance of the situations they face during everyday life. Moreover, such selection/avoidance behavior is subject to sizeable individual differences. An important question then reads as to how the process basis underlying this phenomenon looks like. In this talk, I will examine this process basis in terms of various kinds of cognitive/affective forecasts, while paying special attention to individual differences in the different process links involving those forecasts. Moreover, I will examine to which extent the structure of the process basis is similar for different behavioral domains, and whether it is similar for selection and avoidance behavior. To answer these research questions, two vignette studies on selection/avoidance were run, the first of which involving communication situations and the second social activities. In each study, participants had to rate each element of a set of potential situations on selection/avoidance and on a set of cognitive/affective forecast variables. Results show that, for both communication and social activities, two components constitute the basis of the cognitive/affective forecast structure, namely anticipated positive and anticipated negative affect. With respect to the link between hypothetical situations and forecasts, people further appear to differ in terms of the features they take into account as triggers of anticipated affect. With respect to the link between forecasts and selection/avoidance, for the two behavioral domains under study, both positive and negative forecasts appeared to be significant predictors of selection as well as avoidance; yet, positive forecasts appeared to be the strongest predictor for selection and negative forecasts for avoidance behavior. Furthermore, the relative importance attached to the two types of forecasts appeared to be subject to sizeable individual differences.
Date: Tue Mar 1, 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm
Place: room 02.60 (Department of Psychology, Tiensestraat 102, 3000 Leuven)