Self-Control Depletion and Sleep Duration: the Mediating Role of Television Viewing

Abstract

Objective: Sleep insufficiency has been related to self-control failure: people fail to go to bed in time and end up sleep deprived. The role of state self-control in predicting bedtime and sleep duration has not yet been investigated. Based on an overlap between depleted self-control resources and fatigue, self-control depletion may foster earlier bedtimes. Conversely, self-control depletion also increases the propensity to procrastinate bedtime by giving in to the immediate gratification of late night entertainment. This study looked at procrastinatory television viewing, and its intermediary role in the association between state self-control and bedtime. The implications for sleep duration are examined.

Design: First year students participated in an online survey (N=234). Using Day Reconstruction Method, they charted their activities and experiences during the preceding day and subsequent bedtime behavior.

Results: Self-control depletion was directly related to earlier bedtimes, which we explained by its overlap with fatigue. This was associated with longer sleep duration. Self-control depletion was indirectly related to later bedtimes because it increased the propensity to procrastinate by watching television. This was associated with shorter sleep duration.

Conclusion: This study exposes a dual pathway between self-control depletion and sleep duration, whereby procrastinatory television viewing may reduce sleep duration.

Full text

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 1
This is a post-print version. The manuscript was accepted for publication in Psychology
and Health.
Self-Control Depletion and Sleep Duration: the Mediating Role of Television Viewing
Liese Exelmansa and Jan Van den Bulckb
aSchool for Mass Communication Research, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
bDepartment of Communication Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan,
Corresponding author: Liese Exelmans, School for Mass Communication Research,
Parkstraat 45 (PO box 3603), 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
E-mail: liese.exelmans@kuleuven.be. Telephone: 003216323231. Fax: 003216320497
Twitter: @LieseExelmans
Co-author: Jan Van den Bulck, Department of Communication Studies, University of
Michigan, 5369 North Quad; 105 S. State St. Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1285, USA.
E-mail: jvdbulck@umich.edu. Twitter: @janvandenbulck
This manuscript was accepted for publication in Psychology and Health

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 2
Self-Control Depletion and Sleep Duration: the Mediation Role of Television Viewing
Abstract
Objective Sleep insufficiency has been related to self-control failure: people fail to go to bed
in time and end up sleep deprived. The role of state self-control in predicting bedtime and
sleep duration has not yet been investigated. Based on an overlap between depleted self-
control resources and fatigue, self-control depletion may foster earlier bedtimes. Conversely,
self-control depletion also increases to propensity to procrastinate bedtime by giving in to the
immediate gratification of late night entertainment. This study looked at procrastinatory
television viewing, and its intermediary role in the association between state self-control and
bedtime. The implications for sleep duration are examined.
Design First year students participated in an online survey (N=234). Using Day
Reconstruction Method, they charted their activities and experiences during the preceding
day and subsequent bedtime behavior.
Results Self-control depletion was directly related to earlier bedtimes, which we explained
by its overlap with fatigue. This was associated with longer sleep duration. Self-control
depletion was indirectly related to later bedtimes because it increased the propensity to
procrastinate by watching television. This was associated with shorter sleep duration.
Conclusion This study exposes a dual pathway between self-control depletion and sleep
duration, whereby procrastinatory television viewing may reduce sleep duration.
Keywords: self-control, sleep duration, television, procrastination, bedtime

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 3
Introduction
A poll by the National Sleep Foundation estimated that 60% of people between 13 and 64
years old is not getting the recommended amount of sleep (Gradisar et al., 2013). Children
and teens reported struggling at school because of fatigue and had to cope with a chronic
sleep shortage of 1-2 hours per day (Hysing et al., 2013). Given sleep’s crucial role in both
physical and mental well-being, charting the predictors of sleep insufficiency has become a
key point towards improving public health.
Researchers have observed a remarkable paradox: although sleep is among the
strongest and most commonly felt desires in everyday life (Hofmann et al., 2012), many
people are experts at finding other things to do around bedtime than sleep. The delay of
bedtime has been explained as a failure of self-control: people with low self-control have
trouble prioritizing long term goals (i.e., getting sufficient sleep) over short terms gains.
Recent studies suggest late night entertainment is among those short term gains: people
struggle with resisting the lure of technology and end up later in bed than intended to
(Exelmans & Van den Bulck, 2017; Kroese et al., 2014; Nauts & Kroese, 2016). These
findings add to the growing body of research that implicates electronic media use as a cause
of sleep shortage (for overview see Hale & Guan, 2014).
Existing research about the relationship between bedtime delay and self-control has
primarily looked at trait self-control. People who generally display low self-control are more
likely to put immediate gratification above long term goals and are therefore more likely to
procrastinate bedtime. We will examine self-control as a state. People who are in a state of
low self-control describe themselves as being exhausted, worn out or tired (Friese et al.,
2008; Muraven et al., 1998). Self-control depletion may, therefore, make people inclined to
go to bed earlier.

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Media use has also been related to bedtime delay (Exelmans & Van den Bulck, 2017)
and sleep deprivation (Hale & Guan, 2014), but little is known about the interrelations
between state self-control, media use, and sleep. We will investigate the use of media as a
tool for procrastination in particular. Procrastination is driven by mood optimization (Sirois &
Pychyl, 2013), and media have been characterized as mood managers (Zillmann, 1988). A
recent study observed that people turn to media to procrastinate, which has been linked to
lower well-being (Meier et al., 2016), but, so far, has not been connected to sleep. In sum, we
will investigate the relationships between state self-control, television as a tool for
procrastination and bedtime. We will examine how these processes are related to sleep
duration.
It is important to note that this study will focus on television viewing exclusively.
Although people’s media diet today is certainly more diversified than that of previous
generations, television’s position as the dominant leisure time activity has remained
unchallenged. Americans (>15 years old) spend over half of their leisure time (2.8 hours per
day) watching television (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014), and the same conclusion
applies to [country blinding], where the current study was conducted (2.5 hours/day) (country
blinding, 2015). We defined television viewing as ‘watching televised content (i.e. program,
show, series or movie) on a screen, be it a television, laptop, computer, tablet computer or
other screen’. This definition included live viewing, time-shifted viewing, video on demand,
downloaded and streamed content.
Self-Control
Choosing a healthy snack instead of a scrumptious chocolate cake; going to the gym
instead of lounging in the couch watching television; or doing the dishes instead of putting
off household chores, all reflect the ability to restrain and override our impulses in order to
attain long-term desirable outcomes. This is generally referred to as self-control (Baumeister

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 5
et al., 1998; Tice & Bratslavsky, 2000). Self-control consists of three components: the
capacity to (1) monitor your own behavior, (2) judge your behavior in the context of existing
standards and norms, and (3) alter your behavior to conform to the existing standards
(Baumeister, 2002; Tice & Bratslavsky, 2000). A breakdown in any of the three components
is expected to undermine self-control. For example, people who are on a diet have to monitor
their eating behavior, evaluate their eating behavior in light of the prescribed diet or ideal
weight, and alter their eating pattern if necessary to make the diet successful.
The literature differentiates between self-control as a state, and self-control as a trait.
Trait self-control assumes relatively stable levels of self-control over time, which means that
some people are better at self-regulating than others (Tangney et al., 2004). State self-control
refers to variations in self-control within one person, i.e., one person can have more self-
control on one particular occasion than on another. Research has shown, for instance, that
self-control fluctuates depending on the preceding exertions of self-control, motivation, sleep
or mood (Baumeister et al., 1998; Hofmann et al., 2012; Nauts & Kroese, 2016; Tice &
Bratslavsky, 2000; Vohs et al., 2008). This study will focus on situational or state self-control.
State Self-Control and the Reflective Impulsive Model
The Reflective Impulsive Model (Strack & Deutsch, 2004) describes self-control as a
boundary condition in determining when people engage in impulsive or reasoned behavior.
Impulsive behavior stems from the activation of associative clusters stored in long-term
memory. These clusters consist of associations between concepts, affect and behavioral
schemata and are activated by external or internal stimuli. For example, upon seeing a
television (external stimuli), the affect associated with television viewing (e.g. relaxation,
entertainment) is activated, which will trigger the behavior related to the association (e.g.
turning on the television). Because of activation by association, the behavior path governed
by the impulsive system develops quickly and effortlessly. In comparison, the reflective

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 6
system is responsible for all higher order mental functions such as deliberate decision
making, strategic planning, and goal pursuit. It governs behavior that is in line with reasoned
attitudes, standards, and long-term goals and functions relatively slowly compared to the
impulsive system. Moreover,it is dependent on control resources to implement this reasoned
action (Hofmann et al., 2008; Strack & Deutsch, 2004).
When the impulsive and reflective system trigger incompatible behavioral schemata
(e.g. the presence of a chocolate treat vs. a diet), the behavioral outcome will depend on the
strength of activation. Consequently, if control resources are high, then personal standards
and long term goals will influence behavior. If they are low, the impulsive system will take
the upper hand in determining behavior. Self-control can thus influence the relative weight of
impulses in the determination of behavior (Hofmann et al., 2009; Strack & Deutsch, 2004).
Hofmann, Rauch, & Gawronski (2007), for instance, found that candy consumption among
respondents with depleted self-control resources was predicted by their automatic affective
reactions towards candy, whereas it was predicted by dietary restraint standards among non-
depleted respondents.
In sum, whether or not we follow our impulses impulsive behavioral path, governed
by the impulsive system, depends on the reflective system, and therefore the amount of self-
control resources at a certain time. For this study, we apply the Reflective Impulsive Model to
a familiar self-control dilemma: the impulse to engage in late night television viewing vs. the
plan to go to bed in time
State Self-Control & Sleep: A Dual Pathway
Scholars have argued that self-control failure can partly explain sleep insufficiency:
going to bed in time requires self-control, and those who fail to do so engage in so-called
bedtime procrastination (Kroese et al., 2014; 2016). Few studies to date have looked at the
role of state self-control in this context. Interestingly, there is reason to suspect that low state

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 7
self-control can lead to both earlier and later bedtimes. We will elaborate on both arguments
in what follows.
The Direct Relationship Between Self-Control Depletion and Bedtime
There exists significant discussion on what constitutes self-control depletion, and on
whether it can be regarded as a state of fatigue or not. One strand of research proposes that
continuously exerting self-control throughout the day builds up to feeling worn out and
exhausted. This hypothesis aligns with the metaphor that self-control depletion resembles
muscle fatigue (Baumeister, 2014). There is some evidence in the literature to support a
parallel between the two. For instance, engaging in tasks that require self-control has been
linked to physiological indicators of effort or exhaustion, such as decreased heart rate
variability (Segerstrom & Nes, 2007; Wright et al., 2007). Experimental research found that
those assigned to a control depleting condition reported subjective feelings and symptoms of
tiredness (Finkel et al., 2006; Hagger et al., 2010; Muraven et al., 1998). A meta-analysis by
Hagger et al. (2010) showed a significant and medium sized (d =.44) effect of self-control
depletion on fatigue. Inzlicht and Berkman (2015) even argued that self-regulatory depletion
and fatigue share enough attributes to be called one and the same: they are both the result of
continuous effort, affect performance on subsequent tasks, and can be overcome by
increasing task motivation.
Despite these accounts on the similarity between fatigue and low state self-control,
other research has underscored they should not be treated as synonyms. Vohs et al. (2011)
compared participants who had been sleep deprived for 24 hours to rested participants and
further subcategorized both groups in depleted vs. non-depleted participants. The findings
showed no effect of sleep deprivation on aggression, whereas there was an effect of self-
control depletion. Given the limitations of their study (e.g. they compared the effects of
fatigue and self-control depletion on aggression exclusively and did not compare levels of

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 8
fatigue in both groups), they concluded that self-control depletion is not tantamount to fatigue
(induced by sleep deprivation), but their results did not rule out that both may share similar
symptoms. This is in line with the results by Lindner and colleagues (2017). They found no
difference in the self-evaluation of fatigue between participants in the depletion group and
non-depletion group, but highlighted that they only assessed physical fatigue (as opposed to
mental fatigue). Other researchers have also hypothesized that self-control depletion may be
more similar to mental fatigue than physical fatigue (Inzlicht et al., 2014; Nauts & Kroese,
2016). Finally, Baumeister (2014) argued that it is still uncertain whether self-control
depletion causes fatigue, as it is equally possible that the depletion of self-control resources
may make people less able to suppress feelings of fatigue.
Combined, , the exact nature of self-control depletion remains a topic of discussion.
Prior research has observed that self-regulatory depletion coincides with objective and
subjective indicators of fatigue but scholars argue that there is insufficient evidence to claim
that self-control depletion and fatigue are one and the same. To the extent that fatigue-related
subjective states are an integral component of self-control depletion, this study will explore
how state self-control relates to bedtime. We formulate the following research question:
RQ: What is the association between state self-control and bedtime?
The Indirect Relationship Between State Self-Control and Bedtime
Research has shown that people with low self-control ability engage in more bedtime
procrastination (Kroese et al., 2014). Kroese et al. (2016) posited that, unlike general
procrastination, bedtime procrastination is likely to be more vulnerable to state levels of self-
control as self-regulatory depletion is presumed to progress throughout the day (Baumeister,
2002; Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996) and sleep deprivation fosters resource depletion
(Pilcher et al., 2015).

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 9
As self-control resources become depleted, people are more inclined to avoid
activities that require self-regulation, while being drawn to unchallenging, pleasurable
activities that demand minimal effort (Baumeister et al., 1998; Frey et al., 2007; Hartmann,
2013). For this reason, it has been hypothesized that electronic media could be the drivers of
bedtime delay. Media use is characterized as an activity people perceive as an indulgence,
and one which they have a lot of trouble resisting (Hofmann et al., 2012; Reinecke et al.,
2014). Hofmann et al. (2012) found that self-control depletion increased the likelihood of
failing to resist the temptation of using media. Other studies have concluded that low state
self-control increases the appeal of entertaining, hedonically pleasant media use (Reinecke et
al., 2014; Wagner et al., 2012). Hartmann (2013) further argued that broader accounts on the
use of media to cope with stress and strain also provide support for the idea that depleted
individuals tend to seek out entertainment media.
In addition, turning to media appears to be a common procrastination strategy.
Procrastination is driven by short-term mood repair and emotion regulation. When feeling
low, people will try to make themselves feel better and this is often done by indulging:
engaging in behavior that would require self-control to resist it (Baumeister, 2002; Sirois &
Pychyl, 2013). This may explain the appeal of media: they are omnipresent in today’s society
and can be used with a minimal amount of effort (Kubey, 1986). Relaxation and enjoyment
are among the most salient affordances associated with entertainment media, and are induced
instantaneously upon exposure (Kubey, 1986; Rubin, 1984; Vorderer et al., 2004). Experience
sampling studies have found that media use raised the most goal conflict, implying a tension
between the desire to use media and other obligations and thus the prevalence of media-
induced procrastination (Hofmann et al., 2012; Reinecke & Hofmann, 2016). Media use
conflicted most frequently with efficient time use and with not delaying things (Reinecke &
Hofmann, 2016). A survey study among 1577 internet users (Reinecke et al., 2016) indicated

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 10
that trait procrastination was positively associated with leisure-related internet usage. Finally,
both new (e.g. Facebook; Meier et el., 2016) and traditional media (e.g. television and video
games (Exelmans & Van den Bulck, 2017; Pychyl et al., 2000; Reinecke et al., 2014) have
been linked to procrastination.
Taken together, we propose that self-regulatory depletion will drive the impulsive
selection of unchallenging, pleasant stimuli – in this case television viewing – and will make
use as a tool for procrastination more likely. This association will indirectly lead to a later
bedtime.
H1: Self-regulatory depletion is related to increased use of television as a tool for
procrastination, which, in turn, is related to later bedtimes.
Finally, in order to explore how these processes affect sleep, we will examine the
implications of these associations for people’s sleep duration.
Method
Data Collection
Data were gathered among [nationality deleted] 469 university students in October
2015. Respondents were [native language deleted] and enrolled in a freshman introduction to
mass communication class. An invitation to participate in a study on leisure time and well-
being was sent to their student e-mail address. The invitation highlighted the voluntary
nature of participation and contained a general description of the topic. Informed consent was
obtained before starting the questionnaire. Strict confidentiality was assured. The study was
approved by the Institutional Review Board of [university deleted].
The survey was constructed using the Day Reconstruction Method (Kahneman et al.,
2004), which requests participants to recount how they spent and experienced the preceding
day. By focusing on the previous day, recent memories are activated which reduces recall
bias. Moreover, the time frame for data collection was limited to 2 consecutive weekdays

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 11
(i.e., Wednesday and Thursday) to limit the influence of external factors on respondent’s
sleep schedule.
Questions were ordered as follows. First, we assessed respondents’ level of state self-
control on the preceding evening, after they arrived home from work or school, using the 10
item short version of the State Self-Control Scale (Ciarocco et al., 2004). Respondents rated
items such as ‘Yesterday after school/work, I felt drained’ and ‘Yesterday after school/work, I
felt like my willpower was gone’ on a scale from 1 (does not apply at all) to 7 (fully applies).
A compound score was calculated by summation (α = .84). A higher score represented higher
levels of state self-control and thus less self-control depletion. Next, respondents were asked
to indicate how many hours they watched television during the preceding evening after they
arrived home from work or school, which we incorporated as a confounding variable. We
defined television viewing as ‘watching televised content (i.e. program, show, series or
movie) on a screen, be it a television, laptop, computer, tablet computer or other screen’.
After assessing television viewing time, they reported the extent of procrastination with
television on a five point scale (1 = not at all, 5 = very much). Following previous studies
(Meier et al., 2016; Reinecke et al., 2014), we adapted 5 items from Tuckman’s
Procrastination Scale (Tuckman, 1991) (e.g. ‘Yesterday after school/work, I watched
television even though I had more important things to do’; ‘Yesterday after school/work, I
watched television to find an excuse for not doing something else’). A compound score was
obtained by summing all the items (α =.90). Then, we asked respondents to report at what
time they went to bed the preceding evening and how many hours they slept that night (hours
and minutes)1. For confounding variables, we recorded gender (0 = male, 1 = female), age,
residence (0 = at home, 1 = on campus or in the college town), television viewing time (hours
1 We recoded bedtime and sleep duration to obtain a metric variable. Minutes were divided by 60 and
multiplied by 100, and hours were counted from 0 to 24; hours after midnight were counted as 25 (for 01:00
hours), 26 (for 02:00 hours) and so forth. Example: Bedtime of 11.30PM becomes 23.50 and sleep duration of
06h15min becomes 6.25.

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 12
and minutes), clinical history of sleep problems (0 = no, 1 = yes), and self-perceived physical
health status. To assess the latter, respondents were asked ‘in general, would you say your
health is:’, and response categories were 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 =
excellent (Jenkinson et al., 1993).
Analyses
All analyses were performed using SPSS version 22 (Statistical Package for the Social
Sciences, Chicago, IL). Descriptive statistics and zero order correlations were generated for
the study variables. Independent t tests were computed for gender and residence. The
PROCESS macro with 10000 bootstrap samples (Preacher & Hayes, 2008) was used to
examine the relationships between state self-control, television viewing and bedtime. This
computational tool produces estimates of the direct and indirect relationships using a
bootstrap resampling procedure. Results are shown as 95% bias-corrected confidence
intervals: confidence intervals that do not contain zero indicate significant indirect effects.
Results
A total of 326 students (response rate = 69.5%) participated in the survey. Only those
who had watched television on the preceding day were retained for data analyses, resulting in
a final sample of 234 respondents (67.8% women, Mage = 20.2 years old, SD = 3.07 years).
Regarding self-perceived physical health status, 14.2% rated this as excellent, 35.2% as very
good, 34.8% as good, 13.7% as fair and 2.1% as poor. Respondents reported an average
workload (i.e. hours spent in class, studying or at a job) of 6h34min ( SD = 2h20min) on the
preceding day. Finally, 8.2% of the sample had previously consulted a doctor regarding sleep
difficulties and – as is customary in sleep research - were categorized as having a clinical
history of sleep problems.
Respondents reported having watched television for 1h48min on average on the
preceding evening (SD = 1h07min). They went to bed at 00:24 (SD = 01:46) and slept

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 13
7h19min (SD = 1h29min) on average. Men watched more television (t(231)=2.845, p<.01)
and went to bed significantly later (t(107.439)=3.944, p<.001) than women. Average sleep
duration was significantly shorter among men (t(230)=-3.538, p<.001). Students who lived at
home watched more television (t(114.315)=2.494, p<.05) and went to bed significantly earlier
(t(204.412)=-5.007, p<.001) than students who lived on campus or in the college town did.
Finally, students living on campus reported higher state self-control (t(224) = -3.332, p<.01)
than those living at home (Table 1).
[TABLE 1 AROUND HERE]
Table 2 shows the zero order correlations between the variables of interest. Those who
watched more television, reported a higher use of television as a tool for procrastination ( r = .
260, p<.001). Less state self-control was significantly related to more use of television as a
tool for procrastination (r = -.365, p<.001) and earlier bedtime (r = .181, p<.01).
[TABLE 2 AROUND HERE]
We used PROCESS to test our research question and hypotheses. Variables were
standardized prior to analyses and path coefficients are thus standardized beta coefficients
(see Figure 1). For our research question, we found a direct positive relationship between
respondents’ level of state self-control and bedtime, meaning that the lower their reported
level of state self-control (and thus the more depleted their self-control resources), the earlier
they went to bed (β = .146, p<.05).
Lower levels of state self-control were negative related to use of television as a tool
for procrastination (β = -.388, p<.001), which was in turn positively related to bedtime (β = .
137, p<.05). In other words, the more self-control depletion respondents reported after
arriving home from work, the more they used television as a tool for procrastination, which
was associated with later bedtimes. This indirect path was significant (β = -.053, Boot SE = .
029, CI95% [-.119; -.002]) and thus confirms the first hypothesis.

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 14
Finally, we ran a serial mediation model to examine the subsequent association with
people’s sleep duration. State self-control was not directly related to self-reported sleep
duration. Lower levels of state self-control were indirectly associated with longer sleep
duration, through its association with earlier bedtimes (β = -.086, Boot SE = .032, CI95%
[-.157; -.031]). Conversely, there was also a positive serial indirect path: lower levels of state
self-control (and thus more self-control depletion) were associated with shorter sleep
duration, because it increased the propensity to use television as a tool for procrastination,
which in turn predicted later bedtimes (β = .031, Boot SE = .017, CI95% [.003; .073].
Hypothesis 2 and 3 were thus also supported.
[FIGURE 1 AROUND HERE]
Discussion
The main objective of this study was to explore the relationship between state self-
control and sleep behavior, and to consider the use of television as a tool for procrastination
as an intermediary factor. Our results make two contributions to the literature.
First, we observed a direct positive relationship between state self-control and
bedtime, meaning that lower levels of state self-control (i.e., more self-control depletion)
were associated with earlier bedtimes. Subsequent analysis indicated that this increased
tendency to go to bed earlier resulted in longer sleep duration. These findings may be
explained by previous studies that have framed self-regulatory depletion as a state similar to
exhaustion or tiredness which may make people more inclined to go to bed earlier because of
an increased need for rest and recovery (Finkel et al., 2006; Inzlicht & Berkman, 2015;
Muraven et al., 1998). Sleep has been shown to help restore and maintain self-control
resources (Barber & Munz, 2011; Pilcher et al., 2015) and people who experience self-control
depletion are inclined to replenish these, for instance by resting (Clarkson et al., 2011).

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 15
While tiredness is a plausible explanation for our findings, a note of caution is due
here since there is inconsistency on what exactly constitutes resource depletion. Nauts and
Kroese (2016), for instance, posited that self-control depletion is similar to mental fatigue,
but not physical fatigue. Mental fatigue causes shifts in attention and motivation, thus making
people less motivated to exert self-control (a view in line with the Process Model of Self-
Control, see Inzlicht & Schmeichel (2012)). An alternative explanation to our tiredness-
perspective may thus be motivation: those who reported self-control depletion at the end of
the day were possibly less motivated to get other stuff done before bedtime, and fast forward
to the stage of recovery. A further study with more focus on why depleted individuals may go
to bed earlier is thus required.
Second, low state self-control indirectly resulted in later bedtimes because it
increased the likelihood of using television as a tool for procrastination. Additional analyses
showed that this process resulted in shorter sleep duration. Previous studies had already
shown that procrastinatory media use has negative effects on well-being (Meier et al., 2016),
and this study extends those findings to sleep. We can interpret this indirect path in terms of a
superiority of the impulsive system over the reflective system (Strack & Deutsch, 2004): self-
control depletion makes us more susceptible to distraction, temptation and procrastination:
because we feel depleted, we indulge ourselves in late night television viewing, which may
take longer than intended as our self-control is weak at that time, and therefore we fail to
comply with our resolution to go to bed on time. The consequences of bedtime
procrastination will not become apparent until the next day (or even after that), and are
therefore easily ignored in favor of the short term reward of entertainment.
Nauts et al. (2016) investigated possible reasons people might have for procrastinating
bedtime. It turned out that people do not like many of the preparatory activities that are linked
to bedtime (e.g. household chores, personal hygiene). They speculated that these obligatory

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 16
tasks feel as a reduction of spare time: they have to be done at a time when all other
obligations for the day have finally been finished. Another possibility could be that people
turn to media to procrastinate on less desirable but obligatory tasks, such as schoolwork or
household chores. As these still need to be done by the end of the day, they are indirectly
pushing back bedtime.
While we may interpret procrastinatory media use as a type of self-regulation failure
that happens unintentionally, an alternative perspective argues that people may deliberately
postpone or procrastinate (De Witt Huberts et al., 2013). In this view, reflective processes
may also result in self-regulation failure, a proposition explained by processes of entitlement:
when detecting a discrepancy between the immediate situation and long term goals, we
develop justifications for giving in to our impulses and abandoning goal engagement.
Interestingly, research shows that the most common justifications for self-control failure are
the hard work or previous exertions of self-control (De Witt Huberts et al., 2012). For the
current study, we could thus also argue that self-control depletion offers the perfect excuse to
justify goal disengagement (Kivetz & Zheng, 2006): respondents may willfully procrastinate
by watching television because they feel they earned it after a day’s work and invoke
resource depletion as a justification. In short, while the impulsive route suggests mindless
media use that results in unintentional procrastination, the deliberate route suggests mindful
media use driven by intentional procrastination. So far, this justification-based account of
procrastination has received limited scholarly attention and offers an interesting avenue for
future research (Kroese, & De Ridder, 2015).
The dual pathway presented in this study illustrates a tug-of-war between the need for
sleep (governed by the reflective system) vs. the desire for entertainment (governed by the
impulsive system), which begs the question how these pathways relate to each other.
Following Hofmann, Friese, & Strack (2009), we propose to explore the role of dispositional

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 17
factors that can influence the strength of activation in the competing systems, and thus
influence which of the two pathways is more likely. We have three suggestions in this regard.
First, high levels of trait self-control may provide a buffer for self-control depletion, making
it less likely that the impulsive system will prevail in the determination of behavior (Friese &
Hofmann, 2009; Hofmann, Friese & Wiers, 2008). Second, previous research has reported
that people with an eveningness preference – commonly referred to as “owls” – have lower
self-control (Digdon & Howell, 2008; Owens, Deart-Wesley, Lewin, Gioia, & Whitaker,
2016; Wang & Hu, 2016) and engage in more procrastination (Digdon &Howell, 2008; Hess,
Sherman, & Goodman, 2000) than those with a morningness preference. Moreover, recent
studies have linked eveningness to increased media usage (Fossum et al., 2014, Demirhan et
al. 2016; Blanchnio, Przepiorka, & Diaz-Morales, 2015). Evening types may thus be more
susceptible to the lure on entertainment media, and needlessly delay bedtime. Finally, a high
degree of habitualness in behavior increases the likelihood that we rely on our impulses, even
if they conflict with our long term goals. Media use has a strong habitual component
(Oulasvirta et al., 2008), and Meier and colleagues (2016) found that strong media habits
coincide with more procrastinatory media use. For those whose media use occurs
automatically, we expect more bedtime delay in the case of depleted self-control resources. In
sum, the findings of this exploratory study indicate that self-control depletion may lead to
both earlier and later bedtimes, which we interpret as pathway representing a reflective or
impulsive route towards behavior determination. A natural progression of this work is to
unravel when and for whom those pathways are most likely to occur.
As bedtimes and sleep duration are naturally strongly related to each other, it may
self-evident that our dual pathway results in either more or less sleep duration. However,
prior research has found that media use does not affect sleep duration among adults (Custers
& Van den Bulck, 2012; Exelmans & Van den Bulck, 2016). Compared to children and

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 18
adolescents – whose media use tends to displace sleep and cut back sleep duration (see Cain
& Gradisar, 2010) – adults seem to compensate for lost sleep by rising later, a process called
time shifting. This study did not corroborate the time shifting hypothesis, as procrastinatory
television viewing coincided with less sleep. Even though the research to date thus suggests
that adults do not experience sleep displacement, the next step for future research would be to
determine whether is true for all adults, or only for particular subgroups.
Based on our observations that (1) sleep insufficiency may be partly attributed to self-
control issues and that (2) procrastinatory media use may partly account for bedtime delay,
new areas for intervention open up. First, research showed that implementation intentions are
an effective means to train self-regulation and promote healthy sleep habits (Loft & Cameron,
2013). In particular, using mental simulations of a desired action in a specific situation (i.e.,
if-then statements) increased self-efficacy, sleep planning, and sleep quality. Todd and Mullan
(2013) suggested that training cognitive flexibility (i.e., the ability to overcome barriers that
hinder goal achievement) may be useful in improving sleep hygiene. Second, counteracting
procrastinatory media use may be done by implementing restraint standards (such as the
standard for maintaining proper sleep) (Hofmann et al., 2009) or temporarily reducing or
ceasing media use (Hinsch & Scheldon, 2013). Third, while sleep seems to receive increasing
scholarly attention from various disciplines, sleep does not come to mind easily when
thinking about ways to improve health (Kroese et al., 2016). Boosting awareness about the
importance of sleep and its impact on well-being among the general public thus remains key
in overcoming the problem of sleep deprivation.
Limitations and Future Research
There are limitations to this study that warrant consideration. Although it has been
argued that the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) reduces recall bias and that people should
be able to accurately recreate the preceding day from memory (Kahneman et al., 2004), social

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 19
desirability still remains an issue here. It is also possible that the day of participation was not
entirely representative for an average day. We have tried to limit this by collecting data on
two consecutive weekdays, but results may turn out different for different time points of data
collections. We also expect there are strong differences in the media and sleep habits between
the week and weekend depending upon the type of residence because it is customary in
[country deleted] for students to stay with their parents over the weekend, and on campus or
in college town dorms during the week (deleted for country blinding). These particularities in
our [nationality deleted] student sample also limit generalizability to other age groups or
educational cultures. Furthermore, even though our serial mediation model infers
directionality in the hypothesized relationship, the DRM cannot untangle the causality of the
model. Following Reinecke et al. (2014), the survey design took into account a temporal
order: we measured self-control depletion upon arrival from work, but before media
exposure, and charted their sleep behavior at the end. While this strategy provides some
support for the direction of the observed relationships, our study was cross-sectional and
cannot determine causality. For example, given the importance of sleep for restoration,
researchers propose that sleep and self-control are likely to operate in a feedback loop where
good sleep is an important determinant of one’s capacity to exert self-control and depleted
self-control resources will impair our decision making about bedtime and how to spend the
final hours before sleep (Barber & Munz, 2011; Pilcher et al., 2015). These concerns can be
addressed by using experience sampling methods or diary data, allowing serial measurement
of self-control, sleep and media habits.
This study only investigated television viewing. Even though our television viewing
measure included a wide variety of currently used devices, this may have been neither the
behavior nor the device they used first upon arriving at their residence, or the one they spent
the most time on. Future research should look into how other media devices challenge

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 20
(situational) self-control and subsequent bedtime behavior. For example, in comparison to
television viewing, which easily takes up an hour or more for a single viewing decision,
much mobile phone use can be considered to be a micro task. Its intermittent and ephemeral
usage, higher mobility and multi-functionality may pose additional challenges to self-control
before or in bed. Future studies could also incorporate the content of television viewing as
research has shown that depleted individuals are particularly attracted to hedonically pleasant
stimuli and low brow content (Reinecke et al., 2014; Wagner et al., 2012).
Finally, the current study was conducted in the general population (i.e., a non-clinical
sample). It has been argued that, unlike general procrastination, aversion is not a key
characteristic for bedtime procrastination in a general population as sleep is commonly
perceived as enjoyable (Kroese et al., 2014). This is evidently not the case for those
diagnosed with sleep problems, and data also show that a significant proportion of people in
the general population suffer from undiagnosed sleep difficulties too (Roth, 2007). It would
therefore be interesting to see how these processes play out in a sample of people suffering
from chronic sleep difficulties, for whom media usage patterns may be entirely different. This
suggestion aligns with the idea that procrastination may follow either an impulsive or a
deliberate process. Conclusion
The association between self-control and sleep behavior is an emerging field of
research, and this study contributed to it by looking at state self-control. While media use has
been shown to contribute to bedtime delay and sleep insufficiency, is has only rarely been
integrated into a self-control perspective on sleep. Our findings suggest a dual pathway
whereby self-control depletion can lead to both earlier and later bedtimes, the former because
of a need for recovery, the latter because of a need for entertainment or distraction. As such,
television seems to undermine people’s good intention of going to bed in time.

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 21
Funding details: The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Disclosure statement: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 22
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Table 1 Descriptive statistics for variables of interest
Total Men Women At home On campus
M SD Min Max M SD M SD M SD M SD
TV time (h/evening) 1.80 1.12 .25 6.67 2.10 1.21 1.66 1.05 ** 2.10 1.25 1.68 1.05 *
TV as procrastination 11.50 5.07 5.00 25.00 11.43 5.27 11.54 5.00 n.s. 11.26 5.06 11.71 5.03 n.s.
State self-control 39.16 9.61 16.00 70.00 42.12 8.95 40.25 9.91 n.s. 37.67 10.19 42.19 9.07 **
Bedtime 24.40 1.77 21.00 33.50 25.13 2.14 24.05 1.45 *** 23.71 1.14 24.74 1.92 **
*
Sleep duration 7.31 1.48 1.67 11.00 6.83 1.59 7.54 1.37 *** 7.55 1.29 7.19 1.55 n.s.
Note. n.s.: non-significant, *p<.05 **p<.01, ***p<.001

SELF-CONTROL, SLEEP DURATION, TELEVISION 32
Table 2 Zero order correlations for variables of interest
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
1. TV time (h/evening) --
2. TV as procrastination .260*** --
3. State self-control -.069 -.365*** --
4. Bedtime .065 .118 .181** --
5. Sleep duration -.009 -.114 -.048 -.564*** --
Note. *** p<.001, ** p<.01, * p<.05