This salad might not smell like cinnamon buns, but it smells like progress.
Let’s do this!
Self Control or Response Inhibition
Picture this: It’s the beginning of the year, and your New Year’s resolution is to eat healthier. You’re at a buffet, standing in front of a spread of options. Right next to the Caesar salad - fresh and perfectly aligned with your goals - sits a tray of golden, icing-drizzled cinnamon buns, their sweet aroma wafting toward you. The healthy choice and your favourite treat are side by side, and the internal struggle begins: do you stay true to your resolution and reach for the salad, or give in to the temptation of the cinnamon buns calling your name?
Resisting this powerful urge to indulge in your favourite treat and choosing the salad instead is an example of self-control or response inhibition. Self-control is about overriding the impulse to act on immediate desires, like grabbing that cinnamon bun, and instead sticking to your long-term goal of eating healthy. It involves postponing immediate gratification, choosing to forgo a short-term pleasure in favour of a greater long-term reward - a concept often referred to in neuroscience as delay discounting.
AH there it is! I have been looking for this hoodie all day. Why does my sister always take my stuff without asking? It's so annoying!
Another important aspect of self-control is pausing to think or waiting before taking action. Imagine you're at home and your sibling borrows your favourite hoodie without asking. You find it on their bed, and you're immediately annoyed. Your first instinct might be to go into their room and snap, "Why do you always take my stuff without asking?"–maybe even in front of others. However, instead of reacting right away, you decide to give yourself a moment to reflect. You ask yourself whether this is really worth getting upset over, or if it’s just a small misunderstanding. After a brief pause, you walk into their room and say, "Hey, I noticed you borrowed my hoodie, could you ask next time? I just want to make sure I know where my things are." In this case, self-control enabled you to take that extra moment to think before acting, which not only avoided an unnecessary argument, but equipped you to handle small annoyances without overreacting.
Other times self control is exercised is when you refrain from sending an angry email in the heat of the moment, jumping to conclusions about why someone said or did something, or blurting out the first thing that comes to mind. Instead of reacting immediately, self-control enables us to exercise choice, discipline, and the ability to avoid being impulsive or rash. By reflecting before acting or responding, we create space to make better decisions and communicate more thoughtfully.
"Hey, I noticed you borrowed my hoodie. Could you ask next time? I just want to make sure I know where my things are."
Response Inhibition Test
Now it’s time to exercise your response inhibition! Once you press the "Click here to Start" button, you will be shown a series of colour words. Your task is to say the colour of the ink for normal words. However, if a word appears inside a box, you must read the word itself instead. Words will change every 1.5 seconds, so stay focused and respond quickly!
Here is an example of how it's done:
Say "Blue" because the ink is blue
Say "Green" because it's in a box
References
1. Diamond, A. (2013). Executive Functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64(1), 135–168. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143750 2. Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244(4907), 933–938. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.2658056 3. Duell, N., Icenogle, G., Silva, K., Chein, J., Steinberg, L., Banich, M. T., Di Guinta, L., Dodge, K. A., Fanti, K. A., Lansford, J. E., Oburu, P., Pastorelli, C., Skinner, A. T., Sorbring, E., Tapanya, S., Uribe Tirado, L. M., Alampay, L. P., Al-Hassan, S. M., Takash, H. M. S., & Bacchini, D. (2018). A Cross-Sectional Examination of Response Inhibition and Working Memory on the Stroop task. Cognitive Development, 47, 19–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2018.02.003 4. Hofmann, W., Friese, M., & Strack, F. (2009). Impulse and Self-Control From a Dual-Systems Perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(2), 162–176. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01116.x 5. Inzlicht, M., Schmeichel, B. J., & Macrae, C. N. (2014). Why Self-Control Seems (but may not be) Limited. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(3), 127–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.12.009 6. Pessoa, L., Padmala, S., Kenzer, A., & Bauer, A. (2012). Interactions between Cognition and Emotion during Response Inhibition. Emotion, 12(1), 192–197. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024109