2007 Presidential Address: Fear of Losing Control: Power,Perfectionism,and the Psychology of Women

STANDARDS

Much has been written about the myriad standards that our culture sets, and individual women internalize, for how women should look and behave. The standards women internalize are often unrealistic and should in fact be considered ideals (i.e., a level of perfection that exists only in the imagination) rather than standards (i.e., a level of quality or excellence that is accepted as the norm). Ideals, by definition, can only be approached by a minority of those who strive to meet them. If too many people get too close to an ideal, it will have to change in order to maintain its extraordinary nature (Saltzberg & Chrisler, 1995). It used to be understood that an ideal was to be admired, but excellence was the target for which we strived. We tried to achieve our personal best. Now, however, the culture encourages us to make the ideal the target standard, and no amount of self-control is going to get most of us there.

Beauty ideals are a good example of this. The value of these ideals depends upon their being special and unusual, and this is the reason why they change over time. When beauty ideals change, women's bodies are expected to change as well (Saltzberg & Chrisler, 1995). The ideal is unnatural and extremely difficult (or impossible) to achieve; therefore failure and disappointment are inevitable (Freedman, 1988). For example, in the United States the ideal body weight for women has been going down in recent decades, even as the average body weight of women has been going up. The current beauty ideal requires women to be tall and very thin, with slim hips and small waists, but big breasts; to be toned with some, but not too much, muscular definition; to have tan but not dark, wrinkle-free skin; and to have European facial features (e.g., round eyes, thin noses) (Smith, 2004). I am not sure whether the current ideal is for straight or curly hair (it changes every few years), but whatever it is guarantees that a large number of women are spending a large amount of time trying to control their hair and complaining about bad hair or bad hair days. Many women are excluded from any possibility of approaching the beauty ideal because of their genetics; others, who think they are in range and can afford the necessary time, energy, and money, try to approach the ideal with the help of diet, exercise, cosmetics, and surgical procedures known as body sculpting. Even the fashion models who are held up to the rest of us as embodying the ideal do not really match it. Computer imaging techniques remove their flaws, trim their physique, and otherwise alter their bodies to achieve perfection, and, of course, they are only photographed from their best angles in the best possible lighting. Fashion models spend a great deal of time working on their bodies, but self-regulation alone does not bring them up to standard; it takes the skills of the surgeon, photographer, and other professionals to do that. Constant cultural demands that women pursue beauty have been described by feminist theorists as oppressive (e.g., Dworkin, 1974), misogynistic (Jeffreys, 2005), and a way to control women and uphold the status quo (e.g., Dworkin, 1974; Smith, 2004; Wolf, 1990). One might ask whether it is the women who work at self-regulation in order to approach beauty ideals, or the ones who do not, who are out of control.

Cultural constructions of ideal bodies assume a kind of timelessness, in which changes do not occur. Thus, for example, a true beauty should age gracefully so that she does not look her age. The double standard remains strong, and women are much more likely than men to spend time trying to conceal signs of aging. Since the change from primarily agrarian to primarily industrial economies, Westerners have had a fascination with machines, and anthropologist Emily Martin (1988) has suggested that our admiration for the “well-oiled machine” is responsible for the common belief that we can and should exercise self-control in order to feel and behave the same way every day. American culture encourages people to believe that they have more control over their lives and their bodies than is actually possible (Brownell, 1991; McDaniel, 1988; Ussher, 2004), and our cultural preference for control, order, and stability has led to the tendency to see characteristics such as changeableness, rhythmicity, and emotionality as inherently unhealthy (Koeske, 1983). However, if we set sameness (or stagnation) as our standard, no amount of self-regulation can achieve it, for our bodies (perhaps especially women's bodies) have more in common with nature's seasonality than with industry's mechanization. Women's bodies cycle, they leak, they flash, they swell, they give birth, they “overflow the proper distinctions between self and other” (Shildrick & Price, 1999, p. 3). The facts of reproduction, that we can menstruate, incubate, procreate, and lactate, suggest “a potentially dangerous volatility that marks the female body as out of control” (Shildrick & Price, 1999, p. 3).

Women's bodies are seen as out of control because we are compared to the wrong standards (Zita, 1988); it is change, not constancy, that should be seen as normal, and it is women's bodies, not men's or girls’ bodies, to which we should make comparisons. Yet many women do hold themselves to the wrong standards, as they try to control or conceal evidence of their reproductive processes. (Continuous oral contraceptives to suppress menstruation and hormone replacement therapy for menopause are among the products that have been sold as helpful aids in these efforts.) Jane Ussher (2006) wrote that

However, no amount of self-regulation will hold back time or make our bodies feel, operate, and behave the same way every day, and feminist researchers have documented women's shame and fear of losing control if others discover that they are menstruating (e.g., Kissling, 2006; Stubbs & Costos, 2004), lactating (Moore, 2007), aging, or menopausal (Dillaway, 2005). There is even a recent report (Martin, 2003) about women who feared losing control during labor and birthing, despite explicit cultural permission to let go; the women tried hard to be nice despite their pain and anxiety, and they apologized repeatedly for any crankiness they displayed or demands they made.

Another set of ideals that many women perceive as standards derive from the motherhood mystique (Hoffnung, 1989), a set of popular beliefs that motherhood is natural, easy, and always enjoyable and that optimal child development requires a mother's full-time dedication. These beliefs hinder communication about the difficulties and stresses of motherhood, and they contribute to the unrealistic expectations that many pregnant women have about parenting (Chrisler & Johnston-Robledo, 2000). For example, Genevie and Margolies (1987) interviewed pregnant women and found that their fantasies about motherhood were extremely idealistic. Many of the participants believed that motherhood would be easy for them and that they would be more patient with their children than other mothers are. The women who strongly held these romantic notions later reported more negative feelings about motherhood than did the more realistic women. In an interview study of postpartum women, Mercer (1986) found that most first-time mothers were either unsure of what motherhood would be like or expected motherhood to be fun, exciting, or easy. Few women in her study had realistic expectations about parenting that included both the positive and negative aspects. Furthermore, many pregnant women who are married or in committed heterosexual relationships have high expectations for an egalitarian division of parenting chores and household labor (Ruble, Fleming, Hackel, & Stangor, 1988), expectations that are likely to be violated; researchers (e.g., Perkins & DeMeis, 1996; Sanchez & Thomson, 1997) often find that after parenthood couples assume a more traditional division of labor.

Popular culture promotes the motherhood mystique through its consistent portrayals of happy, calm, and competent mothers (Chrisler & Johnston-Robledo, 2002). For example, a content analysis (Molina, Johnston-Robledo, & Babler, 2000) of illustrations of mothers in Parenting magazine showed that the images do not reflect the stressful nature of parenting. Stories about difficult situations were typically accompanied by blurry photos or drawings in which the mother's face was turned away from the viewer, thereby erasing her emotions. Visual portrayal of mothers’ negative affect was limited to cartoons, which trivialize the anger, stress, and frustration inherent in managing difficult children or situations by provoking laughter. The social and cultural silence about the stresses of motherhood supports the expectation that good women, and especially good mothers, are always soft-spoken, patient, receptive, nurturing, and kind. Any woman who is impatient, annoyed, loud, angry, turned inward, or otherwise unapproachable is thought to have something wrong with her (Chrisler & Johnston-Robledo, 2002). To violate the conspiracy of silence or the motherhood mystique is to risk being labeled a bad mother, one of the worst things one can say about a woman. Therefore, many struggle to control their impulses to express negative emotions.

The superwoman image portrayed so often in popular culture suggests that a woman should be able to handle any number of roles competently and graciously without disappointing anyone else. (Do you remember the TV commercial in which a woman sings that she “can bring home the bacon, cook it up in a pan, and never let [her husband] forget that he's a man”?) Research generally shows that women who have multiple roles report greater happiness, self-esteem, and job satisfaction than do those with fewer roles (Baruch, Barnett, & Rivers, 1983; Miller, Moen, & Dempster-McClain, 1991; Pietromonaco, Manis, & Frohart-Lane, 1986). However, juggling the demands of multiple roles is not easy in societies such as the United States whose public policies do little to support employed mothers. Thus, complaints of role conflict and role overload are common even among women who enjoy both their employment and parenting roles. One way that women cope with the demands of multiple roles is by lowering their standards (e.g., a little dust never hurt anyone, cookies for the school party can be store-bought rather than homemade). Another way women cope is to ask for help from others. Superwomen, of course, do not use either of those methods; they do it all themselves. Studies (e.g., Crago, Yates, Fleischer, Segerstrom, & Gray, 1996; Thornton, Leo, & Alberg, 1991) have shown that high school girls and college women who admire the superwoman ideal also exhibit risk factors for eating disorders.

The superwoman is a perfectionist, which is defined by personality researchers as a person who “sets rigid, unrealistically high standards, and engages in ‘all-or-none’ thinking when evaluating his or her performance” (Campbell & DiPaula, 2002, p. 182). Anything less than perfection is considered a failure. Perfectionism in adolescent girls and young women is often seen as striving for perfect grades, perfect bodies, and perfect relationships with friends and family (Adderholdt & Goldberg, 1999). Later women extend their perfectionism to the workplace and beyond: “They can overbook and stretch themselves to their limits, trying to do everything at once and do it all well” (p. 69). Perfectionism has been associated with eating disorders (e.g., Forbush, Heatherton, & Keel, 2007) and excessive exercise (Shroff et al., 2006), as well as with stress, anger, anxiety, and depression (Antony & Swinson, 1998; Frost & DiBartolo, 2002; Hewitt & Flett, 1991, 1993).

Hewitt and Flett (1990) have described three types of perfectionists: self-oriented, other-oriented, and socially prescribed. Socially prescribed perfectionism is “the generalized belief or perception that others are imposing unrealistic demands on the self” (Flett & Hewitt, 2002, p. 11). Although both women and men can fit into any of these three types, the socially prescribed type fits best with the topics we have been considering. The culture does make unrealistic demands upon women, but women do not have to internalize those demands. Those who do internalize them are perhaps more likely than other women to fear losing control of circumstances that are really beyond their control. Research on socially prescribed perfectionists indicates that they report anxiety in response to situations that others do not find especially stressful (Frost & DiBartolo, 2002); they also tend to be “overcontrolled,” to self-handicap (Habke & Flynn, 2002), and to be particularly prone to shame (Tangney, 2002). Women with PMS also tend to have higher than average levels of trait anxiety (e.g., Giannini, Price, Loiselle, & Giannini, 1985), report a great deal of stress in their lives with which they do not cope particularly well (e.g., Gallant, Popiel, & Hoffman, 1994), adhere closely to the feminine gender role (e.g., Freeman, Sondheimer, & Rickels, 1987), and engage in self-handicapping (Bates & Beck, 1991; Mello-Goldner & Jackson, 1999). Anecdotal evidence suggests that women with PMS are also prone to shame.

It is commonly believed that women are responsible for the emotional tone of their relationships (Nolen-Hoeksema & Corte, 2004). Women are thought to be emotion experts and relationship experts, which can lead to the unrealistic expectation that women can control others’ emotional states and ensure successful relationships by their own efforts. Robyn Fivush has conducted a series of studies of how children learn about emotions. For example, Fivush and her colleagues (e.g., Adams, Kuebli, Boyle, & Fivush, 1995; Fivush, Brotman, Buckner, & Goodman, 2000) have documented that parents talk to their daughters more than to their sons about emotions. This gender gap begins in early childhood and grows wider as children grow older. In addition, parents talk more about sadness with daughters and more about anger with sons (Fivush, 1989). Furthermore, mother-daughter emotion talk tends to be focused on relationships (e.g., “Your friend made you feel sad”), whereas mother-son emotion talk tends to be focused on events (e.g., “That made you feel angry”; Cervantes & Callanan, 1998; Fivush, 1989). Researchers have also documented gender differences in other emotional expressions. For example, young girls and boys laugh and smile equally often, but by adolescence girls laugh and smile more than boys do. “Both laughter and smiling make other people feel comfortable, understood, and appreciated” (Kalat & Shiota, 2007, p. 184); these are also ways to express deference to higher-status others (Henley, 1977), so their associations with femininity are not surprising. It is interesting, however, that more attention has not been paid to the gendered socialization of emotion regulation (Thompson & Meyer, 2007).

Gender-role training in appropriate emotional expression results in what Stephanie Shields (2005) called “the politics of emotion in everyday life.” It also results in another set of standards against which women measure themselves. Is it realistic to expect anyone to maintain a constant “serene comportment” (Cosgrove & Riddle, 2003) to smile easily and often, never to experience (or, at least, never to express) irritation, frustration, or anger? Yet this describes the feminine ideal. Hochschild (1983) has written about “misfitting feelings,” which she defined as emotions that violate social norms. A man who cries at the movies, and an angry woman in almost any situation, are exhibiting misfitting feelings. Misfitting feelings can give rise to shame because they signal that we are not living up to our standards; we are “not being the type of person we believe ourselves to be”¹ (Shields, 2005, p. 8). Women with PMS frequently utilize dualistic discourse (Swann & Ussher, 1995) to explain their misfitting feelings: They speak of “me and not me,” “my PMS self and my real self.” If a woman can believe that she is a sort of Jekyll and Hyde, that the menstrual monster makes her lose control of her emotions, then she can also believe that she has not willingly violated the standards she holds for how a good woman should feel and behave (Chrisler & Caplan, 2002).

Before we leave the topic of standards, it is worth noting that self-control has long been linked to morality, perhaps because of its connection to the seven deadly sins (i.e., lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, anger, envy, pride), all of which concern emotions and appetites. Therefore, it is not surprising that people believe that they must meet their standards in order to gain approval from others (Anthony & Swinson, 1998). Although most men and women have experienced teasing and belittling for lapses in self-control, men have greater degrees of freedom than women do to eat too much, drink too much, be overtly sexual, lay around the house on their days off, and shout when they are angry. The standards for women are higher, and too many women take those unrealistic standards too seriously.

MONITORING

Anyone who has ever gone on a diet, tried to change a habit of any kind, or conducted psychotherapy with individuals who want to increase their self-control will understand just how difficult it can be to monitor one's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors closely enough to promote successful self-regulation. For example, the average person makes at least 200 food-related decisions every day (Wansink, 2006). That is a lot of decisions, and eating is only one of the many processes the average person wants to regulate. It is understandable that many of those decisions will be made without conscious awareness (about 90% of them, in the case of food; Wansink, 2006), as there is only so much room in anyone's conscious awareness at any given time. Both women and men make more decisions every day than they can comfortably think about, but there are some cognitive and behavioral tendencies among women that might make self-monitoring even more challenging for them than it is for men.

Women are consummate role jugglers and multitaskers. I can remember as a child seeing my mother standing over the ironing board in our kitchen, ironing, while talking on the phone, keeping an eye alternately on her favorite soap opera on the TV and on the pots on the stove, and listening for any disturbance from the other room where my younger siblings were playing. That was in the 1960s, a time when my mother did not work outside the home and a time when the pace of life was slower in general than it is today. Contemporary popular culture is replete with images of women busily doing several things at once, often while a man sits nearby doing only one thing (e.g., watching television).

There is anecdotal evidence that women are better at multitasking, and there are some data to indicate that women spend more time multitasking and feel more pressure than men do to multitask (Sanchez & Hall, 1999). However, the pace of life is such today that even those who are very good at doing and thinking about several things at once find themselves overwhelmed, and information overload is a major reason why. In a recent survey of working women in Great Britain (Hallowell, 2006), 59% said that the amount of e-mail, voice mail, and text messages they receive is distracting and makes it difficult to concentrate on other work long enough to do it well; 67% said that it was difficult for them to relax. In his book, Crazy Busy, Edward Hallowell (2006) asserted that longer workdays and demands that we be constantly reachable by our coworkers, family, and friends alike have given us more tasks and decisions to manage than our brains can handle and has resulted in a form of cultural attention deficit disorder. A crazy busy lifestyle might make control of oneself even more desirable, as so much else seems to be out of control, but it will make the kind of self-monitoring necessary for successful self-regulation nearly impossible. The busier we are, the more mindless our mundane decisions are likely to be.

Other aspects of feminine gender-role socialization could also contribute to women's difficulties with monitoring. For example, women are taught to place others’ needs above their own. To succeed in this regard, women must pay more attention to the needs of others than they do to their own, and the habit of doing so can cause them to lose touch with what they need. In the mid-1980s I conducted psychoeducational groups for people with chronic illnesses who needed to lose some weight for health reasons. The vast majority of my clients were women. Assignments that required them to keep track of their emotional states, or to make a list of their goals and desires, or to report on what they need were both difficult and revelatory for many of those who were focused on trying to meet the needs of partners, children, and employers. Women's greater tendency to ruminate (Nolen-Hoeksema & Jackson, 2001) about mistakes, embarrassing moments, and times when they didn't meet their own high standards can also interfere with monitoring. Rumination is distracting; it takes up space in conscious awareness that then cannot be used to notice other aspects of the self, including behavioral tendencies. Self-objectification is another process that can interfere with the kind of monitoring that is necessary for successful self-regulation. Self-objectification (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) is the tendency to adopt a third-person perspective, that is, to experience oneself from the outside in rather than from the inside out. Self-objectification can be seen as a form of “flight from the corporeal body” (Roberts & Waters, 2004, p. 10), and it can be triggered in the laboratory by providing evidence that women's bodies differ from the ideal standards discussed earlier (e.g., Fredrickson, Roberts, Noll, Quinn, & Twenge, 1998). Researchers have demonstrated that self-objectification is more common in women than in men; that it leads to feelings of shame, disgust, and anxiety; that it is a predictor of depression and eating disorders; and that it has cognitive costs—being in a state of self-objectification seems to make it more difficult for women to concentrate on tasks (Fredrickson et al., 1998; Roberts & Waters, 2004). Thus, self-objectification can alienate women from their own internal sensations, and it can distract women and interfere with their ability to be mindful. The women participants in my weight groups often had to learn to recognize when they are hungry, when they are full, when they are too tired or ill to keep working, and when they are a few straws away from the one that breaks the camel's back.

ABILITY AND STRENGTH

Gender-role stereotypes make it clear who is powerful and who is not. Women have traditionally been seen as weak and dependent, whereas men have traditionally been seen as strong, dominant, skilled, and worldly leaders who are not easily influenced (Kahn, 1984). Social psychologists (e.g., Fiske & Berdahl, 2007; Sherif, 1982) define power as the ability to influence others and to control resources, institutions, and outcomes. Three types of power have been described: power over (i.e., the ability to dominate others), power to (i.e., the empowerment of self and others to accomplish tasks), and power from (i.e., the ability to resist the demands of others) (Hollander & Offerman, 1990). Women have less of all three types of power in today's society, despite the social progress and changes in attitudes that that have resulted from the Women's Movement (Goodwin & Fiske, 2001).

Power derives from people's status and position in society, as well as from personal attributes, such as expertise and relational abilities (Fiske & Berdahl, 2007). Men have higher social status than women by virtue of their sex as well as their gender role, are more often found in high-level social and political positions, and typically control more resources with which to reward others. Women in leadership positions often find their expertise and legitimacy questioned by others, who are also less likely to believe women than they would men who threaten them with sanctions (Chrisler & Clapp, in press).

The successful wielding of power can be used to satisfy one's desires, and it contributes to self-esteem and self-confidence (Kipnis, 1976). Because the typical man has easier access to power than the typical woman does, he may be more likely to exercise influence directly, whereas she may be more likely to exercise it indirectly (Carli, 1999). Power exercised indirectly is often effective in the short term, but, if others do not realize that they have been influenced, they do not tend to see the influencer as powerful. If others do not treat women with the respect reserved for the powerful, then women are unlikely to have the confidence that they can regulate anything or anyone, including themselves.

Locus of control and self-efficacy are related to power and confidence and hence to the abilities and strength necessary to successful self-regulation. Locus of control refers to generalized expectancies about how the world works: Individuals are typically more likely to believe either that they can influence what happens to them (i.e., internal locus of control) or that they cannot exert such influence because what happens in life is due to luck, fate, or powerful others (i.e., external locus of control) (Rotter, 1966). Recent meta-analyses have shown no gender differences in locus of control (Feingold, 1994), but indicate that, over time, Americans are becoming more external and increasingly believe that their lives are influenced by forces outside their own control (Twenge, Zhang, & Im, 2004). External locus of control has been shown to be predictive of lower well-being and life satisfaction (Klonowicz, 2001; Moore, 2007), greater depression and anxiety (Hahn, 2000; Mirowsky & Ross, 1990; Morelli, Krotinger, & Moore, 1979), greater stress levels and poorer coping (Abouserie, 1994; Krause & Stryker, 1984), weaker self-control, lower ability to delay gratification (Mischel, Zeiss, & Zeiss, 1974), greater body dissatisfaction (Furnham & Greaves, 2006), and greater likelihood of reporting PMS² (O'Boyle, Severino, & Hurt, 1988).

Self-efficacy refers to the belief that one is capable of doing what one wants to do; this is a key factor in personal agency (Bandura, 1997). If people doubt that they have the ability and strength to regulate their own behavior, they are less likely to try, or to try very hard, to do so and less likely to persist after initial failures; they are more likely to engage in self-defeating thought patterns and to feel stressed and depressed by failure (Bandura, 1997). Gender-role socialization affects self-efficacy, and gender differences in this area emerge in adolescence. For example, boys are more likely than girls to report a strong general sense of self-efficacy, which may be related to the feminine modesty effect and the cultural permission for men and boys to brag about their talents and abilities (Lenney, 1977; Cialdini, Wosinska, Dabul, Whetstone-Dion, & Heszen, 1998; Heatherington et al., 1993). In addition, girls report concern about inefficacy in more areas of their lives than boys do; boys worry about academic failures, whereas girls worry about failures in academic, social, and self-management (e.g., regulation of their bodies) areas (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 1996). Furthermore, self-efficacy is believed to depend on a person's “impression of a well-functioning self” (Fischer, Greitemeyer, & Frey, 2007, p. 1308), and women under circumstances described above (perhaps especially those with eating disorders or those with premenstrual or menopausal complaints) may find it difficult to think of themselves as generally well-functioning.

Popular culture reinforces beliefs about what can be controlled and by whom, and these cultural images can have important effects on women's fears of losing control. For example, in a study (Nolen-Hoeksema & Jackson, 2001) of gender differences in amount and content of rumination, women were more likely than men to believe that they have little control over important events in their lives, that they are responsible for the success or failure of their interpersonal relationships, and that negative affect is very difficult to control. Women's greater experiences with violence, verbal abuse, low income, unhappy marriages, sexism and discrimination, and other stressors no doubt contribute to their belief that it is difficult to control events in their lives. Women who have had easier lives in which such stressful experiences have been minimal have seen many examples in popular culture of the bad things that can happen to women who exert too much influence and control (e.g., violence, loss of relationships). It is interesting to note that many women with PMS and women with eating disorders have been found to have a history of sexual assault and abuse (Fosse & Holen, 2006; Preti, Incani, Camboni, Petretto, & Masala, 2006; Taylor, Golding, Menard, & King, 2001).

Popular culture also tells women that they are more emotional than men and that women's emotions are more likely than men's to result from physiological/biochemical changes within their bodies. My collection of self-help books, cartoons about PMS, and other cultural artifacts clearly exhibits the belief that women go out of control at regular intervals, particularly in relation to expression of anger and to overeating. PMS cartoons often show women's anger becoming violent, which is something that does not happen often in real life, yet is frightening for many women to contemplate. Swept-away romantic fantasies lead to the belief that some of the best things in life (e.g., food, sex) are out of one's control and can only really be enjoyed when one completely suspends judgment. Romance novels and television commercials for sweet and salty foods tell women to let go, enjoy, and then later feel guilty and berate themselves. Does anyone remember the ice cream commercial where a woman has just eaten a whole quart in one sitting, and the announcer says, “If you don't feel guilty, it wasn't worth it”? How about the diet commercial where a woman struggles in vain to resist a wind tunnel that is sucking her into her refrigerator? Then there's the potato chip advertisements that say “Bet you can't eat just one.” Idiomatic expressions such as “blind with rage” and “so mad I couldn't see straight” contribute to beliefs that anger is difficult or impossible to control (Cox, Bruckner, & Stabb, 2003). Furthermore, in popular culture, and in life, men often control women by blaming women's anger on their hormones, thereby effectively silencing women, delegitimizing their complaints, and disempowering them (Cox et al., 2003; Shields, 2005).

Baumeister and his colleagues have theorized that self-regulatory strength, or willpower, is based on a supply of internal resources (such as energy and attention) that can become depleted after successive attempts at self-control. For example, a person who has had to control anxiety during a job interview or public performance may find it difficult later in the day to control impulses to eat sweets (Schmeichel & Baumeister, 2004). A series of studies (e.g., Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998; Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998) have demonstrated that these ego-depletion effects can impair regulation of eating, emotions, thoughts, and task persistence. These effects are apparently in addition to, rather than dependent upon, self-efficacy, as participants’ success or failure at initial regulation tasks was controlled in at least one study (Wallace & Baumeister, 2002). There is no reason to think that women have weaker self-regulatory strength than men do. However, given the greater number of areas in which women are attempting to exercise self-control, the higher standards to which women hold themselves, and the number of roles and tasks they juggle daily, it would not be surprising to find that women deplete their resources earlier in the day than men do or that they fear that they will soon deplete them and thus lose complete control over themselves.

CONCLUSION

Personal control has been of great interest to Western psychology³ for the past 50 years (Shapiro, Schwartz, & Astin, 1996). It is generally agreed to be something for which people strive, and many studies have now shown that it is important to physical and mental health (cf. Shapiro et al., 1996). For example, mentally healthy individuals not only have a greater sense of personal control than mentally unhealthy individuals do, but they often overestimate the amount of control they actually have over events in their lives and underestimate their vulnerabilities (Taylor & Brown, 1988; Weinstein, 1984). This illogical, or unrealistic, way of thinking is thought to be good for people, to protect them from anxiety and to encourage optimism; Shelley Taylor (1991) has dubbed it “positive illusions.”

Yet, as we have seen, it may be more difficult for women than for men (at least for relatively privileged men) to maintain positive illusions about the amount of self-control and self-efficacy and the extent of internal locus of control they have. I suspect that more women than men experience what Shapiro et al. (1996) have termed “control mismatches,” that is, a high desire for control but few opportunities for control, or plenty of opportunities for control but low perceived ability to exercise it. When I hear women say that they cannot resist the Siren call of cookies and ice cream or that they cannot help screaming at their children when they are premenstrual, I wonder if they are experiencing negative illusions or an illusory loss of control. Feminist scholars (e.g., Chrisler & Caplan, 2002; Cosgrove & Riddle, 2003; Laws, 1983) have suggested that one reason why women diagnose themselves with PMS is that it allows them to express unacceptable thoughts and emotions and to do, or refuse to do, things they otherwise would not. Blaming the unfeminine aspects of the self on PMS makes it possible for women to hold on to the self-definition of a good/proper woman who can usually uphold her standards (Laws, 1983; Ussher, 2004). Louise Lander (1988) has suggested that PMS is a metaphor for the common inability of women to control their life situations, and this is interesting to consider in light of Dalton's (1977) observation that women who live alone are less likely than women who live with men to suffer from PMS.

Consider the following quotation from a novel by Alexander McCall Smith (2005, p. 207) about the philosopher Isabel Dalhousie:

Sometimes we really want to do something that violates our standards: to eat chocolate, to express our anger or frustration, to have a lazy day. It can take a great effort of will to overcome years of gender-role socialization and the taunts of the conscience (“Only bad girls do that!”) in order to achieve that goal. How sad if we then negate our success with an inaccurate attribution that we did what we did because we had lost control of ourselves. Thus, fear of losing control, and worry that others will think we are out of control, can be a form of internalized oppression that serves to enforce gender roles and to keep women from developing authentic selves.

Research is needed at the intersection of gender and self-regulation. A good place to start is with qualitative studies of how women understand and use the concept of loss of control and to what extent they worry about it. The development of a measure of fear of loss of control, based on the qualitative data, could then be applied to determine the extent of the problem in different areas of women's lives. Data from such a measure might allow us to predict which women in which circumstances might need clinical interventions.

Psychotherapists whose clients express fears of losing control could use the three elements of self-regulation (i.e., standards, monitoring, strength/ability) to help women to examine their own circumstances. Are their standards unrealistic? Are they trying to control too many things at once without assistance? Perhaps they could slow down the pace of life somewhat (perhaps by dropping less meaningful activities in order to spend more time on what matters most) so that they can be more mindful. Women also should be helped to consider whether their attributions about themselves are accurate. Are they really out of control? Or are they doing what they want and need to do, but, perhaps because they fear the disapproval of others, it is more convenient to say “I couldn't stop myself”?

Finally, the work of the Women's Movement is not finished. Feminists must continue to work to obtain more social power for more women at home and abroad. Until women have the opportunity to exercise power and control over their circumstances, receive the respect from others that power brings, and internalize a view of themselves as powerful into their own self-concepts, they may continue to believe that they are in danger of completely losing control over themselves. Furthermore, we must reject, and encourage others to reject, sexist images in popular culture that show women as out of control and women's bodies and desires as shameful. Women are in need of alternative, positive, self-affirming images that can help to build their self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-efficacy. Feminist psychologists who teach, practice psychotherapy, consult with organizations, and/or work with the media in any capacity are in a position to contribute to the empowerment of women and to help women to lose their fear of loss of control. It is our responsibility to take up this important work.