自我控制行为中的情绪因素

The Role of Emotions in Self-control

对冲动行为的控制及失控(放任)会产生不同的情绪结果,并形成两种自我控制的两难:失控后可能产生的愉悦与内疚、成功自控后可能产生的自豪与遗憾。"自控行为-情绪结果"的联结,使个体能自发地基于预期情绪选择当前行为。情绪预测会受到情境、个体差异等的影响,并有一定的误差。

Success in self-control is essential to several important aspects of life,from personal concerns such as saving money and losing weight to societal concerns such as reducing carbon emissions and preventing financial crisis.Numerous theories and mechanisms have been proposed for explaining what factors may change the strength of self-control,like cognitive executive functions,ego depletion,etc.An increasing body of research has supported that emotions play a vital role in self-control processes.Although early studies focused on the failure of self-control caused by the high arousal of emotional states,more and more research has been paying close attention to the different impact of discrete emotions.This article concentrates on the affective forecasting and its motivational effect on self-control.Various emotions are activated while impulses are controlled or fail to control.Emotional conflict between pleasure and guilt usually arises from succumbing to impulses,whereas conflict between pride and missing out on pleasure is induced by the success of self-control.The associations of ＂self-control behavior-emotional consequences＂ enable individuals to consider anticipated emotions spontaneously when faced with temptations.People would like to approach pleasure and avoid guilt at the same time;they want to approach pride and avoid missing out on pleasure.The process of self-control inevitably changes with this double approach-avoidance conflict of anticipated emotions.Which anticipated emotions would attract more attention？ Which would be ignored？ These depend on the situations,individual differences and a variety of other factors. Kivetz and Keinan （2006） found that greater temporal perspective attenuated emotions of indulgence guilt but accentuated wistful feelings of missing out on the pleasures of life.Fujita and Han（2009） demonstrated that higher-level construals made it easier for people to associate temptations with negativity,and in turn promote self-control.Rick,Cryder and Loewenstein（2007） proposed that ＂tightwads＂ forecasted more pain of paying and spent less money than ＂Spendthrifts＂ who experienced too little anticipatory pain of paying and typically spent much more money.Zemack-Rugar,Bettman and Fitzsimons（2007） found individuals subliminally primed with guilty emotion adjectives showed lower indulgence.This effect only existed in high guilt-proneness persons who would immediately anticipate guilt when faced with indulgence choices.Many researches show that emotions are not obstacles of self-control.As a critical part of human adaptation mechanisms,emotions motivate people to approach or avoid temptations and long-term goals and then shape self-control behavior.Although,sometimes affective forecasting is biased,acting based on the anticipated emotions is ecologically rational and helps people keep a moderate level of self-control.In the future studies of the relationship between emotions and self-control,we should focus on discrete emotions and the emotional component level instead of the arousal and valance.Moreover,personalities and other moderators need to be studied further.