Two essays on the outcomes of self-regulatory failures: The roles of cognitive dissonance and self-schema activation

Berna Devezer Buzbas

doi:10.7273/000006012

The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the role self-regulatory failures in consumer behavior, by advancing theory and exploring practical implications. Specifically, I seek to understand to what extent behavioral lapses influence subsequent self-regulation and under what conditions failure facilitates future goal pursuit. I investigate the outcomes of self-regulatory failures with two essays, each proposing a separate theoretical framework to address a diverse set of research questions. Theoretical models buttressed by five experimental studies provide substantive conclusions for consumer self-regulation and welfare. In Essay One, I draw on cognitive dissonance and hierarchical goal systems to enlighten the psychological processes that are triggered by subgoal failures and explore their upstream outcomes in the goal hierarchy. Specifically, I hypothesize that a behavioral lapse engenders cognitive dissonance, which is relieved by reducing commitment to the corresponding endgoal. These expectations find support across three experiments in the contexts of saving and pro-environmental consumption. Moreover, this downward adjustment in endgoal commitment is shown to indirectly decrease future subgoal setting in the same motivational domain. Three moderators that alleviate the detrimental effects of subgoal failure are identified: endgoal specificity, self-concordance of the endgoal, and aversive consequences of the subgoal failure. Essay Two focuses on situations where feedback generated by regular consumer behaviors is ambiguous in nature. In such cases, a temporarily activated self-schema is hypothesized to act as a goal standard by which behaviors are assessed. I expect that an initial behavior that is incongruent with the active self-schema will be interpreted as a self-regulatory failure. Initiating symbolic self-completion process, this failure will lead to the (de)valuation of schema-(in)congruent means. On the other hand, a schema-congruent behavior will result in an inference of self-regulatory success, which will release the ongoing self-regulation process and cause the evaluations of schema-congruent and incongruent means to converge. In the absence of an active self-schema; however, a pattern of behavioral consistency is expected. These predictions are tested and supported in two studies across health conscious and hedonic self-schemata. Moreover, behavioral intensity is shown to be a significant moderator which enhances motivating effects of self-regulatory failure.

Two essays on the outcomes of self-regulatory failures: The roles of cognitive dissonance and self-schema activation

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