Self-control: health outcomes, daily

experiences, and policy interventions

Liam Delaney, UCD

QUB CHaRMS Workshop

Friday, June 21, 2018

Background

Part 1: Lifespan outcomes of childhood self-control

Part 2: Self-control in everyday life

Part 3: Self-control and intervention strategies

Conclusion

Agenda

2

Increasing relevance of behavioural economics

Behavioural Economics, Nudge, and Libertarian Paternalism

have arrived in Ireland.

Focus is on boundedly rational decision making.

In particular: Self-control problems.

3

Self-discipline: “The capacity to begin tasks

and follow through to completion despite

boredom or distractions” (NEO-PI-R)

The capacity to voluntarily regulate thoughts,

feelings, and behaviour in the service of a

valued long-term goal

Important when confronted with health-

harming short-term rewards and temptations

Important in initiating goal pursuit and forming

healthy habits

What is self-control? Why is it important?

4

Why now?

5

• Cheap high calorie food

• Addictive substances

• Consumer goods

• Need for pension

savings

• Gambling & social

media

• Sustaining relationships

Part 1:

Lifespan outcomes of childhood self-control

6

Established (largely cross-sectional studies of students)

association between high self-control and favourable health

behaviour:

De Ridder, D. T., Lensvelt-Mulders, G., Finkenauer, C., Stok, F. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (2012). Taking

stock of self-control: A meta-analysis of how trait self-control relates to a wide range of behaviours.

Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16, 76–99.

We seek to investigate in the population:

Childhood self-control → Adult behaviours

Intricacies of how self-control operates

in everyday life

Does self-control explain problematic behaviours?

7

Childhood self-control → Adult health

8

Moffitt, T. E. et al. (2011). A

gradient of childhood self-

control predicts health, wealth,

and public safety. Proceedings

of the National Academy of

Sciences, 108(7), 2693-2698.

STUDY 1

STUDY 2

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Self-control measurement

BCS measure (age 10):

1. Child is daydreaming.

2. Cannot concentrate on

particular task.

3. Becomes bored during class.

4. Shows perseverance.

5. Easily distracted.

6. Pays attention in class.

7. Forget on complex tasks.

8. Completes tasks.

9. Fails to finish tasks.

1970 British Cohort Study

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Childhood self-control → Unemployment

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Teacher-rated self-

control at age 10.

Adjusted for gender,

intelligence, and

social class at birth.

Daly, Delaney, Egan, and Baumeister (2015). Childhood self-control and unemployment throughout the

lifespan: evidence from two British cohort studies. Psychological Science, 26, 709 - 723.

Childhood self-control → Unemployment

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Daly, Delaney, Egan, and Baumeister (2015). Childhood self-control and unemployment throughout the

lifespan: evidence from two British cohort studies. Psychological Science, 26, 709 - 723.

Childhood self-control → Pension

13

Adjusted for gender,

intelligence, and

social class at birth.

Leonhard K. Lades, Mark Egan, Liam Delaney, Michael Daly, Childhood self-control and adult pension

participation, In Economics Letters, Volume 161, 2017, Pages 102-104.

Childhood self-control → Smoking

14

From Daly, Delaney, Egan, Quigley and Baumeister (2016). Childhood self-control predicts smoking

throughout life: Evidence from 21,000 cohort study participants. Health Psychology, 35, 1254-1263.

Childhood self-control → Obesity

15

Adjusted for gender,

intelligence, social

class at birth, & father,

mother, child BMI

Daly, M., Egan, M., Quigley, J., & Delaney, L. (in preparation). Childhood self-control and weight gain across life.

Childhood self-control → Health outcomes

Predicts midlife (age 42 BCS, age 45-55 NCDS):

• Self-rated health

• Pain

• Psychological distress

• Chronic conditions

• Whether conditions are limiting

• Physiological dysregulation (NCDS)

• Death

Association is similar to socioeconomic status on average

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Childhood self-control → Health outcomes

17

.

What factors explain the link between self-control

and health outcomes?

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Part 2:

Self-control in everyday life

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Why? What is the mechanism in daily life? How do the lives of

people with high (versus low) self-control differ?

We wanted to look in detail into people’s daily self-control

experiences.

But that is not easy…

Self-control is important for life outcomes

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Phase 1: Systematic reconstruction of “episodes” on the

previous day in a short diary.

“Think about what you did and how you felt yesterday

around 1pm. Think of this as an episode in a film…”

Phase 2: Follow-up questions for each episode about time,

location, activities, social interactions, emotions, desires, self-

control …

“How did you feel? Was there anything that you

wanted? …”

The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM)

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955 participants from Amárach Research’s Omnibus survey.

Representative of Ireland (Age=44.4, 55% female, 28% single,

63.9% married, 32% from Dublin). 58% on the weekend.

Up to 3 episodes per participant.

Number of recorded episodes = 2670.

Number of recorded desires = 1936.

The Study

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Locations: Where were they?

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Positive feelings in different locations

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Positive feelings in different locations

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Activities: What did they do?

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Positive feelings in different activities

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Did you want something?

Did it conflict with a goal?

Did you attempt to resist?

Did you enact the desire?

Measuring self-control failures

-

Yes-

Yes-

Yes-

Yes

= Self-control

failure

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From desire to enactment

~15% Self-

control

failures

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Domains of self-control instances

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Domains of self-control instances

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Compare with 249 Scottish students

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Self-control failures over the day

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Different degrees of trait self-control

• I am good at resisting

temptation.

• I have a hard time

breaking bad habits

(reversed).

• I often act without

thinking through all the

alternatives (reversed).

• …

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How much do you agree on a scale from 1 to 5:

Different degrees of trait self-control

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Feelings by trait self-control

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Tiredness by trait self-control over the day

37

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Do people with high trait self-control have fewer

self-control failures?

18.5%

12.5% Yes!

People with high trait self-control:

• Are NOT better at resisting temptation (59.8% vs 60.5%).

• Are NOT more likely to try to resist (59.8% vs 60.5%).

• DO experience fewer temptations (74% vs 80%).

• DO experience fewer desires (69% vs 78%).

Why do people with high trait self-control have

fewer self-control failures?

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→ More research is needed on the determinants of desire and

temptation. The DRM can help.

See also Fujita (2011), Hofmann et al. (2012), Ent et al. (2015), Milyavskaya & Inzlicht (2018).

Traditional definition:

The capacity to voluntarily regulate

thoughts, feelings, and behaviour in

the service of a valued long-term goal.

Traditionally overlooked aspect:

The ability to pro-actively structure

one’s life to encounter fewer

problematic desires. Avoiding rather

than resisting temptation.

Trait self-control and everyday self-control

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Discussion of DRM research

Summary: The DRM provides information about the where,

when, with whom, etc. of well-being and self-control across

many domains.

Limitations: Self-reported, recalled, correlational.

Relevance: Potential to design and test business & policy

interventions.

… For example using domain-specific DRMs in areas

such as medication, work-arrangements, teaching,

commuting, food consumption, entertainment,

sleep quality, social media use, etc…

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1. Do sensory cues trigger food desires?

2. Do people use resistance strategies?

Abbreviated online DRM focusing on food

• Did you want to eat something during this episode?

• Conflict, resistance attempt, enactment

• Did you see/smell/hear anything food related?

• Did you use any of these resistance strategies?

708 episodes and 380 food desires. N=254, Age = 37 (SD=13),

Female = 61%, BMI = 25.6 (SD=5.8).

Food Study

42(with Sarah Breathnach, Liam Delaney, Stephan Dombrowski and Giulia Piazza)

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Sensory cues predict food desires

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Sensory cues predict food desires

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Specific sensory cues predict food desires

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Resistance reduces likelihood of eating

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Some resistance strategies are better than others

1. Sensory cues trigger food desires

• But some cues lead to food desires more than others.

• Implications of DRM data for regulation and business.

2. People use resistance strategies and are less likely to eat

when they try to resist.

• But resistance strategies differ in effectiveness.

• Implications of DRM data for teaching self-control.

Food Study: Summary

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Part 3:

Self-control and intervention strategies

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Lack of knowledge: We might want to live healthy/happy lives,

but we do not know exactly how

→ Information based interventions often require planning,

monitoring behaviour, inhibiting conflicting activities

→May be most beneficial to those with higher self-control

Self-control problems: We are distracted, fail to keep goals in

mind, and have difficulties resisting temptation

→Training, self-control strategies (breaking cue-response links),

or nudging and non-reflective processes (to reduce the

prevalence of cues or the desirability of unhealthy products)

Potential reasons for problematic health behaviours

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Self-control training, strategies, and nudges

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Hoch, S. J., & Loewenstein, G. F. (1991). Time-inconsistent preferences and consumer self-

control. Journal of consumer research, 17(4), 492-507.

Self-control training (childhood/adolescence)

Piquero, A. R., Jennings, W. G., Farrington, D. P.,

Diamond, B., & Gonzalez, J. M. R. (2016). A meta-

analysis update on the effectiveness of early self-

control improvement programs to improve self-

control and reduce delinquency. Journal of

Experimental Criminology, 12(2), 249-264

Interventions (g = 0.32):

1. Follow rules

(e.g. what to do when… angry,

others teasing, do not want to play)

2. Self-instructional training

(e.g. using verbalisations as guide)

3. Video modelling of

appropriate/inappropriate behaviour

with follow-up observation of child

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Early interventions

• Explaining why well-know early intervention programmes may be effective (e.g. PPP: Heckman et al., 2013; PPP/ABC: Conti et al., 2016)

• Tools of the Mind preschool programme which targets self-regulation (support: Barnett et al., 2008; Blair & Raver, 2014; Diamond et al., 2007; mixed evidence: Jacob & Parkinson, 2015)

• Structured teacher-delivered curriculum focused on “fostering patience in the classroom” effective over 3 years (Alan & Ertac, 2017)

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Self-control training (adults)

Friese, M., Frankenbach, J., Job, V., & Loschelder, D. D.

(2017). Does self-control training improve self-control? A

meta-analysis. Perspectives on Psychological

Science, 12(6), 1077-1099.

What training?

Overriding dominant responses

(e.g. using non-dominant hand,

avoiding slang, computer tasks)

Muscle metaphor (stamina,

strength) repeated control predicts

generalised improvement in self-

control

33 studies and 158 effect sizes:

small-to-medium effect g = 0.30

Bias corrected: gcorrected = .13 to .2454

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Self-control resistance strategies

Nudging and situational influences

For healthy behaviour:

Incentives (e.g. for changes in smoking, eating, alcohol consumption, physical activity: Mantzari et al., 2015 review)

Default rules (e.g. impact of default choice of portion/plate/package size on selection and consumption: Hollands et al., 2015 review)

Make it easy (e.g. healthier options are the default choice or most convenient based on proximity and product order: Cardario & Chandon, 2017 & Bucher et al., 2016 reviews)

Stopping unhealthy behaviour:

Remove or reduce the salience of cues (e.g. cigarette packages, product displays) that elicit relatively automatic purchasing habits (overview Best & Papies, 2017)

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“Hard” policy instruments

Regulation (bans, mandates) and incentives (taxes)

Less self-controlled may

be most responsive to

changes to cues and the

immediate reward/cost of

key behaviours though

this is debated (e.g.

Stautz et al., 2018)

Daly, M., Delaney, L., & Baumeister, R. F. (2015). Self-control, future orientation, smoking, and the impact of Dutch

tobacco control measures. Addictive Behaviors Reports, 1, 89 - 96. 57

Conclusion

• Childhood self-control forecasts economic and health

outcomes across life

• Links are comparable to SES-health associations with similar

lifespan pathways (e.g. smoking, weight gain)

• Desire and self-control processes can be measured in daily life

• Voluntary self-governance may include avoiding temptation

• Trait self-control measures (e.g. Tangney et al., 2004)

embedded in large scale intervention studies could yield key

insights about who self-control training, resistance strategies,

nudges, and other policy instruments are impacting on and why

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Thank you for your attention

Liam Delaney

liam.delaney@ucd.ie