People with greater self-control have calmer minds, which in itself generates fewer distractions from stimuli.
People who have a ‘calmer mind,’ that is, their neuronal processes take longer on average and whirl around less than others, have greater self-control.
This was the finding of Dr. Tobias Kleinert, Prof. Dr. Markus Heinrichs and Dr. Bastian Schiller from the Department of Psychology at the University of Freiburg, together with Prof. Dr. Kyle Nash and Dr. Josh Leota from the University of Alberta/Canada, and Prof. Dr. Thomas König from the University Hospital of Bern/Switzerland.
“Self-controlled behaviour is important for achieving long-term objectives, for example, when we do without high-calorie food to lose surplus pounds,” explains Schiller.
Why is this easier for some people than for others, and are these individual differences based in a fundamentally different organisation of the brain?
To find answers to these questions, the Freiburg researchers recorded the electrical activity in the brains of over 50 relaxed yet wakeful participants in the laboratory.
The scientists also recorded the participants’ capacity for self-control in other ways including self-evaluation reports, behavioural tasks. and the brain activity recorded while they did these tasks.
The results of the study were confirmed in a second co-operative study that took place at the University of Alberta/Canada, with more than 100 subjects.
“On both sides of the Atlantic we were able to prove a robust connection between non-task-dependent neuronal processing and the capacity for self-control,” explains Kleinert.
Schiller says, “Our results indicate that people with greater self-control have a calmer mind, which in itself generates fewer distracting stimuli.”
Heinrichs adds that “these findings are hugely significant to a better understanding of clinical disorders associated with deficient self-control processes.”
This research has been published in the journal Psychological Science.
