The Conceptual Foundations of Self-Control and its Link to Impulsivity and Attention

Self-control is at the heart of our executive function. It supports us in regulating our cognitive
processes and behaviour, making self-control vital to achieving our long-term goals. In recent
years, economists have become increasingly interested in the role of self-control in driving
economic choices. The goal of this research is to better understand the relationships between
self-control, impulsivity, and attention, which—despite being known to jointly support goaloriented
behaviour—are almost entirely studied in isolation by previous research.

We implemented an innovative experimental design to measure differences in participants’
perceived and actual levels of these three cognitive traits. We found that self-assessed measures
of self-control and impulsivity are correlated with what people actually do in the laboratory setting,
but the same was not true for attention. Interestingly, whilst perceived self-control had strong
correlations with perceived levels of impulsivity and attention, it had no relationship with their
actual levels in our experiment.

Accurately measuring the cognitive factors that people use to make decisions is vital for
policymakers and researchers alike. The evidence suggests that self-assessment is not
consistently reliable, a likely consequence of varying levels of self-awareness. Viewing these
issues through an economic and psychological lens will allow us to better understand why people
fail or succeed in achieving their personal goals.