FlashReports Three ways to resist temptation : The independent contributions of executive attention , inhibitory control , and affect regulation to the impulse control of eating behavior q

It is generally assumed that impulse control plays a major role in many areas of self-regulation such as eating behavior. However, the exact mechanisms that enable the control of impulsive determinants such as automatic affective reactions toward tempting stimuli are not well understood. ‘‘The present research investigated the separate moderator effects of three factors of impulse control, executive attention, inhibitory control, and affect regulation on the relationship between automatic affective reactions toward candy and subsequent candy consumption. ” Results showed that all three factors reduced the influence of automatic affective reactions on eating behavior, indicating improved impulse control. Implications for self-regulation research are discussed. 2009 Published by Elsevier Inc. People time and again face the challenge of resisting tempting impulses (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996). This is so because following the call of immediate enticements such as the tasty dessert, the cool drink, or the relaxing cigarette may interfere with important long-term goals such as maintaining good health. In order to resist temptation, impulse control is necessary (Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999). If the capacity for impulse control is situationally or chronically reduced, impulsive behavior determination is more likely (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). For instance, previous research has provided direct evidence for a heightened impact of impulses on self-regulatory behavior following ego depletion (Friese, Hofmann, & Wänke, 2008; Hofmann, Rauch, & Gawronski, 2007) or alcohol consumption (Hofmann & Friese, 2008). In this research, impulses have been specified as automatic affective reactions toward the temptation of interest, as assessed with implicit reaction-time measures (e.g., Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). However, to really understand impulse control, it is necessary to identify the exact mechanisms or factors involved in the resistance to temptation. Drawing on self-regulation research, there appear to be at least three separable factors pertaining to attentional, inhibitory, and affect-regulatory mechanisms, respectively. First, earlier work on delay of gratification has identified the ability to Elsevier Inc. help in data collection. fmann). control attention as an important factor in resisting temptation (Peake, Hebl, & Mischel, 2002; Rodriguez, Mischel, & Shoda, 1989). Correspondingly, recent research has established that low executive attention (i.e., the domain-free ability to control attention, Engle, 2002) is associated with a larger impact of impulses on selfregulatory behavior (Hofmann, Gschwendner, Friese, Wiers, & Schmitt, 2008; Thush et al., 2008). A second factor relates to the general capacity to inhibit prepotent responses (Logan, 1997; Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki, & Howerter, 2000). Specifically, inhibitory control may be needed to prevent impulsive precursors from influencing overt behavior via the activation of behavioral tendencies to approach/consume a temptation of interest (e.g., Strack & Deutsch, 2004). Finally, as impulses are assumed to contain an affective, hedonic component (Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999), the down-regulation of hedonic affect (affect regulation) may be an additional factor involved in impulse control. Specifically, individuals who spontaneously down-regulate activated affect may be less prone to being swayed by impulses than individuals for whom activated affect persists— so that impulsive influences on behavior become less likely. The aim of the present research was to separately assess these three factors: executive attention, inhibitory control, and affect regulation, and to investigate their independent contributions on impulse control. These three factors were measured via the performance on experimental tasks adapted from the (social-)cognitive literature rather than via self-report measures for which accurate 432 W. Hofmann et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45 (2009) 431–435 insight into the processes of interest is unlikely. Specifically, executive attention was assessed with an operation span task (Engle, 2002; Oberauer et al., 2000), inhibitory control with the stop-signal paradigm (Logan, 1997), and affect regulation with an adaptation of the affect misattribution procedure (Payne et al., 2005). Following previous reasoning, impulse control was indicated by the degree to which these three factors reduce the influence of automatic affective reactions toward candy on actual behavior (Hofmann et al., 2007, 2008). The eating behavior of females was chosen as an important applied domain of self-regulation in which impulsive influences play a major role over and above explicit liking or reasoned beliefs (Herman & Polivy, 2004). 1 Note that we use the term ‘‘affect regulation” here in a broad sense that may also incorporate relatively automatic, spontaneous, and potentially unintentional ways in which affect is down-regulated over time (e.g., Koole & Jostmann, 2004). Future research will have to clarify to what extent the current paradigm taps into individual differences in the effortful capacity to neutralize affective reactions over time or into individual differences in a more ‘‘natural” decay function by which affective reactions dissipate over time. Method