'Willpower' over the life span: decomposing self-regulation.
In the 1960s, Mischel and colleagues developed a simple 'marshmallow test' to measure preschoolers' ability to delay gratification. In numerous follow-up studies over 40 years, this 'test' proved to have surprisingly significant predictive validity for consequential social, cognitive and mental health outcomes over the life course. In this article, we review key findings from the longitudinal work and from earlier delay-of-gratification experiments examining the cognitive appraisal and attention control strategies that underlie this ability. Further, we outline a set of hypotheses that emerge from the intersection of these findings with research on 'cognitive control' mechanisms and their neural bases. We discuss implications of these hypotheses for decomposing the phenomena of 'willpower' and the lifelong individual differences in self-regulatory ability that were identified in the earlier research and that are currently being pursued.
Mischel
Walter
W
Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA. wm@psych.columbia.edu
Ayduk
Ozlem
O
Berman
Marc G
MG
Casey
B J
BJ
Gotlib
Ian H
IH
Jonides
John
J
Kross
Ethan
E
Teslovich
Theresa
T
Wilson
Nicole L
NL
Zayas
Vivian
V
Shoda
Yuichi
Y
D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D012919:Social Behavior; D012927:Social Control, Informal