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Self-Control as Hybrid Skill
Abstract
A main obstacle to the successful pursuit of long-term goals is a lack of self-control. But what is the capacity for self-control? The aim of this chapter is to contribute to an overarching theory of self-control by exploring the proposal that it is best understood as a form of hybrid skill. The authors draw on recent work on skill in the domain of motor control to highlight important ways in which experts differ from novices in the capacities they deploy. They then consider how the resulting framework can be applied to the domain of self-control. The chapter ends by examining how this approach can help reconcile a motivational construal of self-control, according to which it involves resisting competing temptations in order to do what one deems best, and an executive construal, in which the emphasis is on overriding “cold” habits that are at odds with what one intends to do.
... And yet, no complete account has been proposed of the skillful agency that makes self-control exertion possible. 2 Such an account must solve the guidance The no-willpower approach to breaking any habit (2016, New Harbinger); and R. Baumeister and J. Tierney's Willpower: Rediscovering the greatest human strength (Penguin, 2012). 2 Mylopoulos and Pacherie (2020) take a notable step in this direction, albeit their focus (diachronic selfcontrol) is different from this work's (synchronic self-control). For discussion see Sect. ...
Researchers often claim that self-control is a skill. It is also often stated that self-control exertions are intentional actions. However, no account has yet been proposed of the skillful agency that makes self-control exertion possible, so our understanding of self-control remains incomplete. Here I propose the skill model of self-control, which accounts for skillful agency by tackling the guidance problem: how can agents transform their abstract and coarse-grained intentions into the highly context-sensitive, fine-grained control processes required to select, revise and correct strategies during self-control exertion? The skill model borrows conceptual tools from 'hierarchical models' recently developed in the context of motor skills, and asserts that self-control crucially involves the ability to manage the implementation and monitoring of regulatory strategies as the self-control exercise unfolds. Skilled agents are able do this by means of flexible practical reasoning: a fast, context-sensitive type of deliberation that incorporates non-propositional representations (including feedback signals about strategy implementation, such as the feeling of mental effort) into the formation and revision of the mixed-format intentions that structure self-control exertion. The literatures on implementation intentions and motivation framing offer corroborating evidence for the theory. As a surprising result, the skill of self-control that allows agents to overcome the contrary motivations they experience is self-effacing: instead of continuously honing this skill, expert agents replace it with a different one, which minimizes or prevents contrary motivations from arising in the first place. Thus, the more expert someone is at self-control,
... And yet, no complete account has been proposed of the skillful agency that makes self-control exertion possible. 2 Such an account must solve the guidance The no-willpower approach to breaking any habit (2016, New Harbinger); and R. Baumeister and J. Tierney's Willpower: Rediscovering the greatest human strength (Penguin, 2012). 2 Mylopoulos and Pacherie (2020) take a notable step in this direction, albeit their focus (diachronic selfcontrol) is different from this work's (synchronic self-control). For discussion see Sect. ...
Researchers often claim that self-control is a skill, an ability that threads cognitive and motivational processes together to achieve commitment-concordant action in the face of contrary motivations. It is also often stated that self-control exertions are intentional actions. However, no account has yet been proposed of the skillful agency that makes self-control exertion possible, and thus our understanding of self-control remains incomplete. Here I propose the skill model of self-control. This model accounts for skillful agency by tackling the guidance problem: how can agents transform their abstract and coarse-grained intentions into the highly context-sensitive, fine-grained control processes required to select, revise and correct strategies during self-control exertion? The skill model borrows conceptual tools from ‘hierarchical models’ recently developed in the context of motor skills, and asserts that self-control crucially involves the ability to manage the implementation and monitoring of regulatory strategies as the self-control exercise unfolds. Skilled agents are able do this by means of flexible practical reasoning: a fast, context-sensitive type of deliberation that incorporates non-propositional representations (including feedback signals about strategy implementation, such as the feeling of mental effort) into the formation of the practical intentions that structure self-control exertion. The literatures on implementation intentions and motivation framing offer corroborating evidence for the theory. The skill model has a surprising result: while cognitive control may be necessary for self-control exertions, expert agents will tend to rely much less on cognitive control than less skilled agents.
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