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Why It is Impossible for Some to 'Just Say No' |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: While the ability to control and restrain our impulses is one of the defining features of the human animal, its failure is one of the central problems of human society. As human beings, we have limited resources to control ourselves, and all acts of control draw from this same source. Inzlicht and Gutsell asked participants to suppress their emotions while watching an upsetting movie. The participants reported their ability to suppress their feelings on a scale from one to nine. Then, they completed a Stroop task, which involves naming the color of printed words (i.e. saying red when reading the word "green" in red font), yet another task that requires a significant amount of self-control. Normally, when a person deviates from their goals (in this case, wanting to read the word, not the color of the font), increased brain activity occurs in a part of the frontal lobe called the anterior cingulate cortex, which alerts the person that they are off-track. The researchers found weaker activity occurring in this brain region during the Stroop task in those who had suppressed their feelings. In other words, after engaging in one act of self-control this brain system seems to fail during the next act. These results, which appear in the November issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, have significant implications for future interventions aiming to help people change their behavior.
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