Defecatory urge increases cognitive control and intertemporal patience in healthy volunteers.

BACKGROUND: Past research has demonstrated that moderate urge to urinate improves inhibitory control, specifically among participants with higher behavioral inhibition sensitivity (BIS). The effect was absent when the urge exceeded intolerable level. The present research examines whether rectal distension-induced urge to defecate has similar effects. METHODS: The moderate and high defecatory urge were induced by rectal distension in healthy volunteers (n = 35), while they completed Stroop task and monetary delay discounting task. The difference of average reaction time between incongruent and congruent trials in the Stroop task (Stroop interference) and the preference for larger-later rewards in the delay discounting task were the primary outcomes. KEY RESULTS: Participants with high BIS (n = 17) showed greater ability to inhibit their automatic response tendencies, as indexed by their Stroop interference, under moderate urge relative to no urge (128 ± 41 ms vs 202 ± 37 ms, t64  = 2.07; P = 0.021, Cohen's d: 0.44), but not relative to high urge (154 ± 45 ms, t64  = 1.20; P = 0.12, Cohen's d: 0.30). High BIS participants also showed a higher preference for larger-later reward in the delay discounting task under high (odds ratio = 1.51 [1.02-2.25], P = 0.039) relative to no urge, but not relative to moderate urge (odds ratio = 1.02 [0.73-1.42], P = 0.91). In contrast, rectal distension did not influence performance on either of the tasks in participants with low BIS (n = 18). CONCLUSIONS AND INFERENCE: These findings may be interpreted as a "spill-over" effect of inhibition of the urge to defecate to volitional cognitive control among healthy participants with high BIS.

The propagation of self-control: Self-control in one domain simultaneously improves self-control in other domains.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 144(3) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (see record 2015-24174-008). The affiliations for co-authors Kuangjie Zhang and Steven Sweldens were incorrect. All versions of this article have been corrected.] A rich tradition in self-control research has documented the negative consequences of exerting self-control in 1 task for self-control performance in subsequent tasks. However, there is a dearth of research examining what happens when people exert self-control in multiple domains simultaneously. The current research aims to fill this gap. We integrate predictions from the most prominent models of self-control with recent neuropsychological insights in the human inhibition system to generate the novel hypothesis that exerting effortful self-control in 1 task can simultaneously improve self-control in completely unrelated domains. An internal meta-analysis on all 18 studies we conducted shows that exerting self-control in 1 domain (i.e., controlling attention, food consumption, emotions, or thoughts) simultaneously improves self-control in a range of other domains, as demonstrated by, for example, reduced unhealthy food consumption, better Stroop task performance, and less impulsive decision making. A subset of 9 studies demonstrates the crucial nature of task timing-when the same tasks are executed sequentially, our results suggest the emergence of an ego depletion effect. We provide conservative estimates of the self-control facilitation (d = |0.22|) as well as the ego depletion effect size (d = |0.17|) free of data selection and publication biases. These results (a) shed new light on self-control theories, (b) confirm recent claims that previous estimates of the ego depletion effect size were inflated due to publication bias, and (c) provide a blueprint for how to handle the power issues and associated file drawer problems commonly encountered in multistudy research projects.

Inhibitory spillover: increased urination urgency facilitates impulse control in unrelated domains.

Visceral states are known to reduce the ability to exert self-control. In the current research, we investigated how self-control is affected by a visceral factor associated with inhibition rather than with approach: bladder control. We designed four studies to test the hypothesis that inhibitory signals are not domain-specific but can spill over to unrelated domains, resulting in increased impulse control in the behavioral domain. In Study 1, participants' urination urgency correlated with performance on color-naming but not word-meaning trials of a Stroop task. In Studies 2 and 3, we found that higher levels of bladder pressure resulted in an increased ability to resist impulsive choices in monetary decision making. We found that inhibitory spillover effects are moderated by sensitivity of the Behavioral Inhibition System (Study 3) and can be induced by exogenous cues (Study 4). Implications for inhibition and impulse-control theories are discussed.