ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the link between avoidance motivation and the depletion of the self's executive resources. Avoidance motivation represents energization by and/or physical or psychological direction away from a threat or punishment. The inherent focus on an aversive object, event, or possibility in avoidance regulation evokes a host of problematic psychological processes. These processes include: affective processes, perceptual-cognitive processes and behavioral processes. The executive function of the self is the active agent that 'makes decisions, initiates actions, and in other ways exerts control over both self and environment'. It is the aspect of the self that engages in the self-regulation of behavior. Oertig et al. conducted two studies designed to examine the concurrent and longitudinal influence of pursuing daily avoidance goals on self-regulatory resources. The avoidance goal pursuit is related to a reduction in the perceived availability of regulatory resources. The decrement in resources may have deleterious downstream implications for phenomenological outcomes such as subjective well-being (SWB).
