How do people cope with setbacks and persist with their goals? We examine how perceiving control over setbacks alters neural processing in ways that increase persistence through adversity. For example, a student might retake a class if initial failure was due to controllable factors (e.g., studying) but give up if failure was uncontrollable (e.g., unfair exam questions). Participants persisted ...

We often encounter setbacks while pursuing our goals. Success requires that we cope with these negative outcomes and choose to persist in spite of them. For example, learners may be more likely to continue a course after failing an assessment if they control their emotional reactions to the setback and study harder. However, the ability to effectively cope with the negative emotion inherent in ...

Prefrontal cortex is involved in adapting our emotional response to setbacks. While we feel that some setbacks are controllable, others are not. Here, Bhanji and Delgado (2014) reveal the neural substrates of persistence in the face of controllable and uncontrollable setbacks.

The current research extended the implicit theory approach to a weight management context and merged it with value expectancy theory. Three studies investigated the hypothesis that individuals are especially unlikely to self-regulate effectively after dieting setbacks when they believe body weight to be fixed (entity theory) rather than malleable (incremental theory). Study 1 examined avoidant ...

BACKGROUND There is an increasing awareness of the multiple potential pathways leading to human health risks from hydraulic fracturing. Setback distances are a legislative method to mitigate potential risks. OBJECTIVES We attempted to determine whether legal setback distances between well-pad sites and the public are adequate in three shale plays. METHODS We reviewed geography, current stat...