Self-regulation

You enjoy good food, but you also want to stay fit. You want to quit smoking and you know why it would be good for you, yet actually stopping turns out to be harder than expected. You plan to study on time and aim for high grades, but exam preparation often starts later than intended. You know you should save part of your income for the future, but more immediate expenses tend to take priority. You care about sustainability, yet that coffee-to-go in a plastic cup during your morning commute is hard to resist. And although you intend to check social media only briefly, you often find yourself scrolling much longer than planned. All of these familiar situations are examples of challenges in self-regulation and self-control.

The entire course will be taught in English. This also includes assignments and exams.

The goal of this course is to familiarize students with fundamental issues in the area of self- regulation. Topics include basic self-regulatory processes such as goal setting and goal striving, self-control, and self-knowledge. In addition, facilitating and disruptive factors that influence self-regulatory processes, such as motivation, emotion (regulation), habits and automatic influences will be explored. Beyond understanding why self-regulation sometimes fails, the course also focuses on strategies for improving self-regulation. Throughout the course, theory is connected to real-world challenges in four key domains: health, education, finance, and sustainability. These themes provide concrete contexts in which self-regulation plays a crucial role and help translate psychological insights into practical applications.

The course is part of the minor Well-being by design: Behavioral Foundations and Public Policy. Within this minor, the four themes recur across concepts and are examined from different perspectives (micro, meso, macro, or an integrated). This course takes a psychological perspective, focusing on the micro-level of individual behavior.

The course consists of lectures (knowledge) and tutorials with assignments (knowledge and skills).

After succeeding this course students should be able to:

• Describe and explain the basic self-regulation theories and the accompanying key concepts.
• Apply these theories in order to explain behavior.
• Describe factors that either stimulate or disrupt self-regulation.
• Apply self-regulation measures in practice by doing a study, and write and present about the outcomes.

These goals will be assessed in assignments paired to the tutorials and lectures. The assignments will be testing students' knowledge and understanding of the literature and lectures, and their writing and presentation skills in relation to the topic of self-regulation.

Basic psychological knowledge at first year bachelor level is convenient but not compulsory.

• Items There is not a handbook coupled to this course. We will work with articles that are each year different. See Brightspace.