Self-Control in Animals and People

Self-Control in Animals and People takes an interdisciplinary look at what self-control is, how it works, and whether humans are alone as a species in their ability to demonstrate self-control. The book outlines historical and recent empirical approaches to understanding when self-control succeeds and fails, and which species may share with humans the ability to anticipate better future outcomes. It also provides readers with in-depth explorations of whether various species can delay gratification, the ways in which people and animals exhibit other forms of self-control, what influences the capacity and expression of self-control, and much more. In addition to its comprehensive coverage of self-control research, the book also describes self-control assessment tests that can be used with young children, adults, and a wide variety of nonhuman species, with the goal of making fair and clear comparisons among the groups. This combination makes Self-Control in Animals and People a valuable resource for cognitive, developmental, and clinical psychologists, philosophers, academic students and researchers in psychology and the social sciences, and animal behaviorists.

Michael Beran is an associate professor of psychology at Georgia State University. He is a cognitive psychologist with 21 years of experience working with nonhuman primates, young children, human adults, and other species such as birds, bears, and elephants. His research on self-control and future-oriented cognition has been supported by grants from the NIH and NSF. He is the editor or co-editor of eight major journals in the fields of comparative and cognitive science, and has published more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles (and more than 250 total publications) on aspects of human and animal cognition, including dozens of papers on self-control.

1. What is Self-Control and What is it Good For?2. Self-Control and Other Forms of Inhibitory Control3. Human Intertemporal Choices: Choosing Between Now and Later4. Intertemporal Choices by Nonhuman Animals5. Children's Delay of Gratification: How Long Would You Wait for Marshmallows?6. The Reverse-Reward Task: Why Pointing Away from What You Want is so Difficult for Animals7. Would Animals Pass a Version of the Marshmallow Test?8. Other Tests of Self-Control and Delay of Gratification in Animals9. How Do We Know Whether We Are Measuring Self-Control? Methodological Concerns Lead to a New Test10. Is Self-Control Like a Muscle? 11. Do Animals Flex Their Own Self-Control "Muscle"?12. Are Animal Tests of Self-Control All Measuring the Same Thing?13. Self-Control and Social Settings14. Mental Time Travel: What Is It, and How Does It Relate to Self-Control?15. Worth Waiting For: Final Thoughts on Self-Control and the Future of Future-Oriented Research with People and Animals