Verified by 
Self-Control
What Self-Control Really Means, and Why It Matters
It may really be about putting yourself in the right situations.
Updated May 2, 2024 Reviewed by Pam Dailey
Key points
- Many people struggle to stick to their New Year's resolutions.
- Psychologists used to think self-control depended on having strong willpower.
- This idea has been mostly discredited by recent large-scale studies.
- Successful self-control is more about putting yourself in situations where it's easy to avoid temptation.
Every year, nearly half of all Americans start the year with a resolution to change something about their lives. People make goals to try to be healthier and happier versions of themselves. But most of these resolutions end in failure—one study found that fewer than 10 percent of resolutions ended in success.
Why do so many New Year's resolutions fail?
Until recently, psychologists believed that self-control—the ability to stick to and ultimately achieve long-term goals—worked like a muscle. Success was about whether you had enough willpower to achieve your goals. But new research suggests that keeping our resolutions depends more on the situations we choose to put ourselves in.
The Muscle Theory of Self-Control
The muscle theory of self-control argues that people have a limited ability to exert control over their own behavior. When you use your self-control (for example, by forcing yourself to go for a run or choosing a healthy meal) you tire yourself out. Then, when you are in this tired state (called “ego-depletion” by psychologists), you are more likely to give in to temptations. As part of this metaphor, using your self-control will tire you out in the short term but can gradually improve your strength of control in the long run.
This theory of self-control implies that success depends on strength of willpower (and strength of character). Succeeding in your resolutions requires being (or becoming) “strong.” At the same time, there’s also an implied judgment of those who fail to stick to their resolutions. People who are “weak” are less likely to stick to their diets or save for retirement.
For decades, the muscle theory of self-control was popular among psychologists. Hundreds of papers argued that it could explain how people make decisions involving health, social relationships, and financial behavior. The muscle theory also showed up in pop science books throughout the 2000s and 2010s.
But, in the past few years, researchers have become less confident about this theory. Multiple large-scale experiments failed to find clear support for it (Hagger et al., 2016; Vohs et al., 2021). These experiments, which involved dozens of research teams collecting data and thousands of participants, found that (at the very least) the effects of self-control depletion were much less robust than the previous literature suggested.
Although some researchers still believe in the idea of self-control as a muscle, many would agree (at least) that the evidence is much less solid than it seemed. Critics argue that there is no solid support for the theory. This means that succeeding in your New Year's resolution is not really about how “strong” (or “weak”) your willpower is. Instead, it’s about the situations you put yourself into.
Self-Control Is About Choosing the Right Situations
While psychologists have become less interested in the idea that self-control is a muscle, they are more interested in how it is shaped by the features of situations.
Some situations make it very hard to stick to our resolutions. Consider two people who are trying to spend less money at Starbucks this year. The one who lives across the street from a Starbucks is going to have a much harder time than the one who lives over 30 minutes away from the nearest Starbucks.
For these two people, success (or failure) has very little to do with strength of character or willpower. Instead, success is about putting yourself in the right situation (Nordgren, Harreveld, & van der Pligt, 2009). Want to save more money? Then avoid situations where you will be strongly tempted to spend it.
People who tend to stick to their resolutions do so because they are in situations where following a resolution is relatively easy (and giving in to temptation is relatively hard).
How We Think About Self-Control Matters
The way that we think about self-control can have a big impact on our behavior.
The situational view of self-control suggests that the best way to stick to your resolution is to choose the right situations. Focus on avoiding (rather than overcoming) temptation. It also suggests that if your resolution does fail, it’s probably not because of your own personal weakness. Instead, you were the right person in the wrong situation. And, if you are one of the lucky few who do succeed in keeping to your resolutions, don't pat yourself on the back too much. The situation deserves a lot of the credit.
Facebook image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock
LinkedIn image: Lysenko Andrii/Shutterstock
References
Hagger, M. S., Chatzisarantis, N. L., Alberts, H., Anggono, C. O., Batailler, C., Birt, A. R., ... & Zwienenberg, M. (2016). A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(4), 546-573.
Nordgren, L. F., Harreveld, F. V., & Pligt, J. V. D. (2009). The restraint bias: How the illusion of self-restraint promotes impulsive behavior. Psychological Science, 20(12), 1523-1528.
Vohs, K. D., Schmeichel, B. J., Lohmann, S., Gronau, Q. F., Finley, A. J., Ainsworth, S. E., ... & Albarracin, D. (2021). A multisite preregistered paradigmatic test of the ego-depletion effect. Psychological Science, 32(10), 1566-1581.
