Research suggested that poverty reduces our ability to pursue long-term goals, but it was unclear how this effect occurs. Does poverty make temptations greater, and self-control failures more frequent? Or do agents respond to poverty’s harsher conditions by abandoning their longterm aspirations, choosing shorter-term goals instead? To our knowledge there had been no direct test of these two possible mechanistic explanations. Using a method that allowed us to take ‘psychological snapshots’ of everyday experiences, we mapped out the influence of context on people’s decision-making process, to better understand the mechanisms of self-control in contexts of poverty.

Our study included the most diverse population yet in self-control studies: people from high and low SES backgrounds in urban Colombia. It provided new insights into how the virtue of self-control manifests in poverty contexts, and identified which strategies, skills, and support conditions are most effective for fostering flourishing in the midst of scarcity and hardship.

This was a 2½-year project that ran from December 2022 to 2025, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. During that time the project’s activities included:

An experience sampling study of self-control in diverse populations in Colombia.

A research seminar where leading experts in the field guided teams of Latin American researchers in developing robust research projects on character virtues, the most promising of which were given seed funding. We built research capacity in Latin America by developing a research workflow to use experience sampling methods to study diverse populations in the region; training researchers in the region to use cutting-edge tools to study the virtues; and mentoring them to design and fund their own research.

The project aimed to have impact beyond academia by providing insights into how to foster flourishing in contexts of scarcity.

The Team

• Project leader:
  Juan Pablo Bermúdez (Southampton & Externado)

• Project co-leader:
  Chandra Sripada (Michigan)

• Lead scientific analyst:
  William Jiménez-Leal (Andes)

• Scientific advisors:
  • Santiago Amaya (Rice)
  • Michael Inzlicht (Toronto)
  • Jennifer Morton (Penn)
• Visiting Researcher:
  • Jonathan Hall
• Research assistants (Externado):
  • Gino Carmona
  • María Alejandra Grisales
  • Nicolás Gil Simancas
  • Juana Ospitia Hernández
  • Isabella González Viatela

We hosted the Self-Control in Context Summer School (Jul.31–Aug.4, 2023), designed to foster the community of young researchers in self-control and related topics across North and South America. It was a wonderful experience and a huge contribution to the project—thank you to everyone involved!!! You can find a news article about it (in Spanish) here.