Self-Regulation and the Executive Function: The Self as Controlling Agent

Importance of Self-Regulation: To appreciate the importance of self-regulation, it is necessary to consider both practical and theoretical implications. The practical ones were anticipated in the opening paragraph of this chapter, but they can be stated more systematically as follows: Most of the social and personal problems that afflict people in modern western society have some element of self-regulatory failure at their root. This is not to say that better self regulation would alone solve all society's problems — but it would probably go a long way toward that end.