SCSB Colloquium with Dr. Yuko Munakata: Changing Perspectives on Self Control
Building 46, 43 VASSAR ST, Cambridge, MA
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…