SCSB Colloquium with Dr. Yuko Munakata: Changing Perspectives on Self Control

Date: Wednesday, September 9, 2026
Location: 46-3002 (Singleton Auditorium)
Time: 4:00pm-5:00pm ET, followed by reception

 

Speaker: Yuko Munakata, Ph.D.
Affiliation: Professor, University of California, Davis

 

Host: Dr. Rebecca Saxe

 

Talk title: Changing Perspectives on Self Control

 

Abstract: Everyone has impulses they must control. But people vary dramatically in the self control they exhibit over thoughts and actions, and these variations from within the first few years of life predict important outcomes in health, wealth, education, and relationships. Why? According to dominant accounts, self control is vital for success in life, and executive functions that support such control show stable individual differences: If you have high executive function capacity as a child, you will have high executive function capacity as an adult, and this stability explains why early behaviors predict later outcomes. However, recent research from my lab and others challenges this view. People can possess the executive function capacity needed for self control, but adaptively decide whether or not to engage it based on whether the effort is likely to pay off. (Is a promised future reward worth resisting an immediate temptation for? Do people around me value self control? Is there an easier option?) These experiences accumulate to create habits that influence the effort required for engaging executive function, which shapes future decisions about whether to engage it. This framework provides an alternative understanding of why people vary in their self control, why these individual differences predict life outcomes, and how to identify effective targets for support and intervention.