The Impact Of Physical Exercise On College Students’self-Control Ability

Self-control is the ability to attain deliberate control over impulses and abstain from gratifying immediate needs and desires. The aim is to enable people to engage in goal-directed behavior to bring about long-term desirable outcomes. Self-control ability is important for both personality and society. Self-control is more important for college students who will become the mainstay of future society. Since self-control is so important, then can it be improved through some approaches?The strength model of self-control suggested that it may be possible to increase people’s self-control ability. Self-control performance may be improved by insisting any tasks that require self-control. Prior researches have provided some evidence that practicing small acts of self-control leads to a general increase in self-control ability. These training programs include insisting monitoring and improving posture, regulating mood, forcing them to study, financial monitoring and so on. The results showed that the capacity of self-control didn’t improve significantly, but the endurance of self-control improved significantly. However, Muraven (2010) found the different result: the whole capacity of self-control can be improved too. As we all know, insisting on physical exercise consumes self-control ability. What’s more, physical exercise is very important for the development of sensory, memory and thinking. Then can insisting on physical exercise improve the capacity of self-control?The present study chose college students as the participants. Firstly, the entire study proved the positive correlation relationship between physical exercise amount and self-control ability. Besides, the study proved self-control can be improved by insisting a month-long physical exercise, through pretest-posttest design. This study includes three parts:Study1The correlation research. Take colleges’exercise level rating scale to measure physical exercise, and take BIS as indicator of self-control, then calculating the correlation of their scores. The result is:Subjects’impulsiveness has significant negative correlation with physical exercise level. What’s more, the difference of BIS scores between female and male college students was significant; the physical exercise level of male college students is higher than that of female.Study2Between-subjects design (high-frequency exercise group, low-frequency exercise group). Take pain endurance and Stroop test as indicator of self-control to compare two group’s self-control ability. The result is:In pain endurance task, high-frequency exercise group endurance longer than low-frequency exercise group. The accuracy of Stroop task in the high-frequency exercise group is higher than the low-frequency exercise group.Study3Pre-post test design. Experimental and control groups adhere to a task about a month, the subjects were measured before and after the task with BIS, Stroop test, pain patience. Finally, we compare two groups of self-control differences in levels of (post-test minus pre-test). Experimental group adheres to the medium-intensity running a month (which is able to exercise self-control); the control group adheres to write diary one month (which is not able to exercise self-control but subjects think it is able to). The result is:In pain endurance task, there were no significant differences across groups, or between sessions, but the interaction between session and condition was not significant. What’s more, the improvement of experimental group’s pain endurance is significant higher than the control group’s. In Stroop task, there were no significant differences across groups between sessions; likewise, the interaction was not significant.Main research results are as follows:(1) The more college students do physical exercise, the higher their self-control ability is.(2) Self-control can be improved by insisting a month of running exercise.The findings of the present study have theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, the findings are consistent with the predictions made by self-control strength mode that practicing self-control should build self-control ability. In practice, the idea that self-control ability can be improved though physical exercise is of vast practical importance for college students.