A wide range of measures have been used to assess self-control including executive function tasks, delay of gratification tasks, and persistence and willpower tasks. The current study sought to examine the convergent and predictive validity of these measures, provide theoretical backing for why we might or might not expect high correlations between different indicators of the construct, and question whether such measures are assessing construct-level variance. The results largely replicated prior research, with the majority of correlations being small in magnitude and non-significant. Possible interpretations include indicators assessing distinct and unrelated subdomains of self-control, the inappropriate use of measures that maximize within person variance, indicators being plagued by large sources of error variance, or some combination of these.

已经使用了广泛的措施来评估自我控制，包括执行功能任务，满足任务的延迟以及持续性和意志力任务。当前的研究试图检验这些措施的收敛性和预测有效性，为为什么我们可能会或可能不会预期结构的不同指标之间的高度相关性提供理论依据，并质疑这些措施是否正在评估结构水平的差异。结果很大程度上重复了先前的研究，大多数相关程度很小且不显着。可能的解释包括评估自我控制的不同且不相关的子域的指标，不恰当地使用在人际差异内最大化的度量，受大量误差方差困扰的指标或这些指标的组合。