Most authors who discuss willpower assume that everyone knows what it is, but our assumptions differ to such an extent that we talk past each other. We agree that willpower is the psychological function that resists temptations – variously known as impulses, addictions, or bad habits; that it operates simultaneously with temptations, without prior commitment; and that use of it is limited by its cost, commonly called effort, as well as by the person's skill at executive functioning. However, accounts are usually not clear about how motivation functions during the application of willpower, or how motivation is related to effort. Some accounts depict willpower as the perceiving or formation of motivational contingencies that outweigh the temptation, and some depict it as a continuous use of mechanisms that interfere with re-weighing the temptation. Some others now suggest that impulse control can bypass motivation altogether, although they refer to this route as habit rather than willpower.

It is argued here that willpower should be recognized as either or both of two distinct functions, which can be called resolve and suppression. Resolve is based on interpretation of a current choice as a test case for a broader set of future choices, which puts at stake more than the outcome of the current choice. Suppression is inhibiting valuation of (modulating) and/or keeping attention from (filtering) immediate alternatives to a current intention. Perception of current choices as test cases for broader outcomes may result in reliable preference for these outcomes, which is experienced as an effortless habit – a successful result of resolve, not an alternative method of self-control. Some possible brain imaging correlates are reviewed.

The aim of the present study was to analyze the role of minors’ impulsiveness in the perpetration of child-to-parent violence (CPV), controlling for sex, age, interest allocated to studies, and participant´s and parent´s drug consumption habits, as well as to test the moderating role of the aggressor’s sex on impulsiveness. The sample comprised 934 students from high school centers (438 boys and 496 girls), aged between 13 and 21 years. Impulsiveness was assessed through the Barratt’s Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11), whereas CPV perpetration was assessed employing the Child-to-Parent Aggression Questionnaire. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that both attentional (β = .09, p < .05; β = .12, p < .001) and motor impulsiveness (β = .26, p < .001; β = .25, p < .001) were related to the perpetration of CPV. Interaction analyses showed a moderating role of the aggressor’s sex over motor impulsiveness in the case of CPV towards the father (β = .29, p < .05), and over attentional impulsiveness in the case of CPV towards the mother (β = .45, p < .001). Results confirm the idea that minors’ impulsiveness has an effect on the probability of CPV perpetration, which differs according to the sex of the perpetrator.

Experiential avoidance (EA) has been connected to various behavioural indicators of psychological distress, implicated in the etiology and maintenance of psychological disorders, and is the target of prevalent psychological treatments. However, the reasons that individuals engage in dysfunctional EA are little understood. One hypothesis focuses on the preference for small, immediate rewards above larger, delayed rewards — in other words, impulsiveness. We examined the relationship of impulsiveness, measured both by self-report and behaviourally, to EA, while statistically controlling for possible confounding variables (i.e., intellectual functioning, gender, ethnicity), in a sample of normal undergraduate participants. Regression analyses suggest a significant relationship exists between EA and self-reported (but not behaviourally measured) impulsiveness. Exploratory analyses indicate nonplanning-type impulsiveness might be the best predictor of EA. Possible confounding variables did not account for a significant amount of variance within either model examined. Thus, support is provided for a theoretically proposed relationship within the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy model of psychopathology between EA and impulsiveness.

The tendency to choose a larger, more delayed reinforcer over a smaller, less delayed one has frequently been termed “selfcontrol.” Three very different research traditions – two models emphasizing the control of local contingencies of reinforcement (Mischel's social learning theory and Herrnstein's matching law) and molar maximization models (specifically optimal foraging theory) – have all investigated behavior within the self-control paradigm. A framework is proposed to integrate research from all three research areas. This framework consists of three parts: a procedural analysis, a causal analysis, and a theoretical analysis. The procedural analysis provides a common procedural terminology for all three areas. The causal analysis establishes that, in all three research traditions, self-control varies directly with the current physical values of the reinforcers; that is, choices increase with reinforcer amount and decrease with reinforcer delay. But self-control also varies according to past events to which a subject has been exposed, and according to current factors other than the reinforcers. Each of the three models has therefore incorporated these indirect effects on self-control by postulating unobservable mechanisms. In all three cases, these mechanisms represent a subject's behavior as a function of a perceived environment. The theoretical analysis demonstrates that evolutionary theory can encompass the research from all three areas by considering differences in the adaptiveness of self-control in different situations. This integration provides a better and more predictive description of self-control.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is characterized by inattention and/or hyperactivity/impulsivity. Impulsivity persists in adults with ADHD and might be the basis of much of the impairment observed in the daily lives of such individuals. The objective of this study was to address the presence, and more importantly, the three dimensions of impulsivity: attentional, non-planning and motor, in how they may relate to neuropsychological mechanisms of impulse control. We studied a sample of 50 adults with ADHD and 51 healthy comparison controls using the Barratt Impulsivity Scale Version 11 (BIS), and neuropsychological tasks, namely the Continuous Performance Task (CPT-II) and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). The ADHD group showed more signs of impulsivity on the three dimensions of BIS, committed more errors of omission and commission on the CPT-II, and made more disadvantageous choices on the IGT. These results support the existence of deficits related to three components of impulsivity: motor, cognitive, and attentional among adults with ADHD. Most importantly, this study also highlights the complementary nature of self-report questionnaires and neuropsychological tasks in the assessment of impulsivity in ADHD adults. (JINS, 2007, 13, 693–698.)

Behavioral science has long been puzzled by the experience of temptation, the resulting impulsiveness, and the variably successful control of this impulsiveness. In conventional theories, a governing faculty like the ego evaluates future choices consistently over time, discounting their value for delay exponentially, that is, by a constant rate; impulses arise when this ego is confronted by a conditioned appetite. Breakdown of Will (Ainslie 2001) presents evidence that contradicts this model. Both people and nonhuman animals spontaneously discount the value of expected events in a curve where value is divided approximately by expected delay, a hyperbolic form that is more bowed than the rational, exponential curve.

With hyperbolic discounting, options that pay off quickly will be temporarily preferred to richer but slower-paying alternatives, a phenomenon that, over periods from minutes to days, can account for impulsive behaviors, and over periods of fractional seconds can account for involuntary behaviors. Contradictory reward-getting processes can in effect bargain with each other, and stable preferences can be established by the perception of recurrent choices as test cases (precedents) in recurrent intertemporal prisoner's dilemmas. The resulting motivational pattern resembles traditional descriptions of the will, as well as of compulsive phenomena that can now be seen as side-effects of will: over-concern with precedent, intractable but circumscribed failures of self-control, a motivated (“dynamic”) unconscious, and an inability to exploit emotional rewards. Hyperbolic curves also suggest a means of reducing classical conditioning to motivated choice, the last necessary step for modeling many involuntary processes like emotion and appetite as reward-seeking behaviors; such modeling, in turn, provides a rationale for empathic reward and the “construction” of reality.

sagvolden, johansen, aase, and russell (sagvolden et al.) examine attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (adhd) at levels of analysis ranging from neurotransmitters to behavior. at the behavioral level they attribute aspects of adhd to anomalies of delay-of-reinforcement gradients. with a normal gradient, responses followed after a long delay by a reinforcer may share in the effects of that reinforcer; with a diminished or steepened gradient they may fail to do so. steepened gradients differentially select rapidly emitted responses (hyperactivity), and they limit the effectiveness with which extended stimuli become conditioned reinforcers, so that observing behavior is less well maintained (attention deficit). impulsiveness also follows from steepened gradients, which increase the effectiveness of smaller, more immediate consequences relative to larger, more delayed ones. individuals who vary in the degree to which their delay gradients are steepened will show different balances between hyperactivity and attention deficit. given the range of adhd phenomena addressed, it may be unnecessary to appeal to additional behavioral processes such as extinction deficit. extinction deficit is more likely a derivative of attention deficit, in that failure to attend to stimuli differentially correlated with extinction should slow its progress. the account suggests how relatively small differences in delay gradients early in development might engender behavioral interactions leading to very large differences later on. the steepened gradients presumably originate in properties of neurotransmitter function, but behavioral interventions that use consistently short delays of reinforcement to build higher-order behavioral units as a scaffolding to support complex cognitive and social skills may nonetheless be feasible.

Many situations in human life present choices between (a) narrowly preferred particular alternatives and (b) narrowly less preferred (or aversive) particular alternatives that nevertheless form part of highly preferred abstract behavioral patterns. Such alternatives characterize problems of self-control. For example, at any given moment, a person may accept alcoholic drinks yet also prefer being sober to being drunk over the next few days. Other situations present choices between (a) alternatives beneficial to an individual and (b) alternatives that are less beneficial (or harmful) to the individual that would nevertheless be beneficial if chosen by many individuals. Such alternatives characterize problems of social cooperation; choices of the latter alternative are generally considered to be altruistic. Altruism, like self-control, is a valuable temporally-extended pattern of behavior. Like self-control, altruism may be learned and maintained over an individual's lifetime. It needs no special inherited mechanism. Individual acts of altruism, each of which may be of no benefit (or of possible harm) to the actor, may nevertheless be beneficial when repeated over time. However, because each selfish decision is individually preferred to each altruistic decision, people can benefit from altruistic behavior only when they are committed to an altruistic pattern of acts and refuse to make decisions on a case-by-case basis.

The significance of a history of anorexia nervosa as regards the diagnosis and treatment outcome for bulimia is unclear. In a retrospective analysis of medical records of 59 inpatients with bulimia (DSM-III), variables related to personal and psychiatric family history did not reveal any differences in bulimics subtyped according to previous anorexia nervosa as defined in the criteria of Russell (1979). These anamnestic data support the results of studies indicating that no specific clinical and outcome variables are correlated with a history of anorexia nervosa in bulimia. The lower body weight and longer duration of bulimia found in bulimic inpatients with a history of anorexia nervosa, however, should be further examined.

The genetical analysis of covariance structures is used to explore the genetical and environmental intercorrelations of impulsiveness and sensation seeking factors and their conformity to Eysenck's principal personality dimensions. The independent dimensions of psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism, and lie scale are not found to give a very satisfactory account of the genetical factor structure. In particular, it is clear that impulsiveness and sensation seeking are not simple reflections of extraversion.