SGER: Social Cognitive Neuroscience of Self-Regulation

Dartmouth College, Hanover NH

Investigators

Abstract

The methods of cognitive neuroscience will be used to examine a social psychological theory of self-regulation. According to the strength model, self-regulation is governed by a limited resource that allows people to control impulses and desires. Self-regulatory resources can be depleted or fatigued by self-regulatory demands. Hence, the active effort required to control behavior in one domain leads to diminished capacity for self-regulation in other domains. Because people have a limited reservoir of self-regulatory resources, they can be overwhelmed by both self-initiated and situational demands, thereby resulting in self-regulation failure. Preliminary studies using social psychological methods have found consistent support for the strength model. The new studies use methods from cognitive neuroscience to more fully elucidate the underlying brain mechanisms involved in self-regulation. A first project examines whether performing an initial self-regulatory task leads to alterations in performance on a subsequent test of frontal lobe functioning. Tasks such as the Tower of London, Stroop Task, and negative priming have been shown to reflect frontal lobe activity. A second project uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess brain activity correlated with self-regulatory effort. Together these studies should provide substantial evidence about the neural correlates of self-regulation. In addition, this research allows for an examination of the strength model of self-regulation that is not possible using traditional social psychological methods. More generally, this research will demonstrate the usefulness of cognitive neuroscience methods for examining social psychological phenomena.