ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the motivational and attendant attentional processes that underlie the extent to which a person uses self-control. It describes how self-control has typically been conceptualized using a resource metaphor and also discusses how this model is incompatible with many research findings. The chapter explores an alternate model of self-control, which we call the shifting priorities model, and highlights the attentional and motivational mechanisms that underlie effective self-control. It explains how self-control can be improved, and highlights future research directions based on the shifting priorities model of self-control. Although the shifting priorities model builds on past research to present a specific mechanism of self-control, many of its components have not been directly evaluated. The chapter also describes an alternative model that construes self-control as a choice, and the frequently observed reduction in self-control across time as the product of attentional and motivational processes that change the choices that people make over time.
