Self-presentation may require self-regulation, especially when familiar or dispositional tendencies must be overridden in service of the desired impression. Studies 1–4 showed that self-presentation under challenging conditions or according to counternormative patterns (presenting oneself modestly to strangers, boastfully to friends, contrary to gender norms, to a skeptical audience, or while being a racial token) led to impaired self-regulation later, suggesting that those self-presentations depleted selfregulatory resources. When self-presentation conformed to familiar, normative, or dispositional patterns, self-regulation was less implicated. Studies 5–8 showed that when resources for self-regulation had been depleted by prior acts of self-control, self-presentation drifted toward less-effective patterns (talking too much, overly or insufficiently intimate disclosures, or egotistical arrogance). Thus, inner processes may serve interpersonal functions, although optimal interpersonal activity exacts a short-term cost. The attentive pupil who wishes to be attentive, his eyes riveted on the teacher, his ears open wide, so exhausts himself in playing the attentive role that he ends up by no longer hearing anything. —John Paul Sartre One of the most vital skills in human social life involves

This research investigated impulse buying as resulting from the depletion of a common—but limited—resource that governs self-control. In three investigations, participants ’ self-regulatory resources were depleted or not; later, impulsive spending responses were measured. Participants whose resources were depleted, relative to participants whose resources were not depleted, felt stronger urges to buy, were willing to spend more, and actually did spend more money in unanticipated buying situations. Participants having depleted resources reported being influenced equally by affective and cognitive factors and purchased products that were high on each factor at equal rates. Hence, self-regulatory resource availability predicts whether people can resist impulse buying temptations. Modern Western societies provide ever-increasing opportunities for impulse spending. Years ago, consumers might have seen an interesting product advertised while watching television or flipping through a magazine one evening. If tempted, however, they would generally have had

Research has established that acts of self-control deplete a resource required for subsequent self-control tasks. The present investigation revealed that a psychological intervention—self-affirmation—facilitates self-control when the resource has been depleted. Experiments 1 and 2 found beneficial effects of self-affirmation on self-control in a depleted state. Experiments 3 and 4 suggested that self-affirmation improves self-control by promoting higher levels (vs. lower levels) of mental construal. Self-affirmation therefore holds promise as a mental strategy that reduces the likelihood of self-control failure.

People rarely desire one thing at a time. Rather, the process of goal pursuit involves constantly prioritizing the many goals that a person wishes to pursue and resolving goal conflicts (e.g., navigating career, leisure, and family activities). In this chapter we focus on a specific type of goal conflict: the self-control dilemma. People face a self-control dilemma whenever the attainment of a high-order goal would come at the expense of a low-order, yet alluring

In this commentary, I focus on the deficiencies in the reflective-impulsive model (RIM) by Strack, Werth, and Deutsch (2006) in terms of understanding the mechanics of the reflective system. Strack et al. outlined the cognitive architecture of the consumer with the RIM but failed to specify how its most impressive feature, the reflective system, is powered. Drawing on the literature on self-regulation (as a reconceptualization of RIM incompatibility), I argue that self-regulatory resources drive the reflective system. Research from 5 domains—overeating among dieters, impulsive spending, logical thinking, making choices, and subjective perceptions of duration—supports this hypothesis. Strack, Werth, and Deutsch (2006) argue that their reflective-impulsive model (RIM) can parsimoniously explain consumer irrationality, as exemplified by the existence of impulsive purchasing. The RIM builds on a wealth of research suggesting that two forces, which emanate from what Strack and colleagues term the reflective system and the impulsive system, determine behavior. Their model advances the field

A man squanders his money on gambling. A woman beats her child. A drunk driver causes a crash that destroys three cars and injures several people. A student postpones studying until the night before the test and gets a bad grade. A young couple engages in unprotected sex and creates an unwanted pregnancy. A delinquent shoots an acquaintance during an argument. A dieter eats seven donuts and a pint of ice cream at one sitting. An athlete trains off and on for a year without any improvement in performance. A girl breaks a promise and betrays a friend’s confidence. An old man again neglects to take his daily dose of insulin and goes into diabetic shock. What these disparate events have in common is failure of self-regulation. When self-regulation works well, it enables people to alter their behavior so as to conform to rules, plans, promises, ideals, and other standards. When it fails, any one of a broad range of human problems and misfortunes can arise. Self-regulation is thus a key to success in human life and, when it falls short, a contributing cause that helps explain many forms of human suffering. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the psychology of self-regulation. We

A processing model of emotion regulation (PMER) was investigated by assessing the attachment system and the two types of emotion regulation strategies (adaptive and maladaptive) in undergraduate students (N = 307) at Georgia State University. The analysis of the data revealed an interesting set of findings: (a) attachment anxiety was a stronger indicator of whether people use adaptive or maladaptive emotion regulation strategies than was attachment avoidance; (b) self efficacy, and not cognitive inability to suppress unwanted thoughts, partially mediated the relationship between attachment anxiety and adaptive emotion regulation strategies; and (c) cognitive inability to suppress unwanted thoughts, and not self efficacy beliefs, partially mediated the relationship between attachment anxiety and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. Overall, the findings provided substantial support for the PMER, and also have important implications for clinical interventions aimed at effective emotion regulation.

conducting the studies included in this paper. 3 The current research tested the hypothesis that making many choices impairs subsequent self-control. Drawing from a limited-resource model of self-regulation, we hypothesized that decision making depletes an internal resource that governs self-control. In four laboratory studies, some participants made choices among consumer goods or college course options, whereas others reviewed the same options without making choices. Making choices led to reduced self-control (i.e., less physical stamina, task persistence in the face of failure, more procrastination, and less quality and quantity of arithmetic calculations). A field study also found that reduced self-control was predicted by shoppers ’ selfreported degree of active choice making. 4 “The difficulty in life is the choice. ”--George Moore, The Bending of the Bough, 1900 The rich complexity of human social life is partly attributable to choice. Each day, millions of

This research examined how the presentation of items related to goals and temptations influences the dynamic of self-regulation, as reflected in evaluation and choice. The authors found that when items, such as healthy and unhealthy foods or academic and leisure activities, are presented together in a unified choice set (e.g., in 1 image) and seem to complement each other, people express a positive evaluation of and a preference for tempting items. Conversely, when the items are presented apart from each other in 2 choice sets (e.g., 2 images) and seem to compete with each other, people express a positive evaluation of and preference for goal items.

The study of self-regulation has blossomed in recent decades. At the same time, people (laypersons and academics alike) seem worse at effectively controlling themselves and one could easily make the argument that people are worse at self-regulating than ever before. Consider a father throwing punches at a hockey referee after a loss; the fact that medicinal noncompliance presents a major impediment to treatment of schizophrenia, adult attentional deficient and hyperactivity disorder, depression, and bipolar disorder; escalating rates of sexually transmitted diseases among people in their 20s; rampant and unnecessary looting in times of national crisis; and lastly consider that by the time an American reaches 65 years of age, she will have watched nine years of television (at a rate of four hours of television watching a day). These situations of course differ in a variety of ways, but they have in common a breakdown in self-control. The destructive and disastrous consequences of a loss of self-control seem all-too-common of late. Engaging in good self-control can do more than protect people from bad outcomes. On the contrary, good self-control can help people reach positive goals, such as saving more money than is needed for retirement, family planning, flossing regularly, refraining from cursing, running marathons, and being kind and patient to one’s spouse. In recognition of the triumphs that can follow from