Effortful Control, Explicit Processing, and the Regulation of Human Evolved Predispositions

Effortful Control, Explicit Processing, and the Regulation of Human Evolved Predispositions
Kevin B MacDonald

Abstract

This article analyzes the effortful control of automatic processing related to social and emotional behavior, including control over evolved modules designed to solve problems of survival and reproduction that were recurrent over evolutionary time. The inputs to effortful control mechanisms include a wide range of nonrecurrent information—information resulting not from evolutionary regularities but from explicit appraisals of costs and benefits. Effortful control mechanisms are associated with the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex and the ventral anterior cingulated cortex. These mechanisms are largely separate from mechanisms of cognitive control (termed executive function) and working memory, and they enable effortful control of behavior in the service of long range goals. Individual differences in effortful control are associated with measures of conscientiousness in the Five Factor Model of personality. Research in the areas of aggression, ethnocentrism, sexuality, reward seeking, and emotion regulation is reviewed indicating effortful control of automatic, implicit processing based on explicit appraisals of the context. Evidence is reviewed indicating that evolutionary pressure for cooperation may be a critical adaptive function accounting for the evolution of explicit processing.

Dimensionality of brain networks linked to life-long individual differences in self-control

Dimensionality of brain networks linked to life-long individual differences in self-control
Marc G Bermann et al., 2013
http://selfcontrol.psych.lsa.umich.edu/papers/2013_Bermanetal_Nature.pdf

 

Abstract

The ability to delay gratification in childhood has been linked to positive outcomes in adolescence and adulthood. Here we examine a subsample of participants from a seminal longitudinal study of self-control throughout a subject’s life span. Self-control, first studied in children at age 4 years, is now re-examined 40 years later, on a task that required control over the contents of working memory. We examine whether patterns of brain activation on this task can reliably distinguish participants with consistently low and high self-control abilities (low versus high delayers). We find that low delayers recruit significantly higherdimensional neural networks when performing the task compared with high delayers. High delayers are also more homogeneous as a group in their neural patterns compared with low delayers. From these brain patterns, we can predict with 71% accuracy, whether a participant is a high or low delayer. The present results suggest that dimensionality of neural networks is a biological predictor of self-control abilities.

Life Outcomes, Intelligence & Self-Control:

When psychologists isolate the personal qualities that predict "positive outcomes" in life, they consistently find two traits: intelligence and self-control.

Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, Willpower, 2012

Self Control & Pleasure Seeking:

Quite a few people have trouble controlling pleasure seeking, especially during adolescence when there is a developmental gap between the relatively immature control centers and the more fully developed pleasure centers; ...

Kevin MacDonald