Causality Orientations Research Articles

Testing a motivational process model in the context of physical activity

Using self-determination theory, we examined the mechanism of motivation in the context of physical activity (PA). We conducted structural equation modeling with 431 participants. The results showed general support for the motivational process model, in which a sequence is specified from autonomy support and causality orientations to psychological need satisfaction to self-determined behavioral regulation to PA behavior. These findings aid understanding of the underlying motivational mechanism of PA behavior, and highlight the positive roles of autonomy support and autonomy orientation in psychological need satisfaction, self-determined behavioral regulation, and PA participation.

The moderating role of Self Determination Theory's general causality orientations in the relationship between the job resources and work engagement of outsourcing sector employees

The aim of the study was to investigate the role of general causality orientations in the motivational impact of job resources on work engagement. Drawing on predictions from the Self Determination Theory and the Job Demands-Resources model, we hypothesized that autonomous, controlled and impersonal causality orientations would separately moderate the relationship between job resources and work engagement. The data was obtained from 1,020 outsourcing sector employees working in Poland. The autonomous and impersonal orientations were shown to moderate the relationship between job resources and work engagement; the positive relationship was weaker for both highly autonomy-oriented and highly impersonal-oriented individuals. The interaction between controlled orientation and job resources was insignificant. The study advances the literature and research that investigates the motivational process of the JD-R by taking into account the individual differences perspective.

What Determines Teachers’ Use of Motivational Strategies in the Classrooms? A Self-Determination Theory Perspective

This study examined the antecedents of teachers’ use of motivational strategies in the classroom using self-determination theory. It was found that teachers’ autonomous causality orientation, perceived job pressure, and perception of student self-determined motivation influenced their need satisfaction. In turn, their need satisfaction had a positive direct impact on autonomous motivation. In addition, teachers’ perception of their students’ self-determined motivation directly predicted teachers’ use of three motivational strategies in the classroom. Finally, their autonomous motivation positively predicted providing instrumental help and support and meaningful rationale, whereas controlled motivation negatively predicted providing instrumental help and support.

Validation of the vignette-based German Exercise Causality Orientation Scale (G-ECOS).

The Self-Determination Theory has been applied to explain behaviour in numerous contexts and cultures. In the exercise context, causality orientations (autonomy, control, impersonal) are important to describe individual differences in initiation and maintenance of health behaviour. The assessment of exercise causality orientations can be a key element to improve predictions of motivated health and exercise behaviour. Nevertheless, a scale to measure exercise causality orientations has not been established in German yet. Thus, it was the aim of the present work to translate the Exercise Causality Orientations Scale to German and to test it throughout three studies. The German G-ECOS questionnaire was cross-validated via confirmatory factor analyses in two separate samples. Both Study 1 (n = 306, 72.60% female, age M = 26.00, SD = 5.66; CFI = .96) and Study 2 (n = 320, 70.94% female, age M = 29.00, SD = 3.54; CFI = .95) indicated a good model fits. In a further Study 3 (n = 548, 62.50% female, age M = 30.17, SD = 11.91), the relations between exercise causality orientations and other SDT related constructs were examined. The correlations indicated positive associations between autonomy causality orientation and intrinsic regulation, intrinsic exercise participation goals, and exercise basic needs satisfaction. Overall, the assessment of exercise causality orientations can be useful in analysing and potentially predicting motivated exercise behaviour.

Political Orientation and Public Attributions for the Causes and Solutions of Physical Inactivity in Canada: Implications for Policy Support.

Objectives: To examine how public attributions for the causes and solutions of physical inactivity and individuals' self-identified political orientation are associated with support for different policy actions in addressing physical inactivity.Methods: A secondary data analysis was conducted with a sample of 2,044 Canadian adults. Two sets of 2 X 3 analyses of variance and post-hoc analyses were conducted to assess (1) the mean differences by the causes of the issue of physical inactivity (individual, or both internal and external/external) and political orientation (liberal, centrist, and conservative), and (2) responsibility for solutions (private matter, or both private and public health matter, and /public health matter) and political orientation on support for least, moderate, and most intrusive policy actions.Results: No interaction effects existed between causal attribution and political orientation on policy support, but a main effect of causal attributions for physical inactivity and political orientation was significant. Those who held internal attributions for the cause of physical inactivity showed less support for policies compared to those who held external causal attributions or both internal and external causal attributions. Conservative individuals reported the least support for all policy actions in comparison to liberal or centrist orientations. There were interaction effects between responsibility for solutions and political orientation on policy support. Conservative individuals who perceived the responsibility for solving physical inactivity as a private matter had less support for all three policy actions.Conclusions: Public acceptance of policy actions addressing physical inactivity varies by the attributions the public have regarding causes and responsibility for solving the problem, and by political orientation. Advocacy and messaging for policy implementation in the physical activity arena needs to be communicated in ways that encourage reflective and informed deliberation that is representative of the Canadian population.

Self-determination Affects the Use of Self-presentation Strategies On Social Networking Sites

We examined how orientation of self-determination affects the use of online self-presentation strategies among social networking site users. Participants were 374 young adult WeChat users (age range = 18–22 years; 166 men, 208 women) who completed the self-report measures of the General Causality Orientations Scale and the Online Interpersonal Communication Strategies Scale. The results indicated that an autonomy orientation of self-determination was positively related to the use of automatic ingratiation strategies; a controlled orientation of self-determination was the most active motivational orientation and was related to the use of the online self-presentation strategies of ingratiation, self-promotion, exemplification, and supplication; and an impersonal orientation of self-determination was primarily associated with use of the supplication strategy of self-presentation. These novel insights regarding self-determination could help to explain individual differences in online self-presentation.

Impoverished Students Are More Flourishing in Vocational College：A Study on Psychological Characteristics and Job-Seeking Motivations

以往对中国贫困大学生的研究主要集中在本科院校的贫困生群体，对贫困高职学生的关注不足。本研究通过调查山西省运城职业技术学院的 2046 名二、三年级学生，发现贫困学生的正性情绪、成长型思维、基本心理需求满足、坚毅、自主学习动机、学校表现均高于非贫困生，抑郁低于非贫困生，生活满意度、负性情绪、希望、自我效能感、焦虑、受控学习动机、学校投入与非贫困生无显著差异，因果定向的自主、受控维度高于非贫困生，非个人化维度则无显著差异。这与以往对贫困大学生心理特点的研究结论不同，原因可能是贫困高职学生的社会比较较不明显、期望较低及该高职院校特点。调查还发现，贫困生的就业自主和受控动机均与非贫困生无显著差异，但动机缺乏程度低于非贫困生，去不同类型单位就业的意愿也高于非贫困生。回归分析显示，这与贫困生更积极的因果定向有关。本研究考察了中西部贫困高职学生的心理和行为特点，对于精准扶贫工作有着重要意义。 Prior research on impoverished college students in China focused on regular undergraduates from low income families. The psychological characteristics of impoverished students in vocational colleges were not sufficiently studied. This study surveys 2046 sophomore and junior students from the Yuncheng Vocational College in Shanxi province. We find that，compared to the other students，the impoverished students have higher positive affect，growth mindset，basic psychological needs satisfaction，grit，autonomous learning motivations，school performance，autonomous and controlled causality orientation，and lower level of depression. There are no significant differences between the two groups in life satisfaction，negativeaffect，hope，self-efficacy，anxiety，controlled learning motivations，and school engagement. The impoverished students have significant lower amotivational level if job-seeking than those of the non-impoverished students，while the other types of job-seeking motivations are statistically the same between the two groups. They are also significantly more willing to work in the government，public sectors，and state-owned enterprises，while their willingness to work in the private sectors and start up their own entrepreneurship are statically the same as the non-impoverished students. These findings show a stronger risk-aversion tendency among impoverished students. The autonomous causality orientation of the impoverished students is negatively related to the job-seeking amotivation and negatively related to the job-seeking willingness，the impersonal causality orientation is positively related to the job-seeking amotivation and negatively related to the job-seeking willingness，while the relationships of the controlled causality orientation to the job-seeking amotivation and willingness are in between of the other two causality orientation styles. The implications and limitations of this study are discussed.

Self-determination theory as a foundation for personality researchers.

In this introductory article, we first describe the impetus for this special issue. What made us think that self-determination theory (SDT) might provide a sort of foundation for the rest of personality psychology? For readers unfamiliar with SDT, we then provide a historical overview that covers the evolution of the six "mini-theories" that currently compose SDT: cognitive evaluation theory, causality orientations theory, organismic integration theory, basic psychological needs theory, goal contents theory, and relational motivation theory. Following each section are preliminary suggestions about how each mini-theory might be useful or informative in other branches of personality. This special issue contains nine articles, each of which makes its own attempt to newly link its area of personality research to SDT. Even if SDT is not the appropriate seed for greater consilience in personality psychology, we urge the field not to neglect the search for unifying principles (Sheldon, Cheng, & Hilpert, 2011); it may finally be time to renew the search for a "grand theory" in personality.

Validation of the Chinese version General Causality Orientation Scale-Clinical Population and causality orientations assessing in major depressions.

This study examined the psychometric properties of the Chinese version General Causality Orientation Scale-Clinical Population (GCOS-CP) and assessed the causality orientations in patients with major depression disorders (MDDs). The psychometric properties of the Chinese GCOS-CP were tested in an adults group (study 1). And then, the Chinese GCOS-CP was given to individuals with and without MDD (study 2). The Chinese GCOS-CP provided good reliability and validity. MDD showed lower autonomy but higher impersonal orientations relative to healthy controls. The GCOS-CP is suitable for the assessment of motivation in patients with mental disorders in Chinese setting.

The Mediating Role of Perceived Social Support in the Relationships Between General Causality Orientations and Locus of Control With Psychopathological Symptoms.

The main aim of this study is to investigate the mediator role of perceived social support in the relationship between general causality orientations and locus of control with psychopathological symptoms. Total 751 participants were consisted of 558 female ages between 17 and 36 (Female M = 19.03, SD = 0.09) (74.3%), 192 male ages between 17 and 37 (Male M = 20.71, SD = 0.17) (25.6%) and a participant who did not provide any gender information. We used the General Causality Orientations Scale (GCOS) and Locus of Control Scale (LOCS) in order to understand the basic motivation for the emergence of behavior. Beck depression Inventory (BDI) used to evaluate the psychological symptoms for depression, Maudsley Obsessive Compulsive Inventory (MOCI) for obsessive-compulsive symptomology and Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) for overall psychological distress and finally to evaluate mediating role of social support used the Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS). According to the results, having internal locus of control and autonomy orientation have shown positive effect to statistically significant predictors for psychological symptomology, having external locus of control and impersonal orientation have shown negative effect. Perceived social support was found to be suited for the role of partial mediator, and social support from friends was found to have more positive roles than social support from family. In conclusion, exceedingly considerable to conduct further research in order to contribute to the understanding of the mediating role of general causality orientations and locus of control with psychopathology symptomology.

I am the chosen one: Narcissism in the backdrop of self-determination theory.

This theoretical article discusses the relevance of self-determination theory (SDT) for narcissism, a classic topic in self-theory. The trait of narcissism reflects a self-aggrandizing, dominant, and manipulative interpersonal orientation that feeds on exaggerated perceptions of agency, but not communion. The article embeds narcissism in the five mini-theories of SDT (organismic integration, causality orientations, basic needs, cognitive evaluation, and goal contents) and considers research directions that can explore synergies between key constructs from SDT and narcissism. SDT can serve as a foundation for a deeper understanding of narcissism. From the other end, narcissism can enrich SDT by explaining variations in motivational processes.

Preliminary report on the patient motivation and adherence to exercise recommendations—The importance of medical communication in the rehabilitation process during and after hospitalization

Medical communication plays very important role in rehabilitation process. It can support or hinder treatment, especially when we have to deal with patients with depression or low self-esteem. The right communication methods tell of professionalism of medical staff and result in success in therapy. The aim of the presentation is to show the research on medical communication in the rehabilitation process of patients during and after their hospitalization. We analyze and assess: –Communication methods used by doctors, nurses and physiotherapists; –Specific needs of patients due to their diseases and psychophysical condition (we examine patients: after various accidents, with neurological or musculoskeletal diseases, terminally ill, with good or bad prognosis, with or without depression etc.); –If patients understand their own condition and what can help them to recover; –Motivation and adherence to exercise recommendations during and after hospitalization; –How medical staff supports the patients in their specific condition. The research has been conducted in a group of 150 adult patients without cognitive disorders, by using original questionnaires, Rehabilitation Causality Orientation Scale, Self-Regulation Questionnaire for Rehabilitation, Depression Anxiety Stress Scales, The Laitinen Modified Questionnaire Indicators of Pain and The Visual-Analogue Scale. The results were statistically analyzed. Patients are highly motivated to undertake rehabilitation during hospitalization. Their motivation gets lower with time afterwards, although, they understand that adherence to exercise recommendations would help them to recover. Patients feel safe in medical staff's presence, despite of some communication problems. Effective communication methods are very important in the rehabilitation process. They play a great role in motivating and realizing of the patients’ will. On the basis of the research will be created proper communication patterns for medical staff, which will have a positive effect on rehabilitation process and will improve the quality of patients’ life, as well as satisfaction of medical staff at work.

Comparison of strategies for scalable causal discovery of latent variable models from mixed data

Modern technologies allow large, complex biomedical datasets to be collected from patient cohorts. These datasets are comprised of both continuous and categorical data (“Mixed Data”), and essential variables may be unobserved in this data due to the complex nature of biomedical phenomena. Causal inference algorithms can identify important relationships from biomedical data; however, handling the challenges of causal inference over mixed data with unmeasured confounders in a scalable way is still an open problem. Despite recent advances into causal discovery strategies that could potentially handle these challenges; individually, no study currently exists that comprehensively compares these approaches in this setting. In this paper, we present a comparative study that addresses this problem by comparing the accuracy and efficiency of different strategies in large, mixed datasets with latent confounders. We experiment with two extensions of the Fast Causal Inference algorithm: a maximum probability search procedure we recently developed to identify causal orientations more accurately, and a strategy which quickly eliminates unlikely adjacencies in order to achieve scalability to high-dimensional data. We demonstrate that these methods significantly outperform the state of the art in the field by achieving both accurate edge orientations and tractable running time in simulation experiments on datasets with up to 500 variables. Finally, we demonstrate the usability of the best performing approach on real data by applying it to a biomedical dataset of HIV-infected individuals.

Personality-based antecedents of teachers' autonomy-supportive and controlling motivating styles

We sought to identify teachers' personality-based antecedents that tend them toward an autonomy-supportive or controlling motivating style. We assessed both aspects of teachers' motivating styles at the beginning of the semester (T1, Time 1) and again after all teachers had completed a semester-long intervention (T2) to learn how to become more autonomy supportive and less controlling. At the start of the semester, 42 full-time elementary-grade teachers (25 females, 17 males) completed a packet of questionnaires to self-report their core traits (the big five) and eight surface traits (e.g., causality orientations, authoritarianism) that we hypothesized would predict one motivating style or the other, while their 633 students self-reported their autonomous motivation. Regression-based analyses revealed four findings: (1) High levels of openness to experience and agreeableness both individually predicted teachers' T1 autonomy-supportive motivating style; (2) high levels of control causality orientation and authoritarianism both individually predicted T1 controlling motivating style; (3) high levels of autonomy causality orientation and personal growth initiative both individually predicted a post-intervention change in T2 autonomy-supportive motivating style; and (4) high level of control causality orientation predicted a post-intervention change in T2 controlling motivating style. These findings suggest a robust relation between personality and teachers' motivating styles.

073_16762-K3 Minimally Invasive Thoracoscopic Technique for LV Lead Implantation IN CRT: Long-Term Outcome

A major goal in the study of complex traits is to decipher the causal interrelationships among correlated phenotypes. Current methods mostly yield undirected networks that connect phenotypes without causal orientation. Some of these connections may be spurious due to partial correlation that is not causal. We show how to build causal direction into an undirected network of phenotypes by including causal QTL for each phenotype. We evaluate causal direction for each edge connecting two phenotypes, using a LOD score. This new approach can be applied to many different population structures, including inbred and outbred crosses as well as natural populations, and can accommodate feedback loops. We assess its performance in simulation studies and show that our method recovers network edges and infers causal direction correctly at a high rate. Finally, we illustrate our method with an example involving gene expression and metabolite traits from experimental crosses.

A real-time simulator framework for marine power plants with weak power grids

This work takes aim at presenting a generic real-time simulation framework for marine power plants with weak power grids, containing transient functionalities such as starting and stopping of arbitrary generators, and phase synchronization. The generator models used in the power plant are hybrid causality models, meaning that they have the ability to switch between causality orientations, between voltage and current. These models facilitate real-time simulations as long as they are solved properly, as will be discussed in this article. Much is devoted to numerical stability, model robustness and power plant control, e.g. rms voltage control, engine speed control, active- and reactive power sharing control and phase synchronization control. Some focus is also given to overall power plant control structure. A case study of a marine power plant including two generators and a fluctuating- and noisy power consumption is presented and analysed, and illustrates the advantages of the proposed framework as well as giving a good foundation for future works.

Beyond Ryff's scale: Comprehensive measures of eudaimonic well-being in clinical populations. A systematic review.

Eudaimonic well-being that protects mental and physical health has received increasing attention. This investigation aimed to review which comprehensive instruments for measuring eudaimonic well-being were applied with clinical populations (reporting mental or physical illnesses), beyond Ryff's Psychological Well-Being Scale. Articles citing at least 1 of the measures of eudaimonic well-being identified by previous theoretical work were extracted from medical and psychological electronic databases and screened. Only investigations involving clinical populations were included and reviewed. An initial screening identified 5,065 articles using eudaimonic well-being measures, out of which only 28 articles encompassed clinical populations and could be included. Sixteen involved patients with mental disorders and 12 populations with medical conditions. In these articles, only 4 measures of eudaimonic well-being were used (Mental Health Continuum, Flourishing Scale, General Causality Orientations Scale, and Orientations to Happiness Subscales), out of the 12 currently available in literature. The Mental Health Continuum was the most used instrument, particularly in adults with depression, whose levels of eudaimonic well-being are impaired, but may be improved by specific interventions. Autonomy appeared to influence patients' motivation to treatment, both in mental and physical disorders. The need for a larger consensus regarding specific measures of eudaimonic well-being for clinical populations emerged. The importance of including assessment of positive functioning as an indicator of recovery in clinical domains is discussed.

Causal Discovery from Nonstationary/Heterogeneous Data: Skeleton Estimation and Orientation Determination.

It is commonplace to encounter nonstationary or heterogeneous data, of which the underlying generating process changes over time or across data sets (the data sets may have different experimental conditions or data collection conditions). Such a distribution shift feature presents both challenges and opportunities for causal discovery. In this paper we develop a principled framework for causal discovery from such data, called Constraint-based causal Discovery from Nonstationary/heterogeneous Data (CD-NOD), which addresses two important questions. First, we propose an enhanced constraint-based procedure to detect variables whose local mechanisms change and recover the skeleton of the causal structure over observed variables. Second, we present a way to determine causal orientations by making use of independence changes in the data distribution implied by the underlying causal model, benefiting from information carried by changing distributions. Experimental results on various synthetic and real-world data sets are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of our methods.

Self-determination theory and intimate partner violence (IPV): Assessment of relationship causality orientations as predictors of IPV perpetration

Much research examines potential antecedents of intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration. The current manuscript suggests that motivation orientations, as conceptualized by self-determination theory, may be a useful framework for understanding why some people engage in reactive IPV perpetration. Studies 1a (N=572) and 1b (N=265) developed, based on self-determination theory, the Relationship Causality Orientation Scale (RCOS), assessing autonomous, controlled, and impersonal motivation orientations toward romantic relationships. Studies 2 (N=324) and 3 (N=274) examined associations between the RCOS and different operationalizations of IPV. In Study 2, results showed that autonomous orientation predicted lower, and controlled orientation predicted higher, likelihood of IPV perpetration. Study 3 experimentally primed partner transgression and employed a voodoo doll task. Results showed that autonomous orientation predicted less IPV perpetration, and inserting fewer pins into the voodoo doll, while controlled orientation predicted more IPV perpetration and inserting more pins into the voodoo doll.

ДИНАМИКА МОТИВАЦИОННОЙ СФЕРЫ ЛИЧНОСТИ ПРИ СМЕНЕ ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОЙ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ В КОНТЕКСТЕ ТЕОРИИ САМОДЕТЕРМИНАЦИИ

The paper describes the results of the research aimed at studying changes in the motivational sphere of a personality when changing a career. The significance of the issue is caused by the fact that the number of professionals willing to change their occupational orientation is growing, though the number of empirical works covering this perspective is not sufficient. The sample is represented by the employees of “Domodedovo” International Airport, who decided to retrain and change their main occupational orientation. Self-determination theory of E. Deci and R. Ryan – one of the most conceptually developed current theories of motivation in psychology was used as a theoretical and methodological foundation of the study. The paper presents modern approaches to the study of self-determination as one of the key concepts within the framework of personality potential of an individual. It is shown that the process of professional development is directly associated with changes in indicators of personal autonomy as a broad integrative construct. The author presents the results of research of motivational sphere of the personality of 140 employees who took occupational retraining programs provided by Moscow universities. Diagnostics was carried out at the beginning and at the end of the retraining period (which last for 13 months) based on specialized test methods. The following diagnostic tools were used: the General Causality Orientation Scale (E. Deci and R. Ryan, adapted by O.E. Dergacheva, L.Ya. Dorfman, D.A. Leontiev) and Purpose-in-Life Test (PIL) (adapted by D.A. Leontiev). It is shown that occupational retraining is connected with positive dynamics of autonomous type indicators of causal orientation and life-purpose orientations. It is the first time when the change of occupational orientation is considered within the self-determination theory framework.