Flexibility in Using Self-Regulatory Strategies to Manage Self-Control Conflicts: The Role of Metacognitive Knowledge, Strategy Repertoire, and Feedback Monitoring

Abstract

For regulating emotion, it has been shown that people benefit from being flexible in their use of emotion regulation strategies. In the current study, we built on research focused on regulatory flexibility with respect to emotions to investigate flexibility in the use of self-regulatory strategies to resolve daily self-control conflicts. We investigated three components of flexibility: (1) metacognitive knowledge, (2) strategy repertoire, and (3) feedback monitoring. In a 10-day experience sampling study, 226 participants reported whether they had, within the past hour, experienced a self-control conflict of initiating an aversive activity, persisting in it, or inhibiting an unwanted impulse in response to a temptation. Results support the hypothesis that higher levels of all three components of flexibility are associated with higher levels of success in managing daily self-control conflicts, except for strategy repertoire and feedback monitoring in conflicts of persistence. Results also support the hypothesis that higher levels of trait self-control are associated with higher levels of metacognitive knowledge and feedback monitoring for conflicts of initiation, but not for conflicts of persistence and inhibition. We found no evidence of an association between trait self-control and strategy repertoire. These findings demonstrate the importance of flexible strategy use during daily self-control conflicts.

Self-control: An integrative framework

“…Additionally, people often use multiple regulation strategies within a single regulatory event. A series of recent experience sampling studies consistently found that people tend to use 2-3 strategies on average within a single regulatory event (Hennecke et al, 2019), a finding that has since replicated in the assessment of desires (Milyavskaya et al, 2020), in the context of dieting and food consumption (Lopez et al, 2021), and in self-control conflicts more generally (Bürgler et al, 2021). As a function of using multiple goals and/or strategies, people would then also use multiple tactics -especially in situations where a person is actively regulating their long-term goal and a temptation.…”

“…Theoretical Integration. To understand how people can choose the "right" strategies from among the different strategy families, here we aim to integrate the emotion regulation literature by considering what strategies a person has available to them, or their strategy repertoire, which can be used in accordance with situational demands (Bonanno & Burton, 2013;Bürgler et al, 2021). This concept can be best described as a toolbox approach to self-control, with a person's strategy repertoire serving as their regulatory "toolbox" and the individual strategies (e.g., situation selection, cognitive change) representing the "tools" they can use in response to situational demands.…”

“…Although relatively new to the literature on self-control (Hennecke & Bürgler, 2020), recent research suggests that having a well-stocked strategy toolbox is important for regulatory success. Indeed, people reap the most benefits when using a wider range of strategies (Bürgler et al, 2021;Grommisch et al, 2020;Lam & McBride-Chang, 2007), whereas having a limited strategy repertoire is associated with negative outcomes (Grommisch et al, 2020;Lougheed & Hollenstein, 2012). For example, having a wider range of emotion regulation strategies that are used to a moderate degree was associated with greater well-being and lower psychopathology, whereas heavily relying on a single or a few strategies was associated with lower wellbeing and greater psychopathology (De France & Hollenstein, 2017;Dixon-Gordon et al, 2015).…”

“…Because of this, trait-level measures that ask people to report general or habitual strategy use (e.g., de Vet et al, 2014;Katzir et al, in-press) are not able to capture the complexity of polyregulation processes. Instead, researchers can more effectively capture polyregulation by asking participants about their use of strategies in response to temptations in the lab (e.g., or in response to momentary events using experience sampling (e.g., Bürgler et al, 2021;Friese & Hofmann, 2016;Lopez et al, 2021).…”

Increasing resolution in the mechanisms of resolve

“…Tactically skillful agents display regulatory flexibility: the ability to adjust one's regulatory processes to the specific demands of the environment (Bonanno & Burton, 2013). Evidence that individual differences in tactical skill correlate with differences in long-term goal achievement has recently begun to emerge, both for emotion regulation and self-control (Bürgler, Hoyle, & Hennecke, 2020;Southward, Altenburger, Moss, Cregg, & Cheavens, 2018).…”