Modelling Dynamic Affective and Decision Making Processes during Approach and Avoidance Goal Striving

This thesis examined the cognitive processes by which individuals engage in goal level choice and the affective processes that individuals experience during approach and avoidance goal striving. The aim was to develop a set of formal theories that can explain and predict the trajectories in goal level choice and affective states as individuals strive towards goals framed as desirable or undesirable end-states. These formal theories provide an explanation of processes at multiple levels of analysis, and incorporate constructs from the work motivation, self-regulation, emotion, personality, and decision making literatures. Data from three experimental studies were analysed using multi-level techniques and computational modelling in order to test the proposed theories. The findings are reported within three manuscripts that form the body of this thesis. Manuscript 1 investigated goal level choice as a cognitive process involving an interaction of decision making, risk preferences, personality, and learning. A computational model was developed in order to describe and predict how individuals make goal level choices over time. Drawing from the decision making literature, the model specifies that goal level choice at the within-person level can be explained by a dynamic anchoring and adjustment process and a risk