Romans 12:2 · Subject · Self-control
Self-control and the Brain
Nine studies published from 1998 to 2021 measured self-control as a trait, in daily life, as a limited resource and in the brain.
People with more self-control hold themselves back less often in daily life than people with less, and researchers have asked what does the work instead.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
- Books
- Romans, Proverbs, 2 Timothy
- Hold in memory
- 2 Timothy 1:7
Summary
Scripture commands self-control and gives it as a gift of God, and psychology measures it as a difference between people. The findings agree with Proverbs in part, since people with more self-control tend to fare better. They also correct two popular pictures of it, the strong-willed person who is always fighting temptation and the will as a store that runs dry. The studies show associations and test claims, so they stand beside the command as witnesses and never as its ground.
- Pooling 102 studies of 32,648 people, a review found a modest link, small to medium in size, between trait self-control and behaviour (de Ridder and colleagues, 2012).
- In six studies of 2,274 people, good habits were an important factor in why people with more self-control fare well (Galla and Duckworth, 2015).
- Two preregistered tests in 23 and 36 laboratories found no reliable sign that self-control is a limited resource used up by exertion (Hagger and colleagues, 2016; Vohs and colleagues, 2021).
- In one imaging study of dieters, the brains of those who chose the healthier food counted health beside taste in valuing it (Hare, Camerer and Rangel, 2009).
What Scripture Says of Ruling Oneself
A proverb and a letter of Paul set the rule of one's own spirit among the strengths God gives and asks for.
Self-control is the rule of oneself under God, and Paul names it last among the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:23. Psychologists have studied the same strength for more than twenty years, and a reader who meets their findings needs to know which of them hold and how far each one reaches.
The question this subject answers is what that research has found about self-control and how much weight it bears beside Scripture. The answer sets each study beside its limit, names the evidence that would weaken each finding, and gives the holders on each side where researchers still disagree.
He who is slow to anger is better than a warrior, and he who controls his temper is greater than one who captures a city.The proverb ranks the rule of one's own temper above the taking of a city, so Scripture counts self-control a strength.
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control.Paul names self-control as part of the spirit God has given, so in Scripture the strength the studies measure is a gift.
Nine Studies Side by Side
Three studies measure the trait, two follow daily life, three test the limited-resource account and one scans the brain.
The nine studies range from four experiments in one laboratory to a review of 102 studies, and each finding reaches only as far as its design.
| Study | Who was studied | What was found | The limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven and Tice, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1998 | Volunteers in four experiments; in the first, some had to eat radishes and leave tempting chocolates alone | Those who had resisted the chocolates quit faster on unsolvable puzzles than those who had not had to control their eating | The account built on these experiments was later tested in many laboratories at once. |
| Tangney, Baumeister and Boone, Journal of Personality, 2004 | People in two large investigations, scored on a new scale of self-control | Higher scores went with a higher grade point average, better adjustment, less binge eating and alcohol abuse, and better relationships | The design is correlational, and the abstract gives neither the sample sizes nor the number of items. |
| Hare, Camerer and Rangel, Science, 2009 | Dieters making real choices about food while their brains were scanned | Activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) tracked a food's value, counting health and taste in self-controllers and taste alone in the others; activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) rose when they used self-control | The abstract gives no sample size, and the finding concerns choices of food alone. |
| Moffitt and colleagues, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011 | Two cohorts: 1,000 children followed from birth to 32, and 500 pairs of siblings | Self-control in childhood predicted adult health, substance dependence, finances and offending on a gradient, and the sibling with less of it fared worse | The design is observational, and the abstract gives no effect size. |
| de Ridder and colleagues, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2012 | A meta-analysis of 102 studies with 32,648 people in all | A small to medium positive effect of self-control on behaviour | The link varied widely across areas of life, and it was stronger for imagined behaviour than for actual behaviour. |
| Hofmann, Baumeister, Förster and Vohs, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012 | 205 adults who wore beepers for a week and gave 7,827 reports of desires | Most desires caused no conflict, and those that clashed with other goals met resistance with uneven success | The reports were the participants' own, taken over a single week. |
| Galla and Duckworth, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2015 | Six studies with 2,274 people in all | Beneficial habits mediated the link between self-control and positive life outcomes | The designs are mostly correlational. |
| Hagger and colleagues, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2016 | 23 laboratories running one preregistered protocol with 2,141 people in all | An ego-depletion effect of d = 0.04, its 95 percent interval running from minus 0.07 to 0.15 and so including zero | One protocol was tested in every laboratory. |
| Vohs and colleagues, Psychological Science, 2021 | 36 laboratories using two procedures with 3,531 people in all | The planned test found d = 0.06, not significant; with the exclusion rules set aside, an exploratory analysis found d = 0.08 | The planned and the exploratory analyses point in different directions. |
Galla and Duckworth, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2015, Hagger and colleagues, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2016, Vohs and colleagues, Psychological Science, 2021
What the Trait Predicts
Studies of self-control as a lasting difference between people tie it to grades, health, relationships and conduct.
Tangney, Baumeister and Boone built their scale to measure how people differ in self-control. They also asked whether a great deal of self-control does harm, and their tests for curvilinearity "failed to indicate any drawbacks of so-called overcontrol". The links they found "remained after controlling for social desirability", the wish to give a good impression of oneself on a questionnaire.
The review of de Ridder and colleagues found the link about the same for doing what a person wants to do and for holding back from what he does not. It was stronger for automatic behaviour, the acts done by routine without a deliberate choice.
Habit More Than Restraint
A week of beeper reports and six studies of habit asked how self-control works on ordinary days.
Hofmann and colleagues asked adults at random moments what they desired and whether they acted on it. They describe desires as "frequent, variable in intensity, and largely unproblematic". Company also changed the outcome, since the presence of others who had already acted on the same desire moved what a person did.
Galla and Duckworth set out from a puzzle in earlier work, that "self-control is associated with less inhibition in daily life". On their reading the beneficial habits, "perhaps more so than effortful inhibition", are what join self-control to its good results.
But reject irreverent, silly myths. Instead, train yourself for godliness.Paul tells Timothy to train himself for godliness, so Scripture speaks of growth in godliness as training kept up over time.
The likeness between this training and the habits of the studies is an inference, and the studies make no claim about godliness.
Does Self-control Run Down with Use?
The account of self-control as a limited resource came from a paper of 1998 and was tested in 2016 and 2021.
Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven and Tice reported four experiments in 1998 and concluded "that the self's capacity for active volition is limited and that a range of seemingly different, unrelated acts share a common resource". The title of their paper named the tired state ego depletion.
The abstract of the 2016 test records that a meta-analysis of ego-depletion experiments had found a medium-sized effect and that later meta-analyses had questioned its size and its existence. Hagger and colleagues then had many laboratories follow one protocol registered in advance.
Baumeister and Vohs answered in the same issue of the journal with a reply of two pages under the title "Misguided Effort With Elusive Implications".
Vohs, an author of the 2016 reply, led a second test across many sites, so the account's defenders were among those who tested it. The authors report that their data were "4 times more likely under the null than the alternative hypothesis".
Self-control in the Brain
One imaging study watched dieters choose between foods and named two regions of the brain at work.
The two regions in the table both lie at the front of the brain. The vmPFC sits behind the eyes, and the DLPFC lies on the side. In the dieters who chose well, the activity of the second region moved with the activity of the first.
The abstract leaves open whether the finding holds beyond choices of food and whether this activity causes the choice or only accompanies it.
What Would Weaken Each Finding
Each finding rests on its design, and each names the kind of new evidence that would weaken it.
The findings on the trait would weaken if the links shrank toward zero once home background and ability were fully counted. They would also weaken if the scales were found to measure general conscientiousness or the wish to look good in place of self-control.
The limited-resource account would be restored only by a preregistered test in many laboratories that found a clear effect. The habit account would weaken if experiments that build habits in people failed to improve their outcomes. The imaging finding would weaken if larger samples and other temptations did not reproduce it.
Where Researchers Disagree
Two questions divide researchers, and under each the holders of every reading and of its strongest objection are named.
Is ego depletion real?Baumeister and colleagues; Hagger and colleagues; Vohs and colleagues
The authors of the 1998 study hold to their account of a resource that runs down. Hagger and colleagues answer with their preregistered test, whose effect could not be told from zero.
Hagger and colleagues read their result as showing the effect much smaller than first claimed or absent. Vohs and colleagues answer in part, since their full sample showed a small effect in an exploratory analysis and the effect grew with reported fatigue.
Does self-control work by habit or by restraint?Galla and Duckworth; de Ridder and colleagues; Hofmann and colleagues
Galla and Duckworth hold that habit does much of the work, and the 2012 meta-analysis of de Ridder and colleagues supports them. The strongest objection comes from Hofmann and colleagues, whose participants still met desires that clashed with other goals by resisting them.
Hofmann and colleagues found effortful restraint at work in those clashes, and the experiments of Baumeister and colleagues rested on it. The strongest objection is the puzzle with which Galla and Duckworth begin.
The Command Rests on God
The studies bear on the command only as far as what can be measured across groups of people, and a finding about groups can be revised by the next study. The command to be self-controlled comes from God, and it would stand if every study here were overturned.
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.Paul ties the mastery of desire to walking by the Spirit, so the strength to rule oneself comes from God.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven and Tice, Ego depletion: is the active self a limited resource?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, no. 5 (1998): 1252 to 1265.
- Tangney, Baumeister and Boone, High self-control predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success, Journal of Personality 72, no. 2 (2004): 271 to 324.
- Hare, Camerer and Rangel, Self-control in decision-making involves modulation of the vmPFC valuation system, Science 324, no. 5927 (2009): 646 to 648.
- Moffitt and colleagues, A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 7 (2011): 2693 to 2698.
- de Ridder and colleagues, Taking stock of self-control: a meta-analysis of how trait self-control relates to a wide range of behaviors, Personality and Social Psychology Review 16, no. 1 (2012): 76 to 99.
- Hofmann, Baumeister, Förster and Vohs, Everyday temptations: an experience sampling study of desire, conflict, and self-control, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102, no. 6 (2012): 1318 to 1335.
- Galla and Duckworth, More than resisting temptation: beneficial habits mediate the relationship between self-control and positive life outcomes, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 109, no. 3 (2015): 508 to 525.
- Hagger and colleagues, A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect, Perspectives on Psychological Science 11, no. 4 (2016): 546 to 573.
- Baumeister and Vohs, Misguided Effort With Elusive Implications, Perspectives on Psychological Science 11, no. 4 (2016): 574 to 575.
- Vohs and colleagues, A multisite preregistered paradigmatic test of the ego-depletion effect, Psychological Science 32, no. 10 (2021): 1566 to 1581.
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