“The answer to the perennial question of what facilitates individual and cultural success might be found in the concept of self-regulation. The benefits of successful self-regulation are great and its costs can be dire. Failures of self-regulation are at the root of many personal and societal ills, such as interpersonal violence, self-defeating behaviours, substance abuse, poor health, underachievement, and obesity. “– Roy Baumeister, Willpower

By Kenneth Ukoh, Updated February 12, 2026

Self-regulation helps people to manage their emotions and behaviours. It allows people to make plans, choose from alternatives, control impulses, and inhibit unwanted thoughts. It enables people to act in alignment with their core values and long-term goals. However, though humans have an immense capacity to self-regulate, failures commonly occur so that people lose control of their behaviour in various ways (Heatherton and Wagner, 2011).

For instance, people who are better at self-regulation are said to have improved relationships, increased job success, better mental health, and a low risk of alcohol abuse and engaging in indiscriminate sexual behaviour. By contrast, poor self-regulation has been estimated to be the cause of 40% of deaths (Heatherton and Wagner, 2011).  Such failures are an important cause of several contemporary societal problems such as obesity, addiction, poor financial decisions, and sexual infidelity to mention only a few of them.

Despite our good intentions, self-regulation is difficult to maintain in a steady state because, in our daily lives, we are constantly encountering temptations and challenges that affect our resolve which can lead to the failure of self-regulation. For this reason, it is equally important to determine how to ensure effective self-regulation when setting goals since self-regulation failure occurs when people either fail to adapt behaviour to enhance the attainment of goals or engage in behaviours that are either ineffective or distract them from their goals (Heatherton and Baumeister, 1996).

Underregulation, Misregulation and Dysregulation

The four different terms used to describe causes of self-regulation failure are underregulation, misregulation, dysregulation and overregulation.

Baumeister and Heatherton, (1996), distinguish between underregulation and misregulation. Underregulation occurs because of the lack of adequate control or lack of self-control. In misregulation, control is exerted on the self, but it is done in a misguided or counterproductive manner so that the expected results cannot be achieved because efforts are directed at the wrong things. According to Baumeister and Heatherton, (1996), underregulation is the most common problem that causes self-regulation failure.

Dysregulation is defined by the APA Dictionary of Psychology as “any excessive or otherwise poorly managed mechanism or response. For example, emotional dysregulation is an extreme or inappropriate emotional response to a situation (e.g., temper outbursts, deliberate self-harm); it may be associated with bipolar disorders, borderline personality disorder, autism spectrum disorder, psychological trauma, or brain injury” (APA Dictionary of Psychology, n.d.). PsychCentral defines it as “Emotional dysregulation — also called affect dysregulation or simply dysregulation — is when you’re unable to manage your emotional responses” (Pedersen, 2022).

So, dysregulation is more of an emotional and a medical issue. We will examine emotion regulation in Part 10. People with emotional issues that are not what can be termed normal in the sense of what people face in their daily lives should seek medical help.

Overregulation is defined “as the effortful self-regulation of several factors at any one time” (Walker, 2016). Sustaining a high level of effortful self-regulation over a period may lead to the depletion of limited self-regulatory resources, which diminishes subsequent self-regulatory actions. This will be examined more later in this article.

Causes of Self-Regulation Failure

Self-regulation is recognised as a complex process which can fail in different ways. For this reason, it is difficult to attribute its failure to a single cause or sequence of causes that can explain and cover all instances of failure. However, research has shown that there are main factors and patterns and any of them can produce self-regulation failure independently (Baumeister and Heatherton, 1996).

Wagner and Heatherton, (2015), identify seven threats to self-regulation which they term “The Seven Deadly Threats to Self-Regulation” in their article. These are cue exposure and impulse control, emotional and Social Distress, lapse-activated patterns and abstinence violations, impairments of self-monitoring and self-awareness, self-regulatory resource depletion, and alcohol intoxication. Heatherton and Wagner, (2011), attribute common self-regulation failure to bad moods, when minor indulgences escalate into full-blown binges and when people are overwhelmed by temptations or impulses as well as when control is impaired, for example, after consuming alcohol or there is a depletion of self-regulatory resources.

We are now going to identify the main causes of self-regulation failure and briefly discuss them in the next section.

Lack of Impulse Control

Self-control is defined by Cheung et al., (2014) “as the capacity to alter and regulate predominant response tendencies resulting in the inhibition of undesirable behaviours while promoting desirable ones to support the pursuit of long-term goals (de Ridder et al., 2012).” Sometimes, researchers use the term “trait self-control” (TSC) interchangeably with self-control because according to Cheung et al., (2014), TSC “is a basic temperament forming the core of personality as it develops (Rothbart et al., 2000) …. and “self-control has been heralded as an evolutionary trait to ensure adaptation and survival (Baumeister et al., 2007)”. According to Zhang et al., (2019), self-control has the following main benefits:

• It is essential for the well-being and healthy development of humans.
• Self-control is a major characteristic of a civilized society (Freud, 1993).
• “The ability to exercise self-control is the key to human success and happiness” (Hare et al., 2009).
• “Good self-control not only prevents drug abuse, criminal offences, and other undesirable social behaviours but also promotes the healthy growth of individuals and the harmonious development of society (Moffitt et al., 2011; Tangney et al., 2014).”
• “Self-control seems to be the core element for achieving optimal competitive performance (Zhang, 2013; Englert, 2016)”

The above points demonstrate the reason lack of self-control is a threat to self-regulation as identified by Wagner and Heatherton, (2015).

Impulsivity

Impulsivity or impulsiveness is defined by the Encyclopaedia of Personality and Individual Differences pp 2207–2209 (Winstanley, 2020) as “A personality trait that reflects a predisposition toward rapid, unplanned reactions to internal or external stimuli without regard to the negative consequences of these reactions to the individual or to others (Moeller et al. 2001).”

Impulsivity is regarded as a component of personality. For this reason, it is sometimes addressed as trait impulsivity (Huang et al., 2017). Being impulsive can be good and bad. For example, it is a good impulsive action if such actions result in seizing an opportunity. However, we are interested in the bad aspect of impulsivity here since we are discussing self-regulation failure.

One of the most widely used measures of impulsivity is the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS) derived from the Barratts’ model of impulsivity. The model identifies the following three characteristics of impulsivity (Lazuras, Ypsilanti and Powell, et al, 2019):

• Motor impulsivity refers to impromptu action without thinking.
• Cognitive impulsivity also known as attentional impulsiveness refers to the inability to focus on the current task.
• Non-planning impulsivity refers to not being future-oriented or lack of forethought.

High levels of impulsivity may be symptoms of disorders as impulsivity is one of the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD) (Bakhshani, 2014). According to WebMD, impulsive behaviour can be a symptom of several conditions such as anxiety, autism spectrum disorders and substance abuse (Cooper, 2022). It is also associated with some of some of the most common disorders like (Cooper, 2002):  

• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
• Bipolar disorder.
•  Antisocial personality disorders.

Cue Exposure

Cue exposure has been identified as one of the commonest ways for impulses to be triggered particularly, during negative moods, or after self-regulatory resources have been depleted (Kelley, Wagner and Heatherton, 2015). When people experience a reward cue, such as a food advertisement or the sight and smell of a cigarette, the cravings increase for the consumption of the substance (Kelley, Wagner and Heatherton, 2015).

The reward system in the brain, known as the mesolimbic dopaminergic system is involved in activating motivated behaviours for various types of reward and cognitive processes such as eating, having sex, or using an addictive drug. Reward is a natural process during which the brain associates diverse stimuli (substances, situations, events, or activities) with a positive or desirable outcome. This results in adjustments in an individual’s behaviour, ultimately leading them to search for that rewarding stimulus (Lewis et al., 2021). It is thought that when we are exposed to a rewarding stimulus, the brain responds by releasing an increased amount of dopamine, which is the main neurotransmitter associated with rewards and pleasure.

Controlling impulses has been known to be a major form of self-regulation. According to Baumeister, Heatherton & Tice, 1994), inhibition of impulses has been estimated to account for 90% of the daily activities of self-regulation. Furthermore, (Hofmann et al.,2012), have estimated that people spend nearly a quarter of their day engaged in some form of impulse control, for example, how to avoid eating, checking e-mails, or taking a break from work. In addition, there are temptations that people are not conscious of resisting. In addition, people are said to typically make 14 food-related decisions a day concerning what food to eat and when to eat it (Hofmann et al., 2012).

Emotional and Social Distress

Negative affect is said to be the frequent cause of self-regulation failure (Wagner and Heatherton, 2015). Negative affect is defined as “classes of mood, emotion, and affect. It refers to the subjective experience of a group of negative emotional states such as anxiety, depression, stress, sadness, worry, guilt, shame, anger, and envy” (Leung and Lee, 2014).

Having bad moods occasionally is a normal part of life. However, having it frequently and consistently is not good for mental well-being. According to Psychology Today, the characteristic of a bad mood is that sometimes, it overwhelms people so that they are not aware of it and as a result, they cannot come out of it. In this way, the bad mood stays and creates symptoms such as irritability with others, low motivation, isolation, and low self-esteem which may lead to conflicts in relationships, distress, low productivity and poor performance both in personal life and at work (Weber, 2022).

Studies have shown that inducing negative affect increases the craving for alcohol in alcoholics (Kelley, Wagner and Heatherton, 2015). The same thing applies to cigarette smokers and drug use by substance abusers. In the case of chronic dieters, negative affect is associated with binge eating and dieting failures. For dieters, prolonged periods of depression are associated with weight gain rather than the typical weight loss found in cases of depression.

According to Kelley, Wagner and Heatherton, (2015), negative affect reduces working memory capacity. For this reason, when people experience negative affect and social distress, this can lead to self-regulation failure because emotion interferes with self-regulation. In addition, it causes people to consider only the immediate and superficial aspects of a situation (Keinan, 1987), making it less likely that they will consider the future consequences of their decisions (Wegener & Petty, 1994).

In part 10, we will examine emotion regulation in detail.

Lapse-Activated Patterns and Abstinence Violations

The abstinence Violation Effect (AVE) is recognised as one of the possible causes of self-regulation failure (Wagner and Heatherton, 2015).

It is normal for people to experience minor setbacks in their daily lives which impede adherence to self-regulation. For instance, people may set standards to deliberate on a plan during the day but use that time to watch a television programme or it may be a standard not to overspend so that they may be able to save but are unable to resist shopping unnecessarily online. These minor breaches may not be damaging but they may trigger chain reactions, and generate thoughts, emotions, and behaviours which may be detrimental to the long-term success of self-regulation and goals. For instance, it has been observed in dieters that a single lapse, which is a minor failure can lead to a downward spiral and subsequent abandonment of a person’s self-regulatory goals (Wagner and Heatherton, 2015).

The Relapse Prevention Model (RPM) was initially designed for the prevention of relapse in substance abuse, but it has now been successfully applied to a wide range of health behaviours, including obesity and sexual abuse (Roordink et al., 2021). The model was suggested by Marlatt and Gordon (Larimer, Palmer and Marlatt, 1999).

The Abstinence Violation Effect (AVE) occurs when people have a lapse in their recovery and believe that they are unable to complete the recovery successfully. They may feel ashamed and guilty and this can drive them into a spiral that may result in a relapse. Relapse prevention (RP) is a cognitive–behavioural approach to relapse. It is designed to identify and prevent high-risk situations that can lead to relapse and to assist individuals in maintaining the desired behavioural changes. Its two specific purposes are (Menon and Kandasamy, 2018):

• To prevent an initial lapse and maintain abstinence or harm reduction treatment goals.
• To Provide lapse management if a lapse occurs and prevent further relapses.

Setback Effect on Self-Regulation

There is a significant link between post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and addiction because traumatic experiences drive individuals to use substances to cope with the emotional pain and distress caused by the trauma (Khoddam, 2023). It is said that substance use disorder (SUD) affects approximately 3% -7% of people within the general population. For people with PTSD, the rate increases to 35%, while alcohol use disorder (AUD) is 52%. About 8% of the general population experiences PTSD, but within the subset dealing with a substance use disorder, this figure surges to between 26% -52%.

Data from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that the estimated relapse rates for addiction are between 40% to 60%.

This setback effect is not only applicable to addiction, it also applies to any self-regulation failure. A recent study on self-regulation in daily life shows that people experienced the lowest self-control success rates after prior self-control efforts failed (ten Broeke & Adriaanse, 2023). When people experience setbacks in self-regulation, they experience a decrease in intentions to self-regulate, which also increases the chance of subsequent self-regulation failure (ten Broeke & Adriaanse, 2023). In addition, a setback may lead to low confidence in their ability to self-regulate because it affects self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is boosted by performance in previous situations and reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one’s motivation, behaviour, and the social environment.

As we have already discussed above, feelings of loss of self-control play a key role in the abstinence violation effect (Marlatt & Witkiewtiz, 2005). After experiencing a lapse, addicts typically feel powerless to exert personal control, which increases the chance of a full-blown relapse into addictive behaviour. Furthermore, after a setback, people may experience a decreased motivation to self-regulate.

Wagner and Heatherton, (2015) suggest that people set too high standards for self-regulatory success, such as adopting a zero-tolerance policy whereby a single slip is believed to indicate complete failure so that all further attempts at regulation are thought of as futile. So, it is important to set challenging and attainable goals.

Poor Self-Awareness and Impairments of Self-Monitoring

The importance of setting standards and self-monitoring has already been discussed in Part 7 of these articles.  Another important contributor to self-regulation failure is poor self-awareness as research shows that self-awareness is crucial for identifying obstacles during self-regulation of goal pursuit. Individuals with a high level of self-awareness are more likely to identify obstacles during goal pursuit (Kreibich, Hennecke & Brandstätter, 2020).

Self-awareness is another complex concept that has no unanimously accepted definition by researchers because they study it from different perspectives, depending on the focus of the research (Sutton, 2016). For this reason, different terminologies are used by researchers to describe self-awareness (Kreibich, Hennecke & Brandstätter, 2020). For instance, there is dispositional self-awareness which is associated with concepts like self-consciousness, self-focused attention, reflection, or metacognitive self-reflection. There is also situational self-awareness also known as objective self-awareness). Objective self-awareness refers to the focus of attention on the “self” as opposed to the focus of attention on the external known as subjective self-awareness (Silvia & Duval, 2001). However, these two situations are mutually exclusive, though a person can alternate between them at short intervals.

The Theory of Self-Awareness

Self-awareness may also be categorised as private or public (Lewis et al., 2011). Private self-awareness is like objective self-awareness.  It refers to the internal knowledge known to the individual only. It might include things like values, opinions, goals etc. Public self-awareness is like subjective self-awareness. It refers to how the individual may be perceived externally, such as how the individual appears to the public.

The Theory of self-awareness (Objective Self-Awareness – OSA) was proposed by Shelley Duval and Robert Wicklund. It is defined as “The ability to focus on yourself and how your actions, thoughts, or emotions do or don’t align with your internal standards. If you’re highly self-aware, you can objectively evaluate yourself, manage your emotions, align your behaviour with your values, and understand correctly how others perceive you” (Duval and Wicklund, 1972). The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines it as “a reflective state of self-focused attention in which a person evaluates himself or herself and attempts to attain correctness and consistency in beliefs and behaviours. This involves the viewing of oneself as a separate object, acknowledging limitations and the existing disparity between the ideal self and the actual self. Objective self-awareness is often a necessary part of self-regulation” (APA Dictionary of Psychology, n.d.).

Self-Awareness and Recent Research Findings.

A Harvard Business Review article identifies two broad categories of self-awareness: internal self-awareness and external self-awareness. These emerged from the findings of research carried out by the Eurich Group as reported by Dr Tasha Eurich, an organizational psychologist, researcher, and principal of The Eurich Group (Eurich, 2018).

Internal self-awareness is regarded as a person’s values, passions, aspirations and how they fit with their environment. It includes thoughts, feelings, behaviours, strengths, and weaknesses and how they affect others. Internal self-awareness is associated with higher job, satisfaction in relationships, having personal and social control, and happiness. Consequently, internal self-awareness is negatively related to anxiety, stress, and depression.

External self-awareness refers to the understanding by people of how others view them based on the same factors mentioned above concerning internal self-awareness. People who are skilled in external self-awareness are said to show empathy and consider other people’s perspectives on issues.

An interesting discovery of this research is that people who are skilled in internal self-awareness are not necessarily skilled in external self-awareness and vice-versa. So, self-aware people have to be skilled in both and that is the reason self-awareness is said to be a rare quality because only 10%–15% of the people studied in the research were found to be self-aware.

Poor Self-Awareness and Self-Regulation Failure

We have already examined the different types and dimensions of self-awareness which show that self-awareness has tremendous benefits. For instance, self-awareness is regarded as a primary means of alleviating psychological distress and a tool for personal growth and development by both practitioners and researchers (Sutton, 2016). Recent research has expanded the concept to include mindfulness and rumination and its impacts on daily functioning (Sutton, 2016).

Self-awareness enables people to focus on their goals and accomplish a task effectively and efficiently by adopting different strategies and monitoring the effectiveness of those strategies while evaluating and determining the next course of action. They compare standards with their current state, identify any discrepancies between them and take action to correct them (Kreibich et al., 2022). Where such skills are lacking, self-regulation failure is likely going to occur.

As we have shown in these articles, successful goal pursuit relies on the effectiveness of self-regulation to identify obstacles even before they occur. Like most things in life, pursuing a goal causes stress, especially if the person encounters serious obstacles or experiences major setbacks. The presence of obstacles makes it difficult to pursue a goal and can lead to self-regulation failure. Obstacles are defined as certain interfering forces that limit a person from achieving a goal (Čopková and Hricová, 2021).

Obstacles and Action Crises

In goal pursuit, what is known as an “action crisis” occurs when an individual has invested considerable resources in a goal but the prospects of attaining the goal get worse because of obstacles. Consequently, the individual is in a conflict of deciding whether to continue with the goal or disengage (Brandstätter and Schüler, 2013).

Action crises cause doubt and stress because of the decreased expectation of attaining a goal (Hu, Zhang and Geng, (2023). In this way, an action crisis reduces psychological and physiological well-being. However, an action crisis may also have a positive effect as it may provide the chance to consider the worthiness of a goal and the evaluation of the potential of new goals (Wrosch et al., 2003) as discussed in Part 7, So, the ability to know when to disengage when circumstances change is an important self-regulatory skill. This is a self-regulatory skill that is part of the executive function of the brain (Uddin, 2021). The lack of such skill can result in self-regulation failure with negative well-being consequences.  

Causal Attribution and Escape Self-Awareness.

Self-awareness is also associated with a phenomenon known as “escape from self-awareness” proposed by Heatherton and Baumeister, (1991). Though this model applies to binge eating, it can apply to any self-regulatory activity. According to Carden, Jones and Passmore, (2022), people may be in an aversive state of self-awareness when a discrepancy arises between the self-representations used in goal pursuit, for example, the ideal self and the actual self. It can be recalled that self-awareness involves the evaluation of self which may involve any of the following elements of self: behaviours, attitudes, emotions, values, thoughts, sensations etc. (Morin, 2003).

The following variables can affect self-evaluation (Morin, 2003)

• “The magnitude of the discrepancy”
• “Outcome expectancy”
• “The rate of progress
• “Focus of attention (which will affect causal attribution)”

The bigger the discrepancy the more the tendency to avoid self-awareness. However, small discrepancies can also cause withdrawal from self-awareness as we shall see below.  An example is given of a discrepancy between ideal and actual weight. If the weight difference is small, the person would likely be encouraged to change the diet and lifestyle to bring the real self to the level of the ideal self. By contrast, if the discrepancy is large, in this case, the weight difference, the person is likely going to be discouraged to abandon and avoid the whole weight issue Morin, (2003).

For a small discrepancy, four situations may occur (Morin, (2003):

• If the person has a positive outcome expectancy, for example, the person believes he or she can lose weight and so tries to continue to modify the real self to achieve an ideal self-status.
• On the other hand, the person may believe that it is unlikely that he or she will lose weight (negative outcome expectancy) and give up trying because of the experience of failure.
• You could expect to lose weight fairly quickly and see results in a few weeks (rapid rate of progress) and start working toward this goal with confidence (i.e., change the real self).
• You could fear that the entire process might be endless so that you would eventually observe results only after months of hard work (low rate of progress) and drop the issue (i.e., avoid self-awareness).

Causal Attribution – Watching TV to Escape Self-Awareness

Causal attribution is the process of trying to determine the causes of people’s behaviour. In this regard, researchers make a distinction between dispositional attributions which shows that it is something about the person that causes the event) and situational attributions which imply that the event is caused by the environment.

A discrepancy might occur, and people don’t want to escape self-awareness. In that case, research indicates that when self-aware people focus on the real self, they attribute the cause of the discrepancy to the real self and try to change it; when they pay attention to the standard, they instead ascribe the cause of the discrepancy to the standard and try to modify it.

Research has shown that self-aware people usually observe things about themselves that they are unhappy with. As a result, they may either avoid self-awareness or face reality. Two ways of avoiding self-awareness are watching television and drinking alcohol Morin, (2003).

Most people watch television for entertainment. So, not everyone who watches television will do so to escape self-awareness. Particularly today, with the emergence of streaming platforms, a new phenomenon known as binge-watching has emerged. However, research has shown that there is a significant relation between binge-watching and compensatory motivations, where binge-watching becomes a way to escape reality and avoid problems or negative emotions.

Binge-watching is defined “as the consumption of at least two complete episodes of the same serialized TV fiction consecutively” Netflix defines it “as consuming two to six episodes of the same show in one sitting” (Castro et al 2021)

The relationship between television viewing and positive self-feelings has been studied by researchers. For instance, Finn and Gorr (1988) found that some people watch television for mood management. In other words, people turn on the television to cheer them up and make them feel better. Furthermore, Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi (1990) found that people who were unhappy with themselves and could not structure their free time tended to watch more television than happy people.

The Influence of Other People

Being part of a group has advantages, but it also has disadvantages. Research has shown that group behaviour can adversely affect self-regulation and result in self-regulation failure. Deindividualization, or deindividuation is a behaviour that occurs within a group as opposed to individualization or individuation.

In a group situation, people lose their identity and adopt a group behaviour. Social psychologists call this “deindividuation”. In this case, the person does not feel different and as a result, self-awareness does not matter. They tend to have little or no inner restraints which may lead to suppressed behaviours and transgression of social norms (Vilanova et al., 2017). A common example is when people are at parties. They tend to drink more than they do when they are alone.

The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines deindividuation as “ an experiential state characterized by loss of self-awareness, altered perceptions, and a reduction of inner restraints that results in the performance of unusual and sometimes antisocial behaviour. It can be caused by a number of factors, such as a sense of anonymity or submersion in a group.” (APA Dictionary of Psychology, n.d.).

The term deindividuation is said to have been coined by Festinger, Pepitone, and Newcomb (1952) to refer to the effect of a crowd or group on the behaviour of an individual (Chang, 2008). When an individual is immersed in a crowd or group, they adopt the group norms which causes them to lose a sense of personal identity and accountability, and act in a way that they would not have acted if alone.

Philip George Zimbardo, a professor emeritus at Stanford University widely known for his controversial Stanford Prison Experiment refers to deindividuated behaviour as “…emotional, impulsive, irrational, regressive, and atypical for the person. The normal feedback loops that would inhibit such behaviour normally are not working. Deindividuation is unresponsive to many features of the situation including the victim or states of self that would resist such action.” According to Zimbardo, those characteristics and other deindividuating behaviours reduce self-observation, evaluation and concern for social evaluation, and weaken controls based on feelings of guilt, shame, fear, and commitment (Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2023).

Zimbardo’s characteristics of deindividuation above are similar to objective self-awareness because the internal state of deindividuation represents the lack of self-awareness and has been labelled as a state of subjective self-awareness. In a state of deindividuation, attention is diverted from the self, and people are less capable of monitoring their behaviour about internal norms and standards (Diener and Wallbom, 1976).

Self-Regulatory Resource Depletion

We have discussed above how the lack of capacity to override impulses can hamper goal pursuit as behaviours that enhance goal achievement are affected. Particularly, research has shown that one phenomenon known as self-regulatory fatigue or “ego depletion” causes the failure of self-regulation.

We are not going to talk more on this again but will continue to update on this as research continues to evolve. Currently, the position is that self-regulatory fatigue has something to do with motivation and resource allocation instead of the depletion of resources. There has been a lot of evidence from research to show that self-regulatory ability may not be limited as such, but engaging in current self-regulation triggers a shift in motivation and attention that makes self-regulatory failure more likely in a subsequent task (Evans, Boggero & Segerstrom, 2016).

Alcohol Intoxication

The National Health Service (NHS) in England explains that there is nothing like a “safe” alcohol drinking level. They recommend “low risk” drinking for men and women not to drink more than 14 units a week regularly, spread over 3 or more days if you regularly drink as much as 14 units a week (National Health Service (NHS), in Great Britain, n.d.). The World Health Organisation has also stated that there is nothing like a safe level of alcohol consumption (World Health Organisation (WHO), Europe, n.d.).

According to (Wagner and Heatherton, 2015), alcohol is said to be the worst of all the threats to self-regulation, health, and welfare of individuals in society.

The negative consequences of alcohol are numerous, but for this article, alcohol slows down the chemicals and pathways the brain uses to control the body, altering mood, slowing down reflexes and affecting balance. It can also contribute to learning, memory, and sleep problems (Mosel, 2023).

High-Intensity Drinking

There is even a new drinking terminology known as “high-intensity drinking”. High-intensity drinking is defined by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “…as drinking two or three times as much alcohol (e.g., 10+ or 15+ drinks) as a typical binge episode, suggest that it is far riskier and has major implications for individual and community health” (Patrick and Azar, 2018).

Research by the University of Chicago shows that in 2010, alcohol misuse cost the United States $249 billion, and each year an estimated 95,000 people die from alcohol-related causes. In 2019 28% of all driving fatalities were attributed to alcohol (Searcy, 2021). Despite this, people continue to drink heavily.

It is suggested that individuals with low self-regulatory capacity are generally less likely to be adaptable and monitor the progress of the status of their goals. Furthermore, individuals with low self-regulatory capacities are inclined to prefer activities that provide immediate gratification, instead of focusing on their goals. Concerning alcohol use, it has been shown that a low level of self-regulation acts as a risk factor for alcohol-related consequences. Furthermore, a study of heavy-drinking college students shows that a low level of self-regulation tends to slow the rate of natural reduction in the use of alcohol over time (Hustad et al., 2009).

Lack of Self-Discipline and Procrastination

All the threats we have examined above work to hinder self-regulation. However, we want to add two main things that can conspire against self-regulation. They lack self-discipline and procrastination. They feed off each other.

Self-discipline, self-control and willpower are sometimes used interchangeably in psychological literature (Moore, 2020). We are going to delineate the differences here as it pertains to self-discipline since it is what we are interested in here.

There is a quote attributed to Jim Rohn that says, “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” This quote sums up what self-discipline is about and what the lack of it can lead to. We are going to focus on the positive aspect of self-discipline here so that one can draw some inferences as to what the consequences of the lack of it can be.

Self-discipline is defined as (APA Dictionary of Psychology, n.d.):

1. “The control of one’s impulses and desires, forgoing immediate satisfaction in favour of long-term goals.”
2. “Resolute adherence to a regimen or course of action to achieve one’s goals.”

Self-Discipline Is Empowering

Alfie Kohn an American author and lecturer who has been very outspoken, and even critical, of many conventional parenting methods has said that self-discipline is overrated because self-control is not always preferable and the lack of it is not always bad because this can “provide the basis for spontaneity, flexibility, expressions of interpersonal warmth, openness to experience, and creative recognitions.” (Kohn, 2008). He refers to self-discipline “as marshalling one’s willpower to accomplish things that are generally regarded as desirable, and self-control as using that same sort of willpower to prevent oneself from doing what is seen to be undesirable or to delay gratification.”

In response, Dr Angela Lee Duckworth, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania refutes the idea that self-discipline is overrated and says that self-discipline is “empowering.” Duckworth states that “self-discipline is not the ability to accomplish goals which others deem desirable. Rather, self-discipline is the ability to marshal willpower to accomplish goals and uphold standards that one personally regards as desirable” Duckworth, (2009). So, in other words, it is not doing what others want, but having the capacity to do what people want to do themselves, knowing how to manage their emotions and thoughts, and how to plan and adapt behaviour to achieve goals.

Self-Discipline Is the Foundation for the Regulation of Behaviour

Patrick, (2019) has shown that a study by Brian M. Galla and Angela L. Duckworth (2015), which examined the association between healthy habits, temptation, and self-control, shows that beneficial habits have more impact than effortful inhibition when it comes to the link between self-control and positive life outcomes. This confirms that developing beneficial habits promotes better self-control. In addition and most importantly, habits are automatic and do not require effortful inhibition and expenditure of much energy.

Conscientiousness is one of the five personality traits. It describes people’s dispositions to act not only in learning but also in different aspects of their lives and is regarded as being relatively stable over time. Conscientiousness includes traits like organization, self-discipline, thoroughness and reliability and has been found in various studies to be associated with attainment in higher education (Loya et al., 2015).

In addition, conscientiousness is specifically found to have attributes associated with different aspects of self-regulation. These attributes include goal orientation, self-control, industriousness, deliberation, organization and punctuality. A meta-analysis has shown a moderate relationship between conscientiousness and other key factors of motivation, including academic goals, expected outcomes and self-efficacy. A positive relationship has also been found between conscientiousness and focusing on cognitive tasks, high levels of self-efficacy and low levels of worry (de la Fuente et al., 2020).

Self-Discipline and Grit

Self-discipline is also associated with grit (Hagger and Hamilton, 2018). The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines grit as a “personality trait characterized by perseverance and passion for achieving long-term goals. Grit entails working strenuously to overcome challenges and maintaining effort and interest over time despite failures, adversities, and plateaus in progress. Recent studies suggest this trait may be more relevant than intelligence in determining a person’s high achievement. For example, grit may be particularly important to accomplishing an especially complex task when there is a strong temptation to give up altogether. “

Angela Duckwood refers to grit as “passion and perseverance for long-term goals”. She states “I study grit because it predicts achieving goals, but I want to point out that grit is more relevant to some goals than others. In particular, grit predicts achievement in really challenging and personally meaningful contexts” (angeladuckworth.com, n.d.). Her book, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance” is a New York Times bestseller.

Procrastination

Though everyday common usage of the term procrastination seems simple to understand, research has shown that it is a complex phenomenon which is associated with many causes and consequences which are still not fully understood. Procrastination is said to be a widespread phenomenon, a stable trait which represents low conscientiousness, high impulsivity, and thought control problems, and a quintessential self-regulation failure (Rebetez et al, 2016).

The causes can be divided into two main categories; individual and situational causes, while the consequences consist of positive and negative (Rebetez et al., 2022). For this reason, there are divergent definitions of it. For instance, procrastination is defined as “the act of unnecessarily postponing decisions or actions.” (Shatz, n.d.). Rebetez et al, (2016) refer to it as a voluntary delay of “an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay (Steel, 2007, p. 66)”. Eisenberger, (1992), defines it as” one’s voluntarily delay of an intended course of action despite being worse off as a result of that delay” and describes it as “a pervasive self-regulatory failure affecting approximately one-fifth of the adult population and half of the student population.”

People often think the cause of procrastination is poor time management, laziness, or weak willpower, but Cognition Today views procrastination as a symptom of psychological and neurological disorders. It attributes it to poor emotional regulation and self-regulation failure (Shukla, 2023). Cognition Today defines procrastination “as the intentional and voluntary delay of an intended activity even if the delay creates negative consequences” (Shukla, 2023). The activity engaged in while procrastinating is called “aversion activities.” “People procrastinate or avoid aversive tasks to improve their short-term mood at the cost of long-term goals” (Shukla, 2023)

Main Causes of Procrastination

According to (Shukla, 2023), procrastination manifests in everyday life as follows:

1. Doing a distracting activity that improves your mood when you should be doing something else.
2. Delaying a task indefinitely
3. Thinking extensively about a task without doing it
4. Knowing you should do something now but failing to do it.

A 2013 study found that procrastination is “the primacy of short-term mood repair … over the longer-term pursuit of intended actions.” This shows that procrastination causes people to be more focused on “the immediate urgency of managing negative moods” than getting on with the task at hand (Sirois and Pychyl, 2013).

Shatz, (n.d.), has identified, the following main features of procrastination:

• It involves unnecessary delay.
• The delay generally leads to predictable negative outcomes such as worse academic performance, worse financial status, increased interpersonal relationship issues, reduced well-being, and worse mental and physical health.
• The delay is often—but not always—unintentional, meaning that it occurs despite the procrastinator’s intent to do things on time.

According to Shatz, (n.d.), about 20% of adults and 50% of college students procrastinate consistently and chronically, 75% consider themselves to be procrastinators, and 80%–95% of college students procrastinate. A study by Wypych, Michałowski and Droździel, et al, (2019) reveals that procrastination is estimated to affect 15%–20% of the total population and leads to a significant decrease in performance, satisfaction with achievements, and quality of life.

Learned Helplessness

There are two opposite concepts in psychology known as learned helplessness and learned optimism that can affect performance and goal attainment. Learned helplessness can cause procrastination and indecision.

Learned helplessness is defined by the APA Dictionary of Psychology as “a phenomenon in which repeated exposure to uncontrollable stressors results in individuals failing to use any control options that may later become available. Essentially, individuals are said to learn that they lack behavioural control over environmental events, which, in turn, undermines the motivation to make changes or attempt to alter situations”  (APA Dictionary of Psychology, 2018).

The theory of Learned Helplessness was developed by Martin E. P. Seligman and Steven F. Maier (Seligman and Maier, 1967) and has become the foundation of many important theories and ideas in psychology, particularly in behavioural theory. It has demonstrated that prior learning can lead to a drastic change in behaviour and the reason people may accept to remain passive in negative situations even though they can change the situation (Nolen, 2023). Learned helplessness is used to describe when a person is in a negative state of mind and believes that he or she has no control over the situation and as a result, remains passive and does nothing to change it. It is called “learned” because it is not an inherent trait as no human being is born with such a belief.

Such situations are conditioned by experiences, for example, responses to stressful situations or traumatic experiences in which a person feels they are powerless to control the outcome of the situation. This signals self-regulation failure and ultimately the termination of a goal pursuit. The symptoms typically include a lack of self-esteem, low motivation, procrastination, the conviction of being inept, and ultimately failure. Research has shown that more than 70% of university students procrastinate and learned helplessness is one of the main reasons for procrastinating (Krihadi, et.al., 2018).

Learned helplessness and procrastination can be overcome by learned optimism, which is the opposite of learned helplessness.

Learned Optimism and the Explanatory Style

Optimism and pessimism are two contrasting worldviews. Optimism is defined as “an individual difference variable that reflects the extent to which people hold generalized favourable expectancies for their future” (Carver, Scheier and Segerstrom, 2010). By contrast, pessimism is expecting a negative future.

Optimism can be understood from three perspectives. Scheier and Carver, (2018), view optimism as a “disposition” and personality trait. They define dispositional optimism as “the generalized, relatively stable tendency to expect good outcomes across important life domains.” Another perspective is the social cognition viewpoint known as “unrealistic optimism”. This refers to the maintenance of unrealistic optimism by people despite encountering information that challenges those biased beliefs (Conversano, et al. 2010). The third approach is learned optimism which does not focus on the expectancies but on the causes of those expectances known as “attributional style”. This is the one which we are interested in here.

Dispositional optimism is based on the expectancy-value approach to motivation which holds the view that people will work toward a goal if they are confident of attaining the goal and the goal is important to them (Carver, Scheier and Segerstrom, 2010).

The attributional style is sometimes known as explanatory style, and it is defined by Encyclopaedia of Personality and Individual Differences pp 1493–1495 (Marshall and Pössel, 2020) as “The characteristic pattern of inferences an individual makes about the causes of negative or positive events that occur in their lives (Abramson et al. 1989)” Initially, Seligman & Maier, (1967) conducted a series of classic experiments with dogs placed in a chamber where they received electric shocks but could not escape from it. It became apparent to test the theory on humans as they are more complex than animals.

The Explanatory Style

The original helplessness theory was that people learned helplessness due to exposure to uncontrollable events resulting in the disruption of motivation, cognition, and emotion. However, there was no explanation for the causes of this helplessness because while some events in life may be uncontrollable to some people, others can cope with such events. Abramson et al. (1978), reformulated the the theory by including the explanations individuals make about the causes of uncontrollable events that affect them and the extent to which situations lead to self-esteem loss, feelings of helplessness, and depression. These explanations were termed explanatory styles and were deemed to be the missing component of the original helplessness model (Abramson et al. 1978).

There are three dimensions along which explanatory style can be measured: internality, stability, and globality.

• Internality refers to the extent to which the cause of an event is due to something about the individual or something outside of the individual (e.g., other people or luck).
• Stability refers to the extent to which the cause of the event will remain stable over time or is more transient.
• Globality refers to the extent to which the cause of the event affects many different life domains or those most immediately related to the stressor.

 A pessimistic explanatory style is the explanation of the causes of negative life events as being internal, stable, and global. According to the reformulated learned helplessness model, it puts individuals at risk of developing depression when exposed to uncontrollable life events.

Using Learned Optimism to Overcome Learned Helplessness

In his book, Learned Optimism, How to Change Your Mind and Your Life (Seligman, 1990), Prof Martin Seligman, widely known as the father of positive psychology, identifies three patterns of thoughts that lead to distorted thinking: personalization, pervasiveness, and permanence, which distinguish tween optimists and pessimists and their worldviews.

1. Permanence. Optimists believe bad events are temporary and normal parts of life. Consequently, they are resilient and can recover quickly from adversity. By contrast, pessimists tend to dwell on negative events because they regard them as something that is going to be permanent. This may cause a lack of motivation as they do not see any way out of the situation. This may cause the situation to be prolonged so that they may not even recover at all.
2.  Pervasiveness. Good things don’t make people anxious and become worried and fearful, only bad things do. When bad things happen, seldom do they spread widely and have the same effects on other areas of our lives or other people. But pessimists do not think like that. They see change as an unwelcome event which brings only gloom and affects everything.
3. Personalisation. When optimistic people are successful, they attribute it to themselves because of the efforts they have put in. If they fail, they know that there must have been something wrong beyond their control, instead of blaming themselves for it. Psychology Today shows that self-blame and self-criticism reduce a person to a few character flaws instead of viewing the person as a whole person (Streep, 2018).

The ABCDE Model

The essence of learned optimism is that for those who are pessimists, anyone can learn to become optimistic and for others who want to become more optimistic, they can do so. For this reason, learned optimism adopts the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) approach developed by Aaron Beck and the Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT) developed by Albert Ellis, which are designed to help detect and change distorted or irrational thoughts (Lazarus, 2022). The mnemonic ABCDE stands for:

• Adversity. This is sometimes known as the activating event. The first stage is the identification and description of the specific events or situations that cause the negative thought patterns or experiences.
• Belief. The analysis of the underlying belief structures and systems to understand the person’s worldview. This determines how an individual reacts or responds to an event.
• Consequence. The third stage is to consider the impact of these beliefs on the person.
• Disputation. It’s time to put your beliefs into perspective by finding any evidence to support or challenge the belief. The goal here is to replace the faulty belief with a healthy belief.
• Energisation. Use the newfound energy from the disputation to create effective new beliefs.

It is important to note that optimism and pessimism are not binary, absolute concepts. In his research paper “The Neural Basis of Optimism and Pessimism”, David Hecht of University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience explains that positive and negative expectations of life are part of a continuum. Optimism in one part of your life, such as your career, can be contrasted by pessimism in another area, such as physical health.

In addition, absolute optimism should not become a goal. While pessimism can lead to avoidance behaviours and even low mood, over-optimism can lead to reckless, risk-taking behaviours. Hecht notes that to live successfully, a fine balance must be found between the two states of expectations.

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