Self-control-the prioritization of valued global goals over immediate local rewards-is typically conceptualized and studied as isolated decisions. Goal pursuit, however, generally requires people to make repeated self-control decisions across contexts. We adopt a higher order, strategic level of analysis of self-control and explore, for the first time, people's preferences for abstinence (a pattern of choices in which one never indulges) versus moderation (a pattern of choices in which one indulges when doing so does not harm one's goals or even helps promote the pursuit of those goals). To understand when and why people may opt for one over the other, the present work explores one psychological feature that may support these strategy preferences: the representation of self-control conflicts as inherent (i.e., choice options are mutually contradictory) versus situational (i.e., choice options compete for limited resources). We present eight studies in the main text and three in the online Supplemental Materials documenting that people associate inherent and situational conflict representations with abstinence and moderation, respectively. By documenting that strategy preferences may differ as a function of conflict representations, this work questions the assumption of abstinence as the primary indicator of self-control success, raises methodological and conceptual questions about how best to assess these strategy preferences, and calls for greater understanding of self-control as a recurrent decision-making process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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冲突表征在禁欲与节制自我控制中的作用。


自我控制（即优先考虑有价值的全球目标而不是直接的局部奖励）通常被概念化并作为孤立的决策进行研究。然而，目标追求通常要求人们在不同的环境中反复做出自我控制的决定。我们采用更高层次、战略层面的自我控制分析，并首次探讨人们对节制（一种从不沉迷的选择模式）与节制（一种人们在做事时沉迷的选择模式）的偏好。因此不会损害一个人的目标，甚至有助于促进对这些目标的追求）。为了理解人们何时以及为什么会选择其中一种而不是另一种，本研究探讨了一种可能支持这些策略偏好的心理特征：自我控制冲突的表征为固有的（即选择选项是相互矛盾的）与情境的（即选择选项是相互矛盾的）。 ，选择选项争夺有限的资源）。我们在正文中提出了八项研究，在在线补充材料中提出了三项研究，记录了人们分别将内在和情境冲突表征与节制和节制联系起来。通过记录策略偏好可能随冲突表征的变化而变化，这项工作对将禁欲作为自我控制成功的主要指标的假设提出了质疑，提出了如何最好地评估这些策略偏好的方法论和概念问题，并呼吁加深理解自我控制作为一个反复的决策过程。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。