Action versus state orientation moderates the impact of executive functioning on real-life self-control.

Abstract

Self-control is commonly assumed to depend on executive functions (EFs). However, it is unclear whether real-life self-control failures result from deficient EF competencies or rather reflect insufficient conflict-induced mobilization of executive control, and whether self-control depends more critically on function-specific EF competencies or general executive functioning (GEF), that is, common competencies that underlie all EFs. Here we investigated whether failure-related action versus state orientation, a personality trait related to the conflict-induced mobilization of cognitive control, moderates the effect of general and function-specific control competencies on self-control. To this end, 240 young adults completed questionnaire measures of action-state orientation and trait self-control, reported everyday self-control failures during 7 consecutive days via smartphone-based experience sampling, and completed 9 EF tasks from which latent variables reflecting GEF as well as inhibition-, updating-, and shifting-specific competencies were derived. Structural equation models confirmed that the effect of GEF on self-control was moderated by action-state orientation: action-oriented compared with more state-oriented participants showed a stronger inverse association between GEF and everyday self-control failures. Corresponding effects of function-specific competencies on self-control were not found. These results highlight that high executive functioning may enable self-controlled behavior only if control is sufficiently mobilized when needed and suggest that self-control may depend more critically on general than function-specific control competencies. More generally, the present study demonstrates the fruitfulness of combining latent-variable models of well-controlled EF tasks with experience sampling of daily self-control and measures of individual differences in control modes to bridge the gap between laboratory research and real-life behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record

Individual differences in inhibitory control: A latent variable analysis

“…The magnitudes of the correlations between the six inhibitory control tasks were generally low (.29 or smaller), but are consistent with the results of previous studies and seem not to be restricted to college samples, but also present in samples with a wider age range and across different levels of intellectual abilities (Cheung et al, 2004;Enge et al, 2014;Enticott et al, 2006;Friedman & Miyake, 2004;Miyake et al, 2000;Shilling, Chetwynd, & Rabbitt, 2002;Singh et al, 2018;Wolff et al, 2016). This is why we applied a latent variable analysis:…”

“…Enge et al, 2014). Therefore, we combined error rates and reaction times into inverse efficiency scores (IES; Bruyer & Brysbaert, 2011;Townsend & Ashby, 1983), as was done in a previous study that applied a latent variable approach on executive function tasks (Wolff et al, 2016). Specifically, we expected higher correlations and a better fit for estimated models with the IES compared to the standard outcome measures.…”

Monitor yourself! Deficient error-related brain activity predicts real-life self-control failures

“…Instead of effectively reducing negative affect by mobilizing control, thus addressing the conflict itself and solving it in accordance with superordinate goals, individuals with low self-control may use less conflictcentered emotion regulation strategies or even ruminate about the emotion itself. In line with this conjecture, in a recent study (Wolff et al, 2016) we found that high executive control competencies predicted lower proneness to daily SCFs in individuals with a disposition toward Baction orientation^(who have been shown to efficiently recruit control in response to conflict; Goschke & Bolte, 2018;Kuhl & Beckmann, 1994), but not in Bstate-oriented^individuals, who tend to respond to conflicts with rumination rather than enhanced control recruitment (Fischer, Plessow, Dreisbach, & Goschke, 2015;Jostmann & Koole, 2007).…”

The Behavior and Mind Health (BeMIND) study: Methods, design and baseline sample characteristics of a cohort study among adolescents and young adults

“…During task battery performance, subjects were alone in a quiet room and allowed to do self-paced breaks between the individual tasks. The tasks included the number Stroop task (Stroop, 1932) to measure inhibition (using a mouse-click version in contrast to common keyboard-based response), the emotional face approach-avoidance task (Face-AAT; Heuer, Rinck, & Becker, 2007) to investigate reactions to emotional faces, the AX continuous performance task (AX-CP; Cohen, Barch, Carter, & Servan-Schreiber, 1999) to measure context processing, goal maintenance and updating, a novel variant of an intertemporal choice task (ITC, Scherbaum, Dshemuchadse, Leiberg, & Goschke, 2013) to measure individually determined advantageous and disadvantageous choices, and a go-nogo task (Wolff et al, 2016) to measure inhibition.…”