Self-Regulation

Last week’s readings on the self covered the topic of self-regulation and motivation. Self-regulation is essentially the ability to deliberately control our own behavior. Self-regulation has an adaptive quality to it. For instance, it would seem beneficial for one to be able to control one’s impulses, and plan for the future. And indeed, as Mischel et al. (1989) has found, children who are better at self-regulation often have better outcomes later in life, such as in academics.

Even though self-regulation is very beneficial, it seems to come from a limited resource. It’s like a muscle, and as you use it, it tires. As Baumeister et al. (1998) has shown, self-regulatory acts deplete the “ego,” thereby making one less able to self-regulate in the future. Self-regulation seems to require energy (i.e., glucose) and/or a resting period. It’s a good thing to keep in mind, I think.

Interestingly, conscious thought isn’t exactly needed for the initiation of self-regulation. Through “implementation intentions”, one can automate self-regulation for various goal pursuits. For instance, if one desired to be less prejudiced against the elderly, then one could train him/herself to “tell” him/herself not to consider a person’s age every time an elderly person is encountered. One thought that came to mind, after reading about this, is whether automating self-regulation uses less ego resources than directed self-regulation. In particular, when thinking of the concept of the adaptive unconscious from the prior articles, it seems that the automatic unconscious is useful and adaptive for its ability to take in a lot of information without using up our resources. So automated self-regulation might just take up less energy than consciously directed self-control. Yet it still seems as though directed thought is needed in sustaining the self-regulatory behavior. Only the initiation of self-regulation seems to be automated, and after training oneself to automate this behavior. If implementation intentions use ego resources as much as that of deliberate self-regulation, then I would think that such cueing could be detrimental to the self-regulatory ability. For instance, if one created implementation intentions for multiple behaviors, and one encounters many cues throughout the day that activate these intentions, then one could become quickly and thoroughly depleted. At what level would these implementation intentions become detrimental? Or does the mere training that automates this behavior build up self-regulation? So, perhaps the automation does deplete self-regulatory resources, but the practice of automating self-control built up a larger inventory of self-regulatory resources to take from? Thoughts to explore further perhaps.


Citations for further reading:

Baumeister, R.F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D.M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1252-1265.

Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2008). Feedback processes in the simultaneous regulation of action and affect. In J. Y. Shah & W. L. Gardner (Eds.), Handbook of motivation science (pp. 208-224). New York: Guilford.

Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54, 493-503.

Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52, 1280-1300.

Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. L. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244, 933-938.