ABSTRACT
Reaching for an apple instead of a chocolate bar, refraining from yelling back at your boss, and forgoing the after-dinner cigarette. Although seemingly disparate, all these behaviors require a person to relinquish their immediate impulses in the service of a more important goal. And, as anyone who has tried to reach a personal goal knows, self-control does not always work – people choose the chocolate, yell back at their bosses, spouses, and children, and continue to smoke despite deteriorating health. Why, then, is self-control so often not applied? In this chapter, we discuss the motivational and attendant attentional processes that underlie the extent to which a person uses self-control.
