PDF(654 KB)
The Role of Self-Control Resource in Intertemporal Decision-making
Gui-Bing HE Xiang-Hui YAN
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2015, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (6) : 1445-1451.
PDF(654 KB)
PDF(654 KB)
The Role of Self-Control Resource in Intertemporal Decision-making
The failure of self-control has been considered to be associated with criminal behavior, smoking, dieting, and even divorcing. The reason why self-control may fail is supposed to be that people has limited capacity for self-regulation. According to the theory of Limited Self-Control Resource (SCR), differences in self-regulation performance must be due to the difference in amount of SCR. Hagger, Wood, Stiff & Chatzisarantis (2010) summarized that SCR had significant impact on self-control behavior, but the role of SCR in intertemporal decision-making, which supposed to involve impulsivity and self-regulation, was still unclear. Based on the theory of SCR and previous studies, we designed two experiments to reveal the effects of SCR level and its variation on intertemporal decision-making. Experiment 1 investigated the effect of individual’s SCR level on intertemporal decision-making in natural condition via questionnaire. Experiment 2 used a dual-task paradigm to examine the effects of SCR manipulation tasks and SCR variation on intertemporal decision-making. The results of Exp.1 demonstrated that participants with higher SCR level showed stronger preference to SS option in intertemporal decision-making. Exp. 2 showed that (1) different SCR manipulation tasks lead to different SCR change and SS preference in intertemporal decision-making. Perception-control task caused more SCR depletion and stronger SS preference than thought-control task did. (2) Higher proportion of participants experienced SCR depletion and less experienced SCR enhancement in perception-control group, than that in thought-control group. (3) Participants who experienced SCR depletion exhibited a significant increase of SS preference, but who experienced SCR enhancement would exhibit a significant decrease of SS preference. (4) The initial preference of SS (SS1), pre-decision SCR level (SCR2) and SCR fluctuation experience had jointly effects on intertemporal decision-making. These findings proved the important role of self-control resource in intertemporal decision-making by means of both group level analysis and individual level analysis. In addition, these results should have benefits to understanding the mechanism of how and why SCR fluctuated after the execution of different SCR manipulation task.
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