TY - JOUR
T1 - Personal conflict impairs performance on an unrelated self-control task
T2 - Lingering costs of uncertainty and conflict
AU - Alquist, Jessica L.
AU - Baumeister, Roy F.
AU - McGregor, Ian
AU - Core, Tammy J.
AU - Benjamin, Ilil
AU - Tice, Dianne M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Inc.
Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2018/1
Y1 - 2018/1
N2 - People have the ability to make important choices in their lives, but deliberating about these choices can have costs. The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that writing about conflicted personal goals and values (conflict condition) would impair self-control on an unrelated subsequent task as compared to writing about clear personal goals and values (clarity condition). Personal conflict activates the behavioral inhibition system (BIS; Hirsh, Mar, & Peterson, 2012), which may make it harder for participants to successfully execute self-control. In this large (N = 337), pre-registered study participants in the conflict condition performed worse on anagrams than participants in the clarity condition, and the effect of condition on anagram performance was mediated by a subjective uncertainty measure of BIS activation. This suggests that BIS activation leads to poor self-control. Moreover, given that conflict is inherent in the exercise of self-control, results point to BIS activation as a mechanism for why initial acts of self-control impair self-control on subsequent, unrelated tasks.
AB - People have the ability to make important choices in their lives, but deliberating about these choices can have costs. The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that writing about conflicted personal goals and values (conflict condition) would impair self-control on an unrelated subsequent task as compared to writing about clear personal goals and values (clarity condition). Personal conflict activates the behavioral inhibition system (BIS; Hirsh, Mar, & Peterson, 2012), which may make it harder for participants to successfully execute self-control. In this large (N = 337), pre-registered study participants in the conflict condition performed worse on anagrams than participants in the clarity condition, and the effect of condition on anagram performance was mediated by a subjective uncertainty measure of BIS activation. This suggests that BIS activation leads to poor self-control. Moreover, given that conflict is inherent in the exercise of self-control, results point to BIS activation as a mechanism for why initial acts of self-control impair self-control on subsequent, unrelated tasks.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85030322737&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jesp.2017.09.010
DO - 10.1016/j.jesp.2017.09.010
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85030322737
VL - 74
SP - 157
EP - 160
JO - Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
JF - Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
SN - 0022-1031
ER -