Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

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 …