Whither Inhibition?. Werner, K. M., Inzlicht, M., & Ford, B. Q. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 31(4):333-339, 2022.
doi  abstract   bibtex   
Inhibition is considered a process essential to goal pursuit and as a result has become a central construct in many disciplines in psychology and adjacent fields. Despite a century’s worth of debate, however, there is little consensus about what inhibition actually is. We suggest that it is time to abandon the concept of inhibition as it currently stands, given that its definition has been problematic. Instead, we propose an alternative framework in which inhibition is the target outcome, rather than a process to obtain a goal. We leverage existing process models to elucidate how people can achieve an inhibition goal by actively regulating impulses and desires. Although the field has been led astray by classifying inhibition as a process, our framework is intended to provide greater practical utility to the study of goal pursuit moving forward.
@Article{Werner2022,
  author   = {Kaitlyn M. Werner and Michael Inzlicht and Brett Q. Ford},
  journal  = {Current Directions in Psychological Science},
  title    = {Whither Inhibition?},
  year     = {2022},
  number   = {4},
  pages    = {333-339},
  volume   = {31},
  abstract = {Inhibition is considered a process essential to goal pursuit and as a result has become a central construct in many disciplines in psychology and adjacent fields. Despite a century’s worth of debate, however, there is little consensus about what inhibition actually is. We suggest that it is time to abandon the concept of inhibition as it currently stands, given that its definition has been problematic. Instead, we propose an alternative framework in which inhibition is the target outcome, rather than a process to obtain a goal. We leverage existing process models to elucidate how people can achieve an inhibition goal by actively regulating impulses and desires. Although the field has been led astray by classifying inhibition as a process, our framework is intended to provide greater practical utility to the study of goal pursuit moving forward.},
  comment  = {Problems with inhibition: (a) Different subfields disagree on how to define inhibition, which has led to a proliferation of different operationalizations; (b) many areas have seemingly lowered the threshold for what counts as inhibition, diluting its meaning as a construct; and (c) the term “inhibition” has been overextended to concepts that can be more parsimoniously explained by other con- structs. 

other analyses suggest that the so-called inhibition factor is indistinguishable from a factor that taps the gen- eral speed of processing (Jewsbury et al., 2016) or even a factor that is common to all executive-function tasks (Friedman & Miyake, 2004).},
  doi      = {10.1177/09637214221095848},
  file     = {:/Users/endress/Articles/Whither Inhibition.pdf:PDF},
}

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