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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences
Improved Self-Control Associated With Using Relatively Large Amounts Of Glucose: Learning Self-Control Is Metabolically Expensive, Matthew T. Gailliot
Improved Self-Control Associated With Using Relatively Large Amounts Of Glucose: Learning Self-Control Is Metabolically Expensive, Matthew T. Gailliot
Faculty Publications
The current study examined whether changes in glucose during a self-control task would predict changes in self-control performance later on. Participants attended two experimental sessions, spaced two weeks apart. During each session, they had their glucose measured, completed the Stroop task as a measure of self-control, and then had their glucose measured again. Larger decreases in glucose (from before to after the Stroop task) during the first session predicted larger increases in improvement on the Stroop task during the second session, in the form of increased speed. Learning self-control might benefit from using larger amounts of glucose. Learning self-control is …
Mortality Salience And Metabolism: Glucose Drinks Reduce Worldview Defense Caused By Mortality Salience, Matthew T. Gailliot
Mortality Salience And Metabolism: Glucose Drinks Reduce Worldview Defense Caused By Mortality Salience, Matthew T. Gailliot
Faculty Publications
The current work tested the hypothesis that a glucose drink would reduce worldview defense following mortality salience. Participants consumed either a glucose drink or placebo, wrote about either death or dental pain, and then completed a measure of worldview defense (viewing positively someone with pro-US views and viewing negatively someone with anti-US views). Mortality salience increased world- view defense among participants who consumed a placebo but not among participants who consumed a glucose drink. Glucose might reduce defensiveness after mortality salience by increasing the effectiveness of the self-controlled suppression of death-related thought, by providing resources to cope with mortality salience …
Breaking The Rules: Low Trait Or State Self-Control Increases Social Norm Violations, Matthew T. Gailliot, Seth A. Gitter, Michael D. Baker, Roy F. Baumeister
Breaking The Rules: Low Trait Or State Self-Control Increases Social Norm Violations, Matthew T. Gailliot, Seth A. Gitter, Michael D. Baker, Roy F. Baumeister
Faculty Publications
Two pilot and six studies indicated that poor self-control causes people to violate social norms and rules that are effortful to follow. Lower trait self-control was associated with a greater willingness to take ethical risks and use curse words. Participants who completed an initial self-control task that reduced the capacity for self-control used more curse words and were more willing to take ethical risks than participants who completed a neutral task. Poor self-control was also associated with violating explicit rules given by the experimenter. Depleting self-control resources in a self-control exercise caused participants subsequently to talk when they had been …