Improving Self-Control Through Observational Learning – What Makes a Good Model?

Self-control is known to be an important benefit throughout life. However, not everyone can delay instant gratification in favor of a later, larger payoff. This study wants to help those people, with a special focus on the importance of the provided model. We, therefore, want to prove that people can improve their self-control through watching someone else exhibiting self-control, investigate the impact of differently presented models on their effectiveness, and test far transfer. The study will be conducted in the lab on previously selected female adults with low self-control. Those participants are divided into four groups and will see different videos of models exhibiting high self-control, which should lead to an improved self-control score. The concept of self-control will be operationalised in a delay discounting task and a persistence task will assess the far transfer.