Control theory and other frameworks for understanding self-regulation suggest that monitoring goal progress is a crucial process that intervenes between setting and attaining a goal, and helps to ensure that goals are translated into action. However, the impact of progress monitoring interventions on rates of behavioral performance and goal attainment has yet to be quantified. A systematic lite...

The importance of autonomous motivation in improving self-regulation has been a focal topic of motivation research for almost 3 decades. Despite this extensive research, however, there has not yet been a mechanistic account of how autonomous motivation works to boost self-regulatory functioning. To address this issue, we examined the role of autonomy in 2 basic self-regulation tasks while recor...

Recent models of procrastination due to self-control problems assume that a procrastinator considers just one option and is unaware of her self-control problems. We develop a model where a person chooses from a menu of options and is partially aware of her self-control problems. This menu model replicates earlier results and generates new ones. A person might forgo completing an attractive opti...

BACKGROUND Sport participation has been associated with improved life prospects such as academic performance and employability prospects. As such, promoting sport participation might be a way to increase life prospects, especially for socially vulnerable youth because they are less physically active than their peers. However, the evidence for the causal effect of sport participation on these ou...

We report the first extended experimental results indicating that radially localized time-varying potential structures, which possess many of the characteristics of zonal flows, are generated by strong fluctuations. Experiments performed in the H-1 heliac show that these poloidally symmetric flows are nonlinearly coupled to other fluctuations and are responsible for significant modifications in...

dition (Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007). When control levels are high, we are able to resist impulses and rapidly correct our behaviour if we inadvertently succumb to temptation. When we lack self-control, behaviours become reflexive and automatic, initiated as a course of habit rather than deliberate exertion. But what factors determine variation in the effectiveness of self-control? Why do we...

Religiosity is related to a variety of positive outcomes and the nature of this relationship has long been a topic of inquiry. Recently, it was proposed that an important piece of this puzzle may be the propensity for religious beliefs to promote self-control, a trait that is linked to a range of benefits. How religion translates into self-control, however, remains unclear. We examined the exte...

The positive youth development perspective, a strength-based relational developmental systems model that focuses on mutually influential relationships between individuals and contexts, has been used to study thriving across the second decade of life. However, more attention has been paid empirically to identifying the features of the individual (e.g., intentional self regulation, hope, or purpo...