Mechanisms of Self-Control Failure Motivation and Limited Resources
Mechanisms of Self-Control Failure Motivation and Limited Resources
Mechanisms of Self-Control Failure Motivation and Limited Resources
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10.1177/0146167203253209
PERSONALITY
Muraven,
Slessareva
AND/SOCIAL
SELF-CONTROL
PSYCHOLOGY
FAILURE
BULLETIN
ARTICLE
Research has found that individuals who are lower in selfcontrol strength because of previous self-control exertions perform more poorly on subsequent tests of self-control. The present
studies suggest that this effect may be moderated by motivation.
In particular, depletion and motivation jointly determine selfcontrol performance. Individuals who were depleted and
believed that the task would help others (Experiment 1) or
believed that their efforts could benefit them (Experiment 2) performed better on a subsequent test of self-control than individuals who were depleted and lower in motivation. The results of
Experiment 3 replicated these findings and suggested that depletion only affects performance on tasks that require self-control;
tasks that are difficult but do not require self-control are immune
to the effects of depletion. Hence, depleted individuals may compensate for their lack of self-control resources when sufficiently
motivated. The results may help explain the nature of self-control
strength.
Authors Note: This research is based in part on the first authors doctoral dissertation. He would like to thank the members of his committeeRoy Baumeister, Dianne Tice, Tim Curran, and Jagdip Singh
for their guidance. Correspondence concerning this article should be
addressed to Mark Muraven, Department of Psychology, University at
Albany, Albany, NY 12222; e-mail: [email protected].
PSPB, Vol. 29 No. 7, July 2003 894-906
DOI: 10.1177/0146167203253209
2003 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
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Memory
Thought Suppression
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Time On Puzzles
(minutes)
25
20
15
10
0
Not Important
Important
Outcome of Puzzles
Figure 1
nondepleted individuals in the high-motivation condition suggest that depleted individuals are more responsive to rewards than nondepleted individuals. There also
may an absolute ceiling in how much effort participants
are willing to put forth on (relatively) inconsequential
self-control tasks. Motivation may be a critical feature in
self-control performance. If that conclusion is supported in subsequent experiments, this finding has
important implications for why depletion leads to
poorer self-control performance.
Experiment 1 is noteworthy because we assessed
whether participants had to inhibit their behavior. The
results indicated that participants who had to suppress
their thoughts exerted more self-control than participants who had to memorize a list of words. That is not to
say that memorizing words (or any other task) does not
require inhibiting an impulse, only that in comparison
to suppressing a thought, memorizing words required
less self-control. Determining whether someone is exerting self-control is difficult (see Wegner & Pennebaker,
1993). Although experiments on self-control are typically designed to maximize the type of response conflicts
that require self-control (e.g., suppressing a thought),
assessing participants own experience helps to buttress
the argument that participants in the thought suppression condition were exerting self-control, whereas participants in the memory condition were not.
In addition, Experiment 1 is significant for its use of
multiple items in the manipulation check. This extensive manipulation check should have increased our abil-
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900
400
No Instructions
Speech Control
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300
Discussion
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100
50
0
Worthless
Beneficial
901
Method
Participants. Ninety-seven (53 men and 44 women)
undergraduate students attending Case Western
Reserve University were recruited for Experiment 3.
They received partial course credit in return for their
participation. Each individual testing session lasted
about 30 min.
Depletion phase. The experimenter told participants
that they were taking part in an experiment looking at
how moods affect information processing. Participants
watched a 5-min video clip of a Robin Williams comedy
routine while their facial expressions were recorded.
Participants in the no instruction condition did not have
to override a behavior; they simply watched the video.
On the other hand, participants in the suppress reaction
condition were instructed to hide their emotional
expressions (i.e., laughing or smiling) while watching
the video. Regulating and inhibiting ones emotional
reactions should require self-control. Pretesting and
prior research (Muraven et al., 1998, Experiment 3)
have found that this clip is extremely funny and that suppressing ones desire to laugh does require self-control.
Therefore, participants in the suppress reaction condition should be lower in self-control strength than participants in the no instruction condition.
Self-control measurement phase. Following the depletion
task, participants were allowed to consume as much
orange-flavored Kool-Aid (a powdered instant drink
mix) as they wanted. Participants in the sweet beverage
condition drank Kool-Aid that was prepared normally,
with a cup of sugar added to the water. Participants in the
bitter beverage condition drank Kool-Aid that contained
a cup of vinegar rather than sugar. The bad-tasting beverage was rather bitter and unpleasant, although participants should have been able to tolerate it and even drink
it if they exerted enough self-control to override the normal desire not to consume bitter concoctions. The
experimenter recorded how much Kool-Aid participants consumed.
Participants in the high-pay condition were given 25
cents for every ounce of beverage they consumed. Participants in the low-pay condition were given 1 cent for
every ounce they consumed. Participants in the high-pay
condition were given a greater incentive to drink and
therefore should be more motivated to consume the beverage than participants in the low-pay condition.
After participants indicated that they had enough
Kool-Aid, the experimenter administered a manipulation check to examine differences in mood, motivation,
and liking of the task. Participants were then paid and
debriefed. Participants indicated no awareness of the
experimental hypothesis, and they did not suspect that
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903
sweet
No Instructions
Suppress Reaction
30
20
10
high pay
low pay
Payment Condition
high pay
low pay
Payment Condition
Figure 3
Sweet and sour Kool-Aid consumed, based on first task and pay.
the two-way interaction between first task and pay for the
amount of bitter-tasting beverage consumed remained
significant when any of these variables were added as a
covariate to the ANOVA model to control for mood
effects, ps < .05. Differences in mood and effort exerted
in the first task did not influence how much participants
consumed. The lack of mood effects in the current
experiment is consistent with previous research on
depletion.
Discussion
Similar to the results of Experiments 1 and 2, the
results of Experiment 3 suggest that the incentives for
exerting self-control and level of self-control strength
(depletion) jointly determine the amount of self-control
exerted subsequently. If depleted participants were not
given a sufficient incentive to exert self-control, they performed more poorly than nondepleted participants.
Conversely, when motivated, depleted participants performed as well as nondepleted participants on a test of
self-control. The results suggest that depleted individual
are not unable, but perhaps unwilling, to exert self-control.
Motivation had an effect on depleted participants but no
effect on nondepleted participants, which suggest depletion may increase individuals sensitivity to the rewards
of the situation. Alternative explanations, such as mood
or difficulty of the first task, cannot easily account for the
results.
Also, consistent with prior research on depletion
(e.g., Muraven et al., 1998), Experiment 3 demonstrated
that the effects of prior exertion of self-control are lim-
Self-control performance may be a product of individuals previous exertions of self-control and their incentives for exerting self-control. Whereas previous studies
(Baumeister et al., 1998; Muraven et al., 1998) have
found that after inhibiting a strong impulse individuals
perform more poorly on subsequent tests of self-control,
the present studies demonstrated that that effect is moderated by motivation. In particular, depleted participants who are working on a self-control task that they
believe could help others (Experiment 1) persisted on a
frustrating task longer than depleted participants who
believed the task was unlikely to help others. Depleted
participants who worked on a task that they believed was
unlikely to benefit them (Experiment 2) also were less
likely to keep practicing as compared to depleted participants who believed that the task could benefit them, and
they were less likely to keeping practicing than
nondepleted individuals. Finally, Experiment 3 demon-
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