Researchers have suggested that "Choice, active response, self-regulation, and other volition may all draw on a common inner resource."
They conducted four experiments: "In Experiment 1, people who forced themselves to eat radishes instead of tempting chocolates subsequently quit faster on unsolvable puzzles than people who had not had to exert self-control over eating. In Experiment 2, making a meaningful personal choice to perform attitude-relevant behavior caused a similar decrement in persistence. In Experiment 3, suppressing emotion led to a subsequent drop in performance of solvable anagrams. In Experiment 4, an initial task requiring high self-regulation made people more passive (i.e., more prone to favor the passive-response option)."
They concluded that, "These results suggest that the self's capacity for active volition is limited and that a range of seemingly different, unrelated acts share a common resource."
Fascinating, methinks.
(HT: Tony Schwartz)
