Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015 Oct;9(10):511-524.
doi: 10.1111/spc3.12200. Epub 2015 Oct 5.

Six Questions for the Resource Model of Control (and Some Answers)

Affiliations

Six Questions for the Resource Model of Control (and Some Answers)

Michael Inzlicht et al. Soc Personal Psychol Compass. 2015 Oct.

Abstract

The resource model of self-control casts self-control as a capacity that relies on some limited resource that exhausts with use. The model captured our imagination and brought much-needed attention on an important yet neglected psychological construct. Despite its success, basic issues with the model remain. Here, we ask six questions: (i) Does self-control really wane over time? (ii) Is ego depletion a form of mental fatigue? (iii) What is the resource that is depleted by ego depletion? (iv) How can changes in motivation, perception, and expectations replenish an exhausted resource? (v) Has the revised resource model unwittingly become a model about motivation? (vi) Do self-control exercises increase self-control? By providing some answers to these questions - including conducting a meta-analysis of the self-control training literature - we highlight how the resource model needs to be revised if not supplanted altogether.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Ainslie GW. Impulse control in pigeons. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 1974;21(3):485–489. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Baumeister RF. Self-regulation, ego depletion, and inhibition. Neuropsychologia. 2014;65:313–319. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.08.012. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Baumeister RF, Bratslavsky E, Muraven M, Tice DM. Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1998;74:1252–1265. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.74.5.1252. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Baumeister RF, Heatherton TF, Tice DM. Losing control: How and why people fail at self-regulation. San Diego: Academic Press; 1994.
    1. Baumeister RF, Vohs KD. Self-regulation, ego depletion, and motivation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass. 2007;1:115–128. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00001.x. - DOI

LinkOut - more resources