Chapter 1 - Universiteit Twente

General Introduction
self-control in the past (and were thus depleted of their regulatory resources) to
conserve their remaining self-control strength for this future task. These participants
performed worse on an intervening measure of self-control than participants who were
either not depleted, or not expecting future self-control. Moreover, when performance
on this future task was actually measured, participants who were initially depleted but
conserved resources performed as well as non-depleted participants. In contrast, initially
depleted participants not expecting to exert self-control in the future performed worse
than participants in the other conditions.
In sum, we should state that self-control performance under depletion conditions is
amenable to short-term modulation as a function of motivation, and the motivation
to engage in self-regulation is therefore an important component of self-control as
well (Baumeister & Vohs, 2007). A state of self-regulatory resource depletion and the
expectation of future self-control demands may cause people to become more selective
in exerting self-control. People are likely to be involved in a constant trade-off between
multiple self-control demands, and motivation can compensate for a reduced ability
to self-regulate. As Muraven and Slessareva (2003) already stated, this trade-off is not
necessarily a conscious and deliberative process, but rather something individuals do
continually with very little awareness, in contrast to the exertion of self-control itself,
which is typically an act of conscious volition.
An alternative perspective on the self-regulatory strength model has recently been
put forward by Dewitte, Bruyneel, and Geyskens (2009). Starting from an alternative
cognitive control model, they claim that the strength-model only holds when the
control processes that have been recruited to deal with the demands of a first selfregulatory
task differ from the control processes needed for a second task. Depletion
effects thus should only occur when the control processes required for two consecutive
tasks differ, since in between people will have to adapt to the temporary misfit between
their cognitive system and the demands of the task at hand. Indeed, Dewitte et al. (2009)
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