Taking Stock of Self-Control

By Denise T D de Ridder, Gerty J. L. M. Lensvelt-Mulders, Catrin Finkenauer, F. Marijn Stok, Roy F. Baumeister. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2011

1,389 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Given assertions of the theoretical, empirical, and practical importance of self-control, this meta-analytic study sought to review evidence concerning the relationship between dispositional self-control and behavior. The authors provide a brief overview over prominent theories of self-control, identifying implicit assumptions surrounding the effects of self-control that warrant empirical testing. They report the results of a meta-analysis of 102 studies (total N = 32,648) investigating the behavioral effects of self-control using the Self-Control Scale, the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, and the Low Self-Control Scale. A small to medium positive effect of self-control on behavior was found for the three scales. Only the Self-Control Scale allowed for a fine-grained analysis of conceptual moderators of the self-control behavior relation. Specifically, self-control (measured by the Self-Control Scale) related similarly to the performance of desired behaviors and the inhibition of undesired behaviors, but its effects varied dramatically across life domains (e.g., achievement, adjustment). In addition, the associations between self-control and behavior were significantly stronger for automatic (as compared to controlled) behavior and for imagined (as compared to actual) behavior.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/91b6644980307c53968c94a1fa2b1358663affe2

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Citations in the corpus

Exploring the Interplay of Trait Self–Control and Ego Depletion: Empirical Evidence for Ironic Effects (2014, result): “Importantly, the findings align well with the recent proposal that TSC may operate more by way of establishing effective habits and routines than by resisting single temptations (de Ridder, Lensvelt-Mulders, Finkenauer, Stok, & Baumeister, 2011).”
Self-regulation in childhood as a predictor of future outcomes: A meta-analytic review. (2020, methodology): “In the current research we adopt a broad control-based definition of self-regulation in which self-regulation refers to the ability to inhibit dominant impulses to modify thought, feeling and behavior (Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007; de Ridder et al., 2012).”
Healthy Satiation: The Role of Decreasing Desire in Effective Self-Control (2013, methodology): “First, this measure has proven reliable and valid in an extensive development process (Tangney et al. 2004), and it has been commonly used in various self-control domains (de Ridder et al. 2012).”