Why is it that some people easily resist temptation in one area but fail miserably when trying to control the simplest urge in another? In the latest issue ofPsychological Science, researchers Michael Inzlicht of the University of Toronto Scarborough and colleague Jennifer N. Gutsell find the answer may come down to scarcity of cognitive resources.
Inzlicht and Gutsell examined the theory that the brain has a limited amount of resources to devote to resistance, and when those are all diverted to one task, sticking to an exercise plan for example, there is nothing left over to draw on when you need to resist something else--perhaps the half gallon of chocolate ice cream with your name on it.
In an experiment involving 31 female and nine male students, study participants were instructed to try to control their emotions while they watched a sad movie. Participants then rated their ability to suppress their feelings on a scale from one to nine and performed a task which required them to name the color names of colors were printed in (for example, saying "red" when presented with the word "blue" printed in red font).
Self-control, the ability to say no to something that we find appealing, is part of what are called executive controls and is governed by an area in the frontal lobe of our brain. In their paper Neural Signals for Self-Control Failure, Inzlicht and Gutsell state:
Analysis of the neural waveforms supported our prediction that the conflict monitoring/error-detection system would be weakened by the exercise of self-control. Individuals who suppressed their emotions during the movie showed attenuated ERNs (error related negativity) relative to control subjects.In other words, when the research team examined the electroencephalographic (EEG) results, they found that there truly was a limited amount of self-control to be had. People who were told to control their emotions when viewing the movie did indeed have a significantly more difficult time appropriately completing the color-naming task because their mental resources were devoted to suppressing sadness.
Expanding these results to embrace areas as diverse as dieting, drug abuse, or crime, the research begins to shed some light on why taxing circumstances make it harder to maintain self-control. For example, if someone spends all day controlling their anger at their economic situation, it could become almost impossible to control their desire to use drugs to escape from the reality of their situation. This research may help to form the basis of understanding why people often times trade one addiction for another.
Read more: Why it is Impossible for Some to ‘Just Say No’
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