Abstract:

Research has shown that self-control was not only an effort made to inhibit impulses, but people also actively promoted self-control through the application of various strategies. The five strategy types proposed by the process model of self-control include situation selection, situation modification, attention deployment, cognitive change, and reaction inhibition strategies. These strategies are considered to contain the majority of self-control strategies used in people's daily life and are also the most often used strategy types in current studies. Plan, personal rules, or habit strategies bypass the evaluation stage of self-control conflict, and it is a shortcut strategy. Other studies have divided self-control strategies into self-deployed interventions and other-deployed interventions, mental tools, and behavioral tools. People commonly use at least one strategy for resisting desires, and in 25% of cases more than one strategy is used. According to existing literature, people use cognitive strategies most, but not the most forward-looking situational strategies. This may be because the use of cognitive strategies is not affected by situational factors, and it is therefore more convenient. The reaction inhibition strategy is not the least used strategy. According to the current situation of self-control and the type of desire, people would give priority to using certain strategies to achieve the long-term goals. The preference for using such strategies may not be due to the perceived effectiveness of the strategies, but because of other reasons, such as ease of use or feasibility. In addition, the possibility of people using certain strategies will be reduced in some situations, possibly because these strategies are considered difficult or impossible. Substantial studies have confirmed that early strategies are more effective than late strategies. One possible reason is that early strategies mainly intervene with the process of temptation generation and reinforcement, which may reduce the intensity of temptation. Because the use of situational selection strategies needs to predict the temptation in advance, in some situations, attention deployment and cognitive change strategies could play a greater role than situational strategies. Although some studies have demonstrated that late strategy is not very effective, other studies have also shown that the late strategy can effectively inhibit impulse. On the one hand, the reasons for the inconsistent results might be due to participants' understanding of the use of strategies. They attribute the success of self-control to inhibition. On the other hand, self-control includes both active control and passive control. Efforts to suppress impulse also play an important role in the process of self-control. The effectiveness of self-control strategies will change with the types of desire conflicts and specific self-control situations that individual experience. The level of individual trait self-control, personality differences, and the number of self-control strategies used also affect the effectiveness of strategies. Understanding the applied mechanism of self-control strategies contributes to the success of self-control. Future research needs to more thoroughly explore the flexibility and variability of the application of self-control strategies, and the mechanism of applying multiple strategies with a focus on the relationship between self-control strategies and the improvement of self-control ability, and to improve intervention research on the application of self-control strategies.

Key words: self-control, self-regulation, inhibition, self-control strategies