Psychological Review

© 2022 American Psychological Association 2023, Vol. 130, No. 5, 1262–1288

ISSN: 0033-295X https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000406

Metacognition and Self-Control: An Integrative Framework

Marie Hennecke1 and Sebastian Bürgler2
1
Department of Psychology, University of Siegen
2
Department of Psychology, University of Zurich

Self-control describes the processes by which individuals control their habits, desires, and impulses in the
service of long-term goals. Research has identified important components of self-control and proposed
theoretical frameworks integrating these components (e.g., Inzlicht et al., 2021; Kotabe & Hofmann, 2015).
In our perspective, these frameworks, however, do not yet fully incorporate important metacognitive aspects
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

of self-control. We therefore introduce a framework explicating the role of metacognition for self-control.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This framework extends existing frameworks, primarily from the domains of self-regulated learning and
problem-solving (e.g., Schraw & Moshman, 1995; Zimmerman, 2000), and integrates past and contempo-
rary research and theorizing on self-control that involves aspects of metacognition. It considers two groups
of metacognitive components, namely, (a) individual metacognitive characteristics, that is a person’s
declarative, procedural, and conditional metacognitive knowledge about self-control, as well as their self-
awareness (or metacognitive awareness), and (b) metacognitive regulatory processes that unfold before a
self-control conflict (forethought and prevention), when a self-control conflict is identified, during a self-
control conflict (regulation and monitoring), and after a self-control conflict (reflection and evaluation). The
proposed framework integrates existing research and will be useful for highlighting new directions for
research on the role of metacognition for self-control success and failure.

Keywords: metacognition, self-control, self-regulation, individual differences, processes

It has been Julia’s habit for years to treat herself to a delicious donut
on her walk home from work. Years of daily donuts, however, have
consequences and one day Julia’s doctor advises that she should start
watching her weight. She decides that she will cut the daily pastry but
anticipating having to walk by the donut bakery with its delicious
smell every day makes it clear to her that she might struggle to break
her habit. She knows that her self-control has strengths but that
resisting donuts is not one of them. To make it easier for her, she plans
to take a slightly different route home from now on, one that does not
pass the bakery to help herself avoid the daily temptation. After a
couple of days, she realizes that avoiding the temptation this way
works well and decides to keep using this strategy in the future.
As this example demonstrates, self-control is not only about
resisting temptation in the heat of the moment. People can, like Julia,
use self-knowledge about their own self-control (Julia knows that
resisting donuts is not her strength), anticipate the future (she antici-
pates that it will be difficult for her to resist), make plans (she plans to
take a slightly different route home from now on), choose self-control
strategies (she actually does not walk past the bakery anymore),
and evaluate their success with these strategies (she realizes that
This article was published Online First December 15, 2022.
Marie Hennecke https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0263-4598
Sebastian Bürgler https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7304-507X
This research was supported by a research Grant (100019_179207/1) from
the Swiss National Science Foundation awarded to Marie Hennecke. The
authors have no conflict of interest to disclose. The ideas presented in this
article have never been disseminated elsewhere.
Marie Hennecke and Sebastian Bürgler contributed equally to this work.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Marie
Hennecke, Department of Psychology, University of Siegen, Obergraben
23, 57072 Siegen, Germany. Email: marie.hennecke@uni-siegen.de
her strategy works well). These processes are metacognitive pro-
cesses, given that they are cognitive processes referring to other
cognitive processes or phenomena, here: self-control conflicts. Until
now, no comprehensive theoretical framework exists that organizes
and integrates these and other metacognitive influences on self-control
in a coherent manner. We would like to provide such an integrative
framework and take a shot at more comprehensively connecting the
two intertwined but so far rarely explicitly connected research fields
of self-control and metacognition. Before we explain further the
contribution of our framework, let us introduce its two central
constructs, self-control and metacognition in more detail.
Self-Control
Self-control has been defined as the “ability to override impulses
to act as well as the ability to make oneself initiate or persist
in boring, difficult, or disliked activity” (Carver, 2019, p. 477). It
is furthermore best conceptualized with two defining features
(Duckworth et al., 2016): First, it is required when two mutually
exclusive options cause an intrapsychic conflict, the self-control
conflict: One option serves an impulse, desire, habit, or immediate
gratification (e.g., eating a donut, smoking, or reading text mes-
sages), whereas the other option serves a more enduring and
important goal (e.g., losing weight, staying healthy, or not failing
an exam). Whereas some scholars have proposed the notion of
“effortless self-control” when beneficial habits serve goals that are
usually associated with the need for self-control (e.g., eating health-
ily; Adriaanse et al., 2014; Gillebaart & de Ridder, 2015), most
perspectives on self-control emphasize a second feature in the
definition of self-control: That it requires intention and self-initiated
efforts to resolve the conflict in the service of a goal (Bargh et al.,
2010; Baumeister et al., 2008; Duckworth et al., 2016; Trope &
Fishbach, 2000; Wood et al., 2014). Under this premise, a situation

1262
 METACOGNITION AND SELF-CONTROL
in which a person advances a goal “by accident” or without
experiencing conflict (Myrseth & Fishbach, 2009), should not be
considered as a situation involving self-control (Duckworth
et al., 2016).
Note, that the term “cognitive control” is often used interchange-
ably with self-control but more common in the cognitive, neurosci-
ence, and clinical literature (Inzlicht, Schmeichel, & Macrae, 2014).
The presumed overlap becomes clear when looking at definitions
of cognitive control as the “coordination of mental processes and
action in accordance with current goals and future plans” (Menon &
D’Esposito, 2022, p. 90), or “the ability to regulate, coordinate, and
sequence thoughts and actions in accordance with internally main-
tained behavioral goals” (Braver, 2012, p. 106). Empirically, the
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association is more ambiguous though. On the one hand, research
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supports the overlap: Individuals high in cognitive control also show
better self-control (Lawrence et al., 2009), have the same benefits in
terms of positive life outcomes as individuals high in self-control
(Hall et al., 2008; Mischel et al., 1989), and imaging studies suggest
overlapping brain regions in the prefrontal cortex (Hare et al., 2009;
Peters & Büchel, 2011; Shamosh et al., 2008). On the other hand,
recent research also calls this overlap into question: It shows that
laboratory-based assessments of cognitive control barely correlate
with indicators of self-control (Allom et al., 2016; Nęcka et al., 2018;
Saunders et al., 2018), increases in cognitive control do not transfer to
increases in self-control (Scherbaum et al., 2018), and self-control
does not show the same age-related decline as cognitive control
(Hennecke & Freund, 2014; Williams et al., 1999). This lack of an
overlap may be caused by the fact that the computer-based tasks used
to measure cognitive control (e.g., the Flanker task, Eriksen &
Eriksen, 1974, or the Stop-Signal task, Verbruggen & Logan,
2008) are unreliable for the assessment of stable individual differ-
ences (Hedge et al., 2018). In addition, self-control conflicts are, in
potentially crucial ways, quite different from such cognitive response
conflicts as they typically occur in the computer-based reaction tasks
that are used to measure cognitive control (Kotabe & Hofmann,
2015): They are, for example, affectively charged (Inzlicht &
Legault, 2014), as also shown by the fact that they involve subcortical
reward- and emotion-related brain activity (Heatherton & Wagner,
2011), and allow for a wider range of responses to resolve them
(Hennecke & Bürgler, 2020). We would therefore caution against
simply equating the two constructs but discuss where research on
cognitive control can inform our framework about metacognition in
self-control.
There is ample evidence that self-control is highly important. In
fact, self-control predicts high achievement at work and school,
health-promoting behaviors, helps people to stay away from drugs
and crime, and promotes the quality of social relationships (de
Ridder et al., 2012; Hofmann et al., 2014; Moffitt et al., 2011;
Tangney et al., 2004). Given the importance of good self-control for
people’s psychological adjustment, it is also important to understand
the factors and processes that contribute to it, for example, for
intervention purposes. Currently, there is a surge of research trying
to identify these factors and processes that allow people to success-
fully control themselves. This surge likely results from the fact that
two formerly dominant assumptions about self-control have recently
been challenged, raising interest in alternative accounts: First, the
strength model of self-control purported the assumption that self-
control relies on a limited resource that is diminished through the
exertion of self-control (Baumeister et al., 1998; Baumeister &
1263
Vohs, 2007). The model has recently faced widespread criticism
given failures to replicate the so-called ego-depletion effect that had
been seen as primary support for the model (Hagger et al., 2016;
Vohs et al., 2021). In addition, its central theoretical assumptions
and methodological operationalizations have been questioned
(Friese et al., 2019; Lurquin & Miyake, 2017). Second, recent
research has shown that the role of inhibitory control, a subprocess
of cognitive control that can be understood as the suppression of
motor responses, impulses, and previously activated cognitive
content or processes (Friedman & Miyake, 2004; Harnishfeger,
1995), and that has for a long time been presumed to be the process
behind successful self-control, may have been exaggerated in the
past, given that computer-based measures of inhibitory control do
not predict self-control in daily life (Saunders et al., 2018). The lack
of convergence may, as for the broader construct cognitive control,
be caused by different assessment methods (Wennerhold & Friese,
2020) or be more substantial if, as others have argued, inhibition
might be better understood as an outcome, rather than a process
of self-control (Werner et al., 2022). In any case, along with the
diminishing significance of these formerly prominent assumptions
about self-control and its underlying processes, the consideration of
alternative processes contributing to success and failure in self-
control have made their way into scholarship. As we will argue,
many of these processes, sometimes without due acknowledgement
and so far without sufficient theoretical integration, are metacog-
nitive in nature.
Metacognition
The term metacognition was introduced to psychology by devel-
opmental and educational psychologists in the 1970s (Flavell, 1977;
see also Schwarz, 2015). In their subdisciplines, metacognition is
primarily understood as cognition about cognition related to learning
and refers to the processes by which learners make plans and
organize their studying (e.g., by determining study slots and what
and how to study during them), monitor their progress (e.g., by
testing their own knowledge), and evaluate their own study strategies
in order to adapt them if necessary (e.g., Pintrich et al., 2000). Still to
date, most research on metacognition investigates its beneficial role
for self-regulated learning and memory (Dimmitt & McCormick,
2012; Dunlosky & Metcalfe, 2008; Hacker et al., 2009; Wang et al.,
1990). Nevertheless, the concept has also captured the attention of
researchers outside the field of education and its role has, for
example, been acknowledged for memory processes in general
(e.g., Dunlosky & Bjork, 2013) and for processes of social cognition
(Wyer et al., 1984), for example, when people form judgments of
truth, attitude strength, or the informational value of feelings (Briñol
& DeMarree, 2012; Petty et al., 2007; Schwarz, 2015). A more
inclusive definition therefore understands metacognition as people’s
beliefs and knowledge about their own cognition and the cognition of
others, including mental processes, states, and capacities, as well as
the processes involved when people think about their own cognition
(Jost et al., 1998; Pintrich et al., 2000; Schraw & Moshman, 1995).
Our use of the term metacognition in the context of self-control is
rather broad and does not only include cognition about cognitive
phenomena. Rather it should also, if relevant to a self-control conflict,
include cognition about motivation, that is, metamotivation (Miele
et al., 2020; Scholer et al., 2018), which refers to the “processes by
which individuals monitor and control their motivational states
 1264 HENNECKE AND BÜRGLER
in order to achieve their goals” (Scholer et al., 2018, p. 437), as well
as individuals’ knowledge about their motivational states and how
they impact their goal pursuit (Miele & Scholer, 2016). Where
suitable, we will refer to and integrate findings about metamotiva-
tion into our framework. We furthermore use metacognition in the
context of self-control also when referring to cognition about
affective phenomena relevant for self-control. Desires, for example,
are affectively charged responses to objects or activities associated
with pleasure or relief from discomfort (Kavanagh et al., 2005).
How people think or feel about their desires, is also in the realm of
metacognition as we use it here.
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Why Do We Need a Framework for
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Metacognition in Self-Control?
We are convinced that, for a comprehensive understanding of
self-control, there is the need for a framework that explicates the role
of metacognition for it. As others have noted, “self-control … is
inherently metacognitive” (Duckworth et al., 2014, p. 204; see also
Achtziger et al., 2012). It shares with all metacognitive phenomena
the characteristic that there are two levels of cognition: an object-
level and a meta-level. If a person experiences a desire (e.g., for a
donut) this experience represents the object-level. If that person then
cognitively engages to resist the desire (e.g., realizes that it conflicts
with their goal of losing weight and thinks about whether and how to
resist it), this happens on the meta-level. However, even though self-
control itself is a metacognitive phenomenon, there is no compre-
hensive model or framework, yet, that explicates structural and
functional components of metacognition before, during, and after
the experience of a self-control conflict and in the service of self-
control itself. What exists so far are disconnected empirical findings
speaking to metacognition in self-control as well as numerous
theories of self-control (see Inzlicht et al., 2021, for an overview)
that already consider certain metacognitive aspects of and for self-
control but without being comprehensive in doing so. Cybernetic
control theory (Carver & Scheier, 1998), for example, is a more
Table 1
Overview of Existing Theories and Their Components Integrated in the Present Framework
Theories
Cybernetic control theory (Carver & Scheier, 1998, 2012)
Conflict monitoring theory (Botvinick et al., 2001, 2004)
Integrative self-control theory (Kotabe & Hofmann, 2015)
Process model of self-control (Duckworth et al., 2014, 2016)
Metamotivation (Scholer et al., 2018)
Trait models (e.g., Whiteside & Lynam, 2001)
Models of self-regulated learning and problem-solving
(e.g., Pintrich, 2000; Schmitz et al., 2007; Zimmerman, 2000)
Preventive-interventive model of self-control
(Hofmann & Kotabe, 2012)
general theory of self-regulation and well-suited to address matters of
monitoring, discrepancy detection, and discrepancy reduction that
are all relevant for self-control, but it neither addresses individual
differences in the extent to which people engage in monitoring nor
the anticipatory metacognitive processes aimed at preventing the
occurrence of discrepancies in the first place. Kotabe and Hofmann’s
(2015) integrative self-control theory very well explicates the com-
ponents that are necessary for the presence, identification, and
resolution of self-control conflicts but does not say much about
the metacognitive processes that occur before or after self-control
conflicts like the anticipation or retrospective evaluation of self-
control conflicts or about the deployment of self-regulatory strate-
gies. Duckworth et al.’s (2016) process model of self-control focuses
heavily on the deployment of self-regulatory strategies, but neither
addresses individual differences nor conflict detection or monitoring
processes during the experience of self-control conflicts. Choice
models (Berkman et al., 2017; Buckholtz, 2015; Neal et al.,
2017) strive to predict the value-based considerations people may
make when weighing the pros and cons of delaying gratification in a
self-control conflict but do not consider self-awareness, self-
knowledge, or the ongoing processes before, during, and after a
self-control conflict that deal with its anticipation, resolution, or
evaluation. Trait models (e.g., Whiteside & Lynam, 2001) are useful
for describing individual differences in self-control and impulsivity
but say little about the underlying within-person processes of self-
control (Inzlicht et al., 2021; but see DeYoung, 2015). Last, models
of self-regulated learning (e.g., Boekaerts, 1996; Efklides, 2011;
Pintrich, 2000; Winne & Hadwin, 1998; Zimmerman & Moylan,
2009; for a review, see Panadero, 2017) are too limited and special-
ized in their scope to be applicable to different types of self-control
conflicts.
This is not to say that these models and theories are not valuable,
rather we borrow from them to the extent that they are helpful for
understanding the role of metacognition in self-control (see Table 1).
In conclusion, we present a framework that, albeit heuristic, is both
an individual-difference and a process-oriented model with a
Theory components integrated in the present framework
Role of performance monitoring and responding to feedback
Role of monitoring and (self-control) conflict detection to instigate regulatory
processes
View that desire-goal conflict functions like other response conflicts and
instigates cognitive and behavioral adjustments
View of self-control as inherently metacognitive; strategy deployment before
(prevention) and during (intervention) a self-control conflict; assumption
that strategy use relies on “general capacities for metacognition and
prospection” (p. 204)
Role of self-knowledge and processes by which individual monitor and
control themselves to achieve goals
Role of stable individual differences in people’s self-control
Role of different types of metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive
regulatory processes for self-regulation, in particular processes of
forethought and prevention, regulation and monitoring, and reflection and
evaluation
Distinction between processes aimed at preventing self-control conflicts and
processes aimed at resolving present self-control conflicts; importance of
self-monitoring for conflict identification
 METACOGNITION AND SELF-CONTROL
consideration of the metacognition that happens before, during, and
after a self-control conflict. The framework furthermore integrates
theories from different psychological subdisciplines including cog-
nitive, social, personality, and educational psychology, as well as
empirical findings speaking to metacognition in self-control, that
have so far not been discussed in the context of larger theories (e.g.,
on implicit beliefs about willpower, Job et al., 2010). The resulting
framework accommodates recent assumptions about self-control
being smart (Fujita et al., 2020), proactive (Hofmann & Kotabe,
2012; Sklar et al., 2017), strategic (Duckworth et al., 2016;
Hennecke et al., 2019; Williamson & Wilkowski, 2020), flexible
(Bürgler et al., 2021; Wenzel et al., 2021), and sometimes, to a
certain degree, effortless (Gillebaart & de Ridder, 2015) rather than
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being primarily reactive, depleting, and tied to the mechanism of
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inhibition (Baumeister et al., 2007). It is furthermore applicable to
understanding self-control outcomes in various life domains, includ-
ing education, work, health, and social relationships, can highlight
new directions for research on psychological components and
processes underlying self-control, and inform the design of inter-
ventions aimed at supporting people in their self-control efforts. We
will later come back to these more applied benefits of the model in
the discussion.
The Framework for Metacognition in Self-Control
Overview
Many accounts of metacognition during self-regulated learning
consider metacognitive characteristics of the person, first and fore-
most their metacognitive knowledge, that is, what one knows (includ-
ing theories and beliefs) about cognition, and distinguish it from
metacognitive regulation, that is, how one uses this knowledge to
regulate cognition and behavior (Baker, 1991; Brown & Palincsar,
1982; Efklides, 2011; Flavell, 1979; Pintrich et al., 2000; Schraw &
Moshman, 1995). In line with this, our framework also distinguishes
Figure 1
Metacognition in Self-Control Framework
Individual Metacognitive Knowledge, Theories, and Beliefs About Self-Control
Difference
Level Metacognitive/Self-Awareness
1. Forethought and
Prevention
Anticipation of self-
control conflicts
Self-Control Conflict
2. Identification of
Goal setting for self-
Process control conflicts
Level Planning
Allocation of
resources
Selection of self-
regulatory strategies
Implementation of
preventive strategies
Time
1265
between two groups of components: (a) individual metacognitive
characteristics of the person including their metacognitive knowl-
edge about self-control and their self-awareness, and (b) metacog-
nitive regulatory processes that may be at work before, during, and
after a self-control conflict (see Figure 1).
Distinguishing these two groups of components is not meant to
exclude the possibility that components of the framework mutually
influence each other. It is likely that individual metacognitive
characteristics feed into the metacognitive processes and determine
their effectiveness and that metacognitive processes feed back into
metacognitive characteristics. For example, people’s knowledge
about self-regulatory strategies should have an effect on the strate-
gies they use to regulate their behavior during a self-control conflict.
Moreover, the process of monitoring one’s self-control performance
likely informs the person about which strategies worked or did not
work well in response to a self-control conflict. They thereby help to
update a person’s metacognitive knowledge about self-control. We
will dive deeper into these mutual pathways later. Let us first
introduce the components of our framework one by one.
Individual Differences in Metacognition
About Self-Control
When we refer to individual differences, we refer to both rela-
tively stable characteristics and traits of individuals as well as to
momentary expressions of these characteristics, so-called states.
Stable individual differences refer to what people typically feel,
think, or do in ways that differentiate them from other people
(Funder, 2001). Despite their temporal and cross-situation stability,
these characteristics nevertheless also show momentary fluctuations
within individuals. Think, for example, of a person who is typically
highly self-aware during goal pursuit, that is, has their own thoughts,
emotions, and behavior in focus (e.g., Duval & Wicklund, 1972).
Even such a person may sometimes be relatively self-unaware, for
3. Regulation and 4. Reflection and
Monitoring Evaluation
Regulation Reflection and evaluation
Allocation of of short-term success and
resources long-term consequences
Implementation of Attributions and inferences
interventive strategies for future self-control
Monitoring performance conflicts
Response to feedback
Allocation of
resources
Adaptation of
strategies
Goal revision
Self-Control
Conflict
 1266 HENNECKE AND BÜRGLER
example, when an external task fully absorbs their mental resources
(Wicklund, 1975). Intraindividual variation in states does not
contradict that, over time and situations, people nevertheless
show stability in their traits and characteristics. In fact, the density
distributions of states are quite typical for individuals and can be
used to describe their characteristics over longer temporal episodes
(Fleeson, 2001).
The characteristics we describe later may vary with regard to how
much intraindividual variation they show. Self-knowledge, for
example, is likely more stable than individual differences in self-
awareness, which, as described before, could show more intraindi-
vidual variation given its dependence on the availability of mental
resources. Nevertheless, knowledge is malleable and can be updated
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if conflicting information is attended to (Metcalfe & Kornell, 2007;
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Piaget, 1970). In addition, the influence of metacognitive knowl-
edge on self-control likely depends on whether it is activated, and
attended to (Förster & Liberman, 2007).
Metacognitive Knowledge, Theories, and
Beliefs About Self-Control
Generally, metacognitive knowledge refers to knowledge about
one’s cognition or about cognition in general (Schraw & Dennison,
1994). Accordingly, metacognitive knowledge about self-control is
the knowledge that people have about their self-control and about
self-control in general. Metacognitive knowledge can furthermore
be distinguished into various types. We here borrow the distinction
of three types of knowledge about metacognition from research on
self-regulated learning, which distinguishes declarative knowledge,
procedural knowledge, and conditional knowledge (Pintrich et al.,
2000; Schraw & Moshman, 1995). We explain these terms in
detail later.
Furthermore, our use of the term knowledge here is also meant to
include the metacognitive theories people hold about self-control.
We understand the term “theory” as a relatively systematic structure
of knowledge that can be used to explain and predict a broad range
of (empirical) phenomena (Schraw & Moshman, 1995), here: in the
domain of self-control. Such theories might differ with regard to
how explicit and formalized they are in people’s heads. People’s
subjective theories about willpower as being a more or less limited
resource have, for example, been described as implicit (Job et al.,
2012). What is meant here is that people might hold a theory without
being readily aware of the theory itself or of evidence supporting or
refuting it (Schraw & Moshman, 1995). Nevertheless, they system-
atically express the theory or act in accordance with it. People who
more strongly endorse the subjective theory that self-control is a
limited resource, for example, take longer breaks after tasks that
required their self-control (Job et al., 2015).
Note, that whereas later we refer to different types of metacog-
nitive “knowledge” we do not mean to suggest, however, that this
knowledge is necessarily correct. Both knowledge and theories
about metacognition may be misguided and reflect beliefs rather
than actual knowledge. For example, based on current failures to
replicate the ego depletion effect (Vohs et al., 2021), it looks as if
individuals who endorse the theory that self-control is a limited
resource (Job et al., 2010, 2015), endorse an, in fact, inaccurate
belief. While the term “belief” would more accurately express that
what people seem to know may be inaccurate, the term “knowledge”
is commonly used in the literature on self-regulated learning and we
subsume theories and beliefs under it. Notably, the term “metacog-
nitive knowledge” has appeared before in the context of self-control,
more specifically, in action control theory (e.g., Kuhl, 1984, 1987).
Here, metacognitive knowledge includes, for example, knowledge
about how emotional states could influence a person’s self-control
or about specific objects (e.g., a “fudge cake,” Kuhl, 1984, p. 126)
that might have a strong motivational pull on someone and pose a
problem for a person trying to lose weight. Such early mentions of
the term in self-control are, however, few and far between and they
were not yet properly integrated into a comprehensive framework
of metacognition in self-control.
Declarative Knowledge About Self-Control. Declarative
knowledge generally refers to “knowledge about things.” Here, it
refers to knowledge and theories about self-control in general, one’s
own self-control, and about the factors that influence it, including
knowledge about tasks, situations, and contexts that are relevant for
self-control, and knowledge of different self-regulatory strategies
(e.g., Pintrich et al., 2000; Schraw & Moshman, 1995). One example
for declarative knowledge about self-control in general are the
abovementioned theories people have about whether self-control
is a limited resource or not (Job et al., 2010). These beliefs, referred
to as implicit beliefs or lay theories about willpower, have been
assessed with items such as “After a strenuous mental activity your
energy is depleted and you must rest to get it refueled again.” The
extent to which people endorse an unlimited as opposed to a limited
theory of willpower has been shown to affect their self-control in
various tasks, including laboratory tasks (Job et al., 2010) and self-
regulation during exam preparation (Job et al., 2015). Similarly, it
was shown that people differ in the extent to which they believe that
the limits of self-control are fixed versus malleable and these beliefs
have consequences as well: People who believed that self-control
is a malleable but inherently limited resource tend to set fewer
resolutions and are also less likely to succeed at them if they are
also low in self-efficacy (Mukhopadhyay & Johar, 2005).
Whereas implicit beliefs assess people’s beliefs about whether
self-control is a limited and depletable resource, self-reports of
personality assess what people believe about their trait levels of
self-control. Such self-report scales capitalize on people’s self-
knowledge (or self-concept) about the extent to which they can,
in general and across situations, control their impulses and achieve
their long-term goals with items such as “I am good at resisting
temptation” or “People would say that I have iron self-discipline.”
(Brief Self-Control Scale by Tangney et al., 2004). The predictive
validity of such reports of self-knowledge for predicting important
outcomes as well as their self-control success in daily life (de Ridder
et al., 2012; Hennecke et al., 2019; Tangney et al., 2004) provides
evidence that people have relatively accurate knowledge about their
own trait levels of self-control. This is supported both by studies
showing that self-perceptions of other personality traits are also
correlated with objective criteria and with others’ perceptions of
them (Vazire & Carlson, 2010). In addition, self-reports of personality
(including conscientiousness, a trait that is broader than self-control
and also encompasses propensities to be orderly, hard-working, and
rule-abiding, Roberts et al., 2009, 2014) generally predict important
life outcomes like mortality, divorce, or occupational success (Ozer &
Benet-Martínez, 2006; Roberts et al., 2007). These correlations,
however, are far from perfect and suggest that people also have
blind spots with regard to their personalities. There are many possible
reasons for individuals’ insufficient declarative self-knowledge
 METACOGNITION AND SELF-CONTROL
including self-serving motivations and a general lack of insight into
unconscious processes (see Wilson & Dunn, 2004). So far, however,
no research has investigated what consequences it has if people have
largely inaccurate declarative knowledge about their own self-
control. It is likely that individuals who, for example, systematically
overestimate their own self-control, are less prepared for dealing
with self-control conflicts (Jia et al., 2022). People who underesti-
mate their own self-control, however, could be more cautious and,
for example, rely more on preventive self-regulatory strategies to
avoid or attenuate anticipated self-control conflicts.
Besides such general declarative knowledge about self-control,
people might also have more or less appropriate knowledge about
their idiosyncratic strengths and weaknesses in the domain of self-
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control (Pintrich et al., 2000). Such knowledge might be the result of
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intraindividual comparison processes. A person may, for example,
think or know about themselves that they are quite good at getting up
for exercise but bad at resisting chocolate. Such knowledge might
then inform subsequent behavior, if the person decides that it is
better not to buy any chocolate in order not to get tempted at home or
that in order to lose weight, exercising more will be more feasible
than eating less chocolate.
In addition, declarative knowledge about self-control also in-
cludes people’s knowledge of different self-regulatory strategies
(Pintrich et al., 2000). Self-regulatory strategies can be defined as
the “means through which individuals, in order to help themselves
achieve their goals, actively alter their cognitive, motivational,
affective, or behavioral reactions to a self-regulatory challenge”
(Hennecke et al., 2019, p. 104). Mischel and Mischel (1983) were
the first who were interested, in particular, in the development of
knowledge about self-control strategies. In their studies, children
were asked to indicate whether they wanted immediately available
smaller rewards to be in sight or not while they were waiting in the
hope to receive a larger reward. The studies showed that 4-year old
children often preferred the self-defeating strategy of having the
immediate rewards exposed. Children nearing 5 years of age then
more frequently preferred the empirically superior strategy of
having the rewards out of sight while waiting. A more recent finding
furthermore shows that adults appear to be aware that mentally
reframing a situation in an abstract or high-level construal as
opposed to a concrete or low-level construal promotes self-control
(MacGregor et al., 2017; Nguyen et al., 2019). For example,
participants who were prompted to act in a self-controlled manner
during a cookie taste test rated high-level statements describing the
task like “I need to evaluate the cookies conscientiously” or “I will
think carefully about the cookies” as more helpful for their self-
control goal than low-level statements like “I will be crunching on
cookies” and “I will be tasting some cookies.” In addition, dieters
and students who had knowledge about the benefits of high-level
construals appeared to pursue their self-control goals, dieting and
achieving good grades, more successfully (MacGregor et al., 2017).
In sum, it looks that people who know that reframing a self-control
situation in higher level terms may use this knowledge strategically
to attain better self-control.
Recent research furthermore shows that people benefit from a
larger repertoire of self-regulatory strategies (Bürgler et al., 2021,
2022). The number of different strategies used over the course of a
10-day experience sampling study predicted momentary success at
self-control conflicts. In addition, people who used more strategies
1267
during any given conflict are also more successful in resolving it
(Bürgler et al., 2021; Milyavskaya et al., 2020). This speaks to the
importance of strategy repertoire as one component of declarative
self-control knowledge.
Finally, a recent strand of research has looked at people’s
metamotivational knowledge, that is, people’s knowledge and
beliefs about the benefits or harms of certain motivational states
(see Scholer et al., 2018, for a review). This research has shown that
people tend to have false conceptions about motivation: They are
unaware that extrinsic incentives undermine their intrinsic motiva-
tion (Murayama et al., 2016) and fail to anticipate the importance of
intrinsic incentives and of being autonomously motivated for future
task accomplishment (Werner & Milyavskaya, 2018; Woolley &
Fishbach, 2015). These findings are relevant for self-control, too,
given that people might have to invest more self-control to finish
tasks for which intrinsic and autonomous motivation is lacking.
Conditional Knowledge About Self-Control. Conditional
self-control knowledge represents a special, more contextualized
type of declarative knowledge. “Conditional” here refers to the
conditions that moderate how self-control works. It includes
knowledge about all types of situational or personal influences
on self-control, such as knowledge about how one’s self-control
works under specific conditions (e.g., being alone vs. with others)
or beliefs about when to use different self-regulatory strategies
(Pintrich et al., 2000; Schraw & Moshman, 1995).
People may know more or less about the external and internal
conditions that affect their own self-control. The presence of other
people may, for example, have effects on a person’s self-control
(Hofmann et al., 2012). A person might, for example, know or
believe that the presence of other people usually helps them to avoid
overeating (e.g., because they would feel ashamed in front of others
if they did) but triggers a desire for alcohol consumption (e.g.,
because it makes them more relaxed around others). In addition,
internal states like certain moods or mental fatigue (Aspinwall,
1998; Clarkson et al., 2016; Fishbach & Labroo, 2007; Leith &
Baumeister, 1996; Saunders & Inzlicht, 2016) may affect a person’s
self-control, and people may be more or less aware of these effects.
Knowing about external and internal conditions under which self-
control is more difficult should furthermore be helpful preconditions
for taking precautionary measures to avoid, attenuate, or resolve
self-control conflicts. A person who knows that fatigue at the end of
the day usually keeps them from sticking to their exercise plans,
might plan to exercise before lunch instead.
Whereas knowledge about the existence of certain self-regulatory
strategies belongs to the category of declarative knowledge, condi-
tional knowledge about when strategies work better or less well
seems paramount too. It has, for example, been argued that the
effectiveness of self-regulatory strategies depends on given self-
control demands (Hennecke & Bürgler, 2020; Hennecke et al., 2019).
In other words: A strategy that is effective in one type of self-control
conflict might not be equally effective in another. Related evidence
stems from the field of emotion regulation. Here, researchers have
acknowledged that it is not true, that some strategies are inherently,
across situations, adaptive, whereas others are inherently, across
situations, maladaptive. Problem-focused emotion strategies, are, for
example, helpful when stressors are controllable but harmful when
stressors are uncontrollable (Aldridge & Roesch, 2007; Clarke,
2006). The same might be true for self-regulatory strategies: Any
 1268 HENNECKE AND BÜRGLER
given strategy may be adaptive in one context but not in another. In
line with this assumption, a larger degree of variability in choosing
from a repertoire of strategies is indeed associated with higher
self-regulatory success (Wenzel et al., 2021). That the fit between a
self-regulatory strategy and the self-control challenge it is used for
matters, is furthermore supported by the observation that modera-
tion (eating a smaller, predetermined amount of something
unhealthy) is a strategy that works better for people high than for
people low in self-control, who might fare better with complete
abstinence (Haws et al., 2011). A couple of different factors
including such individual characteristics, but also task demands
and goal characteristics might moderate the effectiveness of strate-
gies like this (Hennecke & Bürgler, 2020). For example, the strategy
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task enrichment, which entails adding a positive stimulus (e.g.,
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music) to an otherwise effortful and aversive task (e.g., working out)
is not generally helpful for self-control but has positive effects on
self-control during boring and physically effortful tasks (Hennecke
et al., 2019).
That people benefit from conditional knowledge about self-
control is furthermore supported by recent work showing that people
benefit from knowing the conditions under which a high-level
construal, a cognitive representation of objects or events that high-
lights their abstract and essential elements as opposed to a low-level
construal which highlights concrete and surface-level details, is
beneficial for goal attainment and self-control (MacGregor et al.,
2017; Nguyen et al., 2019)
Procedural Knowledge About Self-Control. This last type of
metacognitive knowledge about self-control refers to knowledge
about “how to do things” when it comes to self-control, that is, how
to deal with specific self-control conflicts. On first look, it might
seem difficult to distinguish procedural from declarative knowledge
that refers to people’s repertoire of self-regulatory strategies. How-
ever, it is different from repertoire in the sense that it is not just
knowledge about the existence of a given strategy but more specifi-
cally knowledge that refers to its proper implementation (Pintrich
et al., 2000; Schraw & Moshman, 1995). For example, a person
might, in principle, know a self-regulatory strategy but fail to apply
it to a current self-control conflict. Procedural self-control knowl-
edge is therefore a precondition for the successful development of
self-regulatory “tactics” which have been described as concrete
implementations of strategies in accordance with situational de-
mands (e.g., Ford et al., 2019; McRae et al., 2012; Werner & Ford,
2021). Think of the strategy of self-reinforcement or self-reward as
an example: Even if a person has this strategy in their repertoire, they
still need to decide how to implement it in any given instance.
A person who has, for example, rewarded themselves with delicious
food for most of their life will have to find a new type of reward for
sticking to their diet.
Note that the two terms “strategies” and “tactics” refer to
constructs on a continuum from relatively general regulatory
approaches (strategies) to more concrete regulatory actions (tactics,
Ford et al., 2019). Such a continuum should therefore also be
assumed for declarative versus procedural knowledge about strat-
egies. In addition, because an appropriate procedural application of
any given strategy or tactic requires conditional knowledge about
the situation and how it will affect the suitability of a strategy or
tactic, the three types of metacognitive knowledge are obviously
closely intertwined.
Metacognitive/Self-Awareness
We posit that people do not only differ regarding the metacog-
nitive knowledge they have about self-control but also with regard to
how much attention they pay to their own self-control. In the
literature, there is a large number of constructs referring to individ-
ual differences in people’s capacity or tendency to pay attention to
their own thoughts, feelings, and actions (see Leary & Terry, 2012).
These constructs include self-awareness (Duval & Wicklund, 1972),
self-reflection (Grant et al., 2002), private self-consciousness
(Fenigstein et al., 1975), metacognitive capacity (e.g., Weil et al.,
2013), metacognitive awareness (e.g., Schraw & Dennison, 1994),
and self-monitoring (Briggs et al., 1980; Wilmot, 2015). Whereas
different theories emphasize different aspects of the construct and
even further differentiate various components (e.g., private vs.
public; capacity vs. inclination; state vs. trait), the common denom-
inator of these concepts is that they all refer to the extent that an
individual pays attention to aspects of the self, including their own
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The kind of self-awareness we
refer to has been assessed with items such as “I frequently take time
to reflect on my thoughts,” “I am usually aware of my thoughts,” or
“I usually have a clear idea about why I’ve behaved in a certain
way.” (Self-Reflection and Insight Scale, Grant et al., 2002).
Some research has attested to the important role of individual
differences in self-awareness for self-control. Beaman et al. (1979)
showed that children were less likely to eat more than the allowed
amount of candy when they were seated in front of a mirror. Study
participants who were primed to be more self-aware (vs. who
received a control prime) furthermore did not drop in performance
during a second self-control task, thereby not showing the alleged
ego depletion effect (Alberts et al., 2011). In addition, self-focused
emotions like (anticipated) shame and guilt are antecedents of
subsequent self-control (Baumeister, 1997; Chun et al., 2007;
Hofmann & Fisher, 2012; Kivetz & Zheng, 2006; Zemack-Rugar
et al., 2007). Finally, people who are either chronically or momen-
tarily self-aware, are also more likely to detect obstacles, likely
including self-control conflicts, to their goals (Kreibich et al., 2020).
In addition, self-awareness and the process of self-monitoring
(which we will discuss in more detail later) have been linked to a
person’s increased awareness of their own behavior in comparison
to a desired standard (Carver & Scheier, 1981). In line with this
perspective, the process of self-monitoring has often been discussed
as an important predictor of self-control more generally, given its
importance for identifying that a current desire is in conflict with a
long-term goal (e.g., Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996; Hofmann &
Kotabe, 2012).
Note that self-awareness should also be an important prerequisite
to acquiring metacognitive knowledge about self-control (see
Fleming & Dolan, 2012). Through self-observation and reflection,
people should, for example, acquire declarative knowledge about
their own self-regulatory strengths and weaknesses, procedural
knowledge about the correct or incorrect implementation of self-
regulatory strategies, and conditional knowledge about the context
for which these strategies are suitable and lead to success.
Metacognitive Processes in Self-Control
Whereas people’s metacognitive knowledge about self-control and
their self-awareness describe characteristic individual differences,
 METACOGNITION AND SELF-CONTROL
we would like to now turn to the specific metacognitive mechanisms
or processes that might unfold before, during, and after a self-control
conflict. We adopt the distinction of these different phases from
prominent models of self-regulation and self-regulated learning:
The model of action phases (Heckhausen & Gollwitzer, 1986, 1987)
distinguishes different phases (a) before (predecisional phase includ-
ing deliberation about possible goals, preactional phase including
making plans for goal pursuit), (b) during (actional phase where goal
pursuit happens), and (c) after goal pursuit (postactional phase where
an evaluation of goal pursuit and attainment takes place). Similar
phases (sometimes with more fine-grained distinctions) can also be
found in many models of self-regulated learning (e.g., Pintrich, 2000;
Schmitz et al., 2007; Winne, 2011; Zimmerman, 2000; Zimmerman
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& Moylan, 2009; see Panadero, 2017, or Puustinen & Pulkkinen,
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2001, for reviews). These models use different terms and emphasize
different aspects of self-regulated learning but all consider (a) a
forethought or preparatory phase during which learning goals are
set and learning episodes are planned, (b) a performance and moni-
toring phase during which learning behavior is regulated, monitored,
and, if necessary, adapted, and (c) a self-reflection or appraisal phase
during which the previous learning episode is reflected and attribu-
tions are made.
We borrow the distinction into phases before, during, and after a
self-control conflict. Besides these phases, we include the identifi-
cation of a self-control conflict as an important point of transition
necessary to instigate metacognitive regulation during the respective
conflict.
Metacognitive Processes Before a Self-Control Conflict:
Forethought and Prevention
Before a self-control conflict emerges, people can take cautionary
measures to prevent it from occurring or to prepare themselves for its
occurrence. The following two groups of processes we call fore-
thought and prevention could be relevant in this regard. Under
forethought, we subsume (a) anticipating of self-control conflicts,
(b) goal setting for self-control conflicts, and (c) planning. Preven-
tion refers to the implementation of preventive strategies.
Anticipation of Self-Control Conflicts. The saying “Preven-
tion is better than cure” reveals that in many situations, it is advisable
to take care of problems before they occur. According to the
Preventive-Interventive Model of Self-Control (Hofmann &
Kotabe, 2012) precautions taken before a self-control conflict
may affect to what extent problematic desires will emerge at a later point
in time, how conflicted people will feel about tempting stimuli, how
motivated and capable they will be to resist, and to what extent their
range of behavioral options may allow them to give in to tempta-
tion. (p. 709)
The use of precautions, for example, preventive strategies like
the removal of distractions or temptations (Duckworth et al., 2016;
Kuhl, 1984), however, requires people to anticipate upcoming
conflicts. Unless the strategy is strongly habitualized, a student
would, for example, have to anticipate that they could be distracted
by incoming messages before being able to take the precaution of
turning off the sound of their cell phone.
Anticipating future self-control conflicts requires episodic future
thinking, a form of projection (Gilbert & Wilson, 2007) that includes
imagining or simulating experiences that might occur in one’s
1269
personal future (e.g., Atance & O’Neill, 2001, 2005; Schacter
et al., 2017). The extent to which episodic future thinking results
in the correct anticipation of upcoming self-control conflicts is
likely, at least to some degree, contingent on the metacognitive
knowledge people have acquired about themselves. Knowledge of
one’s weak spots when it comes to self-control should be helpful for
assessing whether a self-control conflict could emerge in an upcom-
ing situation. Being invited to a party, for example, could entail a
self-control conflict to the dieter who is easily tempted by the food
offered at such gatherings. Knowing or anticipating that one will be
tempted in this situation is likely, at least to some extent, the result of
recollecting past experiences in similar situations. It is therefore not
surprising that episodic future thinking depends critically on the
episodic memory system, which underlies people’s ability to
recollect past personal experiences. According to the constructive
episodic simulation hypothesis, for example, episodic memory
supports the anticipation of future events by allowing people to
flexibly retrieve and recombine elements of past experiences into
novel representations of future events (Schacter & Addis, 2007).
The anticipation of self-control conflicts is certainly important for
their avoidance. We will later return to the preventive strategies
individuals may use. However, even if a self-control conflict cannot
be avoided, anticipation might help to set goals and make plans for
dealing with it.
Goal Setting for Self-Control Conflicts. Self-control conflicts
are, per definition, conflicts in which current desires, habits, or
impulses conflict with more valued or long-term goals. Goal setting
for a self-control conflict might, however, go beyond these valued,
long-term goals (whose characteristics might also matter for self-
control, Inzlicht, Legault, & Teper, 2014) and rather refer to more
immediate and contextualized goals for upcoming self-control
conflicts. For example, a person may, in anticipation of the desire
to drink alcohol at a birthday party and the resulting conflict with
their long-term goal of health maintenance, commit to the goal of
“having only one alcoholic drink at the party.” Like other goals,
these goals may vary too with regard to various characteristics.
Besides, for example, their level of ambition, their degree of
specificity might be an important factor in supporting the person’s
degree of success in the self-control conflict, as has been found true
for goals in general (Locke & Latham, 2006). For example, the goal
of “not drinking much alcohol” is less specific than the goal of
“having only one alcoholic drink.” And, given that what is “much
alcohol” is not defined in the first goal, the person may find it
difficult to decide when to stop drinking in a tempting situation.
Planning. Once individuals have set goals for anticipated self-
control conflicts, they can make plans on how to achieve these goals.
Selection of Self-Regulatory Strategies. The person who has
decided that they want to drink only one drink could plan to use their
car to get back home after the party, thereby enforcing that they can
have only one drink (through a form of precommitment, Kurth-
Nelson & Redish, 2012). Or they may plan to bring their own favorite
nonalcoholic drinks to make abstaining from more alcohol easier.
Generally, planning refers to committing to concrete actions to
advance one’s goals by specifying intended actions in terms of
when, where, and how to act (Leventhal et al., 1965). A related
concept are implementation intentions (Gollwitzer, 1999; Gollwitzer
& Brandstätter, 1997), which consist of an “if”-part defining the
situational triggers for planned actions defined in the “then”-part, for
example, “If someone offers me a second drink, then I will ask for
 1270 HENNECKE AND BÜRGLER
water.”. Indeed, implementation intentions outperform mere goal
intentions (here, e.g., “I will have only one drink.”) in helping people
to advance their goals (Gollwitzer & Oettingen, 1998; Orbell &
Sheeran, 2000). Implementation intentions have also been shown to
be effective for dealing with self-control conflicts. In these studies,
participants were instructed to form implementation intentions that
reminded them of their own long-term goals when faced with a
temptation (e.g., “If I see or smell chocolate then I will follow my
goal to diet”; Kroese et al., 2011; Van Koningsbruggen et al., 2011).
While these types of implementation intentions do not contain a
specific intervention strategy, they could be even more helpful if they
did (e.g., “If I see or smell chocolate then I will avert my attention
away from it.”). We will come back to discussing different inter-
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ventive strategies later when describing how people can implement
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them during a self-control conflict.
Allocation of Resources. Planning may also include decisions
about the allocation of resources to deal with upcoming self-control
conflicts. In models of self-regulated learning, time, effort, and pace
of learning have been proposed as resources that learners allocate to
learning processes (Pintrich, 2000). In the domain of self-control,
the most important resource might be effort. Effort can be under-
stood as the intensity of mental and/or physical activity that an
organism invests into pursuing an outcome (Eisenberger, 1992;
Inzlicht et al., 2018). It can be distinguished from demand or
difficulty, although higher demands require more effort to be
met. When, however, a task becomes too demanding, individuals
may disengage their effort completely (Brehm & Self, 1989).
Generally, humans and other animals are thought to avoid effort
if possible but to invest it into valued outcomes (Hull, 1943; Kool
et al., 2010). How much effort a person plans to invest into the
resolution of a self-control conflict is therefore likely a consequence
of how important the long-term goal with whom the temptation or
impulse is in conflict, is to the person (Richter et al., 2016). It may
also be a consequence of the type of motivation underlying the goal.
Individuals who feel autonomously motivated for a given goal might
be more willing to invest effort into dealing with self-control conflicts
on the way as compared to individuals whose motivation for the goal
is controlled (Milyavskaya et al., 2018). This could be one path
through which the positive effects of autonomous motivation on goal
progress might be explained (Werner & Milyavskaya, 2018).
Individuals may, however, also make plans that budget the
amount of effort they want to invest into resolving an anticipated
self-control conflict, if they believe that their self-control is a limited
resource (Job et al., 2010) and that they later need to invest more
self-control. In the context of ego depletion theory, it has been
argued that after a first self-control task, participants who anticipated
exerting self-control in the future performed worse in an intervening
self-control task than participants who either had not performed the
first self-control task or who did not expect to exert self-control in
the future (Muraven et al., 2006; Tyler & Burns, 2009). While ego
depletion theory has faced widespread criticism for being theoreti-
cally vague and empirically questionable (Lurquin & Miyake, 2017;
Vohs et al., 2021), it could be that some people who endorse the
metacognitive theory that self-control is limited, treat it like that,
and budget it in their plans to save it for later tasks.
Note that memory processes are probably not only important for
the anticipation of self-control conflicts but also for making good
plans on how to deal with them. Episodic memories of prior
solutions and procedural knowledge on how to implement a specific
strategy can be helpful for making plans for future conflicts. In fact,
it has been shown that people exhibit more successful self-control
when they can easily recall previous successful instances of self-
control (Nikolova et al., 2016).
Implementation of Preventive Strategies. Preventive strate-
gies can be implemented before self-control conflicts in order to avoid
them or increase one’s chances of resolving them. The process model
of self-control distinguishes between two types of strategies that
prevent or attenuate upcoming self-control conflicts. First, situation
selection is referred to as the “most forward-looking of all self-control
maneuvers” (p. 40) and entails that people avoid environments that
could present temptations and seek out environments that promote
goal pursuit (Duckworth et al., 2016). To avoid drinking too much,
a person might, for example, never show up at parties. To help
themselves stay focused during studying, a student may move to the
quiet library. Avoiding temptations is a strategy that, as recently
shown, is in fact used by individuals high in self-control who are, for
example, more likely to choose working in a distraction-free envi-
ronment than individuals low in self-control (Ent et al., 2015).
Second, a person can use situation modification (Duckworth
et al., 2016; see also “environment control,” Kuhl, 1984, p. 126),
for example, if they do not get to select the situations they find
themselves in. It implies making changes to a situation to avoid or
attenuate upcoming self-control conflicts. Supporting the effective-
ness of situation modification, recent studies showed that students
who were introduced to the idea of moving temptations, like their
cell phones, out of sight, reported higher levels of goal accomplish-
ment and study quality than students who had received the instruc-
tion to “use their willpower” in response to self-control conflicts or
no instruction at all (Duckworth et al., 2016). Additional situation
modification strategies might include installing reminders of con-
flict, seeking social support from others, or the ingestion of sub-
stances like coffee or energy drinks to promote better self-control
(Hennecke et al., 2019; Hofmann & Kotabe, 2012).
In addition, other strategies may also be implemented before a
self-control conflict that do not change the observable situation but
that nevertheless bolster a person’s motivation or volition to resolve
an upcoming conflict. As described before, people may set goals and
make plans for how to deal with an anticipated conflict. In addition,
they may mentally prepare themselves for an upcoming conflict in
various ways: They may, for example, try to bolster their motivation
to resolving the conflict by reminding themselves of the negative
consequences of failing to do so or the positive consequences of
succeeding (Hennecke et al., 2019; Kuhl, 1984). In addition, they
may decide to impose certain contingencies on themselves and
use self-reinforcement (Bandura, 1976; Goldfried & Merbaum,
1973; Grunschel et al., 2016), in order to bolster their motivation
for upcoming self-control conflicts. Imposing contingencies is also
at the core of many so-called “precommitment” strategies, which are
more generally defined as strategies that take away “a choice from
one’s future self in order to enforce one’s present preferences”
(Kurth-Nelson & Redish, 2012, p. 2). Precommitment may involve
forms of situation selection and modification to prevent oneself from
unwanted behaviors (e.g., avoiding the bakery or flushing one’s
cigarettes down the toilet), making public commitment to harness
social influence, but even self-imposed punishments should a given
goal not be fulfilled (e.g., on https://stickk.com, see also Ariely &
Wertenbroch, 2002). Recent studies investigating precommitment
furthermore show that on the neural level, its use can be distinguished
 METACOGNITION AND SELF-CONTROL
from the use of the interventive inhibition which had previously
been considered to be the cognitive process underlying self-control:
Whereas inhibition can be traced back to activity in the dorsolateral
and inferior frontal cortices as well as the anterior cingulate cortex
(ACC; Dias et al., 1997; Garavan et al., 1999; Konishi et al., 1998;
Shimamura, 1995; Taylor et al., 1996), precommitment strategies
have been traced back specifically to activation in the frontopolar
prefrontal cortex, a large region in the anterior portion of the frontal
lobe (Crockett et al., 2013; Soutschek et al., 2017), that is also
involved in related high-order cognition like prospection and coun-
terfactual thinking (Boorman et al., 2009; Boschin et al., 2015;
Okuda et al., 2003, 2007). Importantly, this dissociation supports
the distinction that interventive self-control as inhibition works
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through a different route than self-control as achieved through
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preventive strategies of precommitment.
Certainly, not all self-control conflicts can be anticipated and even
within the pool of conflicts that can, the extent to which people can be
prepared for them and can rely on goals and plans that were set during
the previous phase may vary. Maybe a friend comes by the house
unexpectedly with homemade cookies, or one gets spontaneously
invited to go out drinking with colleagues after work. In that case, a
self-control conflict might emerge without prior preparation. We will
now turn to the metacognitive processes that can take place during
self-control conflicts. These processes are, however, to a great deal
dependent on the identification of a situation as a self-control conflict.
Accordingly, we consider the identification of self-control conflicts
as an important point of passage before turning to the next phase.
Identification of a Self-Control Conflict
In their influential model of action phases, Heckhausen and
Gollwitzer (1986, 1987) referred to the proverbial Rubicon as the
important transition at which people take the step from deliberating
goal adoption to actual goal commitment. This Rubicon therefore
marks the transition from the first, predecisional, to the second,
preactional phase of goal pursuit. With regard to self-control, there is
an equally important transition, the point at which the person
identifies a self-control conflict at hand. In our perspective, the
identification of a self-control conflict is per definition a metacog-
nitive process. It requires that the person recognizes that in a given
situation a behavioral tendency (sometimes called a “desire,” e.g.,
Kotabe & Hofmann, 2015) is at odds with a goal.
That the detection of conflict is crucial for the activation of
effortful self-control processes has recently been acknowledged
in various models of self-control (e.g., Inzlicht, Legault, &
Teper, 2014; Milkman et al., 2008; Myrseth & Fishbach,
2009). The detection of a “desire-goal conflict” is furthermore
one of seven key components in Kotabe and Hofmann’s (2015)
integrative self-control model. They argue that in the sequence of
events, the detection of a conflict between a higher-order goal and a
desire is what triggers control motivation, and given sufficient
control motivation and control capacity, in turn leads to control
effort, the “effective use of control capacity” (Kotabe & Hofmann,
2015. p. 620). On a neural basis, the detection of self-control
and other response conflicts is probably processed in a conflict-
monitoring system (e.g., Botvinick et al., 2001, 2004), located in the
brain’s ACC where, in case of conflict, an “alarm signal” can be
captured by an evoked brain potential called the error-related
negativity (ERN; Gehring et al., 1993). The alarm signal then
1271
triggers the adjustment and mobilization of cognitive control pro-
cesses in the prefrontal cortex. In fact, individuals who do not show
the typical ERN in the ACC during self-control conflicts also show
worse self-control in a food choice task (van der Laan et al., 2014).
In addition, a reduced error-related activity in a broader conflict-
monitoring network (involving the anterior midcingulate cortex, the
presupplementary motor area, and anterior insula) during a conflict
task in the laboratory even predicts a higher likelihood of failure in
daily self-control conflicts, above and beyond what can be predicted
by self-reported trait self-control (Krönke et al., 2018, 2020;
Overmeyer et al., 2021). But please note, that as in other research
correlating computer-based indicators of cognitive control and more
ecologically valid measures of self-control, their association is not
unambiguous: Here, a recent study showed that the ERN and other
event-related potential failed to predict personal goal progress
(Saunders et al., 2022).
Whereas neurocognitive theories imply that the identification of
self-control conflicts is primarily a matter of conflict monitoring
more generally, individuals may also fail to recognize self-control
conflicts despite an otherwise intact conflict monitoring system.
This might be the case if they consider a potential action in an
isolated way: In fact, the effects of eating one donut, smoking one
cigarette, or having one alcoholic drink on a person’s health are
negligible. The identification of conflict relies on viewing an action
opportunity (e.g., eating a donut) not in isolation but with width, that
is, in relation to future opportunities, and with consistency, as a
decision that will be replayed in the future (Ainslie, 2021; Fishbach
& Converse, 2010; Fujita et al., 2006; Myrseth & Fishbach, 2009).
In addition, people might fail to recognize self-control conflicts
because they simply lack the knowledge that an action opportunity is
at odds with a goal. For example, if a person does not know that a
salad with a fatty dressing actually has a lot of calories, they may not
perceive eating a rich salad as conflicting with their personal goal to
lose weight (see, e.g., Klohe-Lehman et al., 2006, for findings on
the importance of nutrition knowledge in weight loss). If a person,
however, correctly identifies a current situation as a self-control
conflict, they can either try to successfully resolve it or not. This
decision can be based on multiple factors, such as expectancy-value
considerations (Atkinson, 1964; Eccles & Wigfield, 2002), self-
efficacy (Bandura, 1994), importance of the goal or the person’s
commitment to it (Fishbach & Ferguson, 2007; Kruglanski et al.,
2002), as well as a multitude of other possible situational or personal
factors (e.g., social factors such as social comparison, see Diel et al.,
2021, or personal factors such as impulsivity, see Price et al., 2013;
Waxman, 2009). Having discussed the different metacognitive
processes that can unfold before self-control conflicts occur, we
next want to focus on the metacognitive processes during self-
control conflicts.
Metacognitive Processes During a Self-Control Conflict:
Regulation and Monitoring
When a self-control conflict is identified, people can try to
(metacognitively) regulate their own behavior, thoughts, and feel-
ings to solve the conflict in favor of their goals. This primary
regulation in response to a self-control conflict, however, likely does
not suffice but must be accompanied by a close monitoring of one’s
performance and a secondary form of regulation, namely, a suitable
response to feedback about this performance that includes an
 1272 HENNECKE AND BÜRGLER
adaptation of one’s efforts and/or goal revision. We will describe
these processes in more detail below.
Regulation. Regulation refers to people’s active attempts of
dealing with a current self-control conflict. It includes the allocation
of resources and the implementation of interventive self-regulatory
strategies.
Allocation of Resources. In the framework, we include the
allocation of resources at three different points. We have already
described above that people can plan their allocation of resources
during a self-control conflict. Here, we refer to this actual allocation,
may it be as planned or different from any initial plans (if there were
any) and later, we will return to the allocation of resources as an
adaptational process in response to feedback (that more or less
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resources are needed).
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As already described, effort, the intensity of mental and/or
physical activity, is likely the most importance resource that people
can allocate to the solution of self-control conflicts (Inzlicht et al.,
2018). How much effort is expended probably depends on the
difficulty of the self-control conflict (Brehm & Self, 1989), the
importance of the current goal (Richter et al., 2016), self-efficacy
(Bandura, 1994), and the reason that a goal is pursued for (autono-
mous goals lead to higher effort, Milyavskaya et al., 2018). Effort
expenditure may, in addition, depend on how people try to resolve a
self-control conflict through interventive strategies: It has been
shown that when people with high levels of self-control are con-
fronted with a temptation cue, they automatically activate cognitive
representations of their goals and that this process does not demand
cognitive resources (Fishbach et al., 2003). It can be debated and
might be a question of nomenclature rather than of content whether
cognitive regulation still counts as “metacognitive” if it is uncon-
sciously triggered and not consciously experienced. In many situa-
tions, however, people report on their regulatory attempts, thereby
clearly showing signs of self-control processes that are metacogni-
tive and potentially effortful in nature. These regulatory attempts,
utilizing the allotted resources, include the use of interventive
strategies.
Implementation of Interventive Strategies. The process-model
of self-control has distinguished various types of self-regulatory
strategies according to the stage of the impulse-generation cycle at
which the strategy applies (Duckworth et al., 2016). Strategies of
situation selection and situation modification can, as described
before, already be used to avoid self-control conflicts but they
may also be used to leave or modify a situation in which a self-
control conflict is already in progress. A person who is tempted by
continuing to eat crisps from a bowl in front of them, might, for
example, leave the room or remove the bowl of crisps. Alternatively,
without making any changes to the situation, a person can, through
attentional deployment strategies, distract themselves from situa-
tional aspects that cause or amplify undesired impulses and direct
their attention to aspects of the situation that attenuate the conflict
and promote its resolution. Looking away from the crisps and
focusing on the TV instead might help in the aforementioned
situation. Conversely, actively focusing the attention on goal-related
information, perhaps looking at the bowl of carrots instead of the
crisps, could support the goal of eating less unhealthy snacks, too
(e.g., Ach, 1910; Kuhl, 1984, 1987). To deploy strategies for
cognitive change, people can also try to alter the way they appraise
and mentally construe the situation to promote self-control. This
could imply reappraising an object in a more negative or a “cooler,”
less tempting manner (Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999), for example, by
thinking of the crisps as “fatty, health-threatening potato slices” or
by adopting a high-level construal and thinking of eating crisps as
“satisfying my desire for junk food” rather than as “crunching on
salty potato slices” (Chiou et al., 2013; Fujita & Carnevale, 2012;
Fujita et al., 2006). Finally, a person can try to modulate or suppress
an unwanted response. This strategy can be used if a self-control
conflict has fully emerged and is hence thought as a “last resort” in
the impulse-generation cycle (Duckworth et al., 2016). Initially, it
was proposed that strategies used earlier in the impulse-generation
cycle are generally more effective than strategies used later
(Duckworth et al., 2016), but recent studies show that strategies
used later are not necessarily less effective, at least not generally
speaking (Lopez et al., 2021; Milyavskaya et al., 2020).
Several studies have shown that people do indeed spontaneously
use a variety of different strategies in their everyday lives and that
many strategies can be effective (Bürgler et al., 2021; Hennecke &
Bürgler, 2020; Hennecke et al., 2019; Lopez et al., 2021;
Milyavskaya et al., 2020; Wenzel et al., 2022). People also fre-
quently use multiple strategies within a single self-control conflict.
This so-called polyregulation, a concept which has been mainly
studied in emotion regulation (Ford et al., 2019), appears to be
important in self-control as well, as several studies have shown that
using more strategies to deal with a single conflict is associated with
higher levels of success in resolving that conflict (Bürgler et al., 2021,
2022; Lopez et al., 2021; Milyavskaya et al., 2020).
If a person consciously tries to resolve a self-control conflict, the
choice of their self-regulatory strategy could either be based on their
planning before the conflict took place, or it could be made in the
moment. As previously described, planning requires a person to be
able to correctly anticipate an upcoming self-control conflict and to
actively plan the use of one or more self-regulatory strategies with
which to resolve that conflict. Correctly anticipating an upcoming
self-control conflict might, however, not always be possible. In
those cases, a person has to decide on which self-regulatory strategy
to use in the moment. This decision would be made similar to the
process of planning, but, because it has to be made quickly and “on-
the-fly,” it might be more prone to biases due to stress, limited time,
and mental resources (Edland & Svenson, 1993; Keinan, 1987;
Payne et al., 1988; Weenig & Maarleveld, 2002), error-prone
heuristics might be used (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974) or behavior
in previous situations might just be repeated, without putting much
additional thought into it. This last-mentioned case would be
different from the habitual and automatic use of a strategy, because
here, the strategy choice would still be made consciously.
Monitoring Performance. Monitoring one’s performance
should constitute another important part of metacognitive regulation
during self-control conflicts (Inzlicht, Legault, & Teper, 2014). In
self-regulated learning, monitoring has been described as “a per-
son’s tracking of specific aspects of his or her own performance, the
conditions that surround it, and the effects that it produces” (Zim-
merman & Campillo, p. 242, in reference to Zimmerman & Paulsen,
1995). In the goal literature, monitoring similarly refers to the
observation of one’s goal progress, either on the process level
(e.g., how much one has eaten) or the outcome level (e.g., how
much weight one has lost) and the comparison of these with a
desired standard (e.g., to lose 2 lbs; Harkin et al., 2016). Generally,
monitoring is also at the heart of cybernetic control models which
assume that control can be attained by the orchestration of three
 METACOGNITION AND SELF-CONTROL
processes (a) goal setting, (b) monitoring for discrepancies between
the goal and current behavior, and (c) the implementation of actions
that bring behavior closer to the goal (Carver & Scheier, 1982, 1990,
1998). Note that in our framework, we have introduced goal setting
as a process in the forethought phase and the implementation of
actions as regulation. So, we will focus here on what monitoring
during self-control conflicts may look like here. Whereas, there is a
vast literature showing that monitoring one’s behavior and goal
progress during goal pursuit more generally is a predictor of goal
attainment (Aittasalo et al., 2006; Amzil, 2014; Burke et al., 2011;
Butryn et al., 2007; Chang, 2010; Gleeson-Kreig, 2006; Mevarech,
1999; Mevarech & Kramarski, 2003; Patel et al., 2019; Razı &
Çubukçu, 2014; Turner-McGrievy et al., 2013), we are not aware of
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any research investigating monitoring one’s performance during
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self-control conflicts in particular.
At this point, goals set in anticipation of specific self-control
conflicts (see “goal setting”) can be used as standards or reference
values. Such specific goals (e.g., only eating 3 pieces of candy in
front of the TV) are more contextualized and potentially more
helpful and informative for detecting discrepancies than the more
abstract and decontextualized goals that originally motivated the
person to invest self-control effort (e.g., to lose weight). Monitoring
should then involve the observation of potential discrepancies
between a current state, which defines what one is doing, and these
goals, that serve as standards or reference values, which define what
one should be doing in a given situation (Carver & Scheier, 1982).
A person could, for example, notice that they are currently eating
candy in front of the TV and become aware that this is not what they
should do given that they have already missed their goal, the
reference value, which was to eat only three pieces of candy.
One important aspect of monitoring one’s performance, as it is
described for metacognition in self-regulated learning, which is
largely neglected in cybernetic control models, is that a person
can not only monitor the discrepancy between the current state
and the goal, or the rate of discrepancy-reduction (e.g., Carver &
Scheier, 1990), but make more nuanced observations about whether
the strategy they are using is effective toward reaching their goal
(e.g., Cleary & Zimmerman, 2004; Ghatala, 1986; Zimmerman &
Paulsen, 1995). Monitoring may, if discrepancies are detected, then
lead to behavioral adaptations that we will discuss in more detail later
(see “Response to Feedback”). Generally, detecting discrepancies
could lead the person to increase their effort for resolving the self-
control conflict (Carver & Scheier, 1982, 1998), to realize that a self-
regulatory strategy is inadequate and promote change to more
suitable ones (see also Pressley & Ghatala, 1990), or cause self-
experimentation, whereby a person varies aspects of their behavior to
solve a problem (see also Bandura, 1991). People who do not (yet)
know suitable self-regulatory strategies or how to best implement a
strategy can, through monitoring, learn what works or does not work
in a given self-control conflict and thereby update their metacognitive
knowledge about self-regulatory strategies.
Monitoring oneself during a self-control conflict may not only
include monitoring one’s (overt) behavior (e.g., eating candy) but
also—and this may in fact be equally important—monitoring one’s
experience. One highly important aspect of that experience is the
strength of the impulse or desire that conflicts with a goal and hence,
causal for the self-control conflict. Accordingly, monitoring is also
crucial for identifying a self-control conflict in the first place, by
allowing the person to realize that there is a current desire that
1273
conflicts with a goal. Monitoring one’s experience should then
remain important as the self-control conflict evolves and is regulated.
Given that desire strength predicts conflict resolution (Hofmann
et al., 2012), monitoring desire strength is therefore crucial to detect
the need for potential strategic adaptations (see “Adaptations of
Strategies”).
Finally, decisions about the use of specific strategies also require
an additional aspect of monitoring, namely, the monitoring of the
context in which a self-control conflict occurs. In self-regulated
learning, analyzing a learning situation (i.e., the nature of the
learning materials) is seen as important for effective learning and
correct strategy choice (Brown et al., 1981). Similarly, context
sensitivity (Bonanno & Burton, 2013) is a prerequisite for achieving
strategy-situation-fit, a concept that has been discussed and investi-
gated in emotion-regulation research and recently applied to self-
control where, depending on the situation, different demands might
be present (see e.g., Aldao et al., 2015; Bonanno & Burton, 2013;
Gan et al., 2007; Haines et al., 2016; Hennecke & Bürgler, 2020;
Wenzel et al., 2020). Take, for example, the strategy task enrichment
which people can use to make tasks more enjoyable by adding some
kind of positive stimulus (Butler, 1998; Hennecke et al., 2019;
Woolley & Fishbach, 2015). As described before, making an
aversive task more pleasant by listening to one’s favorite music
may be helpful during a workout but not when studying for a
difficult exam (Hennecke et al., 2019).
As a self-control conflict evolves and people’s behavior and
experience evolve through it, monitoring processes might give rise
to metacognitive feelings and judgments with regard to the self-
control conflict. This might include feelings of ease or difficulty of the
self-control conflict or confidence judgments about their own likeli-
hood of eventually resolving the self-control conflict (see Efklides,
2001, 2006a, 2006b, for similar ideas in the domain of self-regulated
learning). Such judgments have also been discussed in the realm of
control theory, which proposes that people make expectancy-
assessment judgments (Carver & Scheier, 1982; Scheier & Carver,
1988) about whether or not discrepancy reduction between a current
and a desired state is likely to be successful. These predictive
judgments are also similar to the concept of self-efficacy (Bandura,
1994) and related to aspects of decision-making, like expectancy-
value considerations (Atkinson, 1964; Eccles & Wigfield, 2002).
To conclude, monitoring processes are a crucial source of infor-
mation for the successful resolution of self-control conflicts and, in
particular, detecting the need to adapt regulatory efforts, a process
that we will discuss in the next section.
Response to Feedback. Above, we have described that one
important function of monitoring lies in the detection of discrepan-
cies between a desired state and the current state and the adaptation of
one’s behavior to better match the desired state. Here, we want to
further elaborate on various possible types of behavioral adaptations
(see also Bonanno & Burton, 2013; Garofalo & Lester, 1985;
Pintrich, 2000; Pintrich et al., 2000; Schraw, 1998; Schunk, 2005;
Zimmerman & Campillo, 2003; Zimmerman & Paulsen, 1995).
These behavioral adaptations are also a form of “regulation” but
they are responses to the feedback received through monitoring. We
focus on behavioral adaptations in three domains: adaptations in the
allocation of resources, the adaptation of strategies, and goal revision.
Allocation of Resources. While dealing with a self-control
conflict, a person can make changes to how much effort they put
into the successful resolution of that conflict, based on the information
 1274 HENNECKE AND BÜRGLER
gathered from monitoring. This is different from the previously
described allocation of resources during planning, where a person
estimates and plans how much effort they want to put into the
resolution of an upcoming conflict. During the conflict, however, a
person may realize that certain circumstances make the resolution of
the conflict much harder and that their current progress falls behind
their expectations, which might then lead them to invest more effort,
also known as pushing (Fulford et al., 2010). The opposite is also
possible, where a person realizes that their progress exceeds ex-
pectations, which could lead to a reduction in effort, also known as
coasting (Fulford et al., 2010). Furthermore, a person might experi-
ence motivational shifts, where other goals (e.g., to enjoy the candy)
become more attractive (Inzlicht & Schmeichel, 2012; Inzlicht,
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Schmeichel, & Macrae, 2014) which could lead them to divert
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their effort away from the original goal.
Adaptation of Strategies. Monitoring may also suggest making
changes to currently used strategies (Bonanno & Burton, 2013;
Pintrich, 2000; Schunk, 2005). As previously mentioned, a person
might realize, through monitoring, that their current strategy is not
successful for resolving the self-control conflict at hand, either
because it does not lead to the expected or desired outcome, or
because the strategy requires a great deal of effort and is therefore
inefficient and not sustainable. There are various reasons why
people might have to realize this: They may simply have lacked
the necessary metacognitive knowledge about suitable strategies for
a given conflict or about their appropriate implementation, or they
may have failed to take potentially unforeseen aspects of the self-
control conflict or the situation into account when choosing which
strategy to use. Upon realizing that the current strategy is not
effective, a person can then (a) cease using a strategy, (b) adjust
a currently used strategy, or (c) select a new strategy (Bonanno &
Burton, 2013). When experiencing the desire to stop running while
exercising on the treadmill, a person could, for example, (a) turn off
the music that was supposed to make running on the treadmill more
bearable, because it appears to not help much; (b) slightly adapt this
strategy of task enrichment and listen to an audiobook instead; or
(c) completely change the strategy and start thinking about the
positive consequences of continuing to working out. Alternatively, a
newly selected strategy might also be used concurrently with the
previous strategy. A person could, for example, think about the
positive consequences of working out while listening to music or an
audiobook. This would indicate an attempt at polyregulation, the
simultaneous use of multiple strategies in a single self-control
conflict (Bürgler et al., 2021; Ford et al., 2019; Lopez et al.,
2021; Werner & Ford, 2021).
Goal Revision. According to control theory, reference values
do not have to remain where they are but can be adapted (Carver &
Scheier, 1982, 1990). Likewise, people may revise the goals that
serve as reference values and that they had set in anticipation of a
self-control conflict. They may increase the reference value,
decrease the reference value, or completely abandon the goal. First,
while dealing with a self-control conflict, a person might realize that
they are making much better progress than expected, for example,
they are able to stay focused on their studies for longer than usual.
This could be due to a strategy working better than expected (maybe
they are studying at the library and not at home), daily fluctuations in
motivation (see, e.g., Bellhäuser et al., 2021; Navarro et al., 2013),
or other circumstances. A person might then think to themselves,
that they are capable of “going the extra mile” and, for example,
keep studying a bit longer than planned, or, as another example,
to increase the normal workout-routine by an additional 15 min,
therefore increasing their initial reference value (Carver & Scheier,
1982, 1990). Second, the opposite case is also possible: A person
might realize that they are not going to be able to finish their planned
workout, maybe because their muscles start to hurt much sooner
than they normally do. Here, a person might decide that it’s okay to
cut the workout short by a few minutes, therefore, decreasing their
reference value (Carver & Scheier, 1982, 1990). Third, similar to
what is described as disengagement or withdrawal in control theory
(Carver & Scheier, 1990), a person might feel that they are no longer
capable of successfully resolving a self-control conflict (maybe
because of difficulties or setbacks) and that any further invested
effort would be wasted (see motivational intensity theory; Brehm &
Self, 1989) or that they no longer want to resolve the self-control
conflict, maybe because their priorities have shifted (Inzlicht &
Schmeichel, 2012; Inzlicht, Schmeichel, & Macrae, 2014). Here,
this person might completely abandon the goal of working out,
maybe just for that day, possibly for longer.
Goal revision may, depending on the type of self-control conflict
at hand, come in different shapes: In conflicts where a person wants
to persist in doing something aversive (e.g., continuing to study
boring materials, continuing an effortful workout), one obvious
aspect that can be changed is how long a person persists in that task.
In conflicts where a person wants to resist a temptation, simply
stretching out the duration of, for example, refraining from eating
the candy for a little longer, could only delay failing the conflict if
the desire for candy remains. Here, a person could also make
changes to the degree with which they want to resist (e.g., telling
oneself that eating some candy is allowed). For conflicts where a
person wants to initiate an aversive task (e.g., getting off the couch
for a workout), a person could make initiation easier by lowering
their level of ambition or by changing aspects of the dreaded
activity. Allowing oneself to only exercise for 30 min instead of
the originally planned 45 min or to only do the kinds of exercises one
enjoys, might be helpful goal revisions if a self-control conflict
cannot be resolved with the original goals in mind. Having described
the processes of metacognition before and during self-control
conflicts, let us now turn to the processes that can unfold after a
self-control conflict occurred.
Metacognitive Processes After a Self-Control Conflict:
Reflection and Evaluation
Presumably, humans are motivated to analyze and understand their
own behavior (e.g., Heider, 1958; Jones & Davis, 1965). Accord-
ingly, people may look back and reflect on their behavior and
experiences during self-control conflicts. In the context of self-
regulated learning, a variety of possible targets of reflection have
been named including reflections on and an evaluation of one’s
success during the past learning episode, potentially with an addi-
tional consideration of long-term consequences, as well as attribu-
tions about success and failure to various causes and including
reflections on the suitability of the strategies that were used
(Pintrich, 2000, 2004; Winne & Hadwin, 2013; Zimmerman,
2002). Similar reflections might help people to understand how
they fared during a self-control conflict. At best, these reflections
identify which adaptations should be made if a similar self-control
conflict should occur again in the future (Winne & Hadwin, 2013).
 METACOGNITION AND SELF-CONTROL
Reflection and Evaluation of Short-Term Success and
Long-Term Consequences. As described in our section on moni-
toring, people may, to varying degrees, already observe and evaluate
their performance during a self-control conflict. In addition, they may
afterward, when the impulse is no longer felt, look back and evaluate
to what extent they were successful in resolving the self-control
conflict. The extent to which a person considers themselves as
successful or not likely depends on salient comparison standards
(Carver & Scheier, 1990). One possible standard of comparison is
provided by the goals a person might or might not have set for the
self-control situation, for example, was the person successful in only
having one drink at the party or in persisting on the treadmill for
20 min? As described before, how clearly one’s level of success
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(or failure) can be quantified should also depend on the degree of
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specificity of set goals (Locke & Latham, 2002). Even in hindsight,
attainment of the goal of “having only one drink” is easier to evaluate
than attainment of the goal of “not drinking much.”
Alternatively, standards of comparison might be provided by the
performance of other people (Festinger, 1954; Taylor et al., 1996;
Zimmerman, 2002), especially if no personal goals for the situation
had been set. Thinking that, for example, other party guests got
drunk as well or that other exercisers in one’s gym class did not try to
be more persistent than oneself either, might make oneself feel better
in hindsight, whereas feeling like everyone acted in a very self-
controlled manner might cause dissatisfaction with one’s own
behavior. Such social comparisons have, in fact, been shown to
play a powerful role in motivating people to push or coast in the
pursuit of their own goals (Diel et al., 2021).
The evaluation of short-term success during a self-control conflict
may also take into account the consequences of the outcome of the
self-control conflict for the long-term goal. If the conflict was
resolved very successfully, the person may conclude that they
have gotten closer to their long-term goal. If their success has
even exceeded expectations, the person may feel that they can
now reduce their effort and coast regarding the respective goal or
pay more attention to the advancement of other important goals
(“balancing”; Carver, 2003; Fishbach & Dhar, 2005). If the outcome
of the self-control conflict has been bad, however, the person may
come to the conclusion that more effort has to be invested into the
long-term goal and that compensatory measures (e.g., more exer-
cise) have to be taken. Such evaluations might also cause people to
make changes regarding a long-term goal, for example, lead to
changes in level of ambition or even to goal disengagement
(Brandstätter & Schüler, 2013; Carver, 2003). We will elaborate
on other possible inferences in more detail later. Let us first turn to
another crucial basis for such inferences, that is, causal attributions.
Attributions and Inferences for Future Self-Control
Conflicts. After the self-control conflict, people may also try to
identify the causes for them being more or less successful during the
conflict. In principle, various types of attributions are possible and
they may also come with different emotional reactions and infer-
ences with effects on future behavior.
In the context of various types of outcomes, including learning
outcomes, research has distinguished between attributions to ability,
effort/engagement, task difficulty, or luck/lack of luck (e.g.,
Schuster et al., 1989). These attributions can be characterized
according to whether they identify the cause of a given outcome
as internal, that is, as located within the person (e.g., one’s capacity
for self-control) versus as external, that is, as located outside of the
1275
person (e.g., to having been seduced or supported by others), as
controllable (e.g., one’s own effort) versus uncontrollable (e.g., the
difficulty of a task), as temporally stable (e.g., a lack of trait self-
control) versus variable (e.g., a lack of effort; Weiner et al., 1971),
and as global, that is, as caused by factors present in a wide range of
situations (e.g., one’s trait self-control) versus specific to the current
situation (e.g., a specific strength or weakness; Abramson et al.,
1978; Mikulincer, 1986). Some of these attributions may be more
problematic than others: Attributing failure to an internal, stable,
uncontrollable, and global cause would probably be the most prob-
lematic attribution, given that it could affect a person’s self-concept
(or their metacognitive knowledge about their own self-control) more
permanently and lead to the inference that their self-control efforts
will generally be futile (Abramson et al., 1978; Hong et al., 1999;
Sweeney et al., 1986). This could damage a person’s motivation and
lower their levels of ambition or lead them to disengage from certain
long-term goals (e.g., weight loss) altogether.
Other attributions of failure seem more adaptive: Seeing the
causes of failure as more specific and controllable, in a lack of
effort or the use of an ineffective strategy, could have the person
draw the inference that more effort or a different strategy is
necessary to succeed and motivate the person to be more engaged
or try out a different strategy in future similar situations (see Dweck
& Leggett, 1988; Zimmerman, 2002). Seeing failure as caused by a
specific and external cause (e.g., a person who always pressures
other people into drinking too much alcohol at certain parties or the
smell of pastry at a favorite bakery) might lead the person to update
their conditional metacognitive knowledge about self-control and to
the inference that similar situations should be avoided in the future.
Specific attributions to an internal cause, like inferences about one’s
own strength or weaknesses, appear also less problematic, given that
they should not damage expectancies for all types of self-control
conflicts across the board but might also lead to the inference that
certain situations should be avoided in the future. Finally, even
internal and global attributions to a personal lack of self-control
might not be problematic in the long-term, if people believe that
their personality is malleable rather than fixed and become moti-
vated to work on improving their self-control (Chiu et al., 1997;
Dweck, 2008).
Inferences may also differ depending on whether people think
about what their handling of the self-control conflict says about their
own progress regarding the long-term goal or about their goal
commitment (Fishbach & Dhar, 2005). Having done well can either
indicate that one has made good progress and lead to a reduction of
effort or it can indicate that one is highly committed to the goal and
lead to an increase of effort. Vice versa, not having done well can
either indicate that one has made little progress and lead to an
increase of effort or it can indicate that one is not very committed to
the goal and lead to a decrease of effort. Which inferences are made
might, for example, be affected by pre-existent commitment cer-
tainty (Fishbach et al., 2009). Similar inferences—that little progress
results from little commitment and that large effort results from a lot
of commitment to the goal—may also result from needs for effort
justification or dissonance reduction and have long-lasting effects on
future motivation (Aronson & Mills, 1959; Festinger, 1957)
Finally, emotional reactions to the self-control conflicts should
also vary based on different types of attributions (Weiner, 2010;
Weiner et al., 1971). Both shame and pride, in the event of failure or
success, respectively, occur when individuals attribute the outcome
 1276 HENNECKE AND BÜRGLER
of the self-control conflict to an internal cause. If, however, in-
dividuals feel that something external, for example, another person
has hindered or helped their self-regulatory efforts, they may
respond with different emotions, for example, anger or gratitude,
respectively (Ortony et al., 1988).
Discussion
Mutual Relations Between Individual Differences in
Metacognition and Metacognitive Processes
As already proposed at various points in the description of the
framework, there should be many mutual pathways between the more
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stable, trait-like aspects of metacognition, namely, metacognitive
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
knowledge and self-awareness, and the metacognitive processes,
during, and after a self-control conflict. We want to briefly highlight
a couple of these pathways here:
By definition of the trait-state-correspondence (Fleeson, 2001;
Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015), individuals who score high on the
trait of self-awareness should also be more likely to self-monitor
during self-control conflicts and to reflect on and evaluate their
actions afterward. Generally, our framework describes metacogni-
tive processes as if they would commonly occur during self-control
but it is, in fact, more likely that the extent to which people engage in
these processes is highly variable between and within persons and
that their levels of self-awareness could account for inter individual
differences.
In addition, individual differences in metacognitive knowledge
should also affect metacognitive processes in various ways (Sperling
et al., 2004). Baker (1989) went as far as to state that, in self-regulated
learning, metacognitive knowledge is a prerequisite for metacogni-
tive regulation. We take a weaker position but would nevertheless
assume that metacognitive knowledge about self-control also affects
metacognitive regulation for self-control on various pathways: For
example, metacognitive knowledge should help people to anticipate
future self-control conflicts. Knowing under which circumstances
one will feel tempted is likely a very important precondition for
the prevention of self-control conflicts through strategies of situation
selection or modification (Duckworth et al., 2016; Kotabe &
Hofmann, 2015). In addition, what a person thinks to know about
their own self-control, upcoming self-control conflicts, and their
conditions, could, for example, have effects on the planned allocation
of resources or plans to use specific strategies for self-control
conflicts that cannot be avoided (Livingston, 2003; Nelson &
Narens, 1990). Additionally, a person should be more successful
if they set goals based on the knowledge of their own strengths and
weaknesses with regard to that self-control conflict. For example, it
has been shown that people benefit from setting goals that are
demanding, but not too hard to accomplish (Locke & Latham,
1990, 2013). Setting goals in that “sweet spot” requires a certain
knowledge of one’s abilities, but also one’s shortcomings.
Metacognitive knowledge could have an influence maybe not on
the intensity but on the accuracy of both monitoring and evaluation,
as people with higher levels of metacognitive knowledge have also
been shown to more accurately monitor their performance on a
reading task (Schraw, 1994). Knowledge of one’s own strengths and
weaknesses could provide useful reference points for monitoring
that are based on actual experience. Likewise, it was found in self-
regulated learning, that metacognitive knowledge about a certain
task was associated with higher levels of evaluation, as task
knowledge provided a standard against which participants could
evaluate their performance (Hogan, 1999).
Whereas individual differences in self-awareness should affect the
intensity by which people engage in metacognition for self-control,
their metacognitive knowledge should affect how well-informed they
engage in these processes. Both should matter for self-control
success. But the association between individual differences and
metacognitive regulatory processes is likely not a one-way-street
and metacognitive processes should feed back into metacognitive
knowledge and metacognitive awareness. First, individuals who have
benefitted from monitoring could become inclined to monitor them-
selves more frequently and across more situations, thereby increasing
their trait-level of self-awareness. In addition, there should be various
pathways from metacognitive regulation to metacognitive knowl-
edge. Most importantly, self-monitoring should be an important
precondition for gaining and updating self-related knowledge
(Higgins, 1996; Schoeneman, 1981; Schoeneman et al., 1984),
including metacognitive knowledge about self-control. The same
applies to evaluation and especially the inferences that follow from
attributions for self-control success and failure: They could lead to
the revision of knowledge about self-control “tasks” as being more or
less difficult than expected, situational factors as being more or less
important or harm- or helpful for self-control than expected, strate-
gies as being more or less successful than expected, or their own
strength and weaknesses as being different than expected (see De
Jager et al., 2005, for similar arguments in the literature on self-
regulated learning).
Other Individual Differences and Metacognition in
Self-Control
It is likely that metacognition in self-control is also related to other
individual differences which we have not integrated into our
framework, given that they are not themselves metacognitive con-
structs. We would nevertheless predict that the extent to which
people deploy metacognition during self-control, given its presumed
importance for self-control, should be correlated with a person’s
global self-control ability (Tangney et al., 2004, see also Grund &
Carstens, 2019). Moreover, as a recent study has shown, metacog-
nition is correlated with the trait of conscientiousness (Bürgler et al.,
2022), one of the “Big Five” traits which entails self-control as a
facet along with other aspects like people’s tendencies to be planful,
to think ahead, be prepared, and aspire to excellence (Roberts et al.,
2014). Conscientiousness is a highly important trait which predicts
people’s academic success, life satisfaction, occupational perfor-
mance, and wealth (Duckworth et al., 2012; Ivcevic & Brackett,
2014; Wilmot & Ones, 2019). The clear overlap and empirical
correlation between conscientiousness and metacognition in self-
control suggests that metacognition could be one of the processes
through which conscientiousness “gets outside the skin” (among
others, including the use of effortful strategies, cognitive function-
ing, persistence, and self-regulatory restraint, Corker et al., 2012;
Hill et al., 2011; Wilmot & Ones, 2019). Therefore, correlations of
conscientiousness and metacognition could indicate that metacog-
nition is another way through which people with higher levels of
conscientiousness achieve more positive life outcomes.
There is furthermore evidence suggesting that metacognition is,
at least to some degree, domain-general given that assessments of
 METACOGNITION AND SELF-CONTROL
metacognition in different domains including language, memory,
and perception show substantial overlap (Mazancieux et al., 2020)
and that metacognition in different domains partially depends on the
same neural structures (Geurten et al., 2018; see also, e.g., de
Gardelle & Mamassian, 2014; Mazancieux et al., 2020; McCurdy
et al., 2013; Schraw et al., 1995; Shimamura, 2000). This implies
that metacognition in self-control could also be related to metacog-
nition in other tasks and domains. As, however, self-control conflicts
are probably more affectively charged than the cognitive problems
in these other domains, there might nevertheless be aspects of
metacognition that are unique to the domain of self-control.
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Limitations of the Framework
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The present framework has relevant limitations that require con-
sideration. Most importantly, it should be understood as a heuristic
framework that probably oversimplifies matters, especially in its
assumption of linearly progressing and clearly separable phases and
processes. Even though we posit that distinguishing the phases
before, during and after a self-control conflict and the point of
transition at which a self-control conflict is identified may be useful
for organizational purposes and for integration of previous work, we
do not mean to imply that all phases of our framework have to occur
for any given self-control conflict and that individuals progress
through the different phases in a linear way. People may, of course,
encounter self-control conflicts without having used conflict-related
metacognition before the conflict. Aside from simple “negligence,”
this is likely the case whenever a self-control conflict emerges
surprisingly. A person may also engage in preconflict metacognition
without actually experiencing the conflict later. This might be the
case if an anticipated conflict never materializes either for external
reasons (e.g., the birthday party where one did not want to get too
drunk got cancelled) or because the person, due to preconflict
metacognition, effectively managed to avoid the conflict (e.g.,
through situation selection, e.g., by cancelling their visit to the
birthday party). In addition, postconflict metacognition occurs
only when a conflict was experienced but even then does not
have to occur. People may, of course, solve or fail at self-control
conflicts without devoting much attention to evaluating and reflecting
on their experience or performance later. Even within the phases of
our framework, no single process is necessary for a person to
experience and go through a self-control conflict. We posit, however,
that engaging in these processes of metacognition before, during, and
after a self-control conflict should increase a person’s chance of
success.
In addition, the proposed framework and our elaboration of it
contains many theoretical ideas for which empirical evidence is still
lacking or only indirect, often taken from the literature on self-
regulated learning. We therefore propose, in the next section, some
ideas on how our framework can inform future research on meta-
cognition and self-control.
How the Framework Can Inform Future Research
and Intervention Design
As we have hopefully illustrated, metacognition should be an
important contributor to self-control, yet, we have relatively little
actual knowledge about the underlying processes. Some studies
1277
have looked at isolated pieces of self-knowledge or theories about
self-control, for example, at the effects of willpower theories (Job
et al., 2010), people’s knowledge about the benefits of a high-level
construal (MacGregor et al., 2017), or their metacognitive knowl-
edge about self-regulatory strategies (Bürgler et al., 2021). In
addition, some research has attested to the importance of metacog-
nitive regulation for self-control, for example, research showing that
making plans on how to deal with upcoming self-control conflicts is
helpful (Kroese et al., 2011; Van Koningsbruggen et al., 2011), that
implementing self-control strategies to avoid or deal with self-
control conflicts is helpful (Duckworth et al., 2016; Ent et al.,
2015), and that monitoring oneself during a self-control conflict
(Bürgler et al., 2021) is helpful for self-control. Another study
showed that metacognition, measured at the trait-level, predicted
self-regulatory success (Bürgler et al., 2022). We believe that our
framework should be helpful for organizing these and other findings
that, sometimes without explicitly acknowledging it, already looked
at various metacognitive influences on self-control. Integrating them
as components of our framework might furthermore help to generate
predictions about their role in a larger compound of metacognitive
components relevant for self-control. Possible research questions
pertaining to mutual pathways between these components and the
components and self-control are manifold. Let us just highlight two
illustrative examples.
One line of research zooming into the nuts and bolts of the
framework could look at one aspect of metacognitive knowledge,
namely, people’s self-knowledge about their own capacity for self-
control and their specific strengths and weaknesses. For example, one
could investigate the role of self-awareness and monitoring for the
acquisition of such self-knowledge, the effects of causal attributions
and adaptive inferences on the updating of such self-knowledge, or
the effects of such self-knowledge on the extent to which individuals
correctly anticipate self-control conflicts, prevent them, or plan the
use of strategies. For example, are people who are not well-calibrated
and overestimate their actual self-control “in the heat of the moment”
less likely to take precautionary measures and use preventive strate-
gies to avoid or attenuate self-control conflicts? Are they less
successful in turn? And are people who underestimate their self-
control or correctly identify it as relatively low more inclined to avoid
critical situations or to plan for unavoidable self-control conflicts?
Are they more successful in turn? Generally, devoting more attention
to the role of individual metacognitive knowledge about self-control
could advance our knowledge about the factors under which self-
control succeeds and fails (Scholer et al., 2018).
On a more abstract level, the relation between metacognition and
trait self-control would also be interesting to study: On the one hand,
metacognition might be an aspect of self-control and controlling for
it statistically could reduce the effects of trait self-control on self-
control performance. On the other hand, the relationship between
metacognition and self-control capacity could be compensatory. It
could be that people who are “naturally” bad at self-control might
benefit even more from metacognitive knowledge and regulation.
Such a compensatory relationship has been observed for metacog-
nition in the context of self-regulated learning and intellectual
aptitude (Swanson, 1990).
While these questions are basic in nature, they also inspire
thinking about possible applications. No matter whether metacog-
nition can compensate for a lack of self-control or increase people’s
 1278 HENNECKE AND BÜRGLER
self-control as a component of it, thinking about interventions based
on metacognition could be fruitful for helping people get better at
attaining their goals. How could such interventions focusing on
metacognition look like?
In self-regulated learning, interventions aimed at increasing
metacognitive knowledge or metacognitive regulation have shown
promising results (see Dignath & Büttner, 2008, for a meta-analy-
sis). In our own, nonexhaustive literature research, we found a wide
variety of different interventions showing that training in metacog-
nitive knowledge, planning, monitoring, and evaluation (most
interventions focused on multiple aspects of metacognition), had
positive effects on various school-related performance outcomes
such as critical thinking (Gholami et al., 2016), reading (Amzil,
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2014; Chan, 1996), writing (Briesmaster & Etchegaray, 2017), and
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
performance in math or physics (Hohn & Frey, 2002; Mevarech &
Kramarski, 2003; Montague et al., 2014; Tzohar-Rozen &
Kramarski, 2014; Verschaffel et al., 1999). One aspect that those
interventions have in common is that they are very time-consuming,
often spanning multiple-training sessions embedded into the school
curriculum, over weeks, sometimes months. Trainings of that nature
could be very hard to implement outside of a school context.
Therefore, we want to highlight possible approaches to interventions
that are much less time-consuming and still provided encouraging
results in other fields of research.
Interventions could aim at communicating general knowledge
about self-control, for example, by correcting the widely held but
presumably wrong belief that self-control is a limited and depletable
resource (Job et al., 2010). It also appears useful to aim at expanding
people’s “toolbox” of self-regulatory strategies (Fujita et al., 2020).
In self-regulated learning, cognitive strategy instruction is already a
common instructional approach. It is aimed at enabling students to
become more strategic, flexible, and successful in their learning
endeavors (Livingston, 2003; Scheid, 1993). The idea is that there
are concrete cognitive strategies that can be taught to students and in
fact, the approach has proven successful (Borkowski et al., 1987;
Garner, 1990). For example, a larger strategy repertoire does not
only lead to better performance in self-regulated learning (Pressley
et al., 1987; Pressley & Harris, 2006; Schraw & Gutierrez, 2015)
but also to more adaptive emotion regulation (Lam & McBride-
Chang, 2007; Pearlin & Schooler, 1978), and, most relevant to our
argument, to higher levels of success when dealing with daily self-
control conflicts (Bürgler et al., 2021). To supplement this declara-
tive strategy knowledge with conditional knowledge, interventions
could be individualized and, after careful observation, provide
participants with feedback about the strategies that seem to work
best for them and about the circumstances under which they work
for them. Generally, self-tracking technology could be a helpful tool
for people to prompt self-awareness and produce knowledge about
the conditions of individual’s self-control success and failure
(Bergroth, 2019). More generally, daily diaries and smartphone
apps that have been used to foster people’s self-monitoring of their
long-term goal progress could be adapted to point people’s attention
to the circumstances and their handling of self-control conflicts
(Aittasalo et al., 2006; Burke et al., 2011; Butryn et al., 2007;
Gleeson-Kreig, 2006; Goodman et al., 2013; Patel et al., 2019;
Turner-McGrievy et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2018). With regular use,
people could, over time, become true experts with regard to their
own self-control.
To be effective, teaching metacognitive knowledge about self-
control should be accompanied by also promoting metacognitive
regulation. As proposed in our framework, only if people anticipate
and plan for potential self-control conflicts, identify them, monitor
and adapt their behavior, and learn from success and failure through
reflection, the application of metacognitive knowledge can be
successful (see Livingston, 2003, for similar arguments about
teaching study learning strategies to students). For interventions
aimed at planning, there is a rich field of research on implementation
intentions that possible interventions could be based on (see e.g.,
Gollwitzer, 1999; Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997; Gollwitzer &
Schaal, 1998). For metacognition in self-control, implementation
intentions could, for example, specify the use of certain strategies.
More generally, implementation intentions could also be used to
prompt people to monitor and evaluate their own resolution efforts
of self-control conflicts to learn for future situations.
Regarding interventions targeted at evaluation and reflection,
exam wrappers are a possible approach (see e.g., Edlund, 2020;
Gezer-Templeton et al., 2017; Schendel, 2020; Soicher & Gurung,
2017; Stephenson et al., 2017). In self-regulated learning, students
are given exam wrappers, which are small handouts or “flyers,” after
an exam. Those exam wrappers contain a few questions that should
prompt metacognitive evaluation and reflection of their learning
efforts regarding that exam. Such questions include “Approximately
how much time did you spend preparing for this exam?” and “…
name at least three things that you plan to do differently in preparing
for the next exam.” (Edlund, 2020, p. 160). Transferred to self-
control, individuals could be asked to make causal attributions about
self-control conflicts they experienced in the recent past and draw
adaptive inferences for similar future conflicts. Such “self-control
wrappers” could, in addition, contain prompts to promote adaptive
inferences, for example, by asking people to identify controllable
causes for self-control failure (e.g., lack of effort or an ineffective
strategy) and to set goals and make plans for better dealing with
similar self-control conflicts in the future. Of course, the distribution
of “self-control wrappers” like these could be aided with technology
as well, for example, through mobile apps and daily diaries delivered
online.
Conclusion
Self-control can be difficult but appears to be the key to attaining
various important life outcomes, from achievement in school and at
work to fulfilling social relationships and good health (de Ridder
et al., 2012; Hofmann et al., 2014; Moffitt et al., 2011; Tangney
et al., 2004). However, the factors and processes that promote good
self-control are still not well-understood. Here, we have proposed a
framework that emphasizes the role of metacognition for self-control
and explains how individual characteristics in metacognitive knowl-
edge about self-control and self-awareness as well as metacognitive
processes should promote good self-control. We hope that it serves
(a) to illustrate that metacognition, including both individual differ-
ences in metacognition as well as metacognitive processes before,
during, and after a self-control conflict should affect self-control
through multiple pathways, (b) to not only integrate previous research
but also (c) to organize these effects and pathways in a comprehen-
sive but parsimonious way, as well as serve (d) to stimulate and
inform the generation of new predictions for basic and intervention
research about the role of metacognition for self-control.
 METACOGNITION AND SELF-CONTROL
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Received September 28, 2021
Revision received October 11, 2022
Accepted October 11, 2022 ▪