Predicting Real-Life Self-Control From Brain Activity Encoding the Value of Anticipated Future Outcomes. (March 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Krönke, Klaus-Martin; Wolff, Max; Mohr, Holger; Kräplin, Anja; Smolka, Michael N.; Bühringer, Gerhard; Goschke, Thomas
• Is Part Of: Psychological science. Volume 31:Number 3(2020)
• Page Start: 268
• Page End: 279
• Publication Date: 2020-03
• Subjects: self-control -- decision-making -- experience sampling -- ventromedial prefrontal cortex -- ecological validity; Psychology -- Periodicals; 150.5
• DOI: 10.1177/0956797619896357
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0956-7976

Abstract

Deficient self-control leads to shortsighted decisions and incurs severe personal and societal costs. Although neuroimaging has advanced our understanding of neural mechanisms underlying self-control, the ecological validity of laboratory tasks used to assess self-control remains largely unknown. To increase ecological validity and to test a specific hypothesis about the mechanisms underlying real-life self-control, we combined functional MRI during value-based decision-making with smartphone-based assessment of real-life self-control in a large community sample ( N = 194). Results showed that an increased propensity to make shortsighted decisions and commit self-control failures, both in the laboratory task as well as during real-life conflicts, was associated with a reduced modulation of neural value signals in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in response to anticipated long-term consequences. These results constitute the first evidence that neural mechanisms mediating anticipations of future consequences not only account for self-control in laboratory tasks but also predict real-life self-control, thereby bridging the gap between laboratory research and real-life behavior.