You Wear Me Out

In the U.S., we generally see self-control as a positive trait. It's good when people refrain from gluttony, from overspending, from aggressive outbursts, and from listening to Lady Gaga. Therefore, when we want to prevent a slip-up or change an especially intransigent behavior, it seems like we should surround ourselves with people who exhibit self-control. And we do. People often diet together, shop with friends, attend group addiction meetings, and so on, typically presuming that they are able to coordinate their own self-control with those of others. If someone I know can resist that cigarette or that jelly donut, shouldn't I want to be around that person? But does this coordination of self-control always lead to positive outcomes, or might we sometimes over-coordinate with other people? When is it good and when is it bad to have others resist the same temptations that you face?

First, it's good to know just what self-control is and how it works. Self-control, sometimes referred to as a form of self-regulation, is essentially the inhibition of one's dominant tendencies, presumably for the purpose of achieving more rewarding long-term outcomes. For example, you are practicing self-control when you stop yourself from dumping your savings into Florida swampland because, just maybe, it would be good to keep that money for retirement. Experiences like this should be immediately recognizable to most people, as we constantly exercise self-control throughout our daily lives. Of course, we're not always effective (see: recent financial meltdown). One interesting fact about self-control that has been emphasized by psychologists Roy Baumeister, Kathleen Vohs and their colleagues is that self-control is quite limited in capacity (if you're eating a jelly donut right now, you probably understand what I'm talking about). Self-control is effortful - use it in one situation, and you temporarily have less to use in a subsequent situation. Your self-control has been depleted. Resist that donut, and you might wind up spending more money at the next store you walk into.

The question here, though, is: What effect does another person's use of self-control have on you? To answer this question, a few researchers (Noah Goldstein, Jenessa Shapiro, John Bargh) and I conducted several experiments to test whether the act of "mentally simulating" someone's self-control might cause people to feel depleted even when they didn't exert self-control themselves. Here's where the strange world of unconscious social coordination rears its head... Past research has shown that people often "catch" the goals of others, much like we catch diseases. This is why surrounding yourself with someone who is good at self-control can be a good thing. When you watch a game show like The Biggest Loser, you might catch the goal of using self-control, and be inspired to diet yourself.

Research on mental simulation, however, suggests that if you were to really get inside that contestant's head, you might end up experiencing the end result of that self-control activity—depletion. Mentally simulating the actions of others involves the neural and physical replication of those actions, and has been found to result in consequences consistent with the actual performance of those actions. That's a mouthful, but think about imagining or taking the perspective of someone who eats a disgusting food (like on Fear Factor). When you imagine someone biting into a raw cow's eyeball, you could end up with a disgusted expression on your face, even though you haven't really eaten anything. A similar effect might apply to self-control as well.

We had participants in our experiments read several stories. In one version, a waiter comes to work without having eaten all day, and is really, really hungry. That waiter works at the best restaurant in town, and throughout his (or her) shift, he is surrounded by mouth-watering meals and tempting treats. He can't eat anything though, or else he might be fired. In another version of the story, the waiter comes to work having just eaten, and the restaurant he works at is more of a greasy spoon. So, in the first version, the waiter has to use self-control, and in the second, he doesn't need to use it. We also asked participants to either just read the story (which is similar to simply being in the presence of someone else during the day) or to take the perspective of the waiter. Really get inside his head. Then we had people do a bunch of things that benefit from self-control: decide how much money to spend on products, solve word problems, read ads, think about time, etc.

What we found was really interesting. People who simply read the stories did much better on the second tasks when the story involved the hungry waiter who used self-control than when the story involved the full waiter. Those people decided to spend less money on products, they solved more problems, they were less influenced by ads and they thought less time had passed during the study. Essentially, they had a lot of self-control to burn. But the people who took the perspective of the hungry waiter really suffered. They were willing to spend more money on the same products (over $6,000 more), they solved fewer problems, they agreed to things in ads they didn't even want, and they thought the study took over twice as long. They were burned out.

Studies like these show that our self-control abilities don't reside exclusively within us. Even though we might not realize it, we coordinate our mental and physical states with other people around us. In this research, social coordination can help or it can hurt, depending on how much we tend to get inside others' heads. In situations where we tend to simulate the feelings of others, this "vicarious depletion" could potentially result in small breakdowns of self-control, such as employees speaking out improperly during a meeting, to catastrophic ones, such as police officers responding to an emotionally charged encounter with deadly force. On the other hand, if people can maintain a degree of psychological separation, it seems that others' self-control can actually help us out. The key is finding the right balance in those situations where self-control is necessary. Keep that in mind the next time you're out with others, and don't let them lead you into temptation. The jelly donut is waiting.

Have you had similar experiences? Post about them in the Comments section!

You can read more about these studies in:
Ackerman, J. M., Goldstein, N. J., Shapiro, J. R., & Bargh, J. A. (2009). You Wear Me Out: The Vicarious Depletion of Self-Control. Psychological Science, 20, 326-332.