Many researchers have claimed that the emotion of disgust functions to protect us from disease. Although there have been several discussions of this hypothesis, none have yet reviewed the evidence in its entirety. The authors derive 14 hypotheses from a disease-avoidance account and evaluate the evidence for each, drawing upon research on pathogen avoidance in animals and empirical research on disgust. In all but 1 case, the evidence favors a disease-avoidance account. It is suggested that disgust is evoked by objects/people that possess particular types of prepared features that connote disease. Such simple disgust are directly disease related, are acquired during childhood, and are able to contaminate other objects/people. The complex disgust, which emerge later in development, may be mediated by several emotions. In these cases, violations of societal norms that may subserve a disease-avoidance function, notably relating to food and sex, act as reminders of simple disgust elicitors and thus generate disgust and motivate compliance. The authors find strong support for a disease-avoidance account and suggest that it offers a way to bridge the divide between concrete and ideational accounts of disgust.

Self-regulation is a highly adaptive, distinctively human trait that enables people to override and alter their responses, including changing themselves so as to live up to social and other standards. Recent evidence indicates that self-regulation often consumes a limited resource, akin to energy or strength, thereby creating a temporary state of ego depletion. This article summarizes recent evidence indicating that regular exercises in self-regulation can produce broad improvements in self-regulation (like strengthening a muscle), making people less vulnerable to ego depletion. Furthermore, it shows that ego depletion moderates the effects of many traits on behavior, particularly such that wide differences in socially disapproved motivations produce greater differences in behavior when ego depletion weakens the customary inner restraints.Self-regulation is an important personality process by which people seek to exert control over their thoughts, their feelings, their impulses and appetites, and their task performances. The human capacity for self-regulation appears to be much more extensive than what is found in other animals, which may suggest that the evolutionary pressures that guided the selection of traits that make up human nature, such as participation in cultural groups, found self-regulation to be especially adaptive and powerful (Baumeister, 2005). If so, then self-regulation may be one of the most distinctively human traits. Even if human beings are capable of more self-regulation than other animals, however, their capacity is far less than what many Correspondence concerning this article may be sent to R. Baumeister,

Five studies tested the hypothesis that self-regulatory failure is an important predictor of intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration. Study 1 participants were far more likely to experience a violent impulse during conflictual interaction with their romantic partner than they were to enact a violent behavior, suggesting that self-regulatory processes help individuals refrain from perpetrating IPV when they experience a violent impulse. Study 2 participants high in dispositional self-control were less likely to perpetrate IPV, in both cross-sectional and residualized-lagged analyses, than were participants low in dispositional self-control. Study 3 participants verbalized more IPV-related cognitions if they responded immediately to partner provocations than if they responded after a 10-s delay. Study 4 participants whose self-regulatory resources were experimentally depleted were more violent in response to partner provocation (but not when unprovoked) than were nondepleted participants. Finally, Study 5 participants whose self-regulatory resources were experimentally bolstered via a 2-week training regimen exhibited less violent inclinations than did participants whose self-regulatory resources had not been bolstered. These findings hint at the power of incorporating self-regulation dynamics into predictive models of IPV perpetration.

The uptake and maintenance of an exercise programme over a 2-month period produced significant improvements in a wide range of regulatory behaviours. Nearly every major personal and social problem has some degree of regulatory failure. The idea that the capacity for self-regulation can be improved is therefore of vast practical importance.

Academic examination stress impairs regulatory behavior by consuming self-control strength (Oaten & Cheng, 2005). In this study, we tested whether a study intervention program, a form of repeated practice of self-control, could improve regulatory strength and dampen the debilitating effects of exam stress. We assessed 2 cohorts at baseline and again at the commencement of exams. Without any intervention, we replicated our previous findings of deteriorations in regulatory behaviors at exam time. Students receiving the study program, however, showed significant improvement in self-regulatory capacity as shown by an enhanced performance on a visual tracking task following a thought-suppression task. During examinations, these participants also reported significant decreases in smoking, alcohol, and caffeine consumption and an increase in healthy eating, emotional control, maintenance of household chores, attendance to commitments, monitoring of spending, and an improvement in study habits. Hence, the study program not only overcame deficits caused by exam stress but actually led to improvements in self-control even during exam time.Self-regulation or self-control (terms used interchangeably here) can be defined as the capacity to enact control over one's behavior. Self-control is needed to override dominant behaviors that may be self-destructive, irrational, or undesirable in the long term. Examples of typical self-control problems include not exercising enough, engaging in unsafe sexual practices, abusing drugs and alcohol, overspending, and not sticking to study schedules.Our goals in this study were to (a) replicate the finding that real world stress, specifically academic examinations, consume self-control strength and consequently produce impairments in a number of unrelated regulatory behaviors (Oaten & Cheng, 2005a), and (b) test whether the repeated practice of self-control (a study intervention program) could improve regulatory strength and make students less vulnerable to the debilitating effects of periods of high academic demand. RESOURCE MODEL OF SELF-CONTROL