Self-report and behavioural approaches to the measurement of self-control: Are we assessing the same construct?

By V. Allom, Giulia Panetta, Barbara A. Mullan, Martin S. Hagger. 2016

92 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The capacity for self-control has been consistently linked to successful execution of health behaviour. However, a lack of consensus remains in the conceptualisation and measurement of the construct. Notably, self-report measures relate to behavioural measures of self-control only weakly or not at all. The aim of the current research was to examine the relationship between self-report and behavioural measures of self-control to determine whether these differentially relate to health behaviour. Participants (N = 146) completed questionnaire and behavioural measures of self-control, and reported their physical activity. A direct effect of self-reported self-control on physical activity was observed, qualified by an interaction between self-reported self-control and behavioural measures, whereby greater self-reported self-control was associated with greater engagement in physical activity among those who performed poorly on the stop-signal task and those who performed well on the Stroop task. These results appear to indicate that the combination of trait self-control and behavioural factors leads to facilitative or debilitative effects on behaviour. Self-report and behavioural measures of self-control do not appear to assess the same elements of self-control and should not be used interchangeably. It is suggested that these measurement modes reflect a difference between trait self-control and specific self-control processes.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4e1d6e42cafe62f3f4e9f053b40d9fa66680f5ce

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In Applied Psychology

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Reported self-control is not meaningfully associated with inhibition-related executive function: A Bayesian analysis (2018, methodology): “This sample size exceeds that of similar prior investigations (Allom et al., 2016; Edmonds et al., 2009), and meets rule-of-thumb guidelines for sample size in social-personality psychology (Fraley & Vazire, 2014).”