Bernecker, Katharina; Job, Veronika (2015). Beliefs about willpower moderate the effect of previous day demands on next day’s expectations and effective goal striving. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, p. 1496. 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01496
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Research suggests that beliefs about willpower affect self-regulation following previous self-regulatory demands (Job et al., 2010). Some people believe that their willpower is limited, meaning that after a demanding task it needs to be replenished (limited theory). By contrast, others believe that willpower is not limited and that previous self-control tasks even activate willpower (non-limited theory). We hypothesized that when people experience a demanding day their beliefs about willpower predict their expected capacity to self-regulate and their actual self-regulation on the following day. In a daily diary study (N = 157), we measured students’ daily level of demands, their expected performance in unpleasant tasks, and their effective goal striving. Results showed that following a demanding day, students with a non-limited theory had higher expectations about their progress in unpleasant tasks and were striving more efficiently for their goals than students with a limited theory. These findings suggest that beliefs about willpower affect whether demands experienced on a previous day have positive or negative consequences on people’s self-regulation.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
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PHBern Contributor: |
Bernecker, K. |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Sibylle Blanchard |
Date Deposited: |
10 Jun 2024 16:08 |
Last Modified: |
10 Jun 2024 16:08 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01496 |
PHBern DOI: |
10.57694/7428 |
URI: |
https://phrepo.phbern.ch/id/eprint/7428 |