Children are more likely to control their immediate impulses when they and a peer rely on each other to get a reward than when they’re left to their own willpower, new research indicates.
APS Past President Walter Mischel reflects on the classic marshmallow test and other highlights of his storied career.
Watching people’s hands as they choose between long-term and short-term options offers a new approach to studying self-control.
When choosing between indulgent and healthy foods, your pick may depend on what other foods sit nearby on the grocery shelf.
Those participants who were told their group members were patient ended up waiting almost twice as long for a second marshmallow as the others
Succeeding at “studenting” may require as much self-control as intelligence.
A new research replication project, involving 24 labs and over 2100 participants, failed to reproduce findings from a previous study that suggested that self-control is a depletable resource.
Linking tasks that we intend to complete to distinctive cues that we’ll encounter at the right place and the right time may help us remember to follow through.
Longitudinal data from thousands of participants show that childhood measures of self-discipline predict everything from personal income to the pace of physiological aging in adulthood.
The idea that natural urges “die down” with time seems intuitive, but research shows that it’s being reminded about what not to do, not the passage of time, that actually helps young children control their impulsive behavior.
Research findings suggest that memory encoding and self-control share and vie for common cognitive resources: inhibiting our response to a stimulus temporarily tips resources away from encoding new memories.
Children with high self-control -- who are typically better able to pay attention, persist with difficult tasks, and suppress inappropriate or impulsive behaviors -- are much more likely to find and retain employment as adults.
A panel of regulation experts explains how the capacity develops from infancy through adolescence.
