Attitude-Based Self-Regulation: An Experience Sampling Study on the Role of Attitudes in the Experience and Resolution of Self-Control Conflicts in the Context of Vegetarians

Abstract

The regulation of self-control conflicts is integral to exerting self-control and pursuing (long-term) goals. Nonetheless, prevailing conceptualizations of self-control conflict have been overly broad and rarely tested empirically. In the present research, we therefore propose that self-control conflicts originate in accessible ambivalent attitudes. To examine our attitudinal perspective on self-control and self-regulation, we investigated how (ambivalent) attitudes influence self-control conflicts and how addressing these attitudes may help people exert self-control and avert future conflicts. We ran a 21-day experience-sampling study assessing daily inhibition conflicts about eating meat among conflicted vegetarians (N = 159, k = 2,387). Our findings suggest that holding (positive) attitudes that conflict with predominant (negative) attitudes is associated with heightened conflict frequency in people’s daily lives; and the situational accessibility of both attitudes is associated with conflict magnitude. Moreover, to cope with these conflicts, people often used attitude-based self-regulation involving the affirmation of negative attitudes towards eating meat and thereby successfully exerted self-control. Contrary to our prediction, however, we did not find evidence for the effectiveness of attitude-oriented self-regulatory strategies for mitigating subsequent conflict. In fact, various self-regulatory strategies, including the disaffirmation of positive attitudes, distraction, and thought suppression even tended to escalate future conflict. These findings suggest that our attitudinal perspective on self-control and self-regulation provides a parsimonious and testable conceptualization of self-control conflicts.