By
Roy Baumeister, Social Psychology Area Director
Francis Eppes Eminent Scholar
Professor, Department of Psychology
Floriday State University
Tallahassee, FL, USA
Todd Heatherton, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Dianne Tice, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.
Description
Self-regulation refers to the self's ability to control its own thoughts, emotions, and actions. Through self-regulation, we consciously
control how much we eat, whether we give in to impulse, task performance, obsessive thoughts, and even the extent to which we allow ourselves
recognition of our emotions. This work provides a synthesis and overview of recent and long-standing research findings of what is known
of the successes and failures of self-regulation.
People the world over suffer from the inability to control their finances, their weight,
their emotions, their craving for drugs, their sexual impulses, and more. The United States in particular is regarded by some observers
as a society addicted to addiction. Therapy and support groups have proliferated not only for alcoholics and drug abusers but for all
kinds of impulse control, from gambling to eating chocolate. Common to all of these disorders is a failure of self-regulation, otherwise
known as "self-control."
The consequences of these self-control problems go beyond individuals to affect family members and society
at large. In Losing Control, the authors provide a single reference source with comprehensive information on general patterns of self-regulation
failure across contexts, research findings on specific self-control disorders, and commentary on the clinical and social aspects of self-regulation
failure. Self-control is discussed in relation to what the "self" is, and the cognitive, motivational, and emotional factors that impinge
on one's ability to control one's "self."
Audience:
Researchers and students in social psychology and personality, and clinical psychologists.
