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Abstract
The present research explored people’s everyday practice of counteractive control. Experience sampling was used to test our prediction that strong temptations would promote self-control. Participants were 237 Japanese citizens with ages ranging from 18 to 69. Results indicated that perceived temptation prompted stronger resistance and restraint of behaviors, compared to those cases where no conflict was perceived. In addition, multilevel path analysis revealed the underlying process such that (a) a strong desire toward temptation intensified perception of conflict; (b) perceived conflict bolstered the value of goals that were in disagreement with the temptation; and (c) highly valued goals promoted self-control (i.e., stronger resistance and hence less yielding to temptation).
Notes
1. There is a short mention of goal importance (which may be closely related to the concept of goal value) as a predictor of conflict in the article by Hofmann et al. (Citation2012). However, the factor was not a focus of their study nor was it included in their model.
2. Along with these, other personality traits (e.g., regulatory focus (Higgins et al., Citation2001), satisfaction with life scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, Citation1985), cultural self-construal (Singelis, Citation1994), psychological entitlement (Campbell, Bonacci, Shelton, Exline, & Bushman, Citation2004), BIS/BAS (Carver & White, Citation1994), and mindfulness (Baer, Smith et al., Citation2008) were also measured for exploratory reasons, which are not reported in this paper.
3. For all assessments, participants were assured that their responses would remain confidential. Participants were also permitted to withdraw from the survey at any time. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee in the Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University (approval number: CPE-51) and the Ethics Committee of Toyo University (approval number: July 2014–1).
4. Except for the frequency of desire for sleep being extremely high compared to the German samples (10.3%), probably due to Japanese citizens’ shorter sleep time compared to most the Western countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Citation2011).
5. Desires with no conflict (conflict score = 0) constituted as much as 32% of the reported desires, while the distribution of the remaining cases were 7, 9, 14, 17, 11, 9%, respectively for conflict scores from 1 to 6.
6. We also tested a model which included the personality traits as moderating factors for each path in Level 1, but none of the moderating effects was significant (ps > .2).
7. Considering these coefficients in this paragraph show rather small values for indirect effects, one may question the validity of the effect of counteractive control on resistance and enactment. One possible explanation is that the effect size obtained from the experience-sampling method may be smaller than the ones obtained in experimental studies, due to the uncontrolled environments of the former (meaning that these are full of disturbing factors), a limitation that is multiplied when we try to look into mediation processes involving multiple paths. Nonetheless, we consider these small but detectable indirect effects as a promising sign for the presence (and effectiveness) of counteractive control process in everyday lives.