Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: willpower is more than a metaphor.

By M. Gailliot, Roy F. Baumeister, N. Dewall, Jon K. Maner, E. A. Plant, D. Tice, Lauren Brewer, B. Schmeichel. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2007

1,320 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The present work suggests that self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source. Laboratory tests of self-control (i.e., the Stroop task, thought suppression, emotion regulation, attention control) and of social behaviors (i.e., helping behavior, coping with thoughts of death, stifling prejudice during an interracial interaction) showed that (a) acts of self-control reduced blood glucose levels, (b) low levels of blood glucose after an initial self-control task predicted poor performance on a subsequent self-control task, and (c) initial acts of self-control impaired performance on subsequent self-control tasks, but consuming a glucose drink eliminated these impairments. Self-control requires a certain amount of glucose to operate unimpaired. A single act of self-control causes glucose to drop below optimal levels, thereby impairing subsequent attempts at self-control.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/06145bac99b1596e45a37c17913d624202836e56

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Citations in the corpus

Carryover Effects of Self-Control on Decision Making: A Construal-Level Perspective (2011, methodology): “For example, depletion has been linked to lower levels of blood glucose (Gailliot et al. 2007).”
The Economics and Psychology of Personality Traits (2008, neutral): “(See Baumeister et al. 1998; Gailliot et al. 2007).”
Impulse and Self-Control From a Dual-Systems Perspective (2009, background): “may be improved in the short or long run (Gailliot et al., 2007; Marlatt & George, 1985; Muraven, Baumeister, & Tice, 1999; Oaten & Cheng, 2006; Webb & Sheeran, 2003).”
What Is Ego Depletion? Toward a Mechanistic Revision of the Resource Model of Self-Control (2012, background): “Another study found that ignoring (versus not ignoring) salient visual stimuli at Time 1 caused an increase in aversive noise blasts directed toward an insulter at Time 2 (DeWall, Baumeister, Stillman, & Gailliot, 2007).”
Happy and Proactive? The Role of Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well–Being in Business Owners’ Personal Initiative (2012, background): “Self-regulation refers to the ability to contr l and override one’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior (Gailliot et al., 2007).”
A Cognitive Control Perspective of Self-Control Strength and Its Depletion (2010, background): “An important set of studies along these lines was recently conducted by Gailliot et al. (2007).”
Is There a Downside to Good Self-control? (2009, background): “Interpersonally, those with lowered self-regulatory resources are more likely than their non-depleted peers to respond aggressively to provocation (DeWall, Baumeister, Stillman, & Gailliot, 2007 ; Stucke & Baumeister, 2006 ), to present themselves in ways that fail to make the desired or optimal i”
A General Model of Preventive and Interventive Self‐Control (2012, background): “Further, people may, consciously or unconsciously, consume more glucose before demanding tasks so as to supply the brain (especially prefrontal cortex regions) with enough energy to function most efficiently (Gailliot et al., 2007; Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008).”
Motivation and cognitive control: from behavior to neural mechanism. (2015, background): “Some initial evidence for the role of glucose was provided in studies that found glucose administration reversed the depletion effect (Gailliot et al. 2007).”
Lack of sleep and unethical conduct (2011, methodology): “Task persistence has been utilized as a measure of self-control in previous research (Gailliot et al., 2007).”
Staying on track: Planned goal striving is protected from disruptive internal states (2010, background): “Apparently, implementation intentions serve to strengthen a person’s executive functions as has been discovered in recent research by Cohen, Bayer, Jaudas, and Gollwitzer (2008) .”
The Strength Model of Self-Control (2007, background): “In contrast, there is some reason to think that replenishing glucose in the bloodstream does actually rectify the depletion by restoring the depleted resource (Gailliot et al., 2007).”
Directed Attention as a Common Resource for Executive Functioning and Self-Regulation (2010, background): “Gailliot et al. (2007) have found that low levels of glucose in the blood stream are related to worse executive-functioning and self-regulation performance.”