Self-control literature has recently shifted from explanations appealing to a unique resource (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, Reference Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven and Tice1998) or process (such as inhibition; Diamond, Reference Diamond2013), toward a recognition that self-control relies on a multiplicity of strategies and processes (Duckworth, Gendler, & Gross, Reference Duckworth, Gendler and Gross2016; Hennecke & Bürgler, Reference Hennecke and Bürgler2020). Currently, the challenge is finding unifying threads in this multiplicity (Inzlicht, Werner, Briskin, & Roberts, Reference Inzlicht, Werner, Briskin and Roberts2020; Sripada, Reference Sripada2020). Ainslie's target article contributes to this trend toward a much-needed unification of the self-control literature. His account subsumes current willpower research onto the phenomena of suppression, resolve, and habit, and holds that suppression and resolve are complementary willpower tactics, whereas willpower-as-habit results from repeatedly successful resolve.

One key outstanding gap is explaining how agents can select among diverse willpower tactics and find appropriate tactics for each specific situation. This ability to choose the right tactics is crucial given the diversity of situations calling for self-regulation (from addiction to procrastination, from managing anger to trying to develop good habits). Here I argue that, given the multiplicity of willpower tactics and the plurality of regulation challenges, willpower exertion requires skillfully identifying, selecting, and monitoring the implementation of appropriate tactics for each particular context. This tactical skill (the skillful management of willpower tactics) is a central component of willpower that remains to be fully theorized and studied.

To illustrate how crucial tactical skill is for willpower, consider that the two tactic types Ainslie presents are themselves families of diverse strategies. On the one hand, suppression can take the various forms of response modulation (e.g., inhibiting one's urge to eat another cookie to limit calorie consumption), attentional deployment (e.g., distracting oneself from the package of cookies), or cognitive reappraisal (e.g., imagining the cookies are plastic models instead of real cookies) (Duckworth et al., Reference Duckworth, Gendler and Gross2016). These are all forms of suppression: Strategies for resisting temptations that gate out alternatives to the agent's intention without altering the valuations of the alternatives.

On the other hand, resolve (i.e., resisting temptation by representing the present situation as a test case for the fulfillment of a more abstract commitment or goal) can be instantiated in multiple psychological processes. These include forming implementation intentions (commitments that create an if–then link between a certain context and the performance of a certain behavior; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, Reference Gollwitzer and Sheeran2006); instituting bright lines (unique, unambiguous rules that allow no motivated reinterpretations or exception-justifying rationalizations; Ainslie, Reference Ainslie2001); and representing the situation using high-level, as opposed to low-level construals (i.e., describing objects and events abstractly, in ways that apply to multiple instances beyond the current one; Fujita, Carnevale, & Trope, Reference Fujita, Carnevale and Trope2018; Fujita, Trope, Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, Reference Fujita, Trope, Liberman and Levin-Sagi2006). Additionally, it has been recently shown that a greater tendency toward forming detailed plans is associated with greater self-control (Ludwig, Srivastava, Berkman, & Donnellan, Reference Ludwig, Srivastava, Berkman and Donnellan2018; Sjåstad & Baumeister, Reference Sjåstad and Baumeister2018). This is also an instance of resolve: seeing the specific situation not in isolation but as a crucial step in a broader action pattern. These are not just different descriptions of the same phenomenon: they are different psychological processes. Although the theorist can group them together as “resolve,” the agent must choose which specific strategy to implement when faced with a given temptation.

The great diversity of regulatory processes, and the need to select appropriately among them in diverse contexts, makes the ability to choose the right tactics necessary to reliably exert successful willpower. Tactical skill is the complex ability to (1) accurately detect when a willpower tactic is called for, (2) identify appropriate tactics for the given context, and (3) monitor tactic implementation, evaluating whether to maintain or stop the tactic, or whether to switch to a different one, as implementation unfolds. Tactically skillful agents display regulatory flexibility: the ability to adjust one's regulatory processes to the specific demands of the environment (Bonanno & Burton, Reference Bonanno and Burton2013). Evidence that individual differences in tactical skill correlate with differences in long-term goal achievement has recently begun to emerge, both for emotion regulation and self-control (Bürgler, Hoyle, & Hennecke, Reference Bürgler, Hoyle and Hennecke2020; Southward, Altenburger, Moss, Cregg, & Cheavens, Reference Southward, Altenburger, Moss, Cregg and Cheavens2018).

Ainslie does acknowledge that specific tactics must also be selected. He claims this is done via calculations of the expected value of each tactic, and information-accumulation processes of drift diffusion and vicarious trial and error. Although these are all good candidates for the subpersonal mechanisms underlying tactic selection, two dimensions remain under-defined. First, tactic management is a crucial dimension for finding individual differences in the policies and rules that govern reinforcement-learning and decision-making mechanisms. Such individual differences would amount to differences in value-based decision-making processes (Berkman, Hutcherson, Livingston, Kahn, & Inzlicht, Reference Berkman, Hutcherson, Livingston, Kahn and Inzlicht2017). Methods for assessing these differences are yet to be created. These methods would assess differences not in how people discount larger-later rewards generally, but in how they assess the costs and the expected value of implementing one willpower tactic relative to another. Although research on metacontrol has usefully identified individual differences in the balance between cognitive stability or flexibility, or model-free (habitual) versus model-based (cognitively effortful) problem-solving (Boureau, Sokol-Hessner, & Daw, Reference Boureau, Sokol-Hessner and Daw2015; Hommel, Reference Hommel2015), what remains to be studied is how we value and select among different model-based strategies, such as willpower tactics.

Second, the phenomenology of self-control can be more substantially studied. It is commonly stated that self-control is experienced as effortful, but it is reasonable to expect that not all tactics will be experienced as equally effortful in all contexts. In fact, the feeling of effort itself plays a role in decision-making by indicating the expected costs and benefits of a willpower tactic given past experience (Kurzban, Reference Kurzban2016). As an affect-involving metacognitive state (Carruthers, Reference Carruthers2020), agents can use feelings of effort to guide their tactical decision-making. Tactical skill would thus rely crucially on the ability to effectively integrate affect-involving metacognitive information into these decisions (Bermúdez, Reference Bermúdez2020). Studying such affective metacognitive processes should therefore shed light on how tactical skill works, and thereby on how effective willpower is reliably implemented.