How the Illusion of Self-Restraint Promotes Impulsive Behavior

Four studies examined how impulse-control beliefs—beliefs regarding one’s ability to regulate visceral impulses, such as hunger, drug craving, and sexual arousal—influence the self-control process. The findings provide evidence for a restraint bias: a tendency for people to overestimate their capacity for impulse control. This biased perception of restraint had important consequences for people’s self-control strategies. Inflated impulse-control beliefs led people to overexpose themselves to temptation, thereby promoting impulsive behavior. In Study 4, for example, the impulse-control beliefs of recovering smokers predicted their exposure to situations in which they would be tempted to smoke. Recovering smokers with more inflated impulse-control beliefs exposed themselves to more temptation, which led to higher rates of relapse 4 months later. The restraint bias offers unique insight into how erroneous beliefs about self-restraint promote impulsive behavior. Most forms of temptation are rooted in visceral impulses. Visceral impulses, such as hunger, pain, fatigue, and sexual arousal, are highly adaptive mechanisms that provide information about the state of the body and motivate behavior toward satisfying bodily needs. Unfortunately, impulses often come into conflict with, and can ultimately undermine, long-term goals (Loewenstein, 1996). Just consider how readily a hunger pang can corrupt the most committed dieter, or how the ‘‘heat of the moment’’ can lead to infidelity. Precisely because of the transformative power of impulsive states, it is vital to understand how they compromise resistance to temptation. Consider these common dilemmas. Can recovering alcoholics ever return to the people and places that once nurtured their addiction without fear of relapse? Can dieters visit their favorite buffet without bingeing? Can people committed to their marriage have drinks with past flings without fear of being unfaithful? The answers to questions like these, it would seem, hinge largely on one’s beliefs about the human capacity for impulse control. If people are slaves to impulse, then recovering addicts should avoid exposure to temptation. But if people effectively govern their impulses, then a recovering alcoholic is allowed the occasional drink. The importance of impulse-control beliefs can be seen in the story of Odysseus and the sirens’ song. Odysseus believed he could not overcome the allure of the sirens’ song, so he took drastic measures to avoid it altogether—he put wax in his shipmates’ ears and had himself tied down to his ship’s mast. Had Odysseus been more confident he could overcome the sirens’ temptation, he likely would have taken less extreme precautions. This article examines how people think about impulse control—whether impulsive states are perceived to be easy or difficult to overcome—and examines the implications of these beliefs for the self-control process. We argue that people generally, unlike Odysseus, exhibit a restraint bias: a tendency to overestimate one’s capacity for impulse control. The restraint bias matters because it leads people to overexpose themselves to temptation, thereby promoting impulsive behavior. As a starting point for this prediction, we turn to research on the empathy-gap effect: the finding that people often have difficulty appreciating the power of impulsive states. THE EMPATHY-GAP EFFECT Numerous studies have found that people tend to exhibit what Loewenstein (1996) termed a ‘‘cold-to-hot empathy gap’’: the tendency for people in a cold state (i.e., not experiencing hunger, anger, sexual arousal, and so on) to underestimate the influence a hot, impulsive state will have on their preferences and behavior. Loewenstein argued that the underestimation of visceral impulse is due to constrained memory for visceral experience. That is, although people can recall the circumstances that led to Address correspondence to Loran F. Nordgren, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2001 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, IL 60208, e-mail: [email protected]. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Volume 20—Number 12 1523 Copyright r 2009 Association for Psychological Science an impulsive state (e.g., ‘‘I was hungry because I hadn’t eaten all day’’) and can recall the relative strength of an impulsive state (e.g., ‘‘that was the hungriest I have ever been’’), they cannot bring forth the sensation of the impulsive state. Empathy-gap effects have been found across a variety of impulsive states, including sexual arousal (Ariely & Loewenstein, 2006), hunger (Nordgren, van der Pligt, & van Harreveld, 2007), fear (Van Boven, Loewenstein, & Dunning, 2005), and drug craving (Sayette, Loewenstein, Griffin, & Black, 2008). For example, in one experiment, Nordgren, van der Pligt, and van Harreveld (2006) used a painful ice water manipulation to hinder participants’ performance on a memory test. Later, they asked participants to indicate how the pain and various other factors had affected their performance. Crucially, some participants were again exposed to the painful ice water while they made their attributions, whereas others made their attributions pain free. Nordgren et al. found that participants who made their attributions in a cold state (i.e., pain free) underestimated the influence pain had had on their performance. Only participants who made their attributions while experiencing pain accurately assessed its influence. Drawing on empathy-gap research, we argue that the inability to appreciate the motivational force of impulse leads people to overestimate their capacity to control temptation (i.e., leads people to exhibit a restraint bias). Specifically, we predict that when people are in a cold, nonimpulsive state, they will overestimate their impulse-control capacity, whereas when they are in a hot, impulsive state, they will have a more realistic view of their capacity for impulse control. Moreover, we expect that differences in impulse-control beliefs will influence the extent to which people expose themselves to temptation. We argue that people who perceive themselves to have a greater capacity for impulse control will expose themselves to more temptation and will ultimately exhibit more impulsive behavior than people who perceive themselves to have less impulse control. Note that people are usually in a cold, nonimpulsive state. If confirmed, these predictions would imply that people generally exhibit a restraint bias and, consequently, routinely ignore caution by exposing themselves to temptation.