Research on self-control has flourished within the last two decades, with researchers trying to answer one of the most fundamental questions regarding human behaviour – how do we successfully regulate desires in the pursuit of long-term goals? While recent research has focused on different strategies to enhance self-control success, we still know very little about how strategies are implemented or where the need for self-control comes from in the first place. Drawing from parallel fields (e.g., emotion regulation, health) and other theories of self-regulation, we propose a framework that describes self-control as a dynamic, multi-stage process that unfolds over time. In this review, we first provide an overview of this framework, which poses three stages of regulation: the identification of the need for self-control, the selection of strategies to regulate temptations, and the implementation of chosen strategies. These regulatory stages are then flexibly monitored over time. We then propose a series of questions to organize existing literature by highlighting what we already know, what we need to learn, and methodological recommendations for future research. Finally, we conclude by highlighting the need to bridge across disciplines, thereby improving our understanding of how self-control unfolds in everyday life and across different domains.
Politics and its controversies have permeated everyday life, but the daily impact of politics is largely unknown. Here, we conceptualize politics as a chronic stressor with important consequences for people’s daily lives. We used longitudinal, daily-diary methods to track U.S. participants as they experienced daily political events across two weeks (Study 1: N=198, observations=2,167) and, separately, across three weeks (Study 2: N=811, observations=12,790) to explore how daily political events permeate people’s lives and how they cope with this influence of politics. In both studies, daily political events consistently evoked negative emotions, which corresponded to worse psychological and physical well-being, but also increased motivation to take political action (e.g., volunteer, protest) aimed at changing the political system that evoked these emotions in the first place. Understandably, people frequently tried to regulate their politics-induced emotions; and successfully regulating these emotions using cognitive strategies (reappraisal and distraction) predicted greater well-being, but also weaker motivation to take action. Although people can protect themselves from the emotional impact of politics, frequently-used regulation strategies appear to come with a trade-off between well being and action. To examine whether an alternative approach to one’s emotions could avoid this trade-off, we measured emotional acceptance in Study 2 (i.e., accepting one’s emotions without trying to change them) and found that successful acceptance predicted greater daily well-being but no impairment to political action. Overall, this research highlights how politics can be a chronic stressor in people’s daily lives, underscoring the far-reaching influence politicians have beyond the formal powers endowed unto them.
Major stressors often challenge emotional well-being—increasing negative emotions and decreasing positive emotions. But how long do these emotional hits last? Prior theory and research contain conflicting views. Some research suggests that most individuals’ emotional well-being will return to, or even surpass, baseline levels relatively quickly. Others have challenged this view, arguing that this type of resilient response is uncommon. The present research provides a strong test of resilience theory by examining emotional trajectories over the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In two pre-registered longitudinal studies conducted in diverse U.S. samples (total N =1,147), we examined overall emotional trajectories and predictors of individual differences in emotional trajectories across 13 waves of data from February through September 2020. The pandemic had immediate detrimental effects on emotional well-being. Negative emotions decreased across six months, with the greatest improvements occurring almost immediately. Yet, positive emotions remained depleted relative to baseline levels, illustrating the limits of resilience. Individuals also differed substantially around these normative emotional trajectories and these individual differences were predicted by socio-demographic characteristics and stress exposure. We discuss three theoretical implications of the present investigation: (1) The extent to which resilience is normative depends on the outcome and the context. (2) Individual differences in resilience are large and complex, suggesting that broad claims that resilience is “ubiquitous” or “rare” may not be useful. (3) Resilience is multiply-determined and embedded within societal contexts that influence who experiences stress as well as who has access to resources to respond to stress.
To address anti-Black racism, systemic change across many domains in American life will be necessary. There are many barriers to change, however, and progress requires identifying these barriers and developing tools to overcome them. Given that White individuals disproportionately occupy ‘gatekeeping’ positions of power, one key barrier to systemic change is rooted in White individuals’ emotional (and emotion-regulatory) responses when considering their own role in racism (e.g., involvement in racist systems, biased actions). White people often experience such moments as threatening to their self-perceptions or worldviews and are consequently highly motivated to reduce the distress they feel by denying or avoiding the issue – a multi-faceted response known as White fragility. When White individuals enact a White fragility response, they risk jeopardizing the well-being of Black members of their community and weakening their own motivation for systemic change. Given its stark costs, it is critical to understand White fragility. In this article, we argue that White fragility can be usefully viewed through the lens of emotion regulation theory. In particular, we describe the emotion response and emotion regulation that characterize White fragility, summarize the wide-ranging consequences of White fragility, highlight more sustainable ways forward, and end by considering a broader fragility framework that acknowledges multiple dimensions of power. Although emotion regulation lies at the heart of White fragility, emotion regulation is also a tool that can be leveraged for greater justice.
Transient affect can be tightly linked with people’s global life satisfaction (i.e., affect globalizing). This volatile judgment style leaves life satisfaction vulnerable to the inevitable highs and lows of everyday life, and has been associated with lower psychological health. The present study examines a potentially fundamental but untested regulatory role of sleep: insulating people’s global life satisfaction from the affective highs and lows of daily life. We tested this hypothesis in two daily diary samples (N1=3,011 daily diary observations of 274 participants and N2=12,740 daily diary observations of 811 participants). Consistent with preregistered hypotheses, following nights of reported high-quality sleep, the link between current affect and global life satisfaction was attenuated (i.e., lower affect globalizing). Sleep-based interventions are broadly useful for improv-ing psychological health and the current findings suggest another avenue by which such interventions may improve well-being: by providing a crucial protection against the risks associated with affect globalizing.
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