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How do you feel when you deny yourself something you want? Like skipping that Snickers and reaching for the carrot. Maybe there's a sense of superiority for conquering the craving?
Not so much according to research from the Journal of Consumer Behavior.
Past studies have shown that exerting self-control may increase irritability and anger. But the new research found that the increased aggression brought on by self-restraint has a much broader effect.
The researchers studied different types of self-control and the subjects' subsequent behavior. For instance, participants who carefully controlled their spending of a gift certificate were more interested in looking at angry faces than fearful ones.
Dieters preferred public service ads that were framed in threats, such as "if funds are not increased for police training, more criminals will escape prison."
Subjects who picked an apple over chocolate were more irritated by ads that used words like "you ought to" or "need to,” which sound controlling. They were also more likely to choose to watch a movie with a theme of hostility over other options.
It's a given that self-denial can be frustrating. But who knew it could make me prefer to watch Fight Club again.
—Christie Nicholson reports
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12 Comments
Add CommentThere's an important nuance that's missed in this blurb. The virtue of self-control is a much broader concept than the local exercise of self-restraint, and the wording in the article seems to make no distinction. We know that short term efforts at self-restraint tend to fail and that they are frustrating. Simply trying not to do something we are tempted to do is the weakest last resort of the many self-control strategies and skills, and that's mostly what is being referenced here. Strategies of self-control involve a lot more than just willfully trying to inhibit our immediate actions. If you confuse the two, you end up looking like you're supporting the (in my opinion) idiotic claim that fostering self-control makes people aggressive. The empirical literature on emotional self-regulation makes it quite clear I think that the opposite is true, in line with our intuition that learning self-control strategies (in the broader sense) is essential for avoiding expressing aggression in socially or situationally inappropriate ways such as violence. The divide here is that we learn to nudge and move ourselves in positive ways to learn self-control rather than just trying to inhibit behaviors by force. I think what this research is probably telling us is that there are different styles of attempted self-control and the brute force approach is associated with a brute force attitudes in a more general sense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTodd,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am perhaps a bit dense this morning, but your comment really didn't help me understand the distinction you were making between self-control and self-restraint.
Whether an action is taken out of a direct application of will or because of conditioned response, isn't the frustration likely to still develop at the sub-conscious level?
Could you provide links to a more expansive treatment of the subject?
Thanks.
I'd be interested in knowing whether the self-restraint is being driven by external forces (as presumably it would in such an experiment), and if this in fact is what influences other perceptions of externally-imposed control.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe what Todd is offering a distinction between is constraining yourself from a certain behavior on a short term basis and developing the habit of constraining yourself so that it's no longer a constraint, but a norm.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's say you've just started shopping at a conventional grocery store, for some reason, and you are struck by the snacks presented while in line at the cash register. To resist buying a snack, even though you want to, would bring about the effects described by the study. However, to continually go back and constrain yourself and develop a habit so that you aren't even struck by the snacks anymore will not lead to the effects reported by the study, according to Todd.
Whether Todd is completely right or not would require some empirical evidence, but he is right that there is a distinction between the two, and to draw the conclusions to that extreme would cause a fallacy.
I believe that I can give a reasonable explanation to the findings of the research. That is, a truism states: Self control is a necessary requisite for self respect and self respect is a necessary requisite for courage. Thus, those individuals which have courage, self respect, and self control identify with and have an affinity actions and individuals similarly situated. Self control can be self defeating when it is not modified with strategic thinking as that exemplified in the game of chess as it assumes the pattern of a naivete towards the external environment which can result both in the exploitation of this trait by unscrupulous individuals and the victimization of those that demonstrate the same. One example of the same, was the victimization of the Western World through the appeasement of Adolf Hitler, Nazism, and fascism prior to W.W. II which was based upon the principle of self control without the aforementioned strategic thinking and behavior which should form the framework of the same.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIntuitively, I think Todd's right when he suggests that it's idiotic to propose that self-control leads to aggression. In fact, a perusal of the article in the Journal of Consumer Behavior says that it people on a strict diet who become "aggressive." Maybe they're just hungry. It seems a leap to make the conclusions suggested in this 60-second piece. In fact, it makes me wonder what's scientific about this piece.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome of the responses 1 to 6 only illustrate the old strategy that if you do not like the conclusion bash the author. In fact, if you consider the aggressive tone of some of the contributions, the article is vindicated. We need to believe in self-control, absolutely, but we also need to be aware that the aggression we are trying to control may pop up elsewhere when we are not aware of it. To believe that one could, in the long run, enter a state of successful self-control is self-deceit. It reminds me of the Catholic Church idea that one can successfully wean oneself off from sex. Sex and aggression are biological problems and resources. They need to be channeled, not closed in. Here Aristotle in was wiser than his teacher Plato.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for your response. It helped clarify the distinction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA controlled study would be nice to distinguish the differences in anger for conditioned responses and forced responses.
I also have to question the article's interchangeable use of "anger" and "aggression" as they are not the same thing.
The problem with this piece isn't the conclusion. It is the characterization of "self-restraint" as the cause of increased aggression. In this causal chain it is not self-restraint which affects aggressive tendencies, but something downstream of self-restraint. For example, when I decide to abstain from eating sweet foods this may cause frustration at when I later see foods which I would enjoy eating, but cannot. Hence, self-restraint induced alterations in mood, elevations in frustration or annoyance etc. are the cause of increased aggressive behaviour. This is hardly surprising.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgain, go back and read the article this was based on. There's no evidence to suggest that there's any more to it than that people get snappy when they're hungry. These high blown conclusions are not empirically justified, so there's no point in picking them apart.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt looks to me that the key word is temptation. We are wired to satisfy our needs, and those which are located on the basic level of Maslow's pyramid of needs have strong internal motivation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSelf-control in this case creates inner conflict, the rational mind tries to repress the satisfaction of an inner urge and that could trigger aggressiveness.
Or, maybe people get snappy when they're hungry. Do you need Maslow's pyrmaid and all that theory to explain that?
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