Assuming that willpower – or self-control, more commonly – is being modeled “as a phenomenon within the competitive marketplace of reward,” Ainslie asserts that suppression and resolve are the two primary types of mechanisms available to construct such models; accordingly, he dedicates the better part of his article to cataloging existing theories and findings according to their apparent alignment with suppression or resolve. The bipartite schema that emerges from these efforts is well organized and impressively documented – indeed, at the very least, Ainslie has done much to assemble and sort through many prominent pieces of this puzzle; however, he appears to stop short of outlining a systematic theory that integrates the assorted phenomena he has detailed. In this commentary, we aim to take this study a step further by outlining a motivational account of self-control that unifies suppression and resolve, classifying both as strategies for manipulating one's motivation levels in order to bias behavioral outcomes in favor of one's perceived long-term interests.

Ainslie defines willpower as the process by which a tempting impulse to pursue an attainable reward is resisted in order to facilitate the pursuit of a delayed outcome that is associated with greater long-term value. This definition features what we consider to be the critical components of every context in which self-control is employed: (1) a motivational dilemma regarding which of two exclusive outcomes to pursue, wherein one is more immediately gratifying whereas the other features a delayed, but larger reward; and (2) an intentional effort to influence the resolution of this conflict in favor of pursuing the delayed outcome. We suggest that self-control (or willpower) may be defined more generally in terms of (2), as an individual's efforts to influence their own decision-making processes in order to bias the outcome of present or anticipated motivational conflicts such that subsequent behavior is more likely to serve the individual's perceived long-term interests. From this perspective, suppression and resolve are not “mechanisms” that underlie self-control, but are more aptly considered to be classes of cognitive/behavioral strategies that (when employed) increase the likelihood of successful self-control outcomes – either by impeding the pursuit of short-term goals (suppression), or facilitating the pursuit of long-term goals (resolve).

Given the inherent motivational conflict between immediate versus delayed rewards in self-control contexts, neuroscientific models of intertemporal decision making (e.g., choosing between a smaller/sooner and a larger/later reward) may be a source of insight here. A study by van den Bos and McClure (Reference van den Bos and McClure2013) suggests that two distinct brain networks are involved in estimating the respective values of delayed versus immediate outcomes: roughly, delayed rewards appear to be evaluated by a cortical network (associated with executive control), whereas immediate rewards are estimated by a network of dopaminergic circuits that connect cortical and subcortical regions (associated with impulsivity); their model based on this framework predicts intertemporal decision making by comparing relative activation levels in these two networks (with predictive performance on par with traditional hyperbolic discounting models). That intertemporal choice can be predicted in this way supports the assumption that greater relative network activation is indicative of a greater estimated value – and thus higher motivation – associated with pursuing an immediate or delayed outcome.

This competing-networks framework meshes well with the perspective of self-control that is outlined by Berkman, Hutcherson, Livingston, Kahn, and Inzlicht (Reference Berkman, Hutcherson, Livingston, Kahn and Inzlicht2017); they suggest self-control should be viewed as a value-based choice, in which the estimated values of competing actions are compared and the action with the highest estimate is selected. By situating self-control within this context of competing networks, suppression can be recast as any cognitive or behavioral strategy that reduces relative activation in the dopaminergic network (e.g., a deliberately-averted gaze, which prevents the increase of network activity that otherwise would have resulted from staring longingly at chocolate); similarly, resolve may be recast as a class of strategies that lead to increases of relative activation levels in the cortical network. However, although terms such as suppression and resolve appear to fit nicely with the underlying neural processes outlined above (impeding or facilitating the motivation to pursue short- or long-term goals, respectively), it is not clear that some self-control behaviors are strictly one type or the other – for example, deliberately traveling to do work at the library may simultaneously limit a student's motivation to play video games as well as increase their motivation to study. Regardless, with the above foundation as a starting point, untethered from strict conceptual adherence to suppression and resolve, Ainslie's recursive self-prediction can be seen as one of many possible resolve-like strategies (rather than the singular “process … that underpins resolve”); even procrastination – if not a particularly efficient or self-actualizing form of self-control – may be viewed in terms of a resolve-like strategy, as it effectively serves to increase the motivation to (eventually) begin pursuing some odious task (as the passage of time steadily increases the cost that would be incurred by further delay).

Here, we recommend defining self-control as an individual's efforts to bias the outcome of present or anticipated motivational conflicts in order to increase the likelihood that subsequent behavior serves the individual's perceived long-term interests. This view considers self-control in terms of its motivational influence on behavioral outcomes via known neurological processes, a framing which largely avoids jargon at its base. Although it is highly desirable to have discourse on important phenomena in an interdisciplinary context such as this, one disadvantage can be that each field has already stumbled upon its own unique vocabulary; coming from disparate starting-points can cause confusion and may hamper the development of consilience. Rather than reworking existing concepts from one field or subfield in terms of related concepts from another – for example, recasting construal-level self-control strategies (e.g., Fujita & Carnevale, Reference Fujita and Carnevale2012) in terms of recursive self-prediction – it is preferable to have a relatively-neutral theoretical foundation that may be used to translate such connections into a common language that is interpretable by members of all fields.