What’s inside is all that counts? The contours of everyday thinking about self-control
Review of Philosophy and Psychology:1-23 (forthcoming)
Abstract
Does self-control require willpower? The question cuts to the heart of a debate about whether self-control is identical with some psychological process internal to the agents or not. Noticeably absent from these debates is systematic evidence about the folk-psychological category of self-control. Here, we present the results of two behavioral studies (N = 296) that indicate the structure of everyday thinking about self-control. In Study 1, participants rated the degree to which different strategies to respond to motivational conflict exemplify self-control. Participants distinguished between intra-psychic and externally-scaffolded strategies and judged that the former exemplified self-control more than the latter. In Study 2, participants provided various solutions to manage motivational conflict and rated their proposals on effectiveness. Participants produced substantially more intra-psychic strategies, rated them as more effective, and advised them at a higher rate than externally-scaffolded strategies. Taken together, these results suggest that while people recognize a plurality of strategies as genuine instances of self-control, purely internal exercises of self-control are considered more prototypical than their externally-scaffolded counterparts. This implies a hierarchical structure for the folk psychological category of self-control. The concept encompasses a variety of regulatory strategies and organizes these strategies along a hierarchical continuum, with purely intra-psychic strategies at the center and scaffolded strategies in the periphery.Author Profiles
DOI
10.1007/s13164-021-00573-2
My notes
Similar books and articles
Willpower is a form of, but not synonymous with, self-control.Ariella Kristal & Julian Zlatev - 2021 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44.
In the Thick of Moral Motivation.Wesley Buckwalter & John Turri - 2017 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (2):433-453.
Self-control, willpower and the problem of diminished motivation.Thomas D. Connor - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (3):783-796.
Is Moral Internalism Supported by Folk Intuitions?Caj Strandberg & Fredrik Björklund - 2013 - Philosophical Psychology 26 (3):319-335.
Philosophical Questions about the Nature of Willpower.Chandra Sekhar Sripada - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (9):793–805.
Charting Control‐Space: Comments on Susan Hurley's ‘Animal Action in the Space of Reasons’.Kim Sterelny - 2003 - Mind and Language 18 (3):257-266.
Motivational internalism and folk intuitions.Gunnar Björnsson, John Eriksson, Caj Strandberg, Ragnar Francén Olinder & Fredrik Björklund - 2015 - Philosophical Psychology 28 (5):715-734.
The Importance of Being Understood: Folk Psychology as Ethics.Adam Morton - 2002 - L8ndon: Routledge.
The implications of ego depletion for the ethics and politics of manipulation.Michael Cholbi - 2014 - In C. Coons M. E. Weber (ed.), Manipulation:Theory and Practice. Oxford University Press. pp. 201-220.
The Psychology of Human Control: A General Theory of Purposeful Behavior.Myles I. Friedman - 1991 - Praeger.
Charting control-space: Comments on Susan Hurley's Animal Action in the Space of Reasons.Kim Sterelny - 2003 - Mind and Language 18 (3):257-265.
Is Willpower Just Another Way of Tying Oneself to the Mast?Tillmann Vierkant - 2015 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6 (4):779-790.
Analytics
Added to PP
2021-07-16
Downloads
228 (#55,050)
6 months
39 (#34,034)
2021-07-16
Downloads
228 (#55,050)
6 months
39 (#34,034)
Historical graph of downloads
Author Profiles
Citations of this work
Modeling and corpus methods in experimental philosophy.Louis Chartrand - 2022 - Philosophy Compass 17 (6).
Will-powered: Synchronic regulation is the difference maker for self-control.Zachary C. Irving, Jordan Bridges, Aaron Glasser, Juan Pablo Bermúdez & Chandra Sripada - 2022 - Cognition 225 (C):105154.
Diachronic and Externally-Scaffolded Self-Control in Addiction.Federico Burdman - forthcoming - Manuscrito.