Situational Strategies for Self-Control

Abstract

Exercising self-control is often difficult, whether declining a drink in order to drive home safely, passing on the chocolate cake to stay on a diet, or ignoring text messages to finish reading an important paper. But enacting self-control isn’t always difficult, particularly when it takes the form of proactively choosing or changing situations in ways that weaken undesirable impulses or potentiate desirable ones. Examples of situational self-control include the partygoer who chooses a seat far from where drinks are being poured, the dieter who asks the waiter not to bring around the dessert cart, and the student who goes to the library without a cell phone. Using the process model of self-control, we argue that the full range of self-control strategies can be organized by considering the timeline of the developing tempting impulse. Because impulses tend to grow stronger over time, situational self-control strategies—which can nip a tempting impulse in the bud— may be especially effective in preventing undesirable action. Ironically, we may underappreciate situational self-control for the same reason it is so effective, namely that by manipulating our circumstances to advantage we are often able to minimize the in-the-moment experience of intrapsychic struggle typically associated with exercising self-control.

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War