Procrastination
Resisting Temptation: Short-term Gain & Long-term Pain of External Control
I can resist everything except temptation.
Posted September 30, 2008
We all get tempted away from the task at hand. Who resists this temptation? Does external control help us resist temptation? How well we resist temptation and the effects of external control depend on aspects of our personality.
Nicola Baumann and Julius Kuhl (University of Osnabrück) explored self-regulation and temptation resistance in a novel experimental study published in the Journal of Personality. Their study of self-regulation combined motivational and personality approaches in psychology to predict resistance to temptation. To understand their study, the results and what we could learn from this, I first need to define some key terms.
External control vs. Autonomy
Previously in this blog , I have written about the research of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, and their work on Self-Determination Theory. Baumann and Kuhl draw on this theory, particularly the notion that autonomy is a fundamental human need. In short, autonomy-supportive conditions are assumed to help us satisfy this basic need, whereas conditions that involve external control undermine this need for autonomous independence and our well-being. In fact, a great deal of research has shown that externally controlled events decrease performance on complex and creative tasks, and, more generally, lead people to take on tasks or regulations without accepting them as their own (something called introjection). As such, external control may have two effects. On the one hand, it may help individuals suppress their own needs at the moment to get a task done, on the other, it may undermine the development of self-regulatory abilities as the individual relies too much on external pressure to effect self-regulation. The question is, are there individual differences that might affect this?
Personality Systems Interaction: State- vs. action-orientation
To address the potential for individual differences, the authors considered a personality trait known as state- vs. action orientation. Decision-related State Orientation (SOD) "describes the inability to self-generate positive affect that is needed to act quickly upon one's decisions, whereas Decision-related Action Orientation (AOD) is characterized by self-motivation and initiative" (p. 446). You can see why these two individual differences were chosen as possible moderators of the effect of external control.
Given these definitions, we might expect that people who score high on State Orientation (SOD) would rely on external control to make up for their lack of initiative. Indeed, research has shown that state-oriented students without external motivation carried out fewer leisure activities than they had planned - no get up and go, to get up and go! (Note: If you want to read more about state and action orientation, see my previous blog on some research we conducted relating this individual difference to procrastination.
Their Study
This is a very interesting and complex experimental study that involved participants completing a computer-based task in which speed and accuracy earned them money as a reward. At the same time, there was a distracting task (an amusing on-screen event where two monkeys had a climbing competition, and if the "bad" monkey won it took money out of the participants' accumulated funds, whereas a "good" monkey win resulted in a net increase in money). As with many studies I summarize here on the blog, the details, although important in terms of the science, cannot be summarized here (I think you'd just stop reading!). Suffice it to say that the experimental design allowed these researchers to test the two "types" of personalities (i.e., action vs state oriented individuals) in two conditions (i.e., external control directions vs. autonomy-promoting directions for the task) while they dealt with the temptation of a distracting event.
I think it's important to summarize their hypotheses. In the authors' words:
"The degree to which external control helps one to stick to a boring task despite tempting distracters was expected to depend on a person's action control disposition. Action-oriented individuals use positive self-motivating strategies to realize their intentions (‘I am capable of finding the pleasant aspects of an initially unpleasant activity'). They prefer an autonomy-oriented mode of volition (self-regulation) defined as a ‘democratic' consideration of many different needs and preferences . . . these individuals do not depend on external sources of regulation (e.g., encouragement by an interaction partner or instructions exerting control) because they can self-regulate their feelings and actions. Conversely, state-oriented individuals have difficulty acting upon their decisions. Due to their inability to self-generate positive affect, they often use negative self-motivating strategies (‘In order to motivate myself, I imagine what would happen if I didn't finish the task on time') and self-suppressive modes of self-regulation . . . Presumably, self-suppression helps resist temptation because this mode shuts off any competing action tendencies emanating from the self" (pp. 447-448). One way to generate self-suppression is to have external demands for control. In this case, they predicted that state-oriented individuals would more effectively resist distractions if they were in an externally controlled condition.
What they found
Consistent with their hypothesis, state-oriented participants in the externally controlled condition did not demonstrate a decrease in their task performance due to the distracter, however these individuals did have a significant decrease in task speed when in the autonomy-supportive condition. In short, the state-oriented participants relied on and benefited from the external control conditions and were distracted (could not resist temptation) when this external control was absent. For action-oriented participants, resistance to the temptation to watch the monkey race was not affected by the instruction condition. Their self-regulatory abilities maintained their performance irrespective of the context, however state-oriented individuals showed deficits in self-regulation when external control was not provided to support their task focus.
What this means
There are two very important issues raised in these findings.
First, given that state-oriented participants were able to resist temptation under conditions of external control but had poor resistance in autonomy-supportive conditions, it is important to consider this individual difference when expecting someone to exercise self-control. State-orientation is an individual difference that is a liability to self-regulation.
When self-regulatory abilities are low, situational factors become more important. In this case, state-oriented individuals need external sources of regulation to overcome their deficits in self-motivation. Baumann and Kuhl argue that this finding may be explained by self-suppression. As long as the situation maintains the external control, no competing action tendency can emanate from the self (these are suppressed). Of course, when self-suppression is removed, competing tendencies within the individual may take the person off task again, because there is a lack of internal mechanisms to self-regulate.
Second, although there is a short-term benefit to external control for state-oriented individuals, the results also indicate that there may be a long-term cost associated with external control and self-suppression. As the authors note, "Although state-oriented participants profited from control when trying to resist a motivationally relevant distracter, they experienced negative consequences of control in the long run . . . introducing a task in an authoritative [controlling] manner resulted in self-suppression that outlasted task completion" (pp. 466-467; emphasis added). In other words, even when the participants were allowed to stop, the state-oriented participants were unable to refocus on self-generated goals and desires. In contrast to action-oriented participants, the state-oriented participants did not behave according to their emotional preferences, in fact, they seem to lose access to their personal preferences because they suppressed these as a strategy to self-regulate.
Closing thoughts
Interestingly, Baumann and Kuhl close their paper by noting that their results support the assumption of Self-Determination Theory about external control having negative consequences in the long run. They take this further by noting that the self-suppression mechanism used by state-oriented individuals in the presence of external control actually leads to alienation from personal preferences. This alienation is a psychological cost factor associated with the short-term benefits of external-control facilitated self-control.
Alienation from one's own preferences speaks to an earlier blog topic, one that I have emphasized as being extremely important for understanding procrastination. Alienation from self in this regard may be regarded as a form of "bad faith." However, in this case it's not that we're actively trying to deceive ourselves and escape our freedom to choose. Instead, our over-reliance on external control to maintain self-control actually alienates us from our sense of self, our emotional preferences and self-generated goals.
The ultimate issue seems to be one of seeking autonomously motivated goals in our lives, even though we may need to draw on external control at times when self-regulation leaves us short. For some, those defined by high scores on state-orientation for example, this will be a long-term process of change, as they'll be working against a personality disposition that represents a liability to self-regulation. It doesn't mean that self-regulation is impossible, it's just more difficult, and may require the use of more conscious strategies to effect autonomous control and action. In the end, if we choose the short-term gain of relying solely on external control, whether this be as individuals or as parents or teachers trying to influence and motivate children, we may be only setting ourselves up for some long-term pain.
References
Baumann, N., & Kuhl, J. (2005). How to resist temptation: The effects of external control versus autonomy support on self-regulatory dynamics. Journal of Personality, 73, 443-470.
Blunt, A., & Pychyl, T. A. (2005). Project systems of procrastinators: a personal project-analytic and action control perspective. Personality and Individual Differences, 1771-1780.
Blunt, A., & Pychyl, T.A. (1998). Volitional action and inaction in the lives of undergraduate students: State orientation, boredom and procrastination. Personality and Individual Differences, 24,837-846.
