Success importance and urge magnitude as determinants of cardiovascular response to a behavioral restraint challenge

Fatigue influence on inhibitory control: Cardiovascular and performance findings elucidate the role of restraint intensity

Various papers have detailed an analysis of behavioral restraint that provides suggestions regarding fatigue influence on inhibitory control. A well-known limited resource model by Baumeister suggests that fatigue should directly impair it. By contrast, the behavioral restraint analysis suggests-first-that fatigue might affect control indirectly by impacting the intensity of restraint. Second, fatigue should impair control consistently only when it leads people to withhold restraint effort. We evaluated these suggestions in an experiment that presented participants a task designed to induce low- or high- mental fatigue and then challenged them to maintain a neutral facial expression while watching a more- or less emotionally evocative film clip. As expected, cardiovascular assessments during the facial restraint period revealed interactional response patterns indicative of opposing fatigue influence on restraint intensity under low- as compared to high-evocativeness conditions. Also as expected, fatigue combined with evocativeness to produce a three versus one pattern of inhibitory control operationalized in terms of the duration of non-neutral facial displays. Control failure increased with evocativeness only when fatigue was high and increased with fatigue only when evocativeness was high. Findings support the restraint analysis suggestions, extend results from previous research, and bear out the promise of the restraint analysis for advancing understanding of inhibitory control.

Outsiders’ Thoughts on Generating Self-Regulatory-Depletion (Fatigue) Effects in Limited-Resource Experiments

We offer thoughts pertaining to purported conceptual and replication crises that have been discussed in relation to the limited-resource model (LRM) of self-control, functioning as crisis outsiders who have been conducting related research concerned with determinants and cardiovascular correlates of effort. Guiding analyses in our laboratory convey important lessons about experimental generation of the now-classic LRM self-regulatory-fatigue effect on control. They do so by drawing attention to conditions that must be met in fatigue-induction and fatigue-influence phases of relevant experiments. One fundamental lesson is that even highly standardized fatigue-induction protocols cannot be expected to consistently allow definitive tests of this effect. Another is that the effect might emerge consistently only in a behavioral-restraint “sweet spot” of sorts—a multidimensional motivational space wherein rested study participants view restraint as possible and worthwhile and fatigued participants do not. Implications are identified and discussed.

Time perspective and social preference in older and younger adults: Effects of self-regulatory fatigue

Socioemotional selectivity theory predicts that when perceived time in life is limited, people will prefer emotionally close social partners over less emotionally rewarding partners. Regulating social choices with regard to time perspective can make the best use of time with regard to well-being. However, doing so may depend on the self-regulatory capacity of the individual. Two studies, 1 with younger adults (N = 101) and 1 with younger (N = 42) and older (N = 39) adults, experimentally tested the effects of time perspective and self-regulatory fatigue on preferences for emotionally close partners and knowledgeable partners. In both studies and across younger and older adults, when self-regulatory fatigue was low, the perception of limited time resulted in a greater preference for close social partners relative to knowledgeable social partners. However, this shift was eliminated by self-regulatory fatigue. In Study 2, when fatigued, younger adults preferred close social partners to knowledgeable partners across time perspectives; older adults preferred close and knowledgeable partners more equally across time perspectives. These findings have implications for social decision-making and satisfaction among people who experience chronic self-regulatory fatigue. They also contradict previous suggestions that only younger adults are susceptible to self-regulatory fatigue. (PsycINFO Database Record