Clocking self-regulation: why time of day matters for health psychology

ABSTRACT

Various lines of research have identified a number of factors that can impair a person’s ability and motivation to exercise self-control, here self-regulation, in the face of a tempting object (e.g., food, sex, alcohol/drugs, smoking). Each of these in situ factors – the availability of the tempting object, one’s desire for it, and impaired affective and cognitive functioning (most notably from sleep-related fatigue, daily ‘wear and tear’, and intoxication) – makes self-regulation more difficult, and even more so when they co-occur. This integrative paper highlights how time of day modulates the salience of these impairing factors and argues that they are likely to be especially influential on self-regulation at night, or later in one’s waking day. As each factor is likely to vary considerably across the 24 hours of a day, so too will one’s self-regulatory ability and motivation – although person-level characteristics such as chronotype may shift these time-based considerations. The paper thus emphasises the importance of clocking self-regulation within health psychology research and intervention design. Consideration of when a self-regulation attempt is being made and of how time of day (or night) may be altering both the person and the situation towards risk, will facilitate a more temporally contextualised account of self-regulation.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-control
• risk-taking
• delay of gratification
• behaviour change
• sleep
• relapse

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Jeffrey T. Parsons PhD for his mentoring and guidance, as well as to the faculty and students in the Health Psychology & Clinical Science doctoral programme at CUNY and the entire team at CHEST. Thank you also to Walter Mischel PhD for his advice and guidance. Special thanks, always, to Doris McIlwain, PhD.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Brett M. Millar http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7870-7055