In:
Psychological Science, SAGE Publications, Vol. 31, No. 3 ( 2020-03), p. 268-279
Abstract:
Deficient self-control leads to shortsighted decisions and incurs severe personal and societal costs. Although neuroimaging has advanced our understanding of neural mechanisms underlying self-control, the ecological validity of laboratory tasks used to assess self-control remains largely unknown. To increase ecological validity and to test a specific hypothesis about the mechanisms underlying real-life self-control, we combined functional MRI during value-based decision-making with smartphone-based assessment of real-life self-control in a large community sample ( N = 194). Results showed that an increased propensity to make shortsighted decisions and commit self-control failures, both in the laboratory task as well as during real-life conflicts, was associated with a reduced modulation of neural value signals in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in response to anticipated long-term consequences. These results constitute the first evidence that neural mechanisms mediating anticipations of future consequences not only account for self-control in laboratory tasks but also predict real-life self-control, thereby bridging the gap between laboratory research and real-life behavior.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0956-7976
,
1467-9280
DOI:
10.1177/0956797619896357
Language:
English
Publisher:
SAGE Publications
Publication Date:
2020
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2022256-7
SSG:
5,2
