**UCSB Methods: Differences in physical explanations for self-control failure** Previous research has shown that giving physical explanations for criminal behavior mitigates punishment; judges (Aspinwall et al., 2012) and lay-people (Cheung & Heine, 2015) assert less blame to people and impose more lenient sentences for violent behavior when the actions are given an explanation as originating from physical explanations. The claim is that behaviors (usually murder) explained by genetic or neural forces are mitigated because they are considered more automatic (e.g. Monterosso et al., 2005). We build on this literature in two ways. First, we use instances of self-control failure leading to violence instead of violence itself. Instead of an act like stabbing someone to death being given a physical explanation (Kim et al., 2015), we give physical explanations to self-control that then, through failure, leads to violent behavior. Second, we show that not all physical explanations are equal, and the physical-ness of the explanation is not the key ingredient for mitigation but is instead whether it places somebody into a different category of something ‘being wrong with them’.