Anssi Bwalya, Polaris Koi, Nicolas Chevalier and Hugh Rabagliati
Affiliation: The University of Edinburgh, The University of Turku, The University of Turku, The University of Edinburgh, The University of Edinburgh
Category: Psychology
Keywords: self-control, ADHD, metacognition, neurodiversity, lay beliefs, willpower, implicit theories
Date: Tuesday 2nd of September
Time: 18:00
Location: Gen. Henryk Dąbrowski Hall (006)
View the full session: Akrasia & Self-Control
Self-control allows people to align their behaviour with intention in the face of a motivational conflict: for example, when working on a demanding writing task amid tempting distractions. Research suggests that lay people have varying beliefs about the nature of self-control (see Francis & Job, 2018). These lay beliefs are associated with actual self-control performance in both laboratory tasks and real life. Self-control beliefs vary on at least two dimensions: whether self-control is seen as a limited versus unlimited resource in the short term and whether self-control is seen as fixed versus malleable in the long term.
Research so far has typically used ambiguous “you” statements when measuring self-control beliefs (e.g., “After a strenuous mental activity, your energy is depleted and you must rest to get it refuelled again.”). However, people’s beliefs might differ depending on whose self-control they are thinking about. Firstly, people might hold different beliefs about their own versus other people’s self-control. Secondly, beliefs about other person’s self-control might depend on additional information they have about the person. For example, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a well-known neuropsychiatric diagnosis characterised by attention difficulties, hyperactivity, impulsivity. These traits may create additional challenges for self-control. Indeed, ADHD has even been described as the paradigmatic disorder of self-control (Eme, 2016; but see Koi, 2020). Hence, people’s beliefs about the limitedness and malleability of self-control might change if they are thinking about someone with an ADHD diagnosis.
Moreover, differences in lay beliefs might be partly explained by differences in what people mean by self-control. While traditional conceptions of self-control have often emphasized effortful inhibition of unwanted behaviour (see Bermúdez et al., 2021), more recent research suggests that self-control is not a single process but can take many different forms (Duckworth et al., 2016; Fujita et al., 2020; Milyavskaya et al., 2019). Some self-control strategies are more internal (e.g., response inhibition, cognitive reappraisal), some more situational (e.g., situation selection and modification). A multifaceted view of self-control, which also encompasses the use of situational strategies, might encourage people to believe that self-control is not a limited resource and that there are things people can do to enhance their self-control.
In this preregistered study, we examined whether people hold different beliefs about their own versus other people’s self-control. For measuring people’s beliefs about other people’s self-control, we combined our questionnaire with short descriptions of fictional people. We further tested whether beliefs about the short-term limitedness and long-term malleability of other person’s self-control are affected by information that this person has an ADHD diagnosis. Finally, we also examined whether self-control beliefs and/or an ADHD diagnosis are associated with the self-reported use and self-perceived demandingness and effectiveness of different types of self-control strategies. We collected online questionnaire data from UK participants with (n=91) and without (n=106) an ADHD diagnosis. Recruiting was done via Prolific. The ADHD group consisted of people who had reported that they have ADHD and scored above the cut-off score in the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS; Schweitzer et al., 2001). Similarly, the non-ADHD group consisted of people who had reported that they do not have ADHD and scored below scored the cut-off score in the ASRS.
As expected, people’s self-control beliefs differed depending on whose self-control they were thinking about, and judgments about other people’s self-control were affected by diagnostic information. If people were told that a fictional person had an ADHD diagnosis, they assumed that this person’s self-control is more limited and fixed (p-values <.001 for all three self-control belief subscales; partial η2 estimates between .17 and .39). Interestingly, people associated ADHD with more limited and fixed self-control regardless of whether they themselves had an ADHD diagnosis. By contrast, the gender of the described person did not affect self-control beliefs. Furthermore, our exploratory analyses suggested that people with an ADHD diagnosis also saw their own self-control as more limited and fixed than people without ADHD.
Contrary to our hypotheses, less limited and more malleable beliefs about self-control were not associated with the self-reported use of situational strategies. Moreover, we found no significant differences between the ADHD and non-ADHD groups in how effective and demanding different types of strategies were perceived to be. However, these analyses relied on general self-reports at a single time point. Thus, it was not possible to verify how accurately our participants evaluated their own strategy use or the effectiveness or demandingness of each strategy. Additionally, even if people use certain strategies, they still might not count these as examples of self-control (see Bermúdez et al., 2021). This could partly explain why we found no association between self-control beliefs and self-reported strategy use.
In sum, rather than holding general, context-independent beliefs about self-control, people appear to express different views about the short-term limitedness and long-term malleability of self-control depending on whose self-control they are talking about. One factor that affects these beliefs is an ADHD diagnosis. Future research should further examine this effect. For example, studies could test whether these differences in self-control beliefs also affect the type of advice people would give to a person with versus without an ADHD diagnosis in different types of self-control situations, and whether beliefs about self-control are associated with beliefs about responsibility. With regard to the association between ADHD and people’s beliefs of their own self-control, it is important to study whether differences in self-control beliefs have broader implications to people’s sense of agency. Moreover, considering the limitations of cross-sectional self-report measures in examining self-control strategy use, more research is needed on the potential associations between self-control beliefs, ADHD, and self-control performance. This research on lay conceptions of self-control can eventually inform theories of self-control in both psychology and philosophy.