Self-control: An integrative framework

Abstract

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.

Associations between use of self-regulatory strategies and daily eating patterns: An experience sampling study in college-aged women

“…Here, we found that polyregulation was particularly elevated at moments of high goal conflict (i.e. when selfcontrol is needed most; Inzlicht et al, 2020;Werner & Ford, 2021), and that this in turn was associated with greater regulation. As such, the inclusion of measures of goal processes (conflict and importance) are critically important for ongoing work investigating polyregulation, perhaps because such measures capture variance (i.e.…”

“…With regard to our second hypothesis informed by recent theorizing about polyregulation (Ford et al, 2019;Werner & Ford, 2021), we found that when participants applied additional regulatory strategies during a desire episode, they experienced greater self-regulatory success across multiple metrics. Specifically, an increase in the number of applied strategies was associated with weaker desire strength, greater resistance, lower likelihood of desire enactment, and less food consumed.…”

“…However, these model specifications directly comparing strategies were not preregistered and so these findings should be replicated. Moreover, given that we observed multiple strategies to be effective (in the preregistered model specification; see above), future research may benefit from employing a broader, "toolbox" approach to self-regulation training that highlights the utility and fit of each strategy (Fujita et al, 2020;Werner & Ford, 2021), versus focusing exclusively on strategies hypothesized to be particularly effective, but not always practical (e.g. proactive situational strategies from the process model cannot always be implemented once people find themselves in specific situations).…”

“…While most research stemming from the process model and strategy use more generally has focused on comparing the effectiveness of individual strategies, it is likely that people use more than one strategy within the same regulation episode. Indeed, recent theorizing suggests that the use of multiple strategies-a form of polyregulation-may be particularly adaptive and facilitate goal pursuit (Ford et al, 2019;Werner & Ford, 2021). For example, a person can hide the cookies that their spouse baked (situation modification) while at the same time thinking about how much of a calorie bomb it would be to eat the cookies (cognitive change).…”

“…Hypothesis 3: Goal pursuit Given the variability in motivational factors during people's real world goal pursuit (Milyavskaya & Werner, 2018), especially the effects of goal conflict on self-regulatory processes , we were interested in relations between goal-related processes and the selection and/or efficacy of strategy use. Goal conflict is a critical and necessary precursor to self-control because it signals the need to regulate, which could prompt use of multiple regulatory strategies, whereas an absence of conflict indicates that the food desire does not rise to the level of a temptation that compromises one's goal pursuit, so there is no need to regulate (and therefore no need to implement regulatory strategies; see Hofmann &Kotabe, 2012 andFord, 2021 for further discussion on this topic). Thus, we hypothesize that for participants whose food desires conflict with other goals they are pursuing (e.g.…”