Description
Background: Self-licensing occurs when people rely on justifications to enact on temptations, like eating delicious but fattening foods while dieting. Empirical evidence for self-licensing leading to such self-regulation failure has given rise to the (implicit) assumption that self-licensing is generally undesirable. However, its proposed conflict-resolving qualities may hold beneficial effects for perceived self-regulatory ability and the capacity to deal with subsequent self-regulatory conflicts. The present momentary assessment study therefore examined the mechanism underlying self-licensing effects and its consequences for ensuing self-regulation. Methods: Female participants (N = 138) filled out surveys on their smartphones eight times per day over the course of one week. Temptation strength, conflict, resistance and enactment were assessed. Additionally, the number of potential licenses (i.e., license opportunity) and feelings of control, self-efficacy, motivation and goal importance (i.e., perceived self-regulatory ability) were examined. Findings: Supporting evidence was found for the conflict-resolving qualities of self-licensing; there was a weaker association between temptation strength and conflict when license opportunity was high rather than low. License opportunity also seemed to support the maintenance of perceived self-regulatory ability after temptation enactment, but only when the degree of the respective enactment was low. Importantly, higher perceived self-regulatory ability predicted lower temptation enactment. The results further showed that high license opportunity for a prior temptation enactment, compared to low license opportunity, lead to better handling of subsequent conflict. Discussion: The present study shed light on relatively unexplored yet important secondary outcomes of self-licensing. These outcomes imply that self-licensing can also support successful self-regulation.| Period | 3 Feb 2017 |
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| Event title | Annual Conference for the Association for Researchers in Psychology and Health |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Leiden, NetherlandsShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | National |