3 / 2016-02-18 23:03:09

Sense-making and existential fulfilment mediate the effect of action orientation on willpower

Self-regulation, Willpower, Sense-making, Existential fulfilment, Action Orientation

Sense-making has been theorized as one of the central mechanisms of self-control and will-power. It is required to convert any goal-driven intention to act into an effective goal-directed action. Our earlier study provided initial evidence of this intermediary role of sense-making, mediating the relationship between action-state orientation and self-control traits representing dispositional effectiveness of goal-striving. The current study sought to replicate this mediation effect and to examine the role of another potential mediator – existential fulfillment. 172 university students volunteered to complete Kuhl's (1996) Action-State Orientation (ASO) Scale, Langle & Orgler’s Existenzscale (LOE; Krivcova, 2009), Life-Meaning Orientation Test (LMOT; Leontiev, 2000) as a proxy measure of sense-making (SM) capacity, and self-ratings of self-control traits, such as “persistence", “decisiveness” or “self-discipline” that produced an aggregated measure of will-power (WP). The results showed that the significant relationship between ASO and WP was partially mediated by sense-making, thus replicating the earlier finding. The same relationship was also partially mediated by LOE’s measure existential fulfillment, thus extending the conceptual replication. The implications of these findings for educational and clinical interventions are discussed, along with the future steps in discovering – and exploiting – the mechanisms of human self-control.