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Supplemental material, Ludwig_OpenPracticesDisclosure_rev for Predicting Exercise With a Personality Facet: Planfulness and Goal Achievement by Rita M. Ludwig, Sanjay Srivastava and Elliot T. Berkman in Psychological Science

The benefits of autonomy to self-regulation, health, and well-being are well established. However, relatively few studies have investigated how autonomy might influence affect regulation. In this commentary, we argue that autonomy is an important motivational factor that interacts with affect regulation and may be particularly relevant in health contexts, such as cancer, that can limit individual autonomy. We describe the relationship between autonomy and affect regulation and illustrate ways in which autonomy can be supported broadly as well as during various phases in the cancer trajectory.

The term self-control is broadly used by both researchers and lay people. However, both the term itself and the research on self-control is full of assumptions that are often unexamined and unchallenged. In this paper, we question many assertions and assumptions about self-control that foster confusion and controversy, including the multitude of processes encompassed by the varied uses of the term “self-control.” We describe how these assumptions have caused gaps in the empirical literature, impeded the development of an interdisciplinary knowledge base about self-control, and ultimately slowed scientific progress in this area. Critically, we also present a set of recommendations for conducting research on self-control that would be relevant across theories, areas of inquiry, and disciplines. By bringing these assumptions to light, future research can better focus on issues that are important and foundational but have been relatively neglected by the literature because of their implicit nature. This paper thus raises new avenues for research by highlighting what the field generally assumes but does not test directly.

Self-control is often conceived as a battle between “hot” impulsive processes and “cold” deliberative ones. Heeding the angel on one shoulder leads to success; following the demon on the other leads to failure. Self-control feels like a duality. What if that sensation is misleading, and despite how they feel, self-control decisions are just like any other choice? We argue that self-control is a form of value-based choice wherein options are assigned a subjective value and a decision is made through a dynamic integration process. We articulate how a value-based choice model of self-control can capture its phenomenology and account for relevant behavioral and neuroscientific data. This conceptualization of self-control links divergent scientific approaches, allows for more robust and precise hypothesis testing, and suggests novel pathways to improve self-control.

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of human neuroimaging studies seeking to predict behavior above and beyond traditional measurements such as self-report. This trend has been particularly notable in the area of food consumption, as the percentage of people categorized as overweight or obese continues to rise. In this review, we argue that there is considerable utility in this form of health neuroscience, modeling the neural bases of eating behavior and dietary change in healthy, community populations. Further, we propose a model and accompanying evidence indicating that several basic processes underlying eating behavior, particularly reactivity, regulation, and valuation, can be predictive of behavior change. We also discuss future directions for this work.

Objective: Studies have consistently shown that long-term meditation practice is associated with reduced pain, but the neural mechanisms by which long-term meditation practice reduces pain remain unclear. This study tested endogenous opioid involvement in meditation analgesia associated with long-term meditation practice.Methods: Electrical pain was induced with randomized, double-blind, cross-over administration of the opioid antagonist Naloxone (0.15mg/kg bolus dose, then 0.2mg/kg/hr infusion dose) with 32 healthy, experienced meditation practitioners and a standardized open monitoring meditation.Results: Under saline, pain ratings were significantly lower during meditation (pain intensity: 6.41 ± 1.32; pain unpleasantness: 3.98 ± 2.17) than at baseline (pain intensity: 6.86 ±1.04, t(31) = 2.476, p = 0.019, Cohen’s d = 0.46; pain unpleasantness: 4.96 ±1.75, t(31) = 3.746, p = 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.68), confirming the presence of meditation analgesia. Comparing saline and Naloxone revealed significantly lower pain intensity (t(31) = 3.12, p = 0.004, d = 0.56), and pain unpleasantness (t(31) = 3.47, p = 0.002, d = 0.62), during meditation under Naloxone (pain intensity: 5.53 ± 1.54; pain unpleasantness: 2.95 ± 1.88) than under saline (pain intensity: 6.41 ± 1.32; pain unpleasantness: 3.98 ± 2.17). Naloxone not only failed to eliminate meditation analgesia, it made meditation analgesia stronger.Conclusions: Long-term meditation practice does not rely on endogenous opioids to reduce pain. Naloxone’s blockade of opioid receptors enhanced meditation analgesia; pain ratings during meditation were significantly lower under Naloxone than under saline. Possible biological mechanisms by which Naloxone-induced opioid receptor blockade enhances meditation analgesia are discussed.

Following a key developmental task of childhood, namely building a foundation of self-knowledge in the form of domain-specific self-concepts, adolescents begin to explore their emerging identities in ways that foster both autonomy and connectedness. Neuroimaging studies of self-related processes demonstrate enhanced engagement of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in adolescence, which may both facilitate and reflect identity development by integrating across multiple sources of value. Drawing from neuroeconomic and social cognitive accounts, we propose that motivated behavior during adolescence can be modeled by a general value-based decision-making process centered around value accumulation in vmPFC. This approach advances models of adolescent neurodevelopment that focus on reward sensitivity and cognitive control by considering more diverse value inputs, including contributions of developing self- and identity-related processes. It also considers adolescent decision-making and behavior from their point of view, rather than primarily taking adults’ perspectives on what adolescents should value or how they should behave.

Many psychological theories suggest a link between self-regulation and identity, but until now a mechanistic account that suggests ways to improve self-regulation has not been put forth. The identity-value model (IVM) connects the idea from social psychology, that aspects of identity such as core values and group affiliations hold positive subjective value, to the process-focused account from decision-making and behavioral economics, that self-regulation is driven by a dynamic value integration across a range of choice attributes. Together, these ideas imply that goal-directed behaviors that are identity-relevant are more likely to be enacted because they have greater subjective value than identity-irrelevant behaviors. A central hypothesis, therefore, is that interventions that increase the degree to which a target behavior is perceived as self-relevant will improve self-regulation. Additionally, identity-based changes in self-regulation are expected to be mediated by changes in subjective value and its underlying neural systems. In this paper, we define the key constructs relevant to the IVM, explicate the model and delineate its boundary conditions, and describe how it fits with related theories. We also review disparate results in the research literature that might share identity-related value as a common underlying mechanism of action. We close by discussing questions about the model whose answers could advance the study of self-regulation.

The resource model of self-control casts self-control as a capacity that relies on some limited resource that exhausts with use. The model captured our imagination and brought much-needed attention on an important yet neglected psychological construct. Despite its success, basic issues with the model remain. Here, we ask six questions: (i) Does self-control really wane over time? (ii) Is ego depletion a form of mental fatigue? (iii) What is the resource that is depleted by ego depletion? (iv) How can changes in motivation, perception, and expectations replenish an exhausted resource? (v) Has the revised resource model unwittingly become a model about motivation? (vi) Do self-control exercises increase self-control? By providing some answers to these questions - including conducting a meta-analysis of the self-control training literature - we highlight how the resource model needs to be revised if not supplanted altogether.