Action versus state orientation moderates the impact of executive functioning on real life self control.
Self control is commonly assumed to depend on executive functions (EFs) However, it is unclear whether real life self control failures result from deficient EF competencies or rather reflect insufficient conflict induced mobilization of executive control, and whether self control depends more critically on function specific EF competencies or general executive functioning (GEF) that is, common competencies that underlie all EFs. Here we investigated whether failure related action versus state orientation, a personality trait related to the conflict induced mobilization of cognitive control, moderates the effect of general and function specific control competencies on self control. To this end, 240 young adults completed questionnaire measures of action state orientation and trait self control, reported everyday self control failures during 7 consecutive days via smartphone based experience sampling, and completed 9 EF tasks from which latent variables reflecting GEF as well as inhibition updating and shifting specific competencies were derived. Structural equation models confirmed that the effect of GEF on self control was moderated by action state orientation: action oriented compared with more state oriented participants showed a stronger inverse association between GEF and everyday self control failures. Corresponding effects of function specific competencies on self control were not found. These results highlight that high executive functioning may enable self controlled behavior only if control is sufficiently mobilized when needed and suggest that self control may depend more critically on general than function specific control competencies. More generally, the present study demonstrates the fruitfulness of combining latent variable models of well controlled EF tasks with experience sampling of daily self control and measures of individual differences in control modes to bridge the gap between laboratory research and real life behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record
Journal of experimental psychology. General