High Self‐Control Predicts Good Adjustment, Less Pathology, Better Grades, and Interpersonal Success

2004/02/23 by June P. Tangney, Roy F. Baumeister, Angie Luzio Boone · 6,578 citations
Psychology · #Alcohol abuse #Behavioral Health and Interventions #Clinical psychology #Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion #Developmental psychology #Interpersonal communication #Interpersonal relationship #Mental Health Research Topics #Psychiatry #Psychology #Psychopathology #Scale (ratio) #Self-control #Social desirability #Social psychology

paper · doi:10.1111/j.0022-3506.2004.00263.x

published in Journal of Personality 72(2), 271-324 (Wiley)

openalex publication_date 2004/02/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

What good is self-control? We incorporated a new measure of individual differences in self-control into two large investigations of a broad spectrum of behaviors. The new scale showed good internal consistency and retest reliability. Higher scores on self-control correlated with a higher grade point average, better adjustment (fewer reports of psychopathology, higher self-esteem), less binge eating and alcohol abuse, better relationships and interpersonal skills, secure attachment, and more optimal emotional responses. Tests for curvilinearity failed to indicate any drawbacks of so-called overcontrol, and the positive effects remained after controlling for social desirability. Low self-control is thus a significant risk factor for a broad range of personal and interpersonal problems.

Citations

• Resilience in the Face of Catastrophe: Optimism, Personality, and Coping in the Kosovo Crisis

Cited by

• Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals.
• True grit and genetics: Predicting academic achievement from personality.
• Using wise interventions to motivate deliberate practice.
• Yes, But Are They Happy? Effects of Trait Self‐Control on Affective Well‐Being and Life Satisfaction
• Evaluating the Big Five as an organizing framework for commonly used psychological trait scales.
• The idea of money counteracts ego depletion effects
• Brief Research Report: The Impact of a Utility-Value Intervention on Students’ Engagement
• Annual Research Review: On the relations among self‐regulation, self‐control, executive functioning, effortful control, cognitive control, impulsivity, risk‐taking, and inhibition for developmental psychopathology
• Violence restrained: Effects of self-regulation and its depletion on aggression
• Extrinsic Convergent Validity Evidence to Prevent Jingle and Jangle Fallacies
• The Nonequivalent Health of High School Equivalents
• Foundation for a temperament-based theory of antisocial behavior and criminal justice system involvement
• Beyond the joystick: Exploring the relationship between game addiction trajectories and aggression dimensions
• It's time: A meta-analysis on the self-control-deviance link
• Impulse Purchases, Gun Ownership, and Homicides: Evidence from a Firearm Demand Shock
• Self-Regulated Parenting: A Systematic Review of the Relations Between Effortful Control, the Big-Five, and Parenting Practices
• Self-Control and Academic Achievement
• Predicting school success: Comparing Conscientiousness, Grit, and Emotion Regulation Ability
• Can't Stop: How Context and Individual Traits Influence Effectiveness of Different Gradual Interventions for Infinite Scrolling on Short-Form Video Platforms
• Violent attitudes in Portugal and Canada: Measurement invariance and psychometric properties of the Evaluation of Violence Questionnaire
• Regulatory flexibility and psychological health – Is more always better?
• What drives demand for loot boxes? An experimental study
• Mother and father socially desirable responding in nine countries: Two kinds of agreement and relations to parenting self-reports
• The Hidden Measurement Crisis in Criminology
• The dispositional basis of deviance: A multivariate approach to crime and other deviant acts
• Time perspective and attitude‐behaviour consistency in future‐oriented behaviours
• TikTok Brain: An Investigation of Short-Form Video Use, Self-Control, and Phubbing
• Midday napping in children: associations between nap frequency and duration across cognitive, positive psychological well-being, behavioral, and metabolic health outcomes
• Lay Beliefs About Attention to and Awareness of the Present: Implicit Mindfulness Theory (IMT) and Its Workplace Implications
• Religiosity, self-control, and antisocial behavior: Religiosity as a promotive and protective factor
• Distinguishing the affective and cognitive bases of implicit attitudes to improve prediction of food choices
• Examining the interrelation of a self-regulation intervention with self-control and work-to-family interference
• Reliability, Validity, and Predictive Utility of the 25-item Criminogenic Cognitions Scale (CCS)
• Promise and Paradox
• The Strength Model of Self-Control
• The associations between mothers’ and grandmothers’ self-control, mother-grandmother coparenting relationships and caregiver-child attachment: An actor-partner interdependence mediation model
• The social psychology of everyday life
• Efficacy of the social-emotional learning foundations curriculum for kindergarten and first grade students at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders
• The importance of habits in eating behaviour. An overview and recommendations for future research
• Healthy eating habits protect against temptations
• Do Rating and Task Measures of Control Abilities Assess the Same Thing?
• Binge-Watching Behaviour: The Role of Impulsivity and Depressive Symptoms
• Low self-control and the adoption of street code values among young adults
• Did I Get the Best Discount? Counterfactual Thinking of Tourism Products
• A meta-analysis of the convergent validity of self-control measures
• From ego depletion to self-control fatigue: A review of criticisms along with new perspectives for the investigation and replication of a multicomponent phenomenon.
• Low Self-Control and the Victim–Offender Overlap
• Recovery from job stress: The stressor-detachment model as an integrative framework
• Integrating breathing‐based stress reduction to address stress and alcohol misuse: A novel digital intervention delivered via telehealth and smartphone application
• Harmless bodily pleasures are moralized because they are perceived as reducing self-control and cooperativeness
• Susceptibility to Email Fraud
• Personality and prosocial behavior: A theoretical framework and meta-analysis.
• Teacher–Student Relationship and Academic Achievement Among Adolescents: A Moderated Mediation Model
• "In my defense, only three hours on Instagram": Designing Toward Digital Self-Awareness and Wellbeing
• Feeling Well, Functioning Well: How Psychological Well-Being Predicts Later Self-Control, but Not the Other Way Around
• Problematic TikTok use severity, self-control, and school engagement: A one-year longitudinal study
• Exploring goal change in everyday life
• 「セルフコントロールが得意」とはどういうことなのか 「葛藤解決が得意」と「目標達成が得意」に分けた概念整理
• It wears me out just imagining it! Mental imagery leads to muscle fatigue and diminished performance of isometric exercise
• Factors associated with encounter-specific police procedural justice perceptions among Dutch detainees
• Effectiveness of a Mobile-Based Self-Regulation Training on Youths’ Affect
• Ego-control and ego-resiliency: Generalization of self-report scales based on personality descriptions from acquaintances, clinicians, and the self
• A daily diary study on the relationship between negative affect and problematic short video use: the mediating role of rumination and the cross-level moderating role of self-control
• The Relationship Between Physical Activity and Problematic Internet Use in Turkish College Students: The Chain-Mediated Role of Self-Control and Distress
• Alcohol craving under stress in healthy young men: A randomized laboratory study
• Innate Health: A Novel Examination of What Explains Well-Being, Prosocial Behavior, and Aggression Among Men Living in a U.K. Prison
• Self-Control-Centered Empowerment Model: Health Consciousness and Health Knowledge as Drivers of Empowerment-Seeking through Health Communication
• Gender-specific co-developmental trajectories of internalizing and externalizing problems from middle childhood to early adolescence: Environmental and individual predictors
• Harsh parenting and academic achievement in Chinese adolescents: Potential mediating roles of effortful control and classroom engagement
• Greedy bastards: Testing the relationship between wanting more and unethical behavior
• Designing a Safe Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Agent based on Human\n Self-Regulation
• Affective forecasting and self‐control: Why anticipating pride wins over anticipating shame in a self‐regulation context
• Investigating the effects of single-dose intranasal testosterone on economic preferences in a large randomized trial of men
• The Effect of ICT Self-Discipline in the Workplace
• Beyond Self-Control: Mechanisms of Hedonic Goal Pursuit and Its Relevance for Well-Being
• Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health
• Differentiating passive from active risk taking: the role of self‐control and time perspective
• Gender Differences in Attitudes Towards Drug Use Among South Korean College Students: A Latent Class Analysis
• Tightwads and spendthrifts: An interdisciplinary review
• Socializing the Silent Treatment: Parent and Adult Child Communicated Displeasure, Identification, and Satisfaction
• Activity Engagement as Escape from Self: The Role of Self-Suppression and Self-Expansion
• The Physiology of Willpower: Linking Blood Glucose to Self-Control
• Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: Willpower is more than a metaphor.
• Free Will in Scientific Psychology
• Does Anxiety Improve Economic Decision-Making?
• Conscientiousness, Financial Literacy, and Asset Accumulation of Young Adults
• Tightwads and Spendthrifts
• Person-environment fit and emotional control: Assigned expatriates vs. self-initiated expatriates
• Theorizing inconsistent media selection in the digital environment
• AlGC techno-overload and hospitality employees’ service outcomes: a conservation of resources perspective
• Addressing Fundamental Questions About Mindfulness
• Finding The “Self” in Self-Regulation: The Identity-Value Model
• Self-Enhancement: Food for Thought
• Impulsivity and the Self-Defeating Behavior of Narcissists
• Factors associated with medication adherence to endocrine therapy in women with breast cancer: an analysis based on temporal self-regulation theory
• Serotonergic function, two-mode models of self-regulation, and vulnerability to depression: what depression has in common with impulsive aggression. [europepmc]
• Neuroscience of self and self-regulation. [europepmc]
• Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health. [europepmc]
• Cognitive neuroscience of self-regulation failure. [europepmc]
• High trait self-control predicts positive health behaviors and success in weight loss. [europepmc]
• A Meta-Analysis of the Convergent Validity of Self-Control Measures. [europepmc]
• Personality and alcohol use: the role of impulsivity. [europepmc]
• The erosive effects of racism: reduced self-control mediates the relation between perceived racial discrimination and substance use in African American adolescents. [europepmc]
• Neurobehavioural correlates of body mass index and eating behaviours in adults: a systematic review. [europepmc]
• Psychometrically improved, abbreviated versions of three classic measures of impulsivity and self-control. [europepmc]
• Bedtime procrastination: introducing a new area of procrastination. [europepmc]
• More than resisting temptation: Beneficial habits mediate the relationship between self-control and positive life outcomes. [europepmc]
• Changes in weight, physical activity, sedentary behaviour and dietary intake during the transition to higher education: a prospective study. [europepmc]
• Intergenerational transmission of self-regulation: A multidisciplinary review and integrative conceptual framework. [europepmc]
• Conclusions about interventions, programs, and approaches for improving executive functions that appear justified and those that, despite much hype, do not. [europepmc]
• How do negative emotions impair self-control? A neural model of negative urgency. [europepmc]
• Annual Research Review: On the relations among self-regulation, self-control, executive functioning, effortful control, cognitive control, impulsivity, risk-taking, and inhibition for developmental psychopathology. [europepmc]
• Beyond confidence: Development of a measure assessing the 5C psychological antecedents of vaccination. [europepmc]
• Education and mental health: Do psychosocial resources matter? [europepmc]
• Self-regulation mechanisms in health behavior change: a systematic meta-review of meta-analyses, 2006-2017. [europepmc]
• Orthopaedic Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic. [europepmc]
• Taking control amidst the chaos: Emotion regulation during the COVID-19 pandemic. [europepmc]
• Self-Control Moderates the Association Between Perceived Severity of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and Mental Health Problems Among the Chinese Public. [europepmc]
• Predicting Perceived Stress Related to the Covid-19 Outbreak through Stable Psychological Traits and Machine Learning Models. [europepmc]
• Meaning in Life and Self-Control Buffer Stress in Times of COVID-19: Moderating and Mediating Effects With Regard to Mental Distress. [europepmc]

Related

• Examining five pathways on how self‐control is associated with emotion regulation and affective well‐being in daily life
• Affective strategies of self-control: Hidden risks and cognitive rigidity
• THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-CONTROL: EXAMINING SELF-CONTROL THEORY'S STABILITY THESIS
• The Strength Model of Self-Control
• Feeling Well, Functioning Well: How Psychological Well-Being Predicts Later Self-Control, but Not the Other Way Around