Cognitive Neuroscience of Self-Regulation Failure

By Todd F. Heatherton, Dylan D. Wagner. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2011

988 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Self-regulatory failure is a core feature of many social and mental health problems. Self-regulation can by undermined by failures to transcend overwhelming temptations, negative moods, resource depletion, and when minor lapses in self-control snowball into self-regulatory collapse. Cognitive neuroscience research suggests that successful self-regulation is dependent on top-down control from the prefrontal cortex over subcortical regions involved in reward and emotion. We highlight recent neuroimaging research on self-regulatory failure, the findings of which support a balance model of self-regulation whereby self-regulatory failure occurs whenever the balance is tipped in favor of subcortical areas, either due to particularly strong impulses, or when prefrontal function itself is impaired. Such a model is consistent with recent findings in the cognitive neuroscience of addictive behavior, emotion regulation, and decision making.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e5a274ab59bd10cabd7a1051ba590650589ce72b

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Citations in the corpus

A Multilab Preregistered Replication of the Ego-Depletion Effect (2016, positive): “…2014; Kotabe & Hofmann, 2015), and research identifying the underlying neural processes may shed light on the processes that underpin ego depletion (Heatherton & Wagner, 2011; Hedgcock, Vohs, & Rao, 2012; Inzlicht & Gutsell, 2007; Kool, McGuire, Wang, & Botvinick, 2013; Loftus, Yalcin, Baughman,…”
Cognitive Bias Modification and Cognitive Control Training in Addiction and Related Psychopathology (2013, neutral): “In these models, typically emotional and motivational systems provide the drive and frontal cortices the control (Heatherton & Wagner, 2011; Satpute & Lieberman, 2006).”
Self-Control and Grit (2014, background): “…requiring adjudication (e.g., gobbling up one sweet and chewy marshmallow immediately vs. waiting for two; watching television vs. going to the gym), it seems that common prefrontal brain areas are involved in successful top-down regulation (Cohen & Lieberman, 2010; Heatherton & Wagner, 2011).”
Emotion Regulation: Current Status and Future Prospects (2015, background): “It subsequently was broadened by self-regulation researchers, who focused on the management of appetitive impulses (Heatherton & Wagner, 2011; Mischel, 1974), and by stress and coping theorists, who examined how people handled (or failed to handle) a mismatch between their adaptive capacities and…”
Parental Burnout: What Is It, and Why Does It Matter? (2019, background): “…because our findings emphasize the need and relevance of studies that seek to uncover the brain changes that tie exhaustion to violence (e.g., Heatherton & Wagner, 2011); (c) social work, because researchers will have to study the most appropriate way to support families when child abuse…”
Self-regulation in childhood as a predictor of future outcomes: A meta-analytic review. (2020, background): “…ability to self-regulate – that is, exercise control over their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors – is positioned as a foundational ability with potential to affect population trajectories in health, wealth and criminality (Blair & Raver, 2015; Heatherton & Wagner, 2011; Pandey et al., 2018).”
When do you procrastinate? Sleep quality and social sleep lag jointly predict self-regulatory failure at work (2016, background): “…sleep and self-regulation: Studies consistently have shown that sleep deprivation negatively affects cortical activity, particularly in the prefrontal cortex and thalamus (e.g., Thomas et al., 2000), which have been linked to self-regulation (Durmer & Dinges, 2005; Heatherton & Wagner, 2011).”
How emotionally intelligent are pre-service teachers? (2012, positive): “Self-regulatory failure is a core feature of many social and mental health problems (DeWall et al., 2011; Gruber, Harvey, & Gross, in press; Gyurak, Gross, & Etkin, 2011; Heatherton, 2011; Heatherton & Wagner, 2011; Kober & Ochsner, in press; Williams, Bargh, Nocera, & Gray, 2009).”
Desire The New Hot Spot in Self-Control Research (2012, background): “The automatic affective responses thus generated have the potential to trigger impulsive, habitual behavioral responses (Heatherton & Wagner, 2011; Hofmann et al., 2009), even in the absence of conscious awareness (Winkielman, Berridge, & Wilbarger, 2005).”
What Is Ego Depletion? Toward a Mechanistic Revision of the Resource Model of Self-Control (2012, background): “In this view, self-control succeeds when the impulse is relatively weak, when control is relatively strong, or through some combination of both of these factors (Heatherton & Wagner, 2011; Hofmann, Friese, & Strack, 2009; Strack & Deutsch, 2004).”