Intelligence means greater capacity to use self-regulatory resources rather than greater self-regulatory capacity per se

This is the distinction put forward by Shamosh et al. (2007) in a recent article in cognition and emotion. The authors surprisingly found that those higher in fluid intelligence used more self-regulatory resources on an emotional suppression task. This is somewhat surprising as theoretically fluid intelligence and self-regulatory ability should both rely on executive functioning. However, the authors propose that better performance on Raven's progressive matrices, a good indicator of fluid intelligence, relates only to the ability to utilise self-regulatory resources rather than ones overall level of resources in general.

The authors relate their findings back to a study by Baumeister and colleagues from earlier in the year which found that self-regulatory delpletion has physiological correlates in terms of glucose levels. Specifically, the propose that those higher on fluid intelligence recruit a greater number of neural susbstrates during self-regulation and they also use less efficient processes. An alternative explanation which the authors do not discuss directly is the possibility that those high in fluid intelligence are more responsive to sad scences from films and need to use more self-regulatory resources to suppress their emotional response to the scene (In this case a clip from 'Terms of Endearment' which I haven't seen but has been described as "a manipulative, soap-operatic melodramatic tearjerker").

In general I am finding it hard to make sense of this finding. Theories around thought and emotional suppression would all claim that a higher level of self-regulatory resources should be associated with an improved ability to suppress and better post suppression performance. One would think that being higher in fluid intelligence, which typically means better working memory and the ability to sustain and shift attention, would mean a better a higher capacity for self-regulation. However, the finding discussed may be a way of explaining another counterintuitive finding that those high in conscientiousness are likely to be lower in fluid intelligence and vice versa. Perhaps, fluid intelligence thus has its benefits and disadvantages, mainly being able to burn up your self-regulatory resources over a short-time period but then being unable to do anything else for the rest of the day! I can think of a few people who work in this manner so this may be the reason..


The relation between fluid intelligence and
self-regulatory depletion