PSYC121 - Developing Self Control

Returning to that idea that we all have a ‘body budget’

• Every action has a metabolic cost (breathing, thinking, walking, sleeping, etc).

• In first lecture we talked about how “Uncertainty is metabolically expensive”

• Actually, unnecessary actions are expensive, and uncertainty stops us from being able to tell what actions are necessary at a given time.

• But even after we learn about the world (and have reduced the uncertainty), we are still faced with challenging choices about what actions to perform in a certain situation.

• Making a poor choice is also expensive (2 ways):

  • Unnecessary Expenditure: Expending the energy needed to do the (bad) action

  • Opportunity Cost: Missing the opportunity to do the (better) action that would be more helpful in the long run

What Self-Control looks like, in children’s behaviour?

1. Complying with a request

2. Starting and Stopping activities according to situational demands

3. Formulating a plan and sticking with it

4. Controlling emotions in social settings

5. Tolerating frustration

6. Resisting temptation

7. Waiting

8. Behaving appropriately (even when nobody is watching)

Why is self-control important? It’s about more than just being “well behaved”

• Generalization: when a tendency is applied from a specific context to a range of contexts

  • In the context of attachment: expectations of our caregiver transfers to our expectation of ourselves/others

  • In the context of self-control: patterns of behaviour that develop in one situation transfer to other situations

  • Generalization can be both harmful and helpful: learning to have self-control in one specific situation can lead to better self-control in a range of situations!

• Self Control is a better predictor of academic success than IQ

• Self Control quite strongly correlated with longevity and happiness

Some of the most important EFs

1. Inhibition: the ability to restrain oneself from performing a particular action
2. Task Switching: the ability to quickly change from one task (or from one goal) to another
3. Working Memory: the ability to hold information in one’s mind while also engaging in some effort to monitor or manipulate those items
4. Planning: the ability to mentally represent future events to guide future action
5. Attentional Control: the ability to regulate and direct your own attention
6. Emotion Regulation: the ability to manage emotions to better control behaviour and reach our goals

Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health & Development Study

• Research Question: Does EF during childhood predict health/behaviour/well-being outcomes in adulthood?

• Longitudinal Study:

  • The same participants are measured at multiple points during their lives (1972 - 2005)

• Researchers followed ~1,000 children from birth to 32 years

• Needed to get all of these ~1,000 people to come back into the lab to complete battery of EF tasks and interviews at multiple specific times!