HHS Public Access: Situational Strategies For Self-Control

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Perspect Psychol Sci. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 January 01.
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Published in final edited form as:

Perspect Psychol Sci. 2016 January ; 11(1): 35–55. doi:10.1177/1745691615623247.
Situational Strategies for Self-Control

Angela L. Duckworth,
University of Pennsylvania
Tamar Szabó Gendler, and

Yale University
James J. Gross
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Stanford University
Abstract
Exercising self-control is often difficult, whether declining a drink in order to drive home safely,
passing on the chocolate cake to stay on a diet, or ignoring text messages to finish reading an
important paper. But enacting self-control isn’t always difficult, particularly when it takes the
form of proactively choosing or changing situations in ways that weaken undesirable impulses or
potentiate desirable ones. Examples of situational self-control include the partygoer who chooses a
seat far from where drinks are being poured, the dieter who asks the waiter not to bring around the
dessert cart, and the student who goes to the library without a cell phone. Using the process model
of self-control, we argue that the full range of self-control strategies can be organized by
considering the timeline of the developing tempting impulse. Because impulses tend to grow
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stronger over time, situational self-control strategies—which can nip a tempting impulse in the
bud— may be especially effective in preventing undesirable action. Ironically, we may
underappreciate situational self-control for the same reason it is so effective, namely that by
manipulating our circumstances to advantage we are often able to minimize the in-the-moment
experience of intrapsychic struggle typically associated with exercising self-control.
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Ordinarily, when we think of exercising self-control, we think about how hard it is. Perhaps
we smoke and wish we didn’t. Perhaps we spend hours watching TV and wish we went to
the gym more often. Perhaps we stay up late and wish we got more sleep. Whatever it is that
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makes us feel better now but worse in the long-run, struggling—and often failing—to
exercise self-control is familiar territory for all of us. It is no surprise that across the lifespan
and around the world, people rate themselves lower in self-control than in kindness, fairness,
honesty, gratitude, curiosity, and most other aspects of character (Park & Peterson, 2006;
Park, Peterson, & Seligman, 2006).
Address correspondence to: Angela L. Duckworth, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 3701 Market Street Suite
200, Philadelphia, PA 19104, Phone: 215-898-1339; [email protected].
The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies.
Duckworth et al. Page 2
Conceiving of self-control as difficult is very much in keeping with the contemporary

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scientific literature, which has predominantly investigated effortful attempts to align actions
with goals and standards (Fujita, 2011). But is self-control always exhausting? Consider
commonly dispensed advice for avoiding overindulgence around Halloween. For example,
Better Homes and Gardens magazine recommends buying candy you don’t like, storing
treats out of sight, and keeping sugar-free gum on hand as a substitute for high-calorie
indulgences (Pearson, 2009). When discussing such clever situational manipulations,
Schelling (1984) said, “What I’m talking about is different from what is usually thought of
as self-control or self-discipline. I am not talking about the development of inner strength,
character, or moral fiber…” (p. 69).
In this article, we suggest that manipulating our surroundings to advantage is, in fact, a
highly effective form of self-control. Integrating classic and contemporary scholarship on
self-control, we conceptualize self-control as the self-initiated regulation of conflicting
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impulses in the service of enduringly valued goals. The more direct our interaction with a
particular temptation and the more effortful it feels to resist it, the more obvious it is that we
are exercising self-control. However, there are less obvious means of adjudicating self-
control conflicts, and the full range of self-control strategies can be organized using the
process model of self-control (Duckworth, Gendler, & Gross, 2014). This framework
predicts that situational strategies should be more effective than intrapsychic strategies
because they are deployed earlier in the process of impulse generation. That is, we suggest
that strategies targeted at influences outside of the mind are in general better than strategies
targeted at downstream mental processes. We review empirical evidence consistent with this
prediction and highlight a number of promising directions for future research.
Conceptualizing Self-Control
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As with many topics in psychology, an interest in self-control predates the origins of the
field itself. In the following sections, we first review classical perspectives on self-control.
We then showcase contemporary perspectives, and identify two core features of self-control.
Classical Perspectives: The Struggle of Self-Control

Many of the examples adduced in the classical philosophical and psychological literatures
on self-control have taken the familiar form of effortful, in-the-moment self-mastery in the
face of pressing temptation. For instance, Plato likened the soul to a charioteer driving two
horses, one pliable and the other resistant, which pull the soul in alternate directions:
The horse that is on the right, or nobler side, is upright in frame and well jointed,
with a high neck and a regal nose; his coat is white, his eyes are black, and he is a
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lover of honor with modesty and self-control; companion to true glory, he needs no
whip, and is guided by verbal commands alone. The other horse is a crooked great
jumble of limbs with a short bull-neck, a pug nose, black skin, and bloodshot white
eyes; companion to wild boasts and indecency, he is shaggy around the ears—deaf
as a post—and just barely yields to horsewhip and goad combined (370 BCE/1995,
246A-254A).
Plato’s metaphor emphasizes the brutality of this sort of intrapsychic struggle: there is a
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palpable feeling of being pulled in multiple directions by competing internal tendencies.

Plato’s student Aristotle (384-322 BCE) also depicted the soul as divided, as did
philosophers in the stoic tradition who considered emotions to be “perturbations” that
needed to be overcome in order to attain a state of apatheia: freedom from passion
(Epictetus, 55–135 BCE).
A preoccupation with effortful, in-the-moment, intrapsychic maneuvers for overcoming

temptation is also evident in the classical psychological literature. For example, James
(1899) describes lying in bed on a cold winter morning. He thinks “it is time to get up,” but
at the same time, “there is present to my mind a realization of the extreme coldness of the
morning and the pleasantness of the warm bed” (p. 174). James saw only two possible
moves. First: “I may forget for a moment the thermometric conditions, and then the idea of
getting up will immediately discharge into act: I shall suddenly find that I have got up” (p.
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174). Alternatively: “Still mindful of the freezing temperature, the thought of the duty of
rising may become so pungent that it determines action in spite of inhibition” (p. 174–175).
In either case, the battle between temptation and a more valued outcome is waged and won
in the moment and in the mind: “To think, in short, is the secret of will…” (p. 187, emphasis
in original).
Freud was also fascinated by the effortful resolution of dueling intrapsychic motives.
Indeed, it was Freud (1916–1917/1977) who gave psychology the notions of the pleasure-
seeking, pain-avoiding id and its adversary, the moral and principled super-ego, as well as
the logical, patient ego whose function is to adjudicate between them. Though the mapping
is not perfect, there is an important resonance between Freud’s proposed structure of the
psyche and Plato’s trinity of the wild black horse, the noble white horse, and their
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commanding charioteer. According to Freud, successful development hinges upon the

development of the ego, which enables the child to “renounce immediate satisfaction, to
postpone the obtaining of pleasure, to put up with a little unpleasure and to abandon certain
sources of pleasure altogether” (Freud, 1916–1917/1977, p. 444). As with James, Freud’s
suggested alternative to repressing the immediately gratifying impulse—vivid ideation of
the deferred treat—was a cognitive maneuver.
Contemporary Perspectives: Beyond Effort

Whereas particulars vary by author, self-control is now widely understood as the self-
initiated regulation of conflicting impulses in the service of enduringly valued goals
(Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1994). In Table 1, we provide some of the terms that have
been used by scholars to describe the dueling motives that underlie self-control conflicts.
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Two Defining Features of Self-Control—Whatever terms are used, this consensual

definition of self-control has two defining features.
First, self-control is called for when we are torn between two mutually exclusive options,
one expected to bring immediate gratification and the other expected to further more
enduring and important goals. Crucially, these valuations are asymmetric, with the more
potent desire predicted to yield only momentary reward and the less potent desire predicted
to yield greater returns in the long-run. In contrast, choosing between two comparably
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important goals (e.g., spending time with our children vs. staying late at the office to meet a
deadline) may be tortuous, but it is not an exercise in self-control per se. Nor is choosing
between two equally rewarding-now-but-bad-for-me-later temptations (e.g., chocolate lava
cake vs. ice cream sundae).
Second, self-control must be initiated by the individual with the intention of furthering a
more valued goal over a less valued one. This distinguishes self-control from “accidental”
desirable behavior (e.g., getting exercise while shopping all day when the exercise itself was
not an intended positive outcome). This also distinguishes self-control from beneficial
actions taken at the behest of another person. Compliance with authority, for example, is not
self-control, even when the motives of the authority figure are benevolent: a child who
forgoes eating dessert before dinner to avoid a scolding is not exercising self-control, but an
adult who does the same for the sake of long-term health goals is. By this criterion, self-
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control need not be enacted with conscious awareness, but all acts of self-control must, at
some point in time, have been self-initiated (Bargh, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen, 2010; Galla &
Duckworth, 2015; Trope & Fishbach, 2000; Wood, Labrecque, Lin, & Rünger, 2014).
The Lure of Phenomenology—Mentally suppressing one prepotent impulse while

elevating its rival can be very hard work. Consider, for example, the preschool delay of
gratification task, colloquially referred to as “the marshmallow test.” In this paradigm, an
experimenter gives the child a choice between a smaller amount of a favored treat right
away (e.g., “one marshmallow now”) or a larger amount after an unspecified delay (e.g.,
“two marshmallows when I come back into the room”). Watching children delay
gratification—their small faces adorably contorted, their eyes darting back and forth
between the larger and smaller treat—suggests that the intrapsychic dilemma of self-control
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can be tortuous (Mischel & Ebbesen, 1970; Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989).
Similarly, adults who complete tasks designed to tax their self-control report markedly
higher levels of effort, difficulty, and fatigue than adults who complete similar tasks without
a self-control component (Hagger, Wood, Stiff, & Chatzisarantis, 2010; Kurzban,
Duckworth, Kable, & Myers, 2013). For example, one paradigm contrasts the self-control
task of eating raw radishes while simultaneously resisting candies and cookies with the
control task of eating candies and cookies while resisting raw radishes (Baumeister,
Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998). Another compares doing a complex copyediting task
(e.g., crossing out the letter e except when it is directly adjacent to or one letter removed
from other vowels) with a simple one (e.g., crossing out the letter e wherever it appears)
(Baumeister, et al., 1998). Debate over the origins and consequences of mental effort
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continues, but there is no question that its phenomenology (i.e., the felt subjective
experience) is under most circumstances decidedly aversive (Inzlicht, Schmeichel, &
Macrae, 2014; Kool, McGuire, Wang, & Botvinick, 2013; Saunders & Inzlicht, in press;
Westbrook, Kester, & Braver, 2013).
The phenomenology of directly regulating impulses helps to explain the ongoing

preoccupation, evident from the earliest days of philosophy and psychology, with effortful,
intrapsychic means of adjudicating conflicts between temptations and goals (Fujita, 2011;
Gillebaart & de Ridder, 2015). Thus, whereas formal definitions of self-control do not
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typically refer to the subjective experience of exercising self-control, contemporary

terminology hints strongly at accompanying mental strain. For example, in developmental
psychology, self-control is commonly referred to as effortful control (Eisenberg, Smith,
Sadovsky, & Spinrad, 2004; Rothbart & Rueda, 2005). The related constructs of ego control
and ego resilience, rooted in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, suggest that the control and
flexible modulation of impulses is essentially an internal process. Likewise, in social
psychology, the ego depletion model proposes that every act of self-control progressively
exhausts a finite store of intrapsychic strength (Baumeister, et al., 1998). Finally, willpower
persists as the most common, if least illuminating, lay term for self-control. In sum, the
assumption that “effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will” continues to
influence modern thinking (James, 1890, p. 562).
The Process Model of Self-Control

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As contemporary conceptions of self-control make clear, there is a stunning multiplicity of

means—other than brute force suppression of impulses—that may be used to rein in errant
impulses. Consider, again, children in a delay of gratification experiment (Mischel, 2014). In
archival footage, one little boy stares at the ceiling while kicking his legs rhythmically. A
little girl turns her back on the treats altogether. Another reenacts the directions given by the
experimenter, reinforcing the contingency between waiting and the delayed treat. A recent
observational study revealed just how creative preschool children in this paradigm can be
(Carlson & Beck, 2009). Some children sang (e.g., “I’m waitin’, I’m waitin’, I’m waitin’”);
some sat on their hands or covered their eyes with their hands; others repeated the task
instructions aloud (“If I wait, I get this pile; and if I don’t wait, I get this pile.”). Only 10%
of children used no strategy at all, and all 17 of these children failed to wait for the larger
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reward. The difference in wait time between those who used a strategy and those who did
not was highly reliable (p < .0001).
The array of self-control strategies that Mischel (2014) and others (Ariely & Wertenbroch,
2002; Carlson & Beck, 2009; Mischel & Ayduk, 2004; Perry, Hechter, Menec, & Weinberg,
1993; Poston & Foreyt, 2000; Rachlin, 2000; Schelling, 1978; Wansink, 2007) have
described is dizzying in both number and variety. Taking an inclusive conceptualization of
self-control presents a serious challenge: once we broaden our conception of self-control to
include everything individuals might do or think in order to adjudicate between competing
impulses that differ in their short- versus longer-term value, the universe of possible moves
that constitute self-control expands dramatically. How can we organize the innumerable
little “tricks” we play on ourselves in order to advance our enduringly valued goals? In this
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section, we present the process model of self-control, a theoretical framework which

describes both the stages by which impulses are generated and the strategies by which they
can be regulated.
Impulse Generation
As noted earlier, contemporary conceptions of self-control presuppose that an individual can
be of two minds about what to do, think, or feel. The process model of self-control
formalizes this idea by positing the existence of multiple valuation systems, which, as we go
about our everyday life, can be activated simultaneously (Gross, 2015). Each valuation
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system is sensitive to different aspects of any given situation, and each activates action
impulses relevant to its own evaluation of that situation. The concurrent activation of
multiple valuation systems frequently leads valuation systems to interact with one another.
Very often, valuation systems are mutually supportive. For instance, the impulse to eat a
banana is compatible both with a valuation system oriented toward satisfying hunger and
also one oriented toward long-term health goals. However, in cases of self-control conflict,
one valuation system inclines the individual toward immediately gratifying temptation (e.g.,
a donut) while another disposes the individual toward a more enduringly valued option (e.g.,
a banana).
Figure 1a illustrates the stages through which impulses come into being and are either
augmented or weakened over time. Each cycle begins with an individual encountering a
particular situation, then deciding whether to modify it, next paying attention to particular
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features of the situation, followed by appraising the situation as good or bad, and depending
on this valuation, finally experiencing an impulse, or response tendency. As shown in Figure
1b, the impulse to eat a donut, for example, may begin with an individual standing in a
kitchen. This individual’s gaze is soon drawn to an open box of donuts, an image that in turn
spurs the thought, “tasty treat!” which in turn leads to the impulse to eat one. As suggested
by the circular figure, each situation-attention-appraisal-response process is iterative. A
response (or even a lack of response) brings the individual back to the situation stage where,
again, impulses wax or wane over time depending on what happens at each successive stage.
Impulses of sufficient strength are enacted; those that fail to reach threshold are not. For
instance, if the individual decides to stay rooted at the kitchen counter, staring at the donuts
and salivating at the thought of their sugary deliciousness, the impulse to grab and eat one
might over several cycles grow strong enough to be discharged into action.
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Crucially, response tendencies for most temptations tend to dominate those for rival long-
term goals. As a consequence, our default response is to do things that feel good right away,
even if we have enough life experience to anticipate regretting doing so after the fact. In a
recent study, young adults used a computer mouse to indicate their preference between pairs
of food items varying in healthfulness and tastiness (Sullivan, Hutcherson, Harris, & Rangel,
2014). By analyzing the micro time course of the computer mouse trajectories, researchers
discovered that food tastiness was processed about a fifth of a second faster than food
healthfulness, a lag which was reliably longer in less self-controlled individuals. Likewise,
preschool children who delay their response on a task where they are asked to say “moon”
when they see a picture of a sun perform better if they must wait to give their answer,
allowing the prepotent but incorrect impulse to dissipate (Diamond, Kirkham, & Amso,
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2002; Simpson et al., 2012). These findings complement earlier studies in which increases in
cognitive load (e.g., keeping a long string of numbers in working memory) inclined
individuals to choose tastier but less healthy snacks, presumably by impairing the valuation
system motivated by distal but important health goals (Friese, Hofmann, & Wänke, 2008;
Shiv & Fedorikhin, 1999; Ward & Mann, 2000).
Impulse Regulation
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As shown in Figure 2, the process model of self-control suggests that intervention is possible
at each stage in the situation-attention-appraisal-response cycle. For instance, an individual
who would rather snack on bananas than donuts after work might decide to enter her home
via the living room (rather than the kitchen), calling out to her husband to hide the box of
donuts she knows she left out on the kitchen counter that morning. Then, ensuring that her
gaze falls anywhere but those donuts, she might deliberately think to herself, “calorie
bomb!” and thereby strengthen her resolve not to eat any. See Figure 3a. Alternatively, the
same individual might enter the kitchen after work, immediately taking bananas out of a
shopping bag. Looking at the bananas, she might think to herself “healthy snack!” and then
peel and eat one. See Figure 3b. Readers familiar with the process model of emotion
regulation will recognize this theoretical framework (Gross, 1998) which we expand here to
include other types of conflicts (Duckworth, et al., 2014; Magen & Gross, 2010). Indeed, we
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suggest that the dynamics of impulse generation are similar, no matter whether impulses are
attentional, emotional, or behavioral in nature, and whether they pertain to the domains of
health, interpersonal relationships, finances, or work (Duckworth & Tsukayama, in press).
Consistent with prior observations (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997; Fujita, 2011; Hofmann &
Kotabe, 2012; Trope & Fishbach, 2000), our approach makes a clear prescriptive
recommendation as to when and how self-control is most effectively deployed: as a rule,
earlier intervention is best. For instance, prompt intervention, when the impulse to eat
donuts is still nascent, is wiser than waiting until the impulse has grown so strong that
Herculean efforts are required to make a healthier choice. As Montaigne (1580/2003)
observed of his own hot temper, it is best to intervene proactively, rather than procrastinate:
“The infancies of all things are feeble and weak. We must keep our eyes open at their
beginnings” (p. 1154; for similar arguments, see Hofmann & Kotabe, 2012; Hofmann &
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Van Dillen, 2012; Magen & Gross, 2010; Sheppes & Gross, 2011).
What the process model adds to the general earlier-is-better insight is that self-control
strategies can be subdivided according to the stage in the process of impulse generation
when they are deployed. Within a given cycle, earlier situational stages in the cycle
influence later cognitive stages—but not vice versa. This path dependency plays out as
follows: where we are constrains what we can do to modify our situations; our situations
influence what we pay attention to; what we perceive in turn constrains how we appraise our
situations; and finally, these valuations encourage us to act in one way or another.
Situational vs. Intrapsychic Strategies for Self-Control

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The process model of self-control organizes strategies into five families, each described
briefly below. At the earliest stage of impulse generation, there are two situational strategies
describing how we can select and modify our circumstances, respectively, to favor actions
that make us better off in the long-run. Next, there are three intrapsychic strategies that
describe how we can use attention, cognitive change, and response modulation, respectively,
to advantage.
Situational Strategies
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Situation selection strategies are the most forward-looking of all self-control maneuvers and
involve intentionally choosing to be in situations that favor goal-oriented valuation systems
over temptation-oriented valuation systems. For instance, studying is generally easier to do
at the library than in a noisy dorm room. Exercising is easier at the gym than in the living
room. Abstaining from junk food is easier at home than at the movie theater. Likewise,
virtuous behavior is easier when we surround ourselves with people whose behavior we
hope to emulate. In a recent mixed-age focus group on academic success, we listened to a
tenth grader sagely counsel a fifth grader: “If I knew at your age what I know now,” the
older girl said, shaking her head, “I would have chosen different friends. I got into the wrong
crowd, and it was really hard to get back on track.” In other words, our circumstances are
not just physical but also social, and their influence on our behavior not just transient but,
potentially, enduring.
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Often, we are not free to select our situations but, nevertheless, are able to make changes
wherever we find ourselves. Situation modification strategies entail purposefully changing
our circumstances to advantage. The tale of Odysseus returning from the Trojan War
provides three illustrative examples. First, warned by the goddess Circe of the fatal allure of
the Sirens, whose island he would sail past on his journey home; Odysseus preemptively
plugs the ears of his oarsmen so they will be deaf to the their song. Second, wanting to hear
the singing himself but anticipating its seductive power, Odysseus binds himself to the mast.
Finally, he makes a social contract, ordering his men not to release him during their passage
no matter what he orders them to do. This trio of preemptive maneuvers allows Odysseus to
escape unharmed. Modern examples come from Schelling (1978), who assembled a
catalogue of actual situational “contrivances,” including Christmas Club savings plans,
layaway plans, and enlisting friends to police our cigarettes, among others. And whereas
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James (1899) considered only intrapsychic strategies for getting ourselves out of a warm bed
on a cold morning, Schelling offers a more clever suggestion: “Place the alarm clock across
the room so we cannot turn it off without getting out of bed” (p. 290). The Clocky alarm
clock takes this logic one step further: it literally jumps off of the nightstand and runs around
the room, beeping loudly, until you get out of bed, track it down, and shut it off.
As with situation selection strategies, situation modification strategies can take aim at our
physical or social situations. But there is third aspect of our situations that we can modify,
even if we cannot swap it entirely for one we prefer: our bodies. Schelling (1978), for
example, mentioned that wiring our jaws shut is one radical way to prevent overeating.
Today, gastric bypass surgery, in which the capacity of the stomach is radically reduced, is a
common surgical treatment for morbid obesity (Buchwald & Oien, 2013). But there are
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other less extreme ways in which we can modify our somatic environment to advantage. We
can eat a nutritious lunch in order to avoid junk food cravings later in the afternoon, we can
get a good night’s sleep in order to avoid waking up “on the wrong side of the bed,” and we
can drink coffee to make paying attention to our work a bit easier.
Intrapsychic Strategies
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Sometimes, we are confronted with situations we can neither choose nor change. In such
cases, we can employ attentional deployment strategies to direct our focus to features of the
situation that facilitate, rather than undermine, self-control. Without direct tutelage, children
learn this strategy fairly early in life (Carlson & Beck, 2009; Peake, Hebl, & Mischel, 2002),
but more recently, Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster has been providing direct instruction. In
one episode, after learning how to pronounce “delayed gratification,” he models looking
away from a cookie he is trying not to eat. “Me going to look away from Cookie,” he
declares, turning his back (PBS, 2013, September 4). Ignoring temptations can help us resist
them, but it is often the case that noticing them can be a good thing, especially when doing
so interrupts the otherwise mindless enactment of immediately gratifying impulses
(Wansink & Sobal, 2007). For instance, directing attention to what we are doing can prevent
absentmindedly eating an entire bag of potato chips while engrossed in a riveting television
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show. In either case, deliberately attending to some features of our situation rather than
others may be easier to initiate than to sustain. Cookie Monster, for example, finds it hard to
keep his back turned to temptation: “Me not going to look at…” he declares, but then—sniff,
sniff—turns to glance again in the cookie’s direction, and swiveling away once again, cries,
“Oooh! This hard! This hard for monster!”
When attending to temptations is unavoidable, we can use cognitive change strategies to

diminish our undesired impulses and amplify our desired ones. Cognitive change strategies
entail thinking about our situation differently. For example, we can think about a cookie as a
delicious treat or, alternatively, as a vehicle for saturated fat and refined sugar. One mental
representation amplifies the benefits of eating the cookie; the other amplifies the long-term
costs of doing so. Likewise, thinking about the money we have in our pocket as a windfall
inclines us to spend it, but mentally framing it as part of our future income stream or as a
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previously acquired asset, inclines us to save it (Milkman & Beshears, 2009; Shefrin &
Thaler, 1992). Money, of course, is fungible, but appraising assets differently according to
their provenance is a cognitive change tactic that many individuals use in order to avoid
succumbing to the temptation of overspending.
An especially effective form of cognitive change entails extracting ourselves from the here-
and-now and instead mentally construing our situations in high-level, abstract terms (Fujita,
2011; Fujita & Han, 2009; Kross, Ayduk, & Mischel, 2005; Trope & Liberman, 2010).
These high-level appraisals tend to support goal-directed valuations. For example, inducing
high-level construals by prompting participants to consider why they are doing something, as
opposed to how they are engaged, increases preference for delayed vs. immediate outcomes
as well as physical endurance in a handgrip task (Fujita, Trope, Liberman, & Levin-Sagi,
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2006). Imagining ourselves as a third-party spectator, rather than a first-person combatant, in

arguments with our spouse can preserve marital satisfaction (Finkel, Slotter, Luchies,
Walton, & Gross, 2013). In the field of negotiations, the same third-person perspective is a
well-known emotion regulation technique, often called “going to the balcony” (Ury, 2007).
More generally, separation in time (not now), space (not here), hypotheticality (not real),
and egocentricity (not me) seem to all serve to increase psychological distance—essentially
constituting different ways to transcend an egocentric and immersed perspective (Trope &
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Liberman, 2010).
Of all the self-control strategies, response modulation is the most straightforward. In the
“heat of the moment”, we can voluntarily suppress undesirable impulses or amplify
desirable ones. Unfortunately, the human capacity to exert cognitive control over goal-
incongruent impulses is far from perfect (Carlson, Zelazo, & Faja, 2013; Cohen, 2005;
Diamond, 2013). For instance, adults make mistakes on simple tasks of executive function,
which require exercising top-down control over conflicting subcortical impulses. For
instance, the classic Stroop task takes advantage of the fact that reading is a relatively
automatic response for mature adults (Stroop, 1935). In this task, individuals try to state
aloud the color of the ink in which a contrasting color word is printed (e.g., saying the word
“blue” when presented with the word “red” written in blue ink). Even when successful,
exercising executive function is reliably effortful and, in most cases, at least mildly aversive
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(Inzlicht, Legault, & Teper, 2014; Kurzban, et al., 2013; Westbrook & Braver, 2015).
Similarly, hiding our emotions (e.g., trying not to cry when sad, or trying not to smile when
amused) sometimes works but often doesn’t, and even when successful takes a physiological
toll (Gross & Levenson, 1993).
Intrapsychic Mechanisms Underlying Situational Strategies

Considering the underlying mechanisms by which situational strategies operate leads to the
insight that they are, in fact, indirectly intrapsychic. That is, circumstances outside the mind
are the direct target of situational strategies, but it is the downstream effect these changes
have on our attention, cognitive appraisals, and response tendencies that in turn mediate the
benefits of situational strategies for self-control.
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How, exactly, do situational strategies work? Building upon Elster (2000) and Shefrin and
Thaler (1988), we suggest that our physical, social, and somatic circumstances can influence
self-controlled behavior in three principal ways. First, where, with whom, and in what
physiological state we find ourselves can influence what we pay attention to. Second, our
situations can influence the expected costs and benefits of responses we have yet to enact.
Third, our situations can influence our response options themselves. In this way, situational
strategies can be considered indirectly intrapsychic. Specifically, situational strategies can
be thought of as maneuvers that activate downstream intrapsychic mechanisms at the
attention, appraisal, and response stages of impulse generation, respectively.
Most proximal to the situation in the process model is the attention stage. We have
previously noted that indulging in immediate temptation is the default, automatic, and thus
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mindless option. Therefore, guiding our attention to what we are doing can prevent
absentminded indulgence. Alternatively, when we are already aware of what we are doing
yet have trouble resisting a potent temptation, it can be useful to distract ourselves. What the
process model adds to these basic insights is that we can choose or change our situations to
encourage attention in these ways. For instance, many smokers intentionally buy their
cigarettes pack by pack, rather than in multi-pack cartons, and many consumers are willing
to pay more, per calorie, for “indulgent” snacks sold in smaller serving sizes (Wertenbroch,
1998). Why? Many of us know ourselves well enough to recognize what has been shown
empirically—that we tend to consume more from larger packages than smaller ones
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(Wansink, 1996). One reason, among others, why smaller packages might influence
behavior is that opening the next box or package is a very salient cue of consumption, and
this cue facilitates monitoring of an otherwise automatic indulgence (see also Geier,
Wansink, & Rozin, 2012). Another application of this same principle is that many dieters are
willing to pay extravagant sums to vacation at spas where it is easy to forget about junk food
altogether, and where cues to eat healthfully abound.
Situational strategies can also operate by skipping over the attention stage and directly
influencing how we appraise our situations. In particular, we can choose or change our
situations in ways that increase the value of long-term goals or decrease the value of
momentarily gratifying temptations. We can, for example, arrange in advance post hoc
contingencies that favor self-control. Many of us agree to give talks or write articles by a
deadline, knowing full well that the shame of not delivering on schedule will induce us to
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work harder and get started earlier than without an externally enforced target. By agreeing to
this social contract, we increase the cost of procrastination, getting us off the couch (or our
email) in order to attend to the work at hand. In the behavioral economics literature, such
maneuvers are referred to as precommitment devices (Bryan, Karlan, & Nelson, 2010). Most
entail self-imposed punishments (e.g., forfeiting savings in the event of not going to the
gym; Royer, Stehr, & Sydnor, 2012), but they can also take the form of bundling rewards
with long-term goals (e.g., reserving a guilty pleasure like a trashy novel for visits to the
gym; Milkman, Minson, & Volpp, 2014).
A third mechanism by which situational strategies operate is by restricting the set of

available responses one can enact. This can mean choosing or changing our situations such
that tempting but regrettable options are not available at all. Kessler (2009), for instance,
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offers this heroic story: “One evening I checked into a hotel room and found a plate of
freshly baked chocolate chip cookies waiting for me. I knew I could easily eat them all, and
I knew with equal certainty I didn’t want to do that. There was only one way to gain the
upper hand, and I had to act quickly. I tossed the cookies into the trash” (p. 220). It is also
possible to make beneficial decisions inevitable. Odysseus lashing himself to the mast of his
ship before passing by the island of the Sirens is one example; depositing money in a non-
reversible savings account or choosing to dine at a restaurant with only healthy menu
options are yet others.
Empirical Evidence for Situational Strategies

The process model of self-control makes a strong claim about the superior efficacy of
situational vs. intrapsychic strategies within any given cycle of impulse generation. What
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empirical evidence is there to substantiate this prediction? In this section, we first describe
recent studies that link higher levels of trait self-control to encountering fewer temptation-
ridden situations. Next, we summarize evidence that situational cues can have surprisingly
powerful effects in the domains of substance use, eating and exercise, studying and
academic work, and retirement savings. Though provocative, this evidence base is in our
view incomplete, and we therefore turn our attention in the final section to urgent questions
awaiting future research.
Trait-Level Self-Control
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A handful of compelling studies have recently documented that more self-controlled

individuals find themselves in situations that facilitate adherence to valued goals. In the first,
an experience sampling method (ESM) study, adults who were more self-controlled
according to a trait questionnaire were markedly less likely to report experiencing desires
that were deemed “problematic” by an independent sample of raters (Hofmann, Baumeister,
Förster, & Vohs, 2012). In the same study, the mere presence of other people reduced the
likelihood of enacting desires that conflicted with personal goals, whereas being around
people who were enacting the forbidden desire increased the likelihood of enactment. In
other words, individuals were less likely to give in to temptations when around other people,
except if those people were doing exactly what the individuals were themselves trying to
resist.
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In a second study, young adults completed a questionnaire assessing trait self-control and, in
addition, reviewed a list of common temptations (e.g., playing videogames, procrastinating)
and desirable actions (e.g., exercising, being on time), whose inhibition or activation,
respectively, advanced long-term goals like health and achievement (Imhoff, Schmidt, &
Gerstenberg, 2013). For each item, participants indicated how tempted they usually felt, how
frequently they tried to directly modulate their responses, and how successful they were,
ultimately, in acting in their long-term interests. Consistent with a situational control
account, more self-controlled individuals felt less tempted and directly modulated their
responses less frequently, and yet reported being more successful in acting in accordance
with long-term goals.
In a third study, adults completed the same trait self-control questionnaire and indicated the
extent to which they typically take steps to proactively choose or change situations to
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advantage (e.g., “I avoid situations in which I might be tempted to act immorally,” “I choose
friends who keep me on track to accomplishing my long-term goals.”) (Ent, Baumeister, &
Tice, 2015). Trait self-control was strongly related to avoiding temptation. In a fourth study
by the same authors, undergraduates completed trait self-control questionnaires and then
completed an anagram task, with larger payments for more anagrams solved. Participants
could work in a noisy lounge right away or wait a few minutes to work in a quiet lab room.
More self-controlled individuals were more likely to choose the quiet lab room. Finally, in a
conceptual replication, more self-controlled adults were more likely to request an IQ test
without distracting graphic decorations (Ent et al., 2015).
To our knowledge, no other studies than those we described above have examined how more
self-controlled individuals manage situational influences on their behavior. It is worth
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noting, however, that the entire social psychology literature—literally, thousands upon
thousands of studies—explores the power of the situation over how we act, think, and feel.
Moreover, much is known about the influence of domain-specific situational cues. We now
turn to relevant research on substance use, eating and exercise, studying and academic work,
and retirement savings. Across these diverse domains, we’ll find evidence that corroborates
the view that situational strategies are especially powerful means of self-control.
Substance Abuse
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It is well-established that among drug addicts trying to quit, abstaining is much more likely
among those who experience a significant change of setting (Goldstein, 1994; O’Brien,
1976). Indeed, encounters with trigger cues (i.e., physical or social cues that have through
past experience become strongly associated with taking drugs) may be the single most
potent impediment to abstinence (Bonson et al., 2002; Kelley, 2004; Weiss, 2005), and
addicts who break ties with drug-using associates are four times more likely to remain
abstinent than those who do not (Schroeder et al., 2001). In fact, it may be that encounters
with trigger cues are more important than physiological withdrawal processes in the
precipitation of drug craving (Goldstein, 1994). For example, United States soldiers who
became addicted to heroin and opium while serving in Vietnam and then returned home
relapsed at dramatically lower rates than young male addicts who became addicted but did
not make a dramatic physical move during the same period (Robins, Davis, & Goodwin,
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1974).
The same correlational patterns hold with more common but still problematic substance use.
For example, a longitudinal study of high school students found that decreases in heavy
drinking and marijuana use over the three years following graduation were associated with
getting married and moving into a new home (Bachman, O’Malley, & Johnston, 1984).
More generally, adolescents who spend more time in unstructured social situations (i.e., in
leisure situations with peers in the absence of responsible authority figures) are more likely
to engage in heavy drinking, marijuana and other drug use, as well as criminal activity and
dangerous driving (Osgood, Wilson, O’Malley, Bachman, & Johnston, 1996). And in
communities where purchasing alcohol becomes more convenient, alcohol consumption and
related medical and criminal harms increase in tandem (Campbell et al., 2009).
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Accordingly, drug treatment programs often advise moving to new locations, thereby
avoiding old haunts where previous consumption took place (Doyle, Friedmann, & Zywiak,
2013). Another common recommendation is for addicts to precommit to self-punishment,
should they partake of their foresworn substance. For instance, alcoholics can take
Antabuse, a drug which causes severe nausea and vomiting upon ingestion of alcohol
(Banys, 1988). Smokers can deposit money in an account which they forfeit if their urine
tests positive for nicotine (Giné, Karlan, & Zinman, 2010). Smokers can also chew nicotine-
laced chewing gum, which reliably reduces cravings for cigarettes (Shiffman et al., 2003).
Of course, addicts do not always take advantage of situational devices that would help them
regulate their behavior (Cummings & Hyland, 2005), and we take up this important issue in
the final section of this article.
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Eating and Exercise

As early as 1971, Schachter proposed that obese individuals are especially sensitive to
environmental stimuli (e.g., quantity and taste of food offered to them) as opposed to
internal, visceral cues (e.g., gastric motility). Rodin (1978) later argued that normal-weight
individuals, too, are powerfully influenced by situational cues. In an early demonstration of
the universal influence of situational cues on eating, Meyers and Stunkard (1980) found that
no matter how much patrons at a cafeteria weighed, they all served themselves high-calorie
desserts when they were within easier reach. Likewise, when a freezer lid was closed, 5% of
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normal-weight and 3% of obese patrons served themselves ice cream; when the lid was
open, those percentages jumped to 16% and 17%, respectively (Levitz, 1976).
In more recent experimental work, Wansink and his collaborators have demonstrated the
surprisingly large influence of seemingly trivial situational cues on eating (see Wansink,
2014, for a comprehensive review). For example, adults eat less when using smaller dinner
plates and drink less when using tall and skinny glasses (Wansink, 2014). Office workers eat
more candy when it is kept in a clear (vs. opaque) jar and when it is within arm’s reach (vs.
several feet away) (Wansink, Painter, & Lee, 2006). Students are more likely to make
healthier food choices when they encounter those foods in the beginning, rather than the
middle, of the cafeteria line. Adults also purchase fruit and vegetables more often if such
healthy foods are within easy reach (Rozin et al., 2011).
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Correlational field studies corroborate experimental findings and confirm the power of
situational cues over everyday eating decisions. For instance, at all-you-can-eat Chinese
buffets, thinner diners are more likely to use smaller plates, to sit where the buffet itself is
not in their direct line of sight, and to use chopsticks rather than forks (Wansink & Payne,
2008). Women who keep breakfast cereal in their kitchen cabinets weigh less than women
who keep cereal on their kitchen counters; conversely, women who keep fresh fruit on the
counter weigh less than women who do not (Wansink, 2014). Sometimes, what’s going on
around us simply distracts us, leading to mindless eating: families who eat dinner in the
kitchen or dining room are leaner compared to families who eat elsewhere (e.g., in the living
room in front of the television) (Wansink & van Kleef, 2014). Social cues also matter. We
snack more when we see other people around us eating (Schüz, Bower, & Ferguson, 2015),
and we eat more in the company of heavy diners than lean ones (Shimizu, Johnson, &
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Wansink, 2014). Longitudinal social network analyses suggest that peer effects can
accumulate over time: individuals with a friend who becomes obese are at higher risk of
becoming obese themselves (Christakis & Fowler, 2007).
Studying and Academic Work

A national survey recently found that a majority of American middle school students would
rather eat broccoli than do their math homework, yet most also believe math is important to
the achievement of their long-term goals (Raytheon Company, 2012). Experience sampling
method (ESM) studies paint an even more vivid picture of the good-for-you-eventually vs.
fun-for-you-now tug of war students face when deciding whether to engage in academic
work. When beeped randomly throughout the day and asked what they are doing and how
they are feeling, middle and high school students report that academic activities feel
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important to their personal future goals—but are less fun and intrinsically rewarding—than
anything else they do (Galla, Duckworth, Rikoon, & Haimm, 2015). Even gifted and
talented and straight-A students would rather play sports, watch television, talk to their
friends, or even “do nothing” than sit in class, study, or do their homework (Galla, et al.,
2015; Wong & Csikszentmihalyi, 1991).
A large literature on “self-regulated learning” has found that more successful students
deliberately manipulate their surroundings in ways that make concentrating on their studies
easier (Zimmerman, 1989). Dubbed “environmental structuring,” such actions include

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turning off the radio and finding a quiet room for studying (Zimmerman & Pons, 1986). In
one observational study, high school students wrote essays in an experimental room rigged
with stimuli that could either facilitate or impede writing (Marcus, 1988). Those who opted
to adjust the sound of the television and use a clock to monitor their progress wrote better
essays. More recently, more self-controlled high school students reported fewer distractions
(e.g., cell phone, television) in their direct line of sight when studying (Galla, et al., 2015).
The absence of distractions in turn predicted relatively greater enjoyment and intrinsic
motivation while doing homework in comparison to their more impulsive counterparts.
The influence of situational cues extends to the classroom as well. Seating disruptive or
inattentive students by the teacher’s desk is an age-old classroom management technique,
and it has been shown that academic engagement is indeed higher among students who sit at
the front of the classroom (Schwebel & Cherlin, 1972; Walberg, 1969). In one experimental
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study, elementary school students who were randomly assigned to sit in the front of the
classroom were subsequently rated as more attentive by both peers and teachers (Schwebel
& Cherlin, 1972).
Retirement Savings
Most people undersave for their retirement, even when financial instruments for making
appropriate saving decisions are advertised by their employers (Benartzi & Thaler, 2013). A
major reason for such financial myopia is that saving now to be better off later comes at the
cost of immediate consumption: Socking away money in our 401 (k) retirement plan doesn’t
feel as enjoyable in the moment as, say, buying a new pair of shoes or going out to a
particularly nice dinner. In recognition that individuals do not always make rational choices
—even for tremendously consequential life decisions for which they have been equipped
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with complete information about the relevant costs and benefits— behavioral economists
have recently made spirited arguments for “light paternalism” (Loewenstein & Haisley,
2008) and “choice architecture” (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008).
In essence, the idea is that public and private institutions should create situations for
consumers that nudge them, ever so subtly, in the direction of choices that will benefit them
in the long-term. For example, when employers make saving a portion of wages for
retirement the default option, requiring actively opting out rather than actively opting in,
their employees are more likely to commit to a saving plans (Beshears, Choi, Laibson, &
Madrian, 2009). Likewise, the Save More Tomorrow plan allows individuals to agree to
future increases in retirement savings, but, these escalations in payments are cleverly tied to
pay raises so that employees do not see their take-home income fall (Benartzi & Thaler,
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2013). Both automatic enrollment and automatic escalation dramatically increase savings
rates (Benartzi & Thaler, 2013; Madrian & Shea, 2001). It is also possible to entice some
individuals to voluntarily restrict their future savings through a bank account that limits
withdrawals until an individually pre-specified goal has been reached (e.g., a certain date
has passed, a certain savings amount has accrued) (Ashraf, Karlan, & Yin, 2006).
Future Directions
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As we have seen, empirical findings across a range of domains suggest that whether we act
in our long-term interests or succumb to immediately gratifying temptations depends a great
deal upon the particulars of our physical, social, and somatic situations. In certain
circumstances, it is nearly impossible to exercise self-control; in others, it is trivial to do so.
Furthermore, correlational studies have more recently demonstrated that self-controlled
individuals tend to choose or change situations in ways that facilitate adherence with their
valued goals.
Although suggestive, the evidence currently available about the impact of situational self-
control falls short in several ways. First, research to date has not directly investigated
foundational questions concerning the relative efficacy of situational vs. intrapsychic
strategies or their underlying mechanisms. We suspect that the relative efficacy of different
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self-control strategies will vary by context – as seems to be the case with other forms of self-
regulation (Aldao, 2013; Gross, 2015)-- but empirical work is needed to test this idea.
Second, fields of psychological inquiry that have been centrally focused on self-control,
including developmental, clinical, social, and personality psychology, have yet to take
situational strategies as seriously as intrapsychic strategies. And third, more theoretical and
empirical work is needed to understand how self-control plays out over longer timescales
and within the context of wider social influences. We turn to each of these three issues in the
following sections.
Efficacy of Situational vs. Intrapsychic Strategies

Perhaps the most urgent question for future research concerns the claim of the process
model that situational strategies should out-perform other self-control strategies. The most
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straightforward test of this hypothesis would be an experiment in which individuals are

randomly assigned to different self-control strategies identified in the process model and the
consequent effects of condition on subsequent self-controlled behavior are measured. To our
knowledge, such an experiment has yet to be attempted. Instead, a great deal of energy has
been invested in examining the benefits of earlier-deployed intrapsychic strategies (i.e.,
maneuvers in the attentional deployment and cognitive change families) relative to the “last
ditch” intrapsychic strategy of response modulation. Thus, the causal role, and the relative
efficacy, of situational strategies have theoretical support but have yet to be established
empirically.
Relatedly, research is needed to identify when situational strategies are especially effective,
relative to other means of self-control. For example, situational strategies may be
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particularly useful in furthering second-order goals when cognitive resources are necessarily
diverted to some more urgent activity (e.g., Mann & Ward, 2007). Similarly, if we anticipate
a series of demands on our self-control, we may benefit from selecting or modifying
situations to neutralize potent temptations (Baumeister, 2014). Situational strategies may be
especially helpful for unsuccessful dieters, whose encounters with food cues tend to
suppress the activation of goals to eat more healthfully (Papies, Stroebe, & Aarts, 2008).
More generally, it may be that situational strategies are most useful when intrapsychic
strategies are not sufficient.
On the other hand, it is also important to consider the costs of choosing and changing our
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situations. For example, avoidance has been shown to be an effective coping strategy for
dealing with stress, but more directly dealing with the source of troubles may be more
effective in the long-term (Werner & Gross, 2010). A side benefit of using more
intrapsychic approaches to self-control is that when they do work, they might more
effectively bolster our confidence than situational strategies. Along these lines, certain
temptations may be more easily avoidable than others. And some situational changes are
more reversible than others. In the children’s story Cookies, Frog and Toad end their cookie
binge by placing the cookies in a jar, tying it up with rope, then taking a ladder out to place
the jar on a high shelf (Lobel, 1979). Soon enough, however, they use the same ladder to
take the jar down, untie the rope, open the jar, and recommence eating. Likewise, even after
gastric bypass surgery, some individuals eat enough to regain a significant amount of weight
(Freire, Borges, Alvarez-Leite, & Correia, 2012). And, infamously, although Antabuse has
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been available for over four decades, it has not eradicated alcoholism for the simple reason
that many alcoholics refuse to take the medication consistently (Garbutt, 2009). The obvious
solution to the reversibility problem is permanent situational changes, yet weaker
restrictions may ultimately be more effective insofar as individuals are more inclined to self-
impose them (Beshears et al., 2015; Bryan, et al., 2010; Karlan & Linden, 2014).
In this article, we have suggested that situational strategies should work better than
intrapsychic approaches to self-control because they modify impulses earlier in the process
of generation, when they are weaker. But we have also speculated that situational strategies
“leverage” downstream intrapsychic mechanisms—operating by directing our attention,
changing our cognitive representations, or restricting our response options. This supposition
flows from our model but it has not been tested empirically. If confirmed, the idea that
situational strategies indirectly instigate intrapsychic processes opens up several alternative
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possibilities for their superior efficacy. First, it may be that there is some phenomenological
benefit to externalizing self-control conflicts. In particular, it may feel relatively less
tortuous to submit to some external enforcement (“I would love to have a cookie, but, alas,
there are none in the house!”) than to force ourselves to forgo temptation (“I would love to
have a cookie, but I will instead look away from them!). A second explanation for the
efficacy of situational strategies is that, in many cases, they require more effort and time to
undo than intrapsychic strategies. We have already noted that many situational maneuvers
can, in fact, be reversed, but it seems obvious that driving to the store to replace cookies we
have thrown in the garbage demands more time and energy than simply glancing back in
their direction. It’s also plausible that manipulating our situations is easier than manipulating
our intrapsychic processes for other reasons. Young children, for example, tend to regulate
the behavior of their peers before they are able to do the same with respect to their own
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behavior (Bodrova & Leong, 2007; Prencipe & Zelazo, 2005).
Applications to Subareas within Psychology

In the developmental subarea, one important question is whether the use of situational
strategies increases linearly with age. Such trends would be consistent with generally
improving metacognitive and prospective capacities across childhood and adolescence
(Atance, 2008; Coughlin, Lyons, & Ghetti, 2014; Dimmitt & McCormick, 2012; Eisenberg
& Morris, 2002; White, Kross, & Duckworth, 2015). Alternatively, it may be that cognitive
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strategies displace situational strategies as age-related improvements in executive function

ability, in turn, facilitate attention deployment and cognitive change. Normative age trends
are not necessarily ideal, of course. By age six, children know that placing a plate over the
marshmallow makes it easier to resist (Mischel & Mischel, 1983), but many adults ask their
dining partners for “just one bite” of their chocolate cake only to find their appetites
stimulated, rather than sated, by this misguided situational move. Another relevant question
relates to how older adults use situational strategies—one possibility is that as executive
function declines, the utility of situational strategies is enhanced (Urry & Gross, 2010).
In the clinical literature, impulsivity has recently been implicated as a transdiagnostic feature
of many forms of psychopathology (Johnson, Carver, & Joormann, 2013). Accordingly, we
recommend a more explicit focus on situational strategies for managing conditions such as
ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and substance use problems, among others. Nearly a
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half-century ago, a handful of studies demonstrated that such strategies could be taught in a
clinical setting (Mahoney & Thoresen, 1972; Stuart, 1967). This approach was by no means
the rule, even at the height of behaviorism; however, a minority of clinicians were
compelled to advocate passionately for recognition that the “that self-control is integrally
bound up with immediate environmental considerations” (Mahoney & Thoresen, 1972, p. 2).
Certainly, many contemporary therapists encourage their clients to manage their physical,
social, and somatic environments to advantage, but the joint implementation of such
situational strategies with purely intrapsychic strategies (e.g., questioning irrational
thoughts) makes it difficult to estimate their independent effects.
Historically, personality researchers have focused on domain-general individual differences

in behavior, whereas social psychologists have been especially interested in how behavior
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differs as a function of context. The individual differences approach to studying self-control

has led to the discovery that some individuals are generally more self-controlled than others
across situations, and, further, that domain-general self-control may be as important as any
other trait, to long-term life outcomes (de Ridder, Lensvelt-Mulders, Finkenauer, Stok, &
Baumeister, 2012; Hofmann, Fisher, Luhmann, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2013; Moffitt et al.,
2011). On the other hand, individuals act in a more self-controlled manner in certain
contexts than others (Duckworth & Tsukayama, in press). How might the apparent tension
in these findings be resolved? One possibility is by invoking the capacity for individuals to
proactively choose and change their environments (Bowers, 1973; Buss, 1987; Diener,
Larsen, & Emmons, 1984). Because we can anticipate the future and imagine alternative
scenarios contingent upon our own actions, we can to some extent choose or change our
situations (Bandura, 2001; Seligman, Railton, Baumeister, & Sripada, 2013). In addition,
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most individuals feel more tempted by certain vices than others (Duckworth & Tsukayama,
in press). Thus, it may be that self-controlled individuals recognize their idiosyncratic
temptations and adeptly navigate around them. Indeed, how we voluntarily select and
modify our situations may ultimately explain more variance in our behavior than how, once
in the grips of situational forces, we navigate them (Doris, 2002).
The Bigger Picture: Longer Timescales and Broader Contexts

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We believe that the process model of self-control provides a useful taxonomy for organizing
and understanding the many creative maneuvers individuals can make to advance valued
goals over immediately gratifying alternatives. However, much more remains to be said
about the dynamics of self-control. We have zeroed in on a single situation-attention-
appraisal-response cycle of impulse generation, mentioning only in passing that the process
by which impulses come into being and change in strength is iterative. Earlier is better
within a cycle, and by extension, earlier is also better across cycles. The latter—intervening
in an earlier cycle than a later one—may be at least as important as intervening earlier within
a cycle. For example, it may be that a cognitive change strategy initiated in an earlier cycle
(e.g., making a plan, hours in advance, like “If my husband asks me to share a dessert, then I
will decline!”) may be even more effective than a situational maneuver deployed in a later
cycle (e.g., pushing the chocolate cake out of arm’s reach). In general, rules and plans
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formulated well in advance of encounters with temptation may trump situational strategies
deployed in later cycles of impulse generation.
Considering the dynamics of self-control over the timescale of weeks and months and years
brings us to another unanswered question, which is how the process model can reconcile
intentional self-control behaviors with automatically initiated habits. Unlike the tactics
described in this article, habits are actions executed in response to a specific stimulus,
which, having been reinforced repeatedly over time, do not require conscious intention for
their execution (Wood, et al., 2014). Not surprisingly, more self-controlled individuals have
well-established “good” habits (e.g., to study, exercise, eat healthfully), and these habits in
turn help explain the benefits of self-control for positive life outcomes (Galla & Duckworth,
2015). The automaticity of habits suggests that the situation-attention-appraisal-response
process we have described can eventually be abridged. For instance, upon rising, many of us
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have a habit of brushing our teeth, and the urge to do so is independent of any reflective
consideration of the costs and benefits of dental hygiene. In this case, a particular situational
feature leads automatically to a particular response. One interpretation of habits, therefore, is
that they bypass the appraisal stage of impulse generation altogether. Maybe so, but in any
case, much more thinking and empirical work remains to be done to link self-control to
habit.
Finally, there remains the central question of whether it is the individual or society who
properly bears the onus of responsibility for enacting situational changes. Recognizing the
power of the situation has led us to propose that individuals take responsibility for choosing
or changing their circumstances to advantage. We can exercise self-control over our eating,
for example, by eating off of smaller plates and drinking out of narrower cups. However, a
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broader view may lead prescriptive recommendations in a different direction. It may be

naïve to think that individuals can do as much to influence their environments as, for
example, the state. Rather than asking individuals to steer away from fast food joints
offering bacon double cheeseburgers for a dollar each, perhaps we need restaurants to revise
their menus to make healthier choices more appealing or more salient (Mann, Tomiyama, &
Ward, 2015). Perhaps we need legislation taxing sugary soft drinks, especially when
dispensed in inhuman “super-sized” servings. The failure of such legislative efforts suggests
that many voters are suspicious of paternalistic governmental policies. Our own view is
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consonant with behavioral economists who advocate for psychologically wise social
structures (see Camerer, 2006; Loewenstein & O’Donoghue, 2006; Thaler & Sunstein,
2008). A completely laissez-faire approach to social policy may seem to maximize
individual freedom and welfare, but a more accurate understanding of human decision
making, especially when choices require the exercise of self-control, suggests that
externalizing the burden of self-control may in fact be in everyone’s self-interest.
Concluding Comment
War, as the ancient Chinese military genius Sun Tzu pointed out, is an art that relies more
upon wit and insight than on sheer strength, and which offers tremendously varied
possibilities for creatively and efficiently subduing the enemy. So it is with self-control, and
we have argued that we are well-served by keeping in view the full range of possible self-
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control strategies.
Given that contemporary scholars of self-control define self-control broadly, why isn’t more
attention given to the “less obvious” but highly effective forms of situational control that we
have emphasized here? We see three possible non-competing explanations. First, as noted
earlier, the subjective experience of effortful self-control can be misleading. Specifically,
feelings of strain associated with directly modulating our responses can draw our attention
away from the fundamental mechanics of self-control, leading us to assume, wrongly, that
the most obvious cases of self-control represent all cases of self-control (Fujita, 2011). In
one study of participants who were “debriefed” after being given situational cues to overeat
(e.g., large bowls rather than small ones), 21% denied having eaten more, 75% attributed
overeating to other reasons (e.g., hunger), and only 4% attributed their behavior to the
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situational cue. It seems that when regulating food intake, individuals tend to look inward
rather than outward for explanations—and manipulations—of their behavior.
Second, contemporary psychologists tend to be more interested in covert, mental events than
in overt, physical actions. Our most venerable forebears were similarly preoccupied. Indeed,
apart from a brief interlude in the mid-20th-century—Skinnerian behaviorism—the project
of psychology has been to understand what goes on in the mind more so than what goes on
in the world outside. In this regard, perhaps the cognitive revolution, which affirmed the
existence and causal importance of cognitive mechanisms, went a bit too far. If we ignore
the importance of external rewards, punishments, and discriminative stimuli, we have indeed
thrown out the baby with the bathwater. In particular, we may overlook the potential for
individuals to voluntarily initiate changes in their environments that in turn have desired
intrapsychic effects.
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A third factor has to do with methodology. When studying self-control in the laboratory, we
invariably contrive situations in which research participants are directly confronted with
temptation. For example, we sit research participants at a table with bowls of candy, asking
them to refrain from eating anything but the radishes that we have also placed there
(Baumeister, et al., 1998). But we do not allow them to get up and put the candy back into
the cabinet, which is exactly what they might do in their own homes. Likewise, when we
assess aspects of executive function, we do not allow individuals to write anything down,
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hold their fingers on the computer screen, or otherwise strategically approach the tasks at
hand. This stricture in the standard administration procedures may explain why correlations
between executive function and questionnaire measures of self-control are minute (e.g.,
Duckworth & Kern, 2011; Sharma, Markon, & Clark, 2014). For example, an individual
with subpar working memory, response inhibition, or task switching capacity may arrange
his life in ways that make encounters with temptation less likely. Indeed, there are well-
developed approaches to treating children and adults with especially poor executive function
that encourage exactly such proactive situational strategies (Ramsay & Rostain, 2008;
Strayhorn, 2002). The general insight that experimental situations force individuals into
situations they would neither choose nor accept in everyday life is not new (Diener, et al.,
1984), but the extent to which we as a field keep in mind (and practice) this basic insight is
debatable.
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We advocate a broad conceptualization of self-control that includes any voluntary action

intended to advance more enduringly valued goals over momentarily more alluring
alternatives. This includes tweaks we make to the world we live in, that is, using our minds
to control the worlds that will shape our actions. The cognitive revolution has tremendously
advanced our understanding of self-control (see Higgins, 2012; Mischel, et al., 1989), and it
is now clear that what people pay attention to and how they mentally represent their
situation matters a great deal. By comparison, we know very little about the way people
intentionally manage their environments to the same ends and, indeed, via the same
intrapsychic mechanisms. Wansink (2014) recently concluded: “One sentence summarizes
twenty-five years of my research: Becoming slim by design works better than trying to
become slim by willpower. That is, it’s easier to change your eating environment than to
change your mind… Yet while there are many solutions to mindless eating, most of them
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will go undiscovered because we don’t look for them” (p. 6). We share the conviction that
situational self-control strategies may be as effective as they are underappreciated. In self-
control, the enemy is within. Nevertheless, the most effective way to do battle with our inner
demons may be, in fact, by taking the battle outside of the mind.
Acknowledgments
This research was made possible by the National Institute on Aging (Grants K01-AG033182-02 and R24-
AG048081-01), the Character Lab, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation.
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Figure 1.
The process model of self-control posits that impulses develop in an iterative cycle,
beginning with the situation and ending with a response tendency. Panel (a) depicts this
cycle, and panel (b) illustrates an example of how a pleasure oriented impulse might develop
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in a situation-attention-appraisal-response sequence.
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Figure 2.
Within an impulse generation cycle, situational self-control strategies (shown in the light,
hatched boxes) precede intrapsychic strategies (shown in the dark, solid boxes).
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Figure 3.
Examples of situational and intrapsychic strategies that (a) weaken a pleasure-oriented
impulse or (b) strengthen a health-oriented impulse
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Table 1
Terminology for Dual Motives in Self-Control Conflicts by Date of Publication

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Short-term Long-term Citation(s)

Doer Planner Thaler and Shefrin (1981)
First-order desires Second-order desires Frankfurt (1988)
Single actions Patterns of actions Rachlin (1995); Myrseth and Fishbach (2009)
Hot system Cool system Metcalfe and Mischel (1999)
Reactive control Effortful control Eisenberg, Smith, Sadovsky, and Spinrad (2004)
Concrete, proximal goals Abstract, distal goals Fujita, Trope, Liberman, and Levin-Sagi (2006); Fujita (2011)
Affective Deliberative Loewenstein and O’Donoghue (2007)
Wants Shoulds Milkman, Rogers, and Bazerman (2008); Inzlicht, Berkman, and Elkins-Brown (in press)
Impulsive Reflective Hofmann, Friese and Strack (2009)
Incentive Salience Cognitive Holton & Berridge (2013); Dill & Holton (2014)
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Impulsigenic Volitional Duckworth and Steinberg (2015)

Desire Higher-order goal Kotabe and Hofmann (2015)
Note. We have arranged terminology by publication date, but in almost all cases, the cited authors have published multiple works invoking dual
systems across a span of years.
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Situational Strategies for Self-Control

Tamar Szabó Gendler, and

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

Conceiving of self-control as difficult is very much in keeping with the contemporary

Classical Perspectives: The Struggle of Self-Control

palpable feeling of being pulled in multiple directions by competing internal tendencies.

A preoccupation with effortful, in-the-moment, intrapsychic maneuvers for overcoming

commanding charioteer. According to Freud, successful development hinges upon the

Contemporary Perspectives: Beyond Effort

Two Defining Features of Self-Control—Whatever terms are used, this consensual

The Lure of Phenomenology—Mentally suppressing one prepotent impulse while

The phenomenology of directly regulating impulses helps to explain the ongoing

typically refer to the subjective experience of exercising self-control, contemporary

The Process Model of Self-Control

As contemporary conceptions of self-control make clear, there is a stunning multiplicity of

section, we present the process model of self-control, a theoretical framework which

Situational vs. Intrapsychic Strategies for Self-Control

When attending to temptations is unavoidable, we can use cognitive change strategies to

2006). Imagining ourselves as a third-party spectator, rather than a first-person combatant, in

Intrapsychic Mechanisms Underlying Situational Strategies

A third mechanism by which situational strategies operate is by restricting the set of

Empirical Evidence for Situational Strategies

A handful of compelling studies have recently documented that more self-controlled

Eating and Exercise

Studying and Academic Work

easier (Zimmerman, 1989). Dubbed “environmental structuring,” such actions include

Efficacy of Situational vs. Intrapsychic Strategies

straightforward test of this hypothesis would be an experiment in which individuals are

behavior (Bodrova & Leong, 2007; Prencipe & Zelazo, 2005).

Applications to Subareas within Psychology

strategies displace situational strategies as age-related improvements in executive function

Historically, personality researchers have focused on domain-general individual differences

differs as a function of context. The individual differences approach to studying self-control

The Bigger Picture: Longer Timescales and Broader Contexts

broader view may lead prescriptive recommendations in a different direction. It may be

We advocate a broad conceptualization of self-control that includes any voluntary action

Science. 2013; 8(2):155–172.10.1177/1745691612459518 [PubMed: 26172497]

1601.10.1177/0956797612474938 [PubMed: 23804960]

102(6):1318–1335.10.1037/a0026545 [PubMed: 22149456]

Loewenstein, G.; Haisley, E. The economist as therapist: Methodological ramifications of “light”

Trope Y, Fishbach A. Counteractive self-control in overcoming temptation. Journal of Personality and

Terminology for Dual Motives in Self-Control Conflicts by Date of Publication

Short-term Long-term Citation(s)

Impulsigenic Volitional Duckworth and Steinberg (2015)

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