Flexible control: conflict mindsets reduce the association between trait measures of self-control decision-making and delay discounting

Abstract

People experience conflicts between goals, thoughts, and actions on a regular basis. Those conflict experiences can trigger a conflict mindset, a unique information processing style characterized by the activation and consideration of conflicting alternatives. This processing style has been associated with a reduced reliance on dominant or default response tendencies. It could, therefore, affect self-control decisions, in which in order to receive a larger delayed reward (e.g., good health) people need to forego a smaller immediate reward (e.g., tasty pizza). Importantly, the tendency to choose the delayed over the immediate reward varies between individuals, with people scoring low on trait impulsivity (or high on trait self-control) showing an overall stronger tendency to forgo the immediate reward. In three studies (Ntotal = 480) we tested the effect of a conflict (vs. neutral) mindset on people's repeated choices for smaller immediate over larger delayed rewards in a delay discounting task. A fully powered analysis across all three studies supported the notion that a conflict mindset reduced the influence of dispositional “default” response tendencies on self-control decisions: participants’ trait impulsivity and self-control scores predicted delay discounting only in the neutral mindset condition. In the conflict mindset condition, those dispositional tendencies and delay discounting were unrelated. This finding extends previous work on conflict mindsets by showing that they can reduce the association between individual differences and behavior.