Goal pursuit increases more after dietary success than after dietary failure: examining conflicting theories of self-regulation using ecological momentary assessment.

BACKGROUND: Maintaining a healthy body weight and reaching long-term dietary goals requires ongoing self-monitoring and behavioral adjustments. How individuals respond to successes and failures is described in models of self-regulation: while cybernetic models propose that failures lead to increased self-regulatory efforts and successes permit a reduction of such efforts, motivational models (e.g., social-cognitive theory) make opposite predictions. Here, we tested these conflicting models in an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) context and explored whether effort adjustments are related to inter-individual differences in perceived self-regulatory success in dieting (i.e., weight management). METHODS: Using linear mixed effects models, we tested in 174 diet-interested individuals whether current day dietary success or failure (e.g., on Monday) was followed by self-regulatory effort adjustment for the next day (e.g., on Tuesday) across 14 days. Success vs. failure was operationalized with two EMA items: first, whether food intake was higher vs. lower than usual and second, whether food intake was perceived as more vs. less goal-congruent than usual. Trait-level perceived self-regulatory success in dieting was measured on a questionnaire. RESULTS: Intended self-regulatory effort increased more strongly after days with dietary success (i.e., eating less than usual / rating intake as goal-congruent) than after days with dietary failure (i.e., eating more than usual / rating intake as goal-incongruent), especially in those individuals with lower scores on perceived self-regulatory success in dieting. CONCLUSIONS: Findings support mechanisms proposed by social-cognitive theory, especially in unsuccessful dieters. Thus, future dietary interventions could focus on preventing the decrease in self-regulatory effort after instances of dietary failures and thereby mitigate the potential risk that a single dietary failure initiates a downward spiral into unhealthy eating.

Research on Government-Enterprise Regulation of Online Car-Hailing Based on Differential Game.

In the Internet era, with the widespread application of digital technology, the way people travel has changed. Compared with traditional taxis, more and more people prefer to choose online car-hailing. The rapid development of the online car-hailing industry has solved the problem of taxi-hailing to a certain extent, but it has also brought some new problems. To change the dilemma of the online car-hailing industry, it is necessary to strengthen the regulation of the online car-hailing industry. In this study, we consider the regulatory system composed of a local government and an enterprise and use the differential game to study the regulation of online car-hailing. In the Nash non-cooperative game, Stackelberg master-slave game, and cooperative game, we, respectively, investigate the indicators, such as the optimal regulatory effort of the government, the optimal regulatory effort of the enterprise, the optimal benefit function of the government, the optimal benefit function of the enterprise, the optimal benefit function of the system, the optimal trajectory of the service quality level for the enterprise, and the optimal trajectory of the goodwill for the enterprise. Moreover, we analyze the corresponding conclusions through examples. We obtained some important results. (i) In the Stackelberg master-slave game, the optimal ratio of the local government subsidy to the enterprise's regulatory cost is only related to the benefit distribution coefficient and has nothing to do with other factors. Moreover, when the benefit distribution coefficient is >1/3, the local government is willing to share the regulatory cost of the enterprise. Otherwise, the local government refuses to share the regulatory cost of the enterprise. (ii) Compared with the Nash non-cooperative game, the optimal regulatory effort of the local government remains unchanged in the Stackelberg master-slave game, but the optimal benefit of the local government increases. Moreover, when the benefit distribution coefficient is >1/3, both the optimal regulatory effort and the optimal benefit of the enterprise increase. (iii) Compared with the Stackelberg master-slave game, in the cooperative game, the optimal regulatory effort of both government and enterprise increases, and the system's optimal benefit also increases. (iv) From the Nash non-cooperative game to the Stackelberg master-slave game and then to the cooperative game when the benefit distribution coefficient is >1/3, the service quality level and goodwill of the enterprise all increase.

When tonic cardiac vagal tone predicts changes in phasic vagal tone: the role of fear and perceptual load.

We examined the relationship between tonic--a correlate of self-regulatory functioning--and phasic cardiac vagal activity (indexed by heart rate variability; HRV) during a selective attentional task with varying levels of load. Participants detected a target letter among letter strings superimposed on either fearful or neutral face distractors. Letter strings consisted of six target letters under low load and one target letter and five nontarget letters under high load. With fearful distractors, lower tonic HRV was associated with phasic HRV suppression, suggesting an autonomic stress response under both low and high load. In contrast, higher tonic HRV was associated with phasic HRV enhancement, suggesting greater self-regulatory effort under low load and an absence of phasic HRV suppression under high load. The current research suggests that tonic cardiac vagal tone is associated with the ability to flexibly adapt autonomic responses.