The ImPActS model of principled living:
Measuring the extent that people view principles to be Important, Pressured
by others, Activated, and Successfully engaged.
Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi,
School of Psychology, University of Wollongong
Contributors to the research reviewed in this presentation
Jess Frearson
Kate Williams
Stephenie Veage
Natalie Stefanic
Peter Leeson
Patrick Heaven
Core hypothesis 1
• Human happiness and vitality will be determined by
four components of valued living
• Importance—What people find to be important and
unimportant
Pressure from others –to what extent do people feel
their principles are driven by what others want?
Activation—How many principles do people put into
play in life?
Successfully engagement—Are people successfully
living their principles?
The ImPActS intervention model
Importance
ACT can be used to help people discover what
principles are or are not important to them.
Pressure
ACT can be used to undermine the power of
unhelpful, pliance-based principles
Activity
ACT can be used to increase the amount of
principle-congruent activity and the likelihood of
contacting reinforcers
Success
ACT can be used to increase people’s success at
living principles (e.g., via overcoming barriers and
reinforcing commitment)
Label
Description
Possible Example
Values Done for their own sake
Being a loving parent
Never permanently realized
Being physically active
Cannot be evaluated; must
Having a loving, authentic
be chosen
relationship
Principles
Abstract In the service of values
Being honest and loyal
Goals
Never permanently realized Acting with courage
Often broadly applicable;
does not refer to one
specific type of behavior
Concrete Concrete behaviors in the
goals & service of a goal
actions
Play game with child after work
today
Get up at 7 am on Monday to go
to the gym
Express honest feelings to
partner over dinner tonight
Measuring and using
principles in therapy
ACT intervention
•Card sorting task
• Life in general
• Work
•SLP guides clinical
focus
Survey of Life Principles
SLP as an outcome
measure, focusing
on valued activity
instead of symptoms
Past research in principles
• Values work (Schwartz, et al., Rokeach et al.).
– What is most important to you?
– Are there Universal values?
• Personal strivings (Sheldon, Emmons, Deci).
– What do you strive for
– Why do you strive? Is it for authentic or controlled
reasons?
• We will call both of these “guiding principles” for
ease of reference
Recasting Self-Determination Theory in
behavioural terms.
Pliance
Deci and Ryban, 2000, psychological science
Tracking
Research on values
The structure of values
(Schwarz)
Methods
SLP content
• The SLP seeks to capture all the dimensions in the
Schwarz circumplex.
• It also sought to expand the range of items to include
principles related to career, health, experiential
control, sexuality, and other important domains.
• Items focus on what could personally be put into play
– “Creating beauty” instead of “A world of beauty”
• Items have a verb focus, in keeping with the ACT
notion that values are patterns of behavior that are
never permanently realized.
SLP rating scales
• Go beyond importance scale used in
values research
•
•
•
•
Importance
Pressure
Activity
Success
• N1 = 300 University sample
• N2= 240 adolescents in Grade 12
Top 10 most important values
1
Having genuine and close friends
2
Being loyal to friends, family, and/or my group
3
Maintaining the safety and security of my loved ones
4
Having relationships involving love and affection
5
Feeling good about myself (experiential control item)
6
Striving to be a better person
7
Experiencing positive mood states (experiential control item)
8
Being Honest
9
Having an enjoyable, leisurely life
10
Being safe from danger
Top 10 most pressured values
1
Meeting my obligations
2
Being ambitious and hardworking
3
Being physically fit
4
Showing respect to parents and elders
5
Eating healthy food
6
Being honest
7
Being self-sufficient
8
Striving to be a better person
9
Being competent and effective
10
Being safe from danger
Top 10 most successful values
1
Being loyal to friends, family, and/or my group
2
Enjoying food and drink
3
Being safe from danger
4
Having genuine and close friends
5
Being honest
6
Maintaining the safety and security of my loved ones
7
Making sure to repay favors and not be indebted to people
8
Showing respect to parents and elders
9
Having relationships involving love and affection
10
Enjoying music, art, and/or drama
Top 10 failures
1
Leading a stress free life (experiential control)
2
Having a sense of accomplishment and making a lasting contribution
3
Promoting justice and caring for the weak
4
Gaining wisdom and a mature understanding of life
5
Being wealthy
6
Being at one with god or the universe
7
Feeling good about myself (experiential control)
8
Striving to be a better person
9
Being physically fit
10
Having an enjoyable, leisurely life
13
Experiencing positive mood states (experiential control)
Note: Failure index= Importance – success.
Does the SLP cover important
domains?
• As expected, SLP importance scale
correlates in expected ways to wellaccepted Schwarz value measure
(Williams and
Ciarrochi, 2009).
• We will be assessing whether it
correlates with key dimensions on a job
interest survey
Does the SLP cover important
domains?
• SLP and personality (Steph Veage thesis).
• If the SLP has comprehensive coverage,
then it should be able to distinguish
between types of personality
• Grade 12 high school students; n = 240
Neur
Relationship principles
Friendship
Love
Benevolence (loyalty and
security of loved ones)
Power
Conscientious Achievement
Lasting achievement
Stimulation
Health
Tradition
Religious values
Showing respect for
tradition
Sex (being sexually desirable
and sexually active)
Extro
Open
Conscien
Agree
Psycho
(UnsociImpulsiv)
.14*
.34**
.39**
.37**
-.22**
-.14*
-.32**
.21**
.30**
.27**
-.16*
.17*
.17*
.17*
.21**
.22**
.17*
.20**
.25**
.37**
.22**
.17*
.31**
.15*
-.17*
.19**
.29**
-.16*
-.19**
.22**
.15*
-.14*
.14*
.25**
.29**
-.19**
.31**
Neur
Hedonism
Universalism and selfdirection
Artistic
Connecting with nature
Promoting justice
Self-sufficient
Wisdom
Conformity
Being self-disciplined
Meeting my obligations
Security
Being safe from danger
Reciprocation of favours,
not being in debt
Experiential control
Being Wealthy
Extro
Open
Conscien
-.14*
.47**
.29**
.24**
.33**
.30**
.15*
.15*
.18**
.17*
Psycho
(Unsocial
Impulsiv)
.24**
.21**
.20**
Agree
.18**
.18**
.17*
.24**
.31**
.24**
.26**
.33**
.34**
.29**
.28**
-.28**
.18**
.23**
.30**
.24**
-.29**
-.18**
.31**
-.27**
-.16*
Other findings
• Neurotics tend to feel more external pressure to put
their principles into play, and are less successful at
their principles
• Neurotics feel they are much worse at experiential
control
• Agreeable and C look similar in achievement
motivation. However, C are more successful at
achievement (both lasting and conscientious)
SLP relations to well-being
300 University Students
–
We focused on variables of interest to clinicians: e.g.,
measures of emotional well-being, psychological wellbeing, social support, and relationship satisfaction
We observed four patterns between principles and
well-being
• 1) Happy people find the principle to be important and tend to be
successful at it (relationship principles, stimulation principles,
hedonism, health, achievement)
• 2) Happy people were indifferent to the principle or found it
unappealing, but nevertheless were somewhat more successful
at it (power)
• 3) Happy people do not find the principle to be particularly
important but nevertheless succeed at it. (sex)
• 4) Happy people do not find the principle to be particularly
important, nor do they succeed at it. (being wealthy, tradition
principles, security principles, conformity principles)
• Importance and success  well-being
The Link between principle importance and three forms of well-being
Emotional Well-being
Relationship Pos
emot
Love
Friends
Benevol. .14*
Last Achieve .14*
Con Achieve
Stimulation .30**
Hedonism
.26**
Health
.26**
Hostil Sad
Psychological Wellbeing
Auto Relat
Purp
.26**
-.12* .15*
.22**
.20**
-.13*
.23**
Social well-being
Social
Amnt
.14* .14*
.14* .18**
.23** .16**
.29**
.34**
.15**
.27** .15*
Social Relat
Sat
Sat
.16*
.22**
.21** .26**
The Link between principle success and three forms of well-being
Emotional Well-being
Relationship Pos
emot
.27**
Love
Friends
.25**
Benevol. .15*
Last Achieve .23**
Con Achieve .24**
Stimulation .41**
Hedonism
.27**
Health
Hostil Sad
-.19**
-.17**
-.14*
-.24**
-.25**
-.16**
.20** -.12*
-.33**
-.19**
-.13*
-.24**
-.22**
-.22*
-.18**
Psychological Wellbeing
Auto Relat
Purp
.17** .30**
.21** .62**
.19**
.19** .16**
.16** .19**
.37** .35**
.13* .28**
.23*
.21**
.17**
.17**
.42**
.51**
.23**
.18*
Social well-being
Social Social Relat
Amnt Sat
Sat
.34** .49**
.26** .28** .25**
.13* .13** .30**
.15*
.24** .20**
.18* .27* .20*
.13* .15*
.15*
.14*
Power principles
• People who valued power tended to be
more hostile.
• If these people were in an intimate
relationship, their partner tended to be
less satisfied in the relationship
Sex principles
• Valuing sex was unrelated to well-being
• But getting sex was related to
emotional, psychological, and social
well-being
Emotional control principle
• Most likely to be underachieved
• Valuing emotional control linked slightly to
higher well-being
• Succeeding at emotional control tended to have
the strongest correlate of all aspects of well-being
Correlation, causality, and a core
ACT hypothesis
• When experiential control principles are
inconsistent with important behaviorfocused principles, you get the
following:
Can the SLP substitute for well-being
measures?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Positive affect = 41% variance explained by SLP
Hostility = 18%
Sadness = 28%
Autonomy = 30%
Positive relations with others = 43%
Purpose = 37%
Amount of social support = 9%
Satisfaction with social support = 18%
Relationship satisfaction = 8%
Using the SLP in ACT
interventions
Importance ratings
1. What do clients value most? What is likely to be the
focus of therapy
2. Principle themes. Social. Power. Art? Achievment
3. Look out for low importance ratings involving
relationships, stimulation, hedonism, health, and
achievement
Likely intervention: Values clarification (see card
sorting task)
Low principle Activity
• Clients may endorse several principles as important,
but state that they have not tried to put them into play.
• What are the barriers to putting the principles into
play?
Likely interventions: acceptance, defusion, or
overcoming practical barriers?
Dominance of experiential
control items
•
High importance on experiential control dimension
• Nothing inherently wrong with experiential control,
unless in conflicts with other important principles
Likely interventions: Creative hopelessness,
acceptance
Presence of strong compliance pressure
• Research suggests that pressured principles tend not
to lead to vital living or well-being (Sheldon &
Kasser, 1995) and tend to be associated with hostility
and sadness (Ciarrochi, 2008).
• Danger of contercompliance: In reaction to pressure,
the client refuses to act according to the principle, or
acts contrary to the principle
Presence of strong pressure: Interventions
• Therapist behaviours: acting with humility in session,
undermining your own authority, encouraging clients
to not believe anything you say
• Remove source of pressure. E.g., imagine nobody
knew you were living the principle. Would you still
live it?
• Seek to identify past experience that was vital. E.g.,
sweet spot exercise. Connect their valued statements
to this vital past
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