Understanding Self-Regulation Failure: A Motivated Effort-Allocation Account
Much recent research has challenged the long-standing idea that people have a limited capacity for self-regulation that depletes with use and impairs their ability for further regulation. Instead, failures to sustain self-regulation appear to be more related to waning motivations. One question that remains unanswered, however, is how these motivations wane and why, if there is no fixed capacity, sustaining self-regulation is often so difficult. In this talk I will discuss a new model of self-regulation failure that revolves around a process of motivated effort-allocation driven by people’s experiences of effort and fatigue. I will also discuss some preliminary research in my lab aimed at better understanding what affects these experiences and how that translates into more or less effective self-regulation.