Inhibition – Importance

“…inhibition is a requirement for self-regulation because one cannot direct actions or behavior toward one’s self if one is automatically responding impulsively to an immediate event.”¹

Persons who displayed low self-control during childhood reported a range of difficulties at age 32. These included worse physical health, greater depression, higher likelihood of drug dependence, lower socioeconomic status, lower income, greater likelihood of single-parenthood, worse financial planning, more financial struggles, and most important for a criminological audience, more criminal convictions.²

Inhibition is the key cognitive process of self-control,³ which is the key to success in every³ phase of life.

Education

Unsurprisingly, students with better inhibitory control do better than those without it.³ This is particularly true in math and reading,^4,5 where the inability to inhibit internal and external distractions and regulate attention can cause students to struggle with assignments that are otherwise well within their ability.

Socialization

Inhibition is also required for healthy social interactions at every age. Being able to inhibit irrelevant or counter-productive thoughts, words, and actions is an important part of building and maintaining friendships.⁶

Romantic relationships in particular can suffer when one or more partners has dysfunctional inhibitory control, with such people reporting more difficulties and less satisfaction within their marriages.⁷

Employment & Finances

People with dysfunctional inhibitory control also have difficulties with maintaining steady employment, whether due to the impairments interfering with the job duties, leading to being fired or let go, or from impulsive job quitting/switching.⁸

Unfortunately the unstable employment only adds to the financial difficulties that also come with poor inhibition. For example, research has shown that individuals with ADHD (primarily a disorder of poor inhibitory control) “incur more auto loans, have more difficulty paying bills, and open fewer savings accounts than their peers.”⁹ Poor inhibitory control has also been found in those who gamble 5 or more times a year.¹⁰

Criminality

There is substantial “empirical support linking self- control to conduct problems and crime,”² However, while reduced self-control is a risk factor for criminality, most people with poor self-control will not become criminals.

…pathological criminal offenders are theorized to develop from interactions between life-course-persistent offenders’ global neuropsychological deficits and adverse environments in which they are raised**. Neuropsychological deficits create a suite of deficits for these offenders, but central among them is low self-control—a behavioral tendency that paves the road from temperamental difficultness, to conduct problems, to delinquency, to crime, and ultimately to criminal justice system penalties. ²

Health

Lower self-control has been linked to poor health, increased depression, self-injury, suicide attempts, substance abuse, and obesity.^2,9,11 Risky sexual behavior is also more common.⁸

Memory

As noted above, impaired inhibition effects more than just what can be witnessed from the outside. Inhibition is an important cognitive process that is also involved in invisible processes such as memory and thought. People with impaired inhibitory control are “more likely to retrieve irrelevant information while attempting to retrieve relevant information.”¹² And for those who “may be less able to inhibit prepotent or Traumatic memories, those memories may be more likely to become intrusive,” contributing to conditions such as PTSD.¹²

Positives

Despite the negatives that come with lower inhibitory control and subsequent increased risk taking, there are positives as well.

It is also important to remember, however, that not all forms of risk-taking are necessarily deviant or antisocial. In fact, mainstream society endorses and admires those who take risks in areas such as sports, exploration, or acts of bravery.¹³

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