561487

research-article2014
TAP0010.1177/0959354314561487Theory & PsychologyHorstktter

Article

Theory & Psychology

Self-control and normativity:

2015, Vol. 25(1) 2544
The Author(s) 2014
Reprints and permissions:
Theories in social psychology sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0959354314561487
revisited tap.sagepub.com

Dorothee Horstktter
Maastricht University

Abstract
The exercise of self-control is of great significance in peoples daily lives and in the organization of
social institutions. The reasonableness of the self-control concept, however, has been challenged by
recent developments in cognitive, behavioral, and neurosciences that identify human behavior as a
result of complex automatic processes generated by peoples environments. Collating more data
on self-control and developing new theoretical approaches is crucial to meeting this challenge. Still,
this article argues that a conceptual analysis of the meaning of self-control is also needed. Reflecting
on recent work in philosophy, it discusses how self-controlled behavior is characterized not only by
distinct causal mechanisms, but also by fundamental normative evaluations. Four conceptualizations of
self-control will be presented to highlight why the corresponding self-control failures are essentially
also normative failures. Furthermore, it discusses how the normativity of self-controlled behavior can
contribute to further theorizing in social psychology.

Keywords
making up ones mind, normativity, philosophy of action, recklessness, resistibility, self, self-
control, social psychology, temptation, weakness of will

In their daily lives, people rely strongly on their capacity to control and regulate their
own behavior. They make decisions about what to do, how to proceed, and then act
accordingly. Similarly, they consider fundamental choices in their lives, such as which
career to pursue as well as everyday commodities, such as where to go on a Sunday
afternoon. This manifests itself in the observable behavior of people with careers such
as teachers, lawyers, or tradesmen, who go to the zoo, or the public swimming pool, or
whatever they decide. It seems that people think about their actions and thereby control

Corresponding author:
Dorothee Horstktter, CAPHRI School for Public Health and Primary Care, Department of Health, Ethics
and Society, Maastricht University, Postbox 616, Maastricht, 6200 MD, The Netherlands.
Email: d.horstkoetter@maastrichtuniversity.nl
26 Theory & Psychology 25(1)

whatever they do. Sometimes, people make judgments about a certain course of action,
yet feel tempted to act contrarily. They would like to drink a second glass of wine even
though they have to drive home afterwards; they want to smoke a cigarette although
they know it would be better to quit; or they feel infuriated but still consider aggressive
acts abhorrent and desist from impulsivity. Whenever people act according to their
goals and preferences and thus overcome temptations, they are considered to exercise
self-control. Equally, whenever people give in to temptations they are considered to
lack self-control. In both cases, commonsensically, people are considered responsible
for their behavioral successes and failures and are praised or blamedand perhaps
punishedaccordingly. Generally speaking, behavioral self-control is considered to
be of great social value. Its successful application safeguards the well-functioning of
personal and public actions, whereas self-control failures are considered the cause of
multiple miseries and problems. Self-control binds together much of our social fabric.
Within social psychology, the enormous significance attributed to human self-control
has triggered vast amounts of scientific work investigating its mechanisms and condi-
tions (Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1994; Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007; Carver
& Scheier, 1998; Cervone, Mor, Orom, Shadel, & Scott, 2011; Cervone, Shadel, Smith,
& Fiori, 2006; Deci & Ryan, 2000, 2002; Kuhl, 2000; Kuhl & Fuhrmann, 1998; W.
Mischel, 1996; W. Mischel, Cantor, & Feldman, 1996; Ryan & Deci, 2002; Ryan,
Kuhl, & Deci, 1997).1
Simultaneously, however, the very possibility and relevance of self-controlled behav-
ior has been fundamentally challenged by recent developments in the behavioral, cogni-
tive, and neurosciences. These developments suggest that there is no such thing as
mentally caused or consciously controlled action and that anything people do is the result
of diverse and complex unconscious and automatic processes generated by various fea-
tures in peoples environments (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Hassin, Uleman, & Bargh,
2005; Wegner, 2004; Wegner & Wheatley, 1999). Although people tend to give coherent
explanations for their behaviors, well-designed experiments have been set up to show
that often such rationalizations are unwarranted or that people would do better to think
unconsciously rather than consciously. People behave rudely if and when they are
primed with rudeness; they are polite if primed with politeness; those who are primed
with features of old age walk slower, while those primed with features of professors or
hooligans behave respectively intelligently or aggressively (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999;
Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996; Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998). It has even
been argued that people can be given the illusory experience of willful actions they do
not actually perform (Wegner & Wheatley, 1999). Against this background, it has also
been mentioned that a theory of automaticity rather than one of control or self-control
provides the most adequate explanation of human behavior.
This objection goes to the heart of the concept of self-control. To meet this challenge
empirically, it is necessary to generate increasingly specific data to prove this and also to
establish how people carry out self-controlled actions. Similarly, it would require that the
reliability of these skeptical experiments is tested. In the meantime, psychologists have
focused on both aspects. While some psychologists point out the reality and relevance of
self-control (Baumeister, 2012; Vohs, Baumeister, & Schmeichel, 2013), others try to
replicate the priming findings by Bargh and colleagues. Interestingly, they have not suc-
ceeded in doing so (Doyen, Klein, Pichon, & Cleermans, 2012; Pashler, Coburn, &
Horstktter 27

Harris, 2012). Furthermore, it has been shown that unconscious thought is not as effec-
tive as Dijksterhuis and others had argued (Waroquier, Marchiori, Klein, & Cleeremans,
2010). Hence, in the research community not everybody agrees or is convinced that
behavior is largely induced automatically and generated independently of individual
control. Additionally, there is a conceptual problem with the meaning of the very concept
of self-control as presupposed by automaticity theory. In order to demonstrate this and
show why the far-reaching consequences attached to automaticity theory go awry, a con-
ceptual analysis of the meaning of self-control is required. In this context, theorizing in
social psychology should benefit from the work of philosophers whose core task, after
all, is to explore the meaning of complex concepts. This paper confronts the mentioned
task and reflects on the meaning of self-control.
Phenomenologically, the opposition of control and automaticity may seem natural: food
is digested automatically, but a cigarette has to be lit and inhaled; a car (auto-mobile) rolls
automatically, whereas a carriage has to be pulled; a practiced driver changes gears and
steers automatically, while a learner is attentive and thinks about every movement. Such
phenomena, however, are not conclusive, that is, they do not unambiguously prove that
evidence in support of automaticity, almost by definition, rules out evidence in favor of
self-control. An alternative interpretation of at least one of these examples illustrates this.
People who light a cigarette may either be considered as exercising control over their
behavior, or to smoke in an automatic fashion that is triggered by smoking peers, addictive
cravings, or suggestive billboards. Automaticity may be a sensible explanation. However,
if the same people are contrasted with people who resist the temptation of smoking, one
may argue that those people who light a cigarette do not control their smoking behavior. In
that case, however, the argument holds without any assistance of the automaticity theory.
Apparently, there is a significant difference between, for example, people who light a ciga-
rette because they want to enjoy its taste and the relaxation it provides and people who have
decided to quit but cannot withstand the temptation. Irrespective of whether the first group
of people is attributed with behavioral control, the second group should not be: they fail to
exercise self-control. In this sense, however, self-control is a hybrid term, referring both to
causal processes and normative requirements. Claims regarding automaticity, however, are
merely targeting causal processes and hence, even if true, they cannot disprove the reality
and relevance of self-control in so far as this refers to normative requirements. To this end,
it would be required to show that people lack self-control, rather than that they behave in
an automatic fashion.
Following this line of argument, this article presents a normative account of self-control.
Thus, a robust account of self-control does not depend solely on a notion of causal control;
instead it should also emphasize the normative character of self-controlled types of behav-
ior. There is an important normative difference between those who exercise self-control and
those who fail to. Whether or not any of these behaviors are conducted in an automatic
fashion is a totally different question. Even if it can be shown that a person who deliberately
enjoys a cigarette does so automatically, unconsciously, and as a result of environmentally
induced processes, the contrast to the person who would like to quit yet gives in to tempta-
tion persists. The contrast, however, does not refer to the way in which the respective behav-
iors have been caused; instead it refers to the normative evaluation of the very same
behaviors. That is, the relevant difference does not refer to the question of whether or not the
behavior has been carried out in an automatic or a (consciously) controlled fashion, but
28 Theory & Psychology 25(1)

whether the person, or the self so to speak, can appreciate it and consider it justified or
whether it is considered wrong and unjustified. Hence, the question of automaticity refers to
a different aspect of the topic. As a consequence, and for the time being, it will be put aside.
The focus of this article will be on the development of self-control as a normative and justi-
fying notion of human behavior. Hence, it is not until the conclusion that the challenge of
automaticity is put into perspective.
The argument put forward in this article is philosophical, which means that it is devel-
oping an argument rather than providing a detailed overview of the literature. However,
the following discussion embarks upon the presentation and discussion of empirically
based theories in social psychology that have been influential during the past decades.
Subsequently, it analyzes the strength-model of self-control based on the model of a
feedback-loop (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998; Baumeister & Exline,
1999; Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996; Carver & Scheier, 1998, 1999; Gailliot etal.,
2007; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000), the delay of gratification paradigm as it has given
rise to a capacity or strategy based model of self-control (Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999; H.
N. Mischel & Mischel, 1983; W. Mischel etal., 1996), self-determination theory and
self-regulation theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000, 2002; Kuhl & Fuhrmann, 1998), and an
approach that highlights the relevance of personality science and the role of a self for
self-control (Cervone etal., 2006). A careful analysis of what social psychology teaches
already supports the thesis about the normative character of self-control. Reflecting on
what it means to lack self-control or failure of self-regulated behavior in each of these
models, the discussion aims to contribute to psychological theorizing and to facilitate
correspondence between behavioral scientists and philosophers. Recently, the philoso-
phy of mind and action has greatly profited from insights provided by social psycholo-
gists about self-control (Henden, 2008; Holton, 2003; Mele, 1987, 1995); similarly,
psychologists are also likely to benefit from the work of philosophers conducted in their
area of research (Baumeister, 2008; Baumeister, Mele, & Vohs, 2010).

Self-control, ego-strength, weakness of will and beyond

According to a common sense approach, self-control is required in situations of tempta-
tion and is used in order to overcome these. People are said to be tempted if they are more
strongly motivated to act according to their impulses or spontaneous desires than accord-
ing to what they judge best, desirable, or rational. Intuitively, self-control appears to be a
matter of mental strength, whereas lack of it is attributed to a weakness of will. This basic
idea dates back to an ancient philosophical legacy. In Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics,
for example, it says that people are self-controlled if they act with restraint in the face of
temptation, whereas those who lack continence suffer from weakness of will (Aristotle,
1980). Mele has established a corresponding contemporary account of self-control
according to which self-control and weakness of will (akrasia) appear as two sides of
the same coin (Mele, 1995, p. 5). For many years in social psychology these ancient and
commonsensical philosophical assumptions regarding willpower and weakness of will
enjoyed the status of mysterious and unscientific human fictions. Contemporary social
psychology, however, has succeeded in an empirical operationalization of these ideas
(Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996; Carver & Scheier, 1998; W. Mischel etal., 1996) and
Horstktter 29

has even highlighted the empirical adequacy of the concept of strength of will or mental
strength (Baumeister etal., 1998; Baumeister etal., 2007; Hofmann, Frster, Baumeister,
& Vohs, 2012; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000; Muraven, Baumeister, & Tice, 1999;
Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998; Vohs & Heatherton, 2000).
Several experiments have proved that sequential, albeit totally different, acts of self-
control lead to a diminishment of participants performances in later self-control tasks,
whereas this does not seem to be the case if the previous task was fatiguing only. This
dual-task paradigm and similar experiments have been described at length elsewhere,
therefore only a brief comment is mentioned here. For example, participants were asked
to squeeze a handgrip for as long as possible (self-control task 1) and hence to overcome
their inclination to relax their hand muscles (Muraven etal., 1998). Afterwards they were
asked to watch a disgusting movie and were asked to either suppress or enforce (self-
control task 2) their emotional reaction or they did not receive any further instructions
(no second self-control task). Finally, all participants of the (in total) three groups had to
squeeze the same handgrip again. The results showed a significant decrease in perfor-
mance in the two groups that received instructions about how to deal with their emo-
tional reaction, yet not in the third group which received no such instructions. Since
emotional control is regarded as another, yet independent, self-control task, the decrease
in performance is considered to show that different kinds of self-control tasks draw on
one and the same mental resource, which becomes depleted through exercises. In other
words, successful exercises of self-control appear to depend on some kind of mental
strength, whereas giving in to temptation and failing at self-control can be understood as
expressions of mental depletion or weakness.

Weakness of will: Also a philosophical problem

From its outset, the strength model of self-control has been the target of various concep-
tual and empirical concerns: its scope is too limited, it is unable to include the agents
perspective, leaves unclear the concrete nature of the highlighted mental resource, or
invokes an incomplete understanding of even its key terms self and strength (Ainslie,
1996; Bandura, 1996; Block, 2006; Cervone, 2006). It goes beyond the scope of this
article to discuss the empirical questions raised, which moreover have been addressed, at
least partly, elsewhere in the meantime (Gailliot etal., 2007). Instead this article focuses
on the meaning of the concepts entailed in the strength model. The issue of what is meant
by mental strength and conversely what it means to act in a weak-willed fashion is par-
ticularly relevant in this regard. The question of what self means and how it may contrib-
ute to the understanding of self-control will be the focus for a later discussion.
Self-control tasks differ from other tasks, for example fatigue tasks, in that they require
agents to experience some inner conflict between a valued long-term goal or judgment and
a contravening, disliked, and short-term desire. Fatiguing tasks do not entail such a discrep-
ancy. A self-control task counts as being passed when the goal is achieved and hence the
desire is overcome. In contrast, people are said to show a failure of self-control, if their
short-term desires prevail and the goal is therefore missed. Philosophers have argued that
theoretically three options are available as to why a valued goal or judgment may be out-
played by an inferior desire: (a) the desire may be irresistible and the behavior compulsive;2
(b) the better judgment may, at least temporarily, be abandoned and the behavior is reckless;
30 Theory & Psychology 25(1)

or (c) people may intentionally and voluntarily act against their better judgment and the
behavior is weak-willed (Kennett, 2001). Apparently, the strength-model of self-control best
fits the last option.
However, it is exactly this understanding of behavioral failure, the intelligibility of
which has been fundamentally challenged. That is, it has been argued that it is conceptu-
ally impossible for people to act intentionally and voluntarily against their better judg-
ment. Instead, behavior that appears weak-willed can only be either a case of compulsion
in which agents are involuntarily overwhelmed, or a case of recklessness, in which they
unduly change or ignore their better judgment (Watson, 1977). The conceptual question,
whether, and if so how, weakness of will is indeed an intelligible concept has been termed
the weakness-of-will problem. This is an important question for empirically oriented
social psychologists as well, because if the conceptual objection stands, empirical exam-
ples argued to point out real-world instances of weak-willed behavior can be criticized as
being fundamental misinterpretations. By contrast, pointing out the conceptual intelligi-
bility of weakness of will may at the same time support the conceptual intelligibility of
the strength-model of self-control. Therefore, the weakness of will problem is presented
and applied to the above-mentioned empirical experiment.
The problem emanates from two basic principles of action causation initially formu-
lated by Davidson (1980). According to the first principle, there is a direct connection
between desires and actions so that agents who prefer an action x above action y and who
believe themselves free to perform either action, will intentionally do x as soon as they
do either x or y intentionally. The second principle entails that there is a direct connection
between better judgment and desire so that when agents judge it better to do x than y,
they want to do x more than to do y.3 The weakness of will problem arises because, in
such cases, a person will judge x better than y, yet do y intentionally. This, however,
contradicts the basic principles of action causation. Applying these principles to the
experiment described above, it should be questioned whether in the third phase when
participants are asked to squeeze the handgrip again: (a) participants intentionally loosen
the handgrip and (b) whether participants still care about the judgment that squeezing is
better than loosening. If (a) is not provided, participants may be considered to be com-
pelled, whereas if (b) is not provided, participants will loosen the handgrip in a reckless
way. Conceptually, the crucial question is whether the answer to both of these questions
can be positive at the same time. Only then is weakness of will or mental strength an
intelligible concept.
Within philosophy of action, this question has triggered a vast amount of conceptual
thought and several solutions have been provided (Davidson, 1980; Holton, 1999; Kennett
& Smith, 1994; Smith, 2003; Stroud, 2003; Tappolet, 2003). Kennett and Smiths (1994)
suggestion is of particular relevance to the self-control quest and will be presented more
thoroughly. Adding to the basic two-tiered picture of action-explanation pointed out by
Davidson, they argue that not only desires, but also goals or better judgment can give rise to
an action, because they also constitute a reason for the person to act accordingly. Albeit pos-
sible, they argue that a desire does not necessarily intervene in order to bring about an action.
At first glance, this seems to be inconsistent with typical self-control failures in which a
person, for example, may have the goal to lose weight, yet give in to the temptation of a
cream cake. In such cases, desires rather than goals appear to cause the actual behavior.
However, there is a significant difference between what it means to have a desire and to have
Horstktter 31

a goal or form a judgment. Desires explain why someone does x (if one does x), but goals
and better judgments explain and justify why someone does y (if one does y). If people want
to eat a cake, their eating behavior can be explained by means of a desire. If they are satu-
rated, their abstinence can be explained by a lack of desire. However, if people have the goal
to lose weight, their restraint can be explained and justified by this goal. If they nonetheless
eat a cake, their eating can still be explained by a contravening desire, yet it can no longer be
justified. Therefore, although both desires and goals constitute reasons for action, there is, in
terms of justifiability, a significant difference between mere motivational reasons that con-
sist of desires and normative reasons which are constituted by a persons goals (Kennett &
Smith, 1994). Thus, a discrepancy between explanation and justification, as well as between
desire and goal is possible from a conceptual point of view. As a consequence, weakness of
will can be considered as an intelligible concept. At the same time, however, this is to say
that it necessarily constitutes a normative failure. To have a goal or to form a judgment con-
ceptually entails the request to act accordingly. This is what judgments are about and what
goal-directedness demands. Desiring to do x more than y is no conceptual necessity, but it is
a normative requirement: one should desire what one judges to be better.
For the sake of clarity, this conceptual defense of weakness of will is intended to pro-
vide a solution to a philosophical problem but not to subsequent practical problems, as
well. In conclusion, it can provide a more adequate understanding of the underlying
phenomenon, yet it does not allow any inferences about how to overcome real-world
cases of weakness of will.

Strength, weakness, and beyond

As a consequence, the strength model of self-control entails a crucial normative element
in its distinction between behavior which is and which is not self-controlled. Nonetheless,
it appears to presuppose rather than explicate the normativity of self-controlled behavior.
For methodological reasons, goals or better judgments are pre-given and predefined for
research participants. While the relevance of this for experimental purposes should be
acknowledged, it nonetheless conceals the meaning of self-control outside these specific
laboratory settings. To this end, a different way of doing research might be conducive.
An example in this regard might be qualitative research that would try to reveal the rea-
sons or thoughts that research participants have for their respective behavior and that
might put peoples behavior into the perspective of their normative horizon. In this sense,
qualitative research approaches might go beyond the quantitative measuring of pre-
defined success rates.
In the following, I will invoke an illustrative example which is constructed to emphasize
three relevant preconditions that strong-willed agents fulfill. I will then explicate which
questions, therefore, have to remain unasked by the strength-model, but questions which are
still important to a more encompassing understanding of the concept of self-control. The
remainder of this article will then explore what self-control and self-control failure mean in
each of the three alternative scenarios in which one of these three preconditions is not ful-
filled. Thereby, the understanding of the concept of self-control will be broadened and inter-
nal relationships between various conceptualizations will be identified. Moreover, the
argument that self-controlled behavior is essentially normative will be further underpinned.
32 Theory & Psychology 25(1)

The example is as follows. Tom is an honest boy who knows and respects the laws of
his country and is aware of his parents view of how a good son behaves. Nevertheless,
he steals a CD after an extremely demanding day at school. Apparently, his desire for the
CD overwhelms his better judgment, he feels tempted, and succumbs. Obviously, this
scenario entails immoral and illegal behavior, however, what is important in this context
is that Tom can be said to act intentionally against his better judgment and hence in a
weak-willed fashion. Such an understanding of the situation, however, depends on the
following three preconditions. First of all, in principle, Tom is able to achieve his goal of
being honest and abide by the law. He is not a kleptomaniac; nor is he threatened or
forced to steal, and nor does he fail to understand the meaning of property. Secondly,
being honest continues to be a goal that he cares about even during the shoplifting.
Finally, the goal of not stealing is clear, unambiguous, and not in conflict with any other
equally valued goal he may also have. It is only in conflict with his desire, which, how-
ever, he values far less.
In order for the strength model of self-control to hold, it is important that each of these
three preconditions is fulfilled. Whenever at least one of them is frustrated, any failure to
achieve ones goal can no longer count as being due to the agents weakness of will. At
first glance, (a) being unable to achieve the goal, (b) failing to care about it, and (c) hav-
ing conflicting goals appear as alternative reasons for how and why one may fail at self-
control and act in a normatively unjustified way. For this conceptual reason, three further
senses of self-control appear necessary and possible, which will be explored below
(Kennett, 2001).

Psychological incapacity: Neither weak-willed nor

compelled
Historically, W. Mischels and his colleagues work on the delay of gratification para-
digm appears to be of particular interest regarding the question of what it may mean to
be unable to achieve a goal and therefore to fail at self-control and at what one should do
(H. N. Mischel & Mischel, 1983; W. Mischel & Baker, 1975; W. Mischel, Ebbesen, &
Raskoff Zeiss, 1972; W. Mischel & Moore, 1973). They addressed the question of how
exactly people exercise self-control. Numerous studies looked at what young children
actually do when they resist temptation and wait for a greater but later reward. Children
were provided with a variety of possible strategies that could help them wait for the
greater reward, though they could have a smaller one immediately. It appeared, for
example, that thinking about something pleasurable, rather than about the reward or
looking at the image of the reward rather than the reward itself supported children best.
Children in test groups who received and implemented the right instructions performed
significantly better, that is, they waited longer, than those in uninformed or misinformed
control-groups. As a result, self-control was considered to consist of distinct capacities
and strategies which help to simplify goal-pursuit over time and in the face of other bar-
riers. However, unless children have learned appropriate strategies and acquired relevant
capacities, they can be considered unable to achieve the distant goal and hence unable to
exercise successful self-control. In other words, it is a lack of capacity, rather than a
weakness of will, that make the un- and misinformed children fail at self-control. In the
above it has been suggested that those who for psychological reasons are unable to
Horstktter 33

achieve their goals, fail in a compelled way. At this moment, however, it seems necessary
to further nuance the conceptual debate. In addition to compulsion and weakness of will,
a third intermediate category of self-control failure seems available which highlights
what it means to fail at self-control because one is psychologically unable to achieve
ones goal, and also to show why this is a normative failure. In the following, this cate-
gory will be termed psychological incapacity. It will be further explored by means of an
analysis of resistible versus irresistible desires and the distinction between synchronic
and diachronic self-control. In the end, this will show that, as well as why, people who
fail to act in a self-controlled way, because they lack a relevant capacity, can be consid-
ered to fail in a normative sense, that is, fail to do what they should (and could) do.

Conditionally resistible desires

Traditionally, both compulsive and weak-willed agents are considered to fail at resisting a
desire. The former face an irresistible desire that they cannot resist and the latter face a
resistible desire that they do not resist. However, what does it mean for a desire to be irresist-
ible? Which conditions underlie the distinction between resistibility and irresistibility? In a
philosophical analysis Mele (1990) has analyzed these conditions and pointed out when and
why a desire should count as irresistible. To begin with, Mele considers the distinction
between resistible and irresistible desires to hold only in ordinary, but not in extraordinary,
circumstances (p. 457). For the sake of argument, any further elaboration on this distinction
will be waived here and it will be presupposed that the situation discussed is ordinary. Two
conditions have to be fulfilled for a desire to count as irresistible, namely unconquerability
and uncircumventability. A desire is unconquerable if no strategy for resisting the desire is
available and it fulfills each of the following conditions: (a) agents awareness of it, (b) their
motivation to use it, and (c) possession of the relevant capacities and skills necessary to
execute it. If any of these conditions are fulfilled, desires are conquerable and hence resist-
ible. However, even an unconquerable desire may still be circumvented. A desire is circum-
ventable if next to the desire to do x, an alternative desire to do y is also available and the
agent cannot perform both. An (unconquerable) desire to do x is circumvented, and there-
fore resisted, if the agent performs the alternative action y and hence not x.
These conditions of irresistibility are quite restricted. It may therefore seem as if
Meles analysis indicates that people rarely experience irresistible desires, hardly ever
act in a compulsive fashion and that the first precondition of the strength-model is gener-
ally fulfilled and self-control failures typically are cases of mental weakness. However,
this conclusion is not compelling. Although Meles actual analysis was intended to dif-
ferentiate between the two concepts of resistible and irresistible desires only, it makes it
possible to distinguish an important third category. First, there are desires that are con-
querable and circumventable; second, unconquerable and uncircumventable desires fol-
low, and finally, a distinct third category of desires that are unconquerable but
circumventable can be distinguished. Apparently, this category is conceptually different
from the other two. Desires of this third kind may be considered conditionally resistible.
This less strict meaning of irresistibility in turn is important to understand because of
what it means to lack the capacity or a strategy to exercise self-control and therefore fail
at achieving some distant goal.
34 Theory & Psychology 25(1)

What this means may best be explained by applying the concept of conditional resist-
ibility to the above-presented experiments underlying the delay of gratification para-
digm. Conceptual resistibility can then make distinct conceptual sense of the uninstructed
control-group children in Mischel etal.s experiments, as well as, of other agents who
fail at self-control because they lack relevant skills or strategies. The following example
will show this, and why the uninstructed children are neither compelled to take the
smaller and earlier reward, nor that they are weak-willed when they do so. Instead, they
should be considered as agents who are psychologically incapable. Actually, the various
experiments in this sense showed that it has been precisely due to their lack of proper
strategies and capacities that the uninformed children did not (or to a far lesser extent)
overcome their desire to take the immediate but smaller reward. Nonetheless, given the
conditions of irresistibility, it is now possible to recognize that these children could still
be considered to be in a situation that allows them to circumvent their very desire.
Moving beyond the actual experimental set-up, these children could, next to the desire
for the immediate reward for example, also develop a desire to go to the toilet or go back
to their waiting mother next door. Consequently, even an uninstructed or misinformed
child could let the waiting time pass by and successfully resist the desire for the immedi-
ate reward. In this sense, they are significantly different from, for example, compulsive
eaters, who eat as soon as food is available. Thus, weak-willed agents can conquer a
desire, but fail to do so; compulsive agents fail to resist desires because they can neither
conquer nor circumvent them, but psychologically incapable agents who cannot conquer
less valuable desires either, still can, and should, circumvent them.

Diachronic self-control
This not only applies to experimental settings in social psychology, but may also be
important for daily instances of self-control. To bring about alternative incompatible
desires may be considered a suitable means for vulnerable people to resist desires, which
they prefer not to act on. The distinction between synchronic and diachronic self-control
can further show how this makes sense. Synchronic self-control refers to self-control in
the moment and in circumstances of vulnerability whereas diachronic self-control per-
tains to self-control over time. For example, smokers who want to quit may be unable to
say no thanks to cigarettes offered by their smoking friends and hence be unable to
exercise synchronic self-control. Nevertheless, their smoking habits need not also pre-
vent them from forming a second and incompatible desire, that is, not to meet these
friends anymore. By exercising such diachronic self-control, they enable themselves to
circumvent situations they cannot handle. Exercising diachronic self-control, if one finds
oneself unable to exercise synchronic self-control, is not merely a conceptual and practi-
cal possibility, rather, it constitutes a normative requirement. The self-control failure of
those who fail to achieve their goal, because they lack a suitable psychological strategy
or capacity, does then not consist in not having tried hard enough. Instead, it consists in
having failed to enable themselves and to put themselves in a situation in which the
capacity they lack would not be required. In summary, psychological incapacity is a form
of self-control failure which is conceptually distinct from weakness of will. Nonetheless,
in both cases agents could and should have acted differently. While weak-willed agents
Horstktter 35

should have tried harder, psychologically incapable agents should have enabled them-
selves. Hence, both forms of self-control failure are essentially also normative failures.

Beyond goal-functionality: Goal-setting

Despite relevant differences, there are also important commonalities between the strength
and the capacity models of self-control. Both focus on goal-achievement and both postulate
the availability of pre-existing goals, the contents of which are clear and valuable by defini-
tion. This supposition, however, is not without controversy. Beyond goal-achievement, it
has also been argued that the determination of the kind and content of ones goals should be
part of self-control. Only people who are in control of setting their goals and whose goals are
set to express who they are, or prefer to be, as a person have been argued to deserve to count
as instances of self-control. Ryan and Deci (1999), for example, argue that a meaningful
concept of self-control [although they invoke the term of self-determination] requires a dis-
tinct concept of a self that can add to the concept of control so that a persons self can be
considered to be the source of any goals and judgments to be achieved. The prefix self has
to be invoked so that it meaningfully adds to the term control or regulation.

Goal-setting and concern for ones goals

Equally, in an attempt to differentiate between a basic process of self-control and a more
elaborate process of self-regulation, Kuhl and Fuhrmann (1998) incorporate the relevance
and special meaning of the notion of self. They reserve a distinct concept for the afore-
mentioned kinds of behavioral regulation: self-control supports goal-maintenance and is
required when the achievement of goals is challenged. However, the process they term
self-regulationkf 4 is theorized to be fundamentally different. Rather than being a striving
for the achievement of some pre-set goals, it also requires the maintenance and formation
of ones self. The self is maintained if people set and pursue goals they consider signifi-
cant, intrinsically valuable, and which provide them with reasons to act and achieve said
goals. Self-regulatedkf people achieve their goals because these are important to them.
Continuous attention (conscious or unconscious), motivation, and arousal are important
aspects of this self-maintaining kind of goal-pursuit. In principle, people who have estab-
lished, for example, the goal to stop smoking can do so either in a self-controlled or a
self-regulatedkf manner. However, if self-regulationkf is the available mode of volition, the
way in which, or the reason why, exactly this goal has been set, significantly influences a
persons commitment to said goal. Being committed to ones goals involves recognizing
them as states that represent what one intrinsically considers worth doing, or who one
desires to be. For example, if one considers oneself a non-smoker or incorporates a stop
to smoking into ones system of values and therefore manages to quit, one has exercised
self-regulationkf. For self-regulatedkf people, something counts as a goal because they
attach great importance and a special meaning to it, whilst at the same time it also expresses
who they are as a person (Deci & Ryan, 1987; Ryan & Deci, 2002). As a consequence,
setting a goal and pursuing it may merge into one. This, in contrast, would not be the case
with basic self-control, where goals may be pressured by some outside environmental
forces, and do not express real choices of these people, nor become incorporated into their
systems of value.
36 Theory & Psychology 25(1)

Both Kuhl and Fuhrmanns and Ryan and Decis approaches emphasize the signifi-
cance of a concept of self-control that is independent of mere goal-functionality.
Investigations of how people best achieve certain goals may therefore be too limited to
understand what it means to exercise self-control and also when and why people should
be considered to fail to do so. In addition, it is important to consider why people select
and pursue which goals. For self-determined or self-regulatedkf people acting in a goal-
directed way is expressive of a personal value statement.
As pointed out above, the strength-model of self-control presupposes that agents care
for their goals (the second precondition). However, accounts of self-control that empha-
size the significance of the self and the importance of goal-setting underline that concern
or care for ones goals is most crucially at stake. Goals are not pre-given, but their forma-
tion is part and parcel of the very exercise of self-control. Consequently, what seems
most likely to characterize self-control failure in these theoretical approaches is a lack of
care for ones goals. This reversion into its negative form exceeds both the scope and the
intentions of the original accounts. However, for the purpose of this article, an elabora-
tion of what it might mean to fail to care for ones goals will not only further the under-
standing of these accounts, but also highlight their normative foundation.

Recklessness
The initial characterization of what it means to be, as Ryan and Deci term it, a self-
determined agent provides a useful starting point in this regard. They state that to be
self-determined, people must grasp their importance and synthesize their meaning
[emphasis added] with respect to other values and motivations (Deci & Ryan, 2000, p.
239). Consequently, it could be argued that those who fail at self-determination do not
primarily fail at behaving in a goal-directed way. More fundamentally, they fail to con-
sider their own goals and judgments as being important or meaningful.
The above-introduced philosophical concept of recklessness seems to resemble this
state of mind quite closely. Reckless agents, as Watson (1977) has claimed, know what
they do, but accept the negative consequences. Reckless behavior is the result of a judg-
ment, which, also in the agents eyes is clearly wrong, or it occurs because agents fail to
make a certain judgment, although in their opinion they have overwhelming reasons to
make it and to act accordingly. The behavior of reckless agents cannot be based on the
totality of reasons actually available to them (Kennett, 2001, p. 172). Nonetheless, such
agents retain a basic contact with their reasons, norms, goals, or judgments. That is, they
are reckless with regard to something. It is this condition that ensures that reckless agents
remain within the realm of self-control, because it distinguishes them from, among oth-
ers, disinterested people who do not make any relevant judgments in certain areas of life.
For example, people who are not interested in soccer cannot be said to fail as supporters
when they show no enthusiasm for their home team. Yet, a devoted fan who cheers
neither, does seriously fail. In so far as being a fan is constitutive for who this person is,
failing to cheer could be said to be a failure of self-control, that is, to aim at achieving the
goals one commits oneself to.
A careful analysis of another example, presented by Zangwill (2008) in his analysis
of moral indifferences, may further illuminate what exactly is entailed in the reckless
kind of self-control failure. Zangwill puts forward the case of a mercenary who describes
Horstktter 37

himself as a person who knows his vocation to be morally wrong but who, provided it
pays well, is not concerned by this wrongness. At the same time, however, he claims to
be aware of the moral depravity of his vocation, cognitively to understand the converse
demands of morality and he even insists on sharing normal moral beliefs with other
people and his pre-mercenary self. He can just no longer be bothered accordingly. The
important point to consider here is whether it is possible to believe a person like him in
any intelligible way. It is the specific combination of mental attitudessharing moral
beliefs and not thinking that he should act accordinglywhich characterizes the merce-
nary. It is the condition of recklessness that can render his behavior intelligible. However,
the price to pay for this intelligibility is that his behavior is grounded in a fundamental
normative failure. The mercenary is not only morally wrong, most significantly, he acts
wrongly according to his own definition of goodness. His behavior cannot count as being
controlled by his goals or judgmentswhich he shares with usand hence is not con-
trolled by his self. However, in contrast to weak-willed or psychologically incapable
agents, the essence of the reckless agents failure does not consist in their failure to
achieve their goalswhich they also fail atinstead, it consists of their failure to grasp
what it means to have a goal or to form a judgment. By definition, even if actual achieve-
ment proves difficult or impossible, a goal ought to be aimed at and count as a normative
reason to try to act accordingly. This is what goals are about and this is what the merce-
nary, and other reckless people, fail to live up to and therefore their self-control failures
are normative failures.

The self of self-control

In so far as coming to understand what is important and meaningful to ones self, self-
control is to be conceptualized as control by the selfrather than control of the self. This
final section also focuses on the concept of self and elaborates further on the question of
how having or being a self is part and parcel of self-controlled forms of behavior.
The strength model of self-control presupposes that people have clear and unambiguous
goals (third precondition). In the following this precondition will be challenged and an
understanding of self-control will be pointed out that can also apply to cases of dilemmas,
that is, in situations where people have two mutually exclusive, yet equally valued goals.
Again, the criterion of goal-achievement is of no avail, because from the outset it is unclear
which goal should be achieved and which can be abandoned. Instead, it will be argued that
people can be said to act in a self-controlled way if they overcome a dilemma so that their
subsequent behavior is an expression of how they constitute themselves as persons.

Personality science and the self

Recent attempts by personality science to integrate a theory of self-regulation may be con-
ducive in this regard. The aim is to reconcile relatively stable personality structures with the
dynamic and fine-tuned process of self-regulation (Cervone etal., 2006) and thereby try to
aim at providing an explanation of how self-regulation by persons [emphasis added]
(Cervone etal., 2006, p. 335) can be achieved. The basic presumption of this theoretical
approach is that in self-regulated behavior people are engaged as whole and complex beings
(W. Mischel & Ayduk, 2004) rather than only, for example, their executive functions.
38 Theory & Psychology 25(1)

The Knowledge-Appraisal-Personality-Architecture model (KAPA; Cervone, 2004)

intends to conceptualize the self in terms of personal and intra-individual functioning. It is
believed to explain how peoples within-person personality is shaped and how that in turn
may relate to self-regulated responses. People dispose of intentional mental states, like
beliefs or plans that always relate to something else: a person believes that x is true or plans
to do y. The intentional part of peoples mentality allows them to have goals and be goal-
directed. A goal, however, may have two different references: knowledge and appraisal
(Cervone, 2004, p. 187). While knowledge is considered relatively stable, appraisals are
pointed out as being dynamic. Appraisals allow people to evaluate their knowledge and
make judgments about themselves, the world, and their mutual relationship. People continu-
ously appraise how significant certain situations, plans, or goals are to themselves and
decide whether to cope with difficult situations or best leave the scene, and to consider
whether or not it is worth making an effort. These appraisals are important aspects of who,
as a person, one is or becomes. The KAPA-model wants personality psychology to under-
stand personality both as a question of what people know about themselves and the world
and of how they evaluate this knowledge. This, in turn, is considered to have repercussions
for what it means to exercise self-control. Whenever people are engaged in a process of
goal-achievement, they receive feedback on their progress. Yet, and in contrast to cybernetic
feedback-loop theories, this feedback need not be employed in order to adjust ones behav-
ior for the sake of goal-achievement. Instead, it can be employed in order to adjust ones
appraisal of the respective situation. People who receive negative feedback may (re)estimate
how important they evaluate a certain goal, how capable they consider themselves, or how
reasonable it is to remain committed. Knowledge about oneself and the world influences
such appraisals, but does not replace them (Brandstdter & Rothermund, 2002). The quest
of goal-adjustment versus continued goal-achievement directly relates to possible dilemmas
between the original and the potential new goal which are initially valued equally, yet also
contradict each other. In this way, the KAPA-approach to self-control underscores the posi-
tion of the self as the subject, rather than the object of self-control.
Actually, in such situations it is required that in order to be self-controlled, people
make up their minds and make a decision as to which of the two options to choose.

Solving dilemmas and making up ones mind

Velleman (2002) argues that whenever people face two equally valued but mutually exclu-
sive goals, they have to make up their mind and determine who they want to be. In this
sense, the two options available in dilemmas should not be understood as two alternatives
for the person, but as two alternatives of the person (Bransen, 2000). Vellemans example of
a rational smoker may illustrate what this means. Rational smokers face a dilemma between
wanting to quit smoking and not wanting to engage in any irrational act. To them, however,
to stop smoking entails some irrationality because the benefit of smoking the last cigarette
always outweighs the costs of smoking that one last cigarette. Therefore, not to have the last
cigarette would require them to do something irrational. Most actual smokers who want to
quit confront a clear normative horizon, in which there is a conflict between a disvalued
desire to smoke and a valued goal to stop. Not so, for rational smokers. They face a genuine
dilemma and are either rational in the short-term or irrational in the long-run (continue
smoking), or rational in the long-run and irrational in the short-term (stop smoking).
Horstktter 39

For them, both options are equally dissatisfying. In order to proceed in a self-controlled way,
willpower is of no avail. Instead, in order to proceed, they will have to overcome the
dilemma, make up their mind, and determine what is important to them as persons. Unlike
typical smokers who may suffer from psychological and/or physiological difficulties,
rational smokers mainly have to determine the normativity of the situation, make an evalu-
ative judgment, and define who they want to be: a smoker or a non-smoker. This is entailed
in making up ones mind. Velleman makes a suggestion as to how this can be achieved. In
his example, would-like-to-stop smokers start by giving themselves a new guise, as non-
smokers, and they do so by stopping to think of themselves as smokers (Velleman, 2002, p.
99). Under their new self-given guise as non-smokers, it is no longer irrational for them to
forego the benefits of the last cigarette. Smoking ceases to be beneficial at all, thus enabling
them to change behavior rationally. From the perspective of who these persons are, this is a
sensible option. This holds even though empirically, it may still appear unjustified to
describe such people as non-smokers, because their cravings for nicotine may remain meas-
urable and their friends, unaware of their decision, may continue to describe them as devoted
smokers. Apart from that, these people can be considered non-smokers because of their
mental state and their personal commitment and hence they can be considered to have over-
come their initial dilemma. For the sake of clarity, this is not a statement about a vindicated
strategy of how best to stop smoking. Actually, the philosophical argument would likewise
hold in cases where people make up their mind in the sense of thinking of oneself as a
smoker who does not want to quit. What is important to notice instead, is that by making
up ones mind people may overcome dilemmas in a way that deserves to count as self-con-
trol: they are controlled by their newly acquired self. Again, an underlying normative reflec-
tion is invoked to constitute the new selfthe non-smoker. Therefore, normative evaluations
allow people to act in self-controlled ways even if their goals initially appear unclear, ambig-
uous, or conflicting. Unlike pre-given goals that are potentially external to who someone is
as a person, such decisions, evaluations, or resolutions do not assail or bind agents against
their wills; they explicate who they are and what their wills consist of (Frankfurt, 2006).
People who have made up their minds and constituted a self can be said to act in a self-
controlled way when their behavior is justified by who they decide to be. By contrast, they
fail at self-control when they act in a way that cannot be thus justified. Hence, whether any
action counts as being self-controlled or as a failure of self-control depends on a normative
evaluation that puts the behavior into the perspective of the person concerned.

Conclusion
This article provides a philosophical discussion of the meaning of self-control. For philo-
sophical purposes, the availability of such an analysis of a complex concept is valuable on
its own. For social psychologists, however, this is different and the quest for direct applica-
tions may arise. Therefore, the following lines will briefly point out how the above analysis
bears direct relevance to psychological theorizing. Contemporary social psychology has
developed a variety of conceptualizations of self-control (or self-regulation). Yet, despite
important theoretical differences amongst these variations, the above analysis also demon-
strates that they share one crucial element: they all make reference to the inherent norma-
tivity of self-controlled human behavior. This insight ought to be important to social
psychologists because it can facilitate a proper understanding of the interrelationship of the
40 Theory & Psychology 25(1)

various conceptualizations of self-control currently in use. Bearing this in mind, it should

nevertheless be recognized that the current philosophical analysis also has its limits. With
regard to applications in further social psychology research, I would like to suggest that the
insight that self-control is essentially also a normative issue by referring to peoples reasons
and understanding of themselves, may find its way into new kinds of qualitative research
that investigates the views and experiences of people whose self-control is at stake. In the
end, however, it will all depend on those trained in social psychology to determine how
best to create new kinds of empirical research that lives up to the concept of self-control by
referring not only to causal, but also normative aspects of human behavior. On this point,
further reflection and research is needed.
In the above, the issue of automaticity, which is apotentialchallenge, has been
left until the end. My argument is that the question of whether or not automaticity makes
a difference ceases to apply as soon as normative evaluations of a persons behavior are
at stake. The above analysis has shown that, at least implicitly, each of the conceptualiza-
tions of self-control discussed makes reference to an inherent and indispensable norma-
tivity of self-controlled behavior. Therefore, they are all able to meet the challenge posed
by the automaticity theory. This is not to deny that automatic aspects of human behavior
are real and can very much influence human proceedings. However, this is to say that
they cannot endanger the reality and significance of self-controlled forms of human
behavior. Whenever one signifies a persons behavior as being self-controlled, one
thereby also draws a normative difference to non-self-controlled behavior. This, how-
ever, is not the case with regard to automatic behavior. Non-automatic behavior need not
be of a different normative quality than automatic behavior. Consequently, whenever the
normativity of behavior is at stake, theories of automaticity cease to apply whereas theo-
ries of self-control come to the fore. They cannot only explicate why people behave as
they behave, but in addition they can help us in making sense of both the behavior of
others and of ourselves.

Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this manuscript had been developed while the author was working for the
Behavioral Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The author wants to
thank Jan Bransen and Jeannette Kennett for their great support throughout the research period that
let to this article. Thanks also to Daniel Cervone who encouraged me to present this philosophical
work to an audience of psychologists. I also very much appreciate the work of Joan Coke who has
carefully proofread the manuscript.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

Notes
1. The terms self-control and self-regulation will be used synonymously, except for cases in
which authors referred to make specific use of one of these terms.
2. This paper invokes the term compulsion in this philosophical sense and therewith departs
from its usage in psychiatry, where it largely indicates a serious disorder.
Horstktter 41

3. There are a variety of behaviors such as self-deception, self-destruction, or various forms

of psychopathology that may render one to doubt whether desires indeed cause actions and
hence whether P1 would be correct. This question, however, exceeds the topic and scope of
this article. For the time being, it should suffice to state that according to the standard theory
of human action, such forms of behavior would not count as actions, yet as happenstances and
hence fall outside what could count as (not) self-controlled behavior.
4. For the sake of terminological clearness, the superscript kf (Kuhl Fuhrmann) will be added to
the term self-regulation whenever this specific meaning is referred to.

References
Ainslie, G. (1996). Studying self-regulation the hard way. Psychological Inquiry, 7, 1620.
Aristotle. (1980). The nicomachean ethics (D. Ross, Trans.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press.
Bandura, A. (1996). Failures in self-regulation: Energy depletion or selective disengagement.
Psychological Inquiry, 7, 2024.
Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American
Psychologist, 54, 462479.
Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects
of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 71, 230244.
Baumeister, R. F. (2008). Free will in scientific psychology. Perspectives on Psychological
Science, 3, 1419.
Baumeister, R. F. (2012). Self-control the moral muscle. The Psychologist, 25, 112115.
Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego-depletion: Is the
active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 12521265.
Baumeister, R. F., & Exline, J. J. (1999). Virtue, personality, and social relations: Self-control as
the moral muscle. Journal of Personality, 67, 11651194.
Baumeister, R. F., & Heatherton, T. F. (1996). Self-regulation failure: An overview. Psychological
Inquiry, 7, 115.
Baumeister, R. F., Heatherton, T. F., & Tice, D. M. (1994). Losing control: How and why people
fail at self-regulation. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Baumeister, R. F., Mele, A. R., & Vohs, K. D. (Eds.). (2010). Free will and consciousness, how
might they work? Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., & Tice, D. M. (2007). The strength model of self-control. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 351355.
Block, J. (2006). Some jangly remarks on Baumeister and Heatherton. Psychological Inquiry, 7,
2832.
Brandstdter, J., & Rothermund, K. (2002). The life-course dynamics of goal pursuit and goal
adjustment: A two-process framework. Developmental Review, 22, 117150.
Bransen, J. (2000). Alternatives of oneself: Recasting some of our practical problems. Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research, 60, 381400.
Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1998). On the self-regulation of behavior. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1999). Themes and issues in the self-regulation of behavior. In
R. S. Wyer Jr. (Ed.), Perspectives on behavioral self-regulation (pp. 1105). Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Cervone, D. (2004). The architecture of personality. Psychological Review, 111(1), 183204.
Cervone, D. (2006). People who fail at self-regulation: What should we think of them and how?
Psychological Inquiry, 7, 4046.
42 Theory & Psychology 25(1)

Cervone, D., Mor, N., Orom, H., Shadel, W. G., & Scott, W. D. (2011). Self-efficacy beliefs
and the architecture of personality. In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Handbook of
self-regulation: Research, theory, and applications (2nd ed., pp. 461484). New York, NY:
Guilford.
Cervone, D., Shadel, W. G., Smith, R. E., & Fiori, M. (2006). Self-regulation: Reminders and sug-
gestions from personality science. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 55, 333385.
Davidson, D. (1980). How is weakness of the will possible? In D. Davidson (Ed.), Essays on
actions and events (pp. 2142). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1987). The support of autonomy and the control of behaviour. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 10241037.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The what and why of goal pursuit: Human needs and the
self-determination of behaviour. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227268.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (Eds.). (2002). Handbook of self-determination research. Rochester,
NY: University of Rochester Press.
Dijksterhuis, A., & van Knippenberg, A. (1998). The relation between perception and behavior, or
how to win a game of trivial pursuit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 865877.
Doyen, S., Klein, O., Pichon, C.-L., & Cleeremans, A. (2012). Behavioral priming: Its all in the
mind, but whose mind? PLoSONE, 7, e29081. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029081
Frankfurt, H. G. (2006). Taking ourselves seriously and getting it right. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Gailliot, M. T., Baumeister, R. F., DeWall, C. N., Maner, J. K., Plant, E. A., Tice, D. M.,
Schmeichel, B. J. (2007). Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: Willpower
is more than a metaphor. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 325336.
Hassin, R. R., Uleman, J. S., & Bargh, J. A. (Eds.). (2005). The new unconscious. Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press.
Henden, E. (2008). What is self-control? Philosophical Psychology, 21(1), 6990.
Hofmann, W., Frster, G., Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2012). Everyday temptations: An
experience sampling study of desire, conflict, and self-control. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 102, 13181335.
Holton, R. (1999). Intention and weakness of will. The Journal of Philosophy, 96, 241262.
Holton, R. (2003). How is strength of the will possible? In S. Stroud & C. Tappolet (Eds.), Weakness
of will and practical irrationality (pp. 3967). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Kennett, J. (2001). Agency and responsibility: A common-sense moral psychology. Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press.
Kennett, J., & Smith, M. (1994). Philosophy and commonsense: The case of weakness of will. In
M. Michael & J. OLeary-Hawthorne (Eds.), Philosophy in mind: The place of philosophy in
the study of mind (pp. 141157). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.
Kuhl, J. (2000). A functional-design approach to motivation and self-regulation: The dynamics
of personality systems interaction. In M. Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich, & M. Zeidner (Eds.),
Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 111169). San Diego, CA: Elsevier Academic Press.
Kuhl, J., & Fuhrmann, A. (1998). Decomposing self-regulation and self-control: The volitional
components inventory. In J. Heckhausen & C. Dweck (Eds.), Motivation and self-regulation
across the life span (pp. 1549). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Mele, A. R. (1987). Irrationality: An essay on akrasia, self-deception, and self-control. Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press.
Mele, A. R. (1990). Irresistible desires. NOUS, 24, 455472.
Mele, A. R. (1995). Autonomous agents: From self-control to autonomy. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Metcalfe, J., & Mischel, W. (1999). A hot/cool-system analysis of delay of gratification: Dynamics
of willpower. Psychological Review, 106, 319.
Horstktter 43

Mischel, H. N., & Mischel, W. (1983). The development of childrens knowledge of self-control
strategies. Child Development, 54, 603619.
Mischel, W. (1996). From good intentions to willpower. In P. M. Gollwitzer & J. A. Bargh (Eds.),
The psychology of action: Linking cognition and motivation to behavior (pp. 197218). New
York, NY: Guilford Press.
Mischel, W., & Ayduk, O. (2004). Willpower in a cognitive-affective processing system. In R. F.
Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and appli-
cations (pp. 99129). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Mischel, W., & Baker, N. (1975). Cognitive appraisals and transformations in delay behavior.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 254261.
Mischel, W., Cantor, N., & Feldman, S. (1996). Principles of self-regulation: The nature of will-
power and self-control. In E. T. Higgins & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology:
Handbook of basic principles (pp. 329360). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Mischel, W., Ebbesen, E. B., & Raskoff Zeiss, A. (1972). Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in
delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 21, 204218.
Mischel, W., & Moore, B. (1973). Effects of attention to symbolically presented rewards on self-
control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28, 172179.
Muraven, M., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). Self-regulation and depletion of limited resources: Does
self-control resemble a muscle? Psychological Bulletin, 126, 247259.
Muraven, M., Baumeister, R. F., & Tice, D. M. (1999). Longitudinal improvement of self-regulation
through practice: Building self-control strength through repeated exercise. Journal of Social
Psychology, 139, 446457.
Muraven, M., Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1998). Self-control as limited resource: Regulatory
depletion patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 774789.
Pashler, H., Coburn, N., & Harris, C. R. (2012). Priming of social distance? Failure to replicate
effects on social and food judgments. PLoSONE, 7, e42510. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0042510
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (1999). Approaching and avoiding self-determination: Comparing
cybernetic and organismic paradigms of motivation. In R. S. Wyer Jr. (Ed.), Perspectives on
behavioural self-regulation (pp. 193215). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2002). An overview of self-determination theory: An organismic-
dialectical perspective. In E. L. Deci & R. M. Ryan (Eds.), Handbook of self-determination
research (pp. 333). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
Ryan, R. M., Kuhl, J., & Deci, E. L. (1997). Nature and autonomy: An organizational view of social
and neurobiological aspects of self-regulation in behaviour and development. Development
and Psychopathology, 9, 701728.
Smith, M. (2003). Rational capacities, or: How to distinguish recklessness, weakness, and com-
pulsion. In S. Stroud & C. Tappolet (Eds.), Weakness of will and practical irrationality (pp.
1338). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Stroud, S. (2003). Weakness of will and practical judgement. In S. Stroud & C. Tappolet (Eds.),
Weakness of will and practical irrationality (pp. 121146). Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press.
Tappolet, C. (2003). Emotions and the intelligibility of akratic action. In S. Stroud & C. Tappolet
(Eds.), Weakness of will and practical irrationality (pp. 97120). Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Velleman, D. J. (2002). Motivation by ideal. Philosophical Explorations, 5, 89104.
Vohs, K.D., Baumeister, R. F., & Schmeichel, B. J. (2013). Motivation, personal beliefs, and
limited resources all contribute to self-control. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,
49, 184188.
Vohs, K. D., & Heatherton, T. F. (2000). Self-regulatory failure: A resource-depletion approach.
American Psychological Society, 11, 249254.
44 Theory & Psychology 25(1)

Waroquier, L., Marchiori, D., Klein, O., & Cleeremans, A. (2010). Is it better to think uncon-
sciously or to trust your first impression?: A reassessment of unconscious thought theory.
Social Psychology and Personality Science, 1, 111118.
Watson, G. (1977). Skepticism about weakness of will. Philosophical Review, 86, 316339.
Wegner, D. M. (2004). Prcis of The illusion of conscious will. Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
27, 649692.
Wegner, D. M., & Wheatley, T. (1999). Apparent mental causation: Sources of the experience of
will. American Psychologist, 54, 480492.
Zangwill, N. (2008). The indifference argument. Philosophical Studies, 138, 91124.

Author biography
Dorothee Horstktter, PhD, is assistant professor at the Department of Health, Ethics and
Society, CAPHRI at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. She was formerly employed by the
Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her research
interests cover conceptual and ethical questions at the interface of social psychology/genomics/
neurobiology and (disordered) human behavior. Her recent publications cover her dissertation
entitled Self-control revisited, Varieties of normative agency, as well as articles in International
Journal of Law and Psychiatry, Bioethics, BioSocieties, and the American Journal of Bioethics
Neuroscience.