Self-Control

Controlling Responses

• %%Physical Restraint:%% you physically manipulate the environment to prevent the occurrence of some problem behavior

  • covering nails with bandaids
  • removing access to cell phone while studying
  • deleting social media from phone

• %%Depriving and Satiating:%% deprive/satiate yourself, thereby altering the extent to which a certain event can act as a reinforcer

  • no naps during the day so you sleep longer at night

• %%Doing Something Else:%% performing an alternate behavior

  • no use of any distraction in the bed - only used for sleeping
  • no using phone in bed - may not use it while lying down

• %%Self-Reinforcement and Self-Punishment%%

  \n \n Risks of using Self-Control

• if other people are aware of your plan (social consequence) you are more likely to complete your goal

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Self-Control

• Skinner on Self-Control

  • self control is not willpower but conflicting outcomes
  • two types of responses:
  • controlling response alters frequency of controlled response
  • physical restraint manipulates environment to prevent occurrence
  • depriving and satiating: utilize motivating operations of deprivation and satiation to alter extent to which certain event can act as reinforcer
  • doing something else: prevent engaging in certain behaviors by performing alternate behavior
  • self-reinforcement and self-punishment: reinforce your own behavior. less likely to produce consequences for yourself; use social consequences to keep accountable

• Self-Control as a Temporal Issue

  • behavior more heavily influenced by immediate consequences rather than delayed ones
  • later consequences are less certain than sooner consequences
  • delay of gratification: choosing a larger later reward over smaller sooner reward VS
  • impulsiveness: choosing smaller sooner over larger later reward

• Mischel’s Delay of Gratification Paradigm

  • extent to which children avoided paying attention to reward had significant effect on their resistance to temptation
  • manner in which children thought about rewards made a difference
  • children who devised tactics enabling them to wait for preferred reward were, at 17, more cognitively and socially competent

• Ainslie-Rachlin Model of Self-Control

  • preference between smaller sooner / larger later rewards can shift over time
  • get less impulsive when you get older
  • grand plans at night and give up by next day
  • value of reward increases more sharply as delay decreases / reward become imminent
  • graduating hs - reward was greater senior yr than it was freshman yr
  • some of us can delay gratification better than others
  • innate differences in impulsivity
  • individual differences in impulsivity
  • less impulsive after experience
  • availability of other reinforcement reduces impulsiveness
  • maintain responding for distant goal by setting up explicit series of subgoals
  • make a commitment (precommitment) response
  • carried out at early point in time
  • serves either to eliminate or greatly reduce the value of upcoming temptation
  • behavioral contract

• Small-but-Cumulative Effects Model

  • each individual choice on self-control task has small but cumulative effect on our likelihood of obtaining desired long-term outcome; helps explain who self-control is difficult
  • to improve self-control:
  • make salient that individual choices are not isolated events, but rather parts of a whole
  • have a relapse prevention plan
  • establish rules that clearly distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors

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• Is self-control a limited resource?

  • ego-depletion model says yes
  • cognitive load is a related concept

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