Concept
Self-control
Overview
Self-control is the ability to regulate one's emotions, thoughts, and behavior in the face of temptations and impulses. It is an aspect of inhibitory control, one of the core human executive functions. Executive functions are cognitive processes that are necessary for regulating one's behavior in order to achieve specific goals.
As an executive function, self-control supports goal-directed behavior, planning, and decision making. In psychology, self-control is often distinguished from the broader construct of self-regulation, which includes the monitoring, adjustment, and maintenance of behavior and emotional states across changing situations.
One influential model has described self-control as operating like a muscle that draws on a limited resource.
In the short term, use of self-control can lead to the depletion of that resource. However, in the long term, the use of self-control can strengthen and improve the ability to control oneself over time.
Self-control is also a key concept in the general theory of crime, a major theory in criminology. The theory was developed by Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi in their book A General Theory of Crime (1990). Gottfredson and Hirschi define self-control as the differentiating tendency of individuals to avoid criminal acts independent of the situations in which they find themselves. Individuals with low self-control tend to be impulsive, inconsiderate towards others, risk takers, short-sighted, and nonverbal-oriented. About 70 percent of the variance in questionnaire measures of this construct of self-control has been found to be attributable to genetic factors.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Self-control is discussed.
But, of the different forms of Imperfect Self-Control, those are better who are carried off their feet by a sudden access of temptation than they who have Reason but do not abide by it; these last being overcome by passion less in degree, and not wholly without premeditation as are the others: for the man of Imperfect Self-Control is like those who are soon intoxicated and by little wine and less than the common run…
Aristotle, The Nicomachean ethics of Aristotle
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
For virtue, when it considers what it ought to do and what it ought not to do, is called prudence; and when it curbs passion, and sets a fit and proper limit to pleasure, it is called self-control; and when it is associated with our dealings and covenants with one another, it is called justice; just as a knife is one article, though at different times it cuts different things in half: and so, too, fire acts on…
Plutarch, Plutarch's Morals
states what it is; names the idea
But here again, without looking to duty, all men have already the strongest and most intimate inclination to happiness, because it is just in this idea that all inclinations are combined in one total. But the precept of happiness is often of such a sort that it greatly interferes with some inclinations, and yet a man cannot form any definite and certain conception of the sum of satisfaction of all of them which is…
Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
states what it is; author linked in the graph
All the inclinations together (which can be reduced to a tolerable system, in which case their satisfaction is called happiness) constitute self-regard (solipsismus).
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason
states what it is; author linked in the graph
It would be so, if the consequence necessarily followed that because people are excitable they must always be in a state of excitement. But this is wholly a question of training. Strong feeling is the instrument and element of strong self-control: but it requires to be cultivated in that direction. When it is, it forms not the heroes of impulse only, but those also of self-conquest. History and experience prove that…
John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women
author linked in the graph; names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Self-control
Related ideas
- Emotion
- Operant conditioning
- Immanuel Kant
- Language
- Desire
- Prefrontal cortex
- Neuron
- Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
- Aristotle
- Compassion
- Neuroimaging
- Orbitofrontal cortex
- Digital object identifier
- Temperance (virtue)
- Behavior
- Nicomachean Ethics
- Akrasia
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Stoicism.