Citation

Stucke TS, Baumeister RF. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 2006; 36(1): 1-13.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Giessen, Germany; Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, European Association of Experimental Social Psychology, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/ejsp.285

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

If self-regulation is a limited resource, the capacity to inhibit aggressive behavior should be lower among people who have already exercised self-regulation. In Experiment 1, participants who had to resist the urge to eat tempting food later reacted more aggressively to an insult than other participants who were allowed to eat as much as they wanted. In Experiments 2 and 3, some participants had to self-regulate by making themselves concentrate on a boring film and stifling their physical and facial movements, and afterward they, too, responded more aggressively than controls. Experiment 3 also showed that the results were not due to differential moods and that one act of self-regulation (unrelated to aggression) was sufficient to enhance subsequent aggressive responses toward the experimenter.