Research Overview
Broadly, I am interested in how people set and reach goals. Much of my research has focused on self-control. I am interested in how people set and reach goals that they set for themselves as well as the effects of reaching or not reaching these goals. I am especially interested in factors that may contribute to the breakdown of self-control. I have been working on a model of self-control that suggests self-control draws upon a limited resource or strength (self-control strength). People who are lower in self-control strength due to prior self-control demands (depleted) tend to perform more poorly on tests of self-control than people who have more self-control strength.
Research has found that individuals in a situation that demanded control over alcohol consumption consumed more and became more intoxicated when they exerted self-control in the first part of the experiment as compared to individuals who worked an equally unpleasant, frustrating, effortful task that did not require self-control. The converse was also true: after resisting the temptation to drink, social drinkers were less successful at self-control. Depletion has also been associated with poorer self-control performance in children, greater use of stereotypes, and worse performance on cognitive tasks such as the Stroop and stop signal paradigm.
Moderators
Recent research has found several moderators of self-control strength. In particular, motivation appears to play a key role in whether depleted individuals will perform more poorly on self-control tasks. When given sufficient motivation, depleted individuals and non-depleted individuals perform equally well on measures of self-control. Only when motivation is low do depleted individuals perform worse on tests of self-control.
In addition, when they expect to exert self-control in the future, depleted individuals perform much more poorly than non-depleted individuals on tests of self-control. This suggests that depleted individuals appear to be highly motivated to conserve self-control strength. This conservation may account for their poorer self-control performance. Individuals factor in future demands on their strength, as well as they currently level of resources when exerting self-control.
Exerting self-control for intrinsic reasons also appears to be less depleting than exerting self-control for extrinsic reasons. When given controlling reasons to exert self-control or report feeling less intrinsically motivated, participants performed more poorly on subsequent measure of self-control.
Building Strength
There is some evidence that it possible to improve self-control through practice as well. That is, just as physical exercise fatigue muscles and leads to poorer performance in the short-term, exerting self-control decreases self-control capacity temporarily. However, in the long-term, physical exercise, when tempered with rest, leads to greater strength. Research on self-control strength has found a similar effect: When participants practiced small acts of self-control for several weeks, they were more successful at quitting smoking better than participants who did not practice self-control. Research on this provocative idea is ongoing.
There may be ways to accelerate the recovery of self-control strength as well. Depleted individuals who experience a positive mood perform better than depleted individuals whose mood is neutral or negative. We are exploring other means of recovering lost self-control strength.