Attitude-Based Self-Regulation: An Experience Sampling Study on the Role of Attitudes in the Experience and Resolution of Self-Control Conflicts in the Context of Vegetarians

The regulation of self-control conflicts is integral to exerting self-control and pursuing (long-term) goals. Nonetheless, prevailing conceptualizations of self-control conflict remain vague, and the mechanisms and boundary conditions through which self-control conflict emerges are rarely empirically tested. In the present research, we thus propose that self-control conflicts originate in accessible ambivalent attitudes. To examine our attitudinal perspective on self-control and self-regulation, we investigated how (ambivalent) attitudes influence self-control conflicts and how resolving these attitudinal origins may enhance self-control and avert future conflicts. We ran a 21-day diary study assessing daily inhibition conflicts about eating meat among conflicted vegetarians (N = 156, k = 2,346). Our findings suggest that holding (positive) attitudes that conflict with pre-dominant (negative) attitudes predicted heightened conflict frequency in people’s daily lives; and the situational accessibility of both positive and negative attitudes is associated with conflict magnitude. Moreover, to cope with these conflicts, people often engaged in attitude-based self-regulation involving the affirmation of negative and the disaffirmation of positive attitudes towards eating meat, thereby successfully exerting self-control. Contrary to our prediction, however, we did not find evidence for the effectiveness of attitude-based self-regulatory strategies for mitigating subsequent conflict. In fact, various self-regulatory strategies, including the disaffirmation of positive attitudes, self-distraction, and thought suppression, even escalated subsequent conflict. These findings suggest that our attitudinal perspective on self-control and self-regulation provides a parsimonious and testable conceptualization of self-control conflicts.