Clarkson Joshua J, Otto Ashley S, Hirt Edward R, Egan Patrick M
1 University of Cincinnati, OH, USA.
2 Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2016 Nov;42(11):1490-1504. doi: 10.1177/0146167216664059. Epub 2016 Sep 28.
Emerging research documents the self-control consequences of individuals' theories regarding the limited nature of willpower, such that unlimited theorists consistently demonstrate greater self-control than limited theorists. The purpose of the present research was to build upon prior work on self-validation and perceptions of mental fatigue to demonstrate when self-control is actually impaired by endorsing an unlimited theory and-conversely-enhanced by endorsing a limited theory. Four experiments show that fluency reinforces the documented effects of individuals' willpower theories on self-control, while disfluency reverses the documented effects of individuals' willpower theories on self-control. Moreover, these effects are driven by differential perceptions of mental fatigue-perceptions altered by individuals' level of confidence in their willpower theory-and are bound by conditions that promote effortful thought. Collectively, these findings point to the malleable efficacy of willpower theories and the importance of belief confidence in dictating this malleability and in modulating subsequent self-control behavior.
新出现的研究记录了个体关于意志力有限性的理论所产生的自我控制后果，即持有意志力无限理论的人始终比持有意志力有限理论的人表现出更强的自我控制能力。本研究的目的是在先前关于自我验证和心理疲劳感知的研究基础上，证明在何种情况下，认可无限理论会实际损害自我控制能力，相反，认可有限理论会增强自我控制能力。四项实验表明，流畅性强化了个体意志力理论对自我控制的已知影响，而不流畅性则逆转了个体意志力理论对自我控制的已知影响。此外，这些影响是由对心理疲劳的不同感知驱动的——这种感知因个体对其意志力理论的信心水平而改变——并且受到促进努力思考的条件的限制。总体而言，这些发现表明意志力理论具有可塑的效力，以及信念信心在决定这种可塑性和调节后续自我控制行为方面的重要性。
