Changing Perspectives on Self-Control

Everyone has impulses that they need to control. But people vary dramatically in the self-control they exhibit over impulsive thoughts and actions, and these variations from the first few years of life predict important outcomes in health, wealth, education, and relationships. Why? According to dominant accounts, self-control is vital for success in life, and executive functions that support such control show stable individual differences: If you have high executive function capacity as a child, you will have high executive function capacity as an adult, and this stability explains why early behaviours predict later outcomes.

However, recent research from my lab and others challenges this view. People can possess the executive function capacity needed for self-control, but adaptively decide whether or not to engage it based on whether the effort is likely to pay off. Is a promised future reward worth resisting an immediate temptation for? Do people around me value self-control? Is there an easier option? These experiences accumulate to create habits that influence the amount of effort required for engaging executive function, which shapes future decisions about whether to engage it. This framework provides an alternative understanding of why people vary in their self control, why these individual differences predict life outcomes, and how to identify effective targets for support and intervention.

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