Effortless Self‐Control: A Novel Perspective on Response Conflict Strategies in Trait Self‐Control

Abstract

Self‐control is of invaluable importance for well‐being. While previous research has focused on self‐control failure, we introduce a new perspective on self‐control, including the notion of effortless self‐control, and a focus on self‐control success rather than failure. We propose that effortless strategies of dealing with response conflict (i.e., competing behavioral tendencies) are what distinguishes successful self‐controllers from less successful ones. While people with high trait self‐control may recognize the potential for response conflict in self‐control dilemmas, they do not seem to subjectively experience this conflict as much as people with low self‐control. Two strategies may underlie this difference: avoidance of response conflict through adaptive, habitual behaviors, and the efficient downregulating of response conflict. These strategies as well as the role of response conflict are elaborated upon and discussed in the light of existing literature on self‐control.

Perfectionism and Health Behaviors: A Self- Regulation Resource Perspective

“…In most cases, the choice to engage in health-promoting behaviors presents a temporal dilemma: giving in to immediate desires and needs (including mood-regulating ones such as eating pleasurable foods) or focusing instead on the larger and often more lasting goals, such as making healthier eating choices to feel more fit. The resolution of this type of response conflict (Gillebaart & de Ridder, 2015) may therefore require shifting to a more distal temporal focus. Not surprisingly, future temporal orientation has been linked to the practice of health-promoting behaviors (Joireman, Shaffer, Balliet, & Strathman, 2012;Sirois, Shucard, & Hirsch, 2014;Strathman, Gleicher, Boninger, & Edwards, 1994), whereas a present and hedonistic temporal orientation has been linked to engaging in less healthy behaviors (e.g., Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999).…”

A new perspective on the interplay between self-control and cognitive performance: Modeling progressive depletion patterns

“…It should be noted that the heterogeneous findings on the interplay between ego depletion and trait self-control (for an overview see [13]) need to be clarified in greater detail [9] in order to gain deeper insights into the underlying mechanisms of self-control.…”

“…[9, 13]). Trait self-control is assumed to be positively related to effortless strategies that individuals use for dealing with self-control dilemmas [13].…”

Six Questions for the Resource Model of Control (And Some Answers)

“…Self-control training might improve self-control by enlarging self-control capacity, but it might also increase control by changing people's lay beliefs about willpower (Job et al, 2010), by lowering the aversiveness of effortful control (Botvinick, 2007;Inzlicht et al, 2015), or by making control habitual (Galla & Duckworth, 2014;Gillebaart & De Ridder, 2015) and effortless (Milyavskaya, Inzlicht, Hope, & Koestner, in press). The point here is that even if training increases control, it might do so for any number of reasons, with enlarged self-control resources being only one of many.…”