380 Iv. COGNITI vE AND M OTIvATIONAL P ROCESSES
(Rothbart, Sheese, & Posner, 2007). Similar 
ideas have been proposed in the social and 
cognitive literatures (Hofmann, Schmeichel, 
& Baddeley, 2012).
Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki, and 
Howerter (2000) showed that a number of ex -
ecutive function tasks may be understood in 
terms of three underlying factors: inhibition, 
updating,  and shifting.  Inhibition (measured 
by tasks such as the Stroop task) overlaps 
to the greatest extent with a general execu -
tive function factor, and updating can be as -
sessed with working memory tasks (Miyake 
& Friedman, 2012). Executive functions are 
largely genetic (Miyake & Friedman, 2012) 
and are protective against problems such 
as procrastination (Gustavson, Miyake, 
Hewitt, & Friedman, 2015) and substance 
use (Young et al., 2009). Individual differ -
ences in working memory capacity have also 
been linked to emotion regulation success 
(Hofmann et al., 2012). Executive functions 
are not personality traits, but they are clearly 
relevant to key outcomes—  such as impulsive 
behavior—  that are the concern of personal -
ity psychologists.
Conclusions
There is considerable flexibility in cognitive 
approaches. One can model aspects of at -
tention, perception, priming, automatic self- 
regulation, and effortful performance. Even 
within a particular area— such as attention 
(Pashler, 1998) or cognitive control (Braver, 
2016)—several different models or tasks can 
serve as the basis for one’s assessment pro -
cedures. In many cases, furthermore, one 
will want to alter the tasks such that they 
include factors related to motivation, affect, 
or social context. Anger could be induced 
through noise blasts (Robinson, Boyd, & 
Persich, 2016) or social interactions could be 
modeled using facial expressions (Mansell, 
Clark, Ehlers, & Chen, 1999). As should 
be clear, there is a great diversity in cogni -
tive approaches. This diversity can be an 
advantage, but particularly when it is com -
bined with the taxonomic strengths of the 
personality trait literature. In other words, 
trait and cognitive approaches can comple -
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