Everyone's Health

Control Yourself

Drug abuse, crime and obesity wouldn't seem to have much in common, but all can be the result of a person's failure to control behavior in the face of temptation.

Why is that? Why do human beings seemingly lose the ability to restrain their impulses, their self-control? Researchers at the University of Toronto have found a clue, based upon psychological tests and brain scans.

They asked a group of volunteers to suppress any emotions while watching an upsetting movie. The idea was that the volunteers would deplete their internal resources for self-control by trying to restrain their emotions.

After the movie, the volunteers were asked to rate their ability to suppress their feelings on a scale of 1 to 9, then take a Stroop test, which involves naming the color of printed words (i.e. saying red when reading the word “green” in red font). Doing so is difficult; it requires a significant amount of mental self-control.

The researchers found that those who most suppressed their emotions during the movie performed worse on the Stroop test, indicating that they had used up their mental resources holding back tears during the film.

An EEG, performed during the Stroop test, confirmed the results. Normally, when a person deviates from a goal (in this case, wanting to read the word, not the color of the font), increased activity occurs in a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex, which alerts the person that he is veering off course.

But researchers found much weaker activity in this region for the volunteers who had suppressed feelings during the movie. In other words, after the volunteers engaged in one act of self-control (watching the movie), their brains weren't quite up to the next act.

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