Motivational dynamics of self-control

Abstract

How people respond to desires varies substantially across time and situations. Building on recent theoretical developments, we propose that motivation plays a central role in the dynamics of self-control as it unfolds across time. We illustrate the role of motivation in self-control by highlighting evidence that pursuing goals for intrinsic (vs. extrinsic) reasons plays a key role in shaping when and how people engage in self-control in service to their goals. We then expand this framework by outlining several promising directions for future research, specifically emphasizing the dynamic interplay between motivation and self-control at various stages in the regulation process. Ultimately, we posit that motivation is a key factor in helping people flexibly regulate desires in accordance with situational demands.

Keywords: Dynamic processes; Flexibility; Goals; Motivation; Self-control; Self-regulation.

Figure 1.. Contextual influences on self-control and goal pursuit.

Adapted from Hofmann (2024) and Greenaway et al. (2018), we propose that contextual factors can include various features of both the person and the situation, ranging from relatively stable features of the person (i.e., the micro-level) to more distal features of the situation (i.e., meso-level, macro-level). Although the micro, meso, and macro levels represent relatively stable characteristics of the person or the situation, the microenvironment represents features of both the person (e.g., motivation, affect) and the situation (e.g., available choice options, whether other people are present) as they emerge in a specific regulation episode, such as in response to a specific momentary desire, temptation, or goal in real-time. From a motivational perspective, a person may generally be intrinsically motivated for a particular goal, as represented in the micro-level, but the extent to which they are intrinsically vs. extrinsically motivated in a given moment can vary, as represented in the microenvironment. Thus far, most research has examined the association between motivation and self-control from a micro-level perspective [–22]; however, we propose it is also important to consider motivation within a given regulation episode, or the microenvironment [1,23].