The field of self-control has witnessed an unprecedented boom, not least due to the immense implications of successful and unsuccessful self-control for people's lives. However, successful and unsuccessful self-control can take many different forms, and many conceptual problems have been raised as to what self-control is about and how to best study it. Integrating different literatures, our Social and Personality Psychology Compass article provides a general model of self-control, which distinguishes between preventive (i.e., anticipatory) and interventive (i.e., momentary) forms of self-control. The proposed Preventive-Interventive Model (PI-Model) of Self-Control combines seven basic components: preventive strategies, desire, conflict, motivation, volition, opportunity constraints, and behavioral enactment. The model helps to distinguish self-control from standard motivational processes, to define the concept of temptation, and to identify different types of self-control failure including self-monitoring failure, motivational self-control failure, and volitional self-control failure. Further, the model helps to outline five broad mechanisms through which people may be able to proactively boost self-control success.In this 10-week supplementary teaching and learning guide, weeks 1-2 are spent reviewing previous models from which the PI-Model drew ideas. Week 3 is spent reading about integrative models of self-control including the PI-Model. Weeks 4-7 focus on core components from the PI-Model: desire, conflict, motivation, and preventive self-control.Week 8 covers pertinent topics to self-control including affect and self-regulation. Week 9 takes the learner into the context of everyday life and self-control. And finally, week 10 deals with practical ways to boost self-control.We believe that a thorough reading and discussion of the papers in this teaching andlearning guide will provide a broad introduction to the field of self-control and might also help the learner identify self-control conflicts and make smart decisions about how to handle them.
SyllabusWeek 1: cybernetic and self-regulatory strength models of self-regulation and self-control Cybernetic models Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1982). Control theory: A useful conceptual framework for personality-social, clinical, and health psychology. Psychological Bulletin, 92, 111-135.
