title: Clocking self-regulation: why time of day matters for health psychology.
abstract: Various lines of research have identified a number of factors that can impair a person's ability and motivation to exercise self-control, here self-regulation, in the face of a tempting object (e.g., food, sex, alcohol/drugs, smoking). Each of these in situ factors - the availability of the tempting object, one's desire for it, and impaired affective and cognitive functioning (most notably from sleep-related fatigue, daily 'wear and tear', and intoxication) - makes self-regulation more difficult, and even more so when they co-occur. This integrative paper highlights how time of day modulates the salience of these impairing factors and argues that they are likely to be especially influential on self-regulation at night, or later in one's waking day. As each factor is likely to vary considerably across the 24 hours of a day, so too will one's self-regulatory ability and motivation - although person-level characteristics such as chronotype may shift these time-based considerations. The paper thus emphasises the importance of clocking self-regulation within health psychology research and intervention design. Consideration of when a self-regulation attempt is being made and of how time of day (or night) may be altering both the person and the situation towards risk, will facilitate a more temporally contextualised account of self-regulation.
authors.affiliation: a Health Psychology & Clinical Science Doctoral Program, The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY) , New York , NY , USA.|b Center for HIV/AIDS Educational Studies & Training (CHEST), Hunter College, CUNY , New York , NY , USA.
authors.forename: Brett M
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7870-7055
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Millar
mesh_terms: D001294:Attitude to Health; D001524:Behavioral Medicine; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D009042:Motivation; D000068356:Self-Control / Q000523:psychology*; D012890:Sleep; D012907:Smoking
keywords: Self-control; behaviour change; delay of gratification; relapse; risk-taking; sleep