The ability to regulate and control our behaviors is a key accomplishment of the human species, yet the psychological mechanisms involved in self-regulation remain incompletely understood. This book presents contributions from leading international researchers who survey the most recent developments in this fascinating area. The chapters shed new light on the subtle and often subconscious ways that the people seek to regulate their thoughts, feelings and behaviors in everyday social life. The contributions seek answers to such intriguing questions as: How can we improve our ability to control our actions? How do people make decisions about which goals to pursue? How do we maintain and manage goal-oriented behavior? What happens when we run out of self-regulation resources? Can we match people and the regulatory demands of to specific tasks so as to optimize performance? What role does self-regulation play in sports performance, in maintaining successful relationships, and in managing work situations? The book offers a highly integrated and representative coverage of this important field, and is suitable as a core textbook in advanced courses dealing with social behavior and the applications of psychology to real-life problems.

The ability to regulate and control our behaviors is a key accomplishment of the human species, yet the psychological mechanisms involved in self-regulation remain incompletely understood. This book presents contributions from leading international researchers who survey the most recent developments in this fascinating area. The chapters shed new light on the subtle and often subconscious ways that the people seek to regulate their thoughts, feelings and behaviors in everyday social life. The contributions seek answers to such intriguing questions as: How can we improve our ability to control our actions? How do people make decisions about which goals to pursue? How do we maintain and manage goal-oriented behavior? What happens when we run out of self-regulation resources? Can we match people and the regulatory demands of to specific tasks so as to optimize performance? What role does self-regulation play in sports performance, in maintaining successful relationships, and in managing work situations?

The book offers a highly integrated and representative coverage of this important field, and is suitable as a core textbook in advanced courses dealing with social behavior and the applications of psychology to real-life problems.

Self-regulation refers to the self's ability to control its own thoughts, emotions, and actions. Through self-regulation, we consciously control how much we eat, whether we give in to impulse, task performance, obsessive thoughts, and even the extent to which we allow ourselves recognition of our emotions. This work provides a synthesis and overview of recent and long-standing research findings of what is known of the successes and failures of self-regulation.
People the world over suffer from the inability to control their finances, their weight, their emotions, their craving for drugs, their sexual impulses, and more. The United States in particular is regarded by some observers as a society addicted to addiction. Therapy and support groups have proliferated not only for alcoholics and drug abusers but for all kinds of impulse control, from gambling to eating chocolate. Common to all of these disorders is a failure of self-regulation, otherwise known as "self-control."
The consequences of these self-control problems go beyond individuals to affect family members and society at large. In Losing Control, the authors provide a single reference source with comprehensive information on general patterns of self-regulation failure across contexts, research findings on specific self-control disorders, and commentary on the clinical and social aspects of self-regulation failure. Self-control is discussed in relation to what the "self" is, and the cognitive, motivational, and emotional factors that impinge on one's ability to control one's "self."
Key Features
* Discusses the importance of the concept of self-regulation to general issues of autonomy and identity
* Encompasses self-control of thoughts, feelings, and actions
* Contains a special section on the control of impulses and appetites
* First book to integrate recent research into a broad overview of the area