Restraint Bias

Vladimir_Nesov

Ed Yong over at Not Exactly Rocket Science has an article on a study demonstrating "restraint bias" (reference), which seems like an important thing to be aware of in fighting akrasia:

People who think they are more restrained are more likely to succumb to temptation

In a series of four experiments, Loran Nordgren from Northwestern University showed that people suffer from a "restraint bias", where they overestimate their ability to control their own impulses. Those who fall prey to this fallacy most strongly are more likely to dive into tempting situations. Smokers, for example, who are trying to quit, are more likely to put themselves in situations if they think they're invulnerable to temptation. As a result, they're more likely to relapse.

Thus, not only do people overestimate their abilities to carry out non-immediate plans (far-mode thinking, like in planning fallacy), but also the more confident ones turn out to be least able. This might have something to do with how public commitment may be counterproductive: once you've effectively signaled your intentions, the pressure to actually implement them fades away. Once you believe yourself to have asserted self-image of a person with good self-control, maintaining the actual self-control loses priority.

See also: Akrasia, Planning fallacy, Near/far thinking.

Ed Yong over at Not Exactly Rocket Science has an article on a study demonstrating "restraint bias" (reference), which seems like an important thing to be aware of in fighting akrasia:

People who think they are more restrained are more likely to succumb to temptation

In a series of four experiments, Loran Nordgren from Northwestern University showed that people suffer from a "restraint bias", where they overestimate their ability to control their own impulses. Those who fall prey to this fallacy most strongly are more likely to dive into tempting situations. Smokers, for example, who are trying to quit, are more likely to put themselves in situations if they think they're invulnerable to temptation. As a result, they're more likely to relapse.

See also: Akrasia, Planning fallacy, Near/far thinking.

This confirms that, like the case of the icy bucket, students overestimate their ability to fight off tiredness unless they're actually experiencing it, and this affects how they plan their studying.

What amazes me in all these studies is that they show how little we learn from our own experience. A lot of people always study in the last days prior to an exam. The problem is, they repeat this same behaviour year after year. Our decisions are much more affected by our momentary feelings than by data, including our past experience.

EDIT:

People often lack the discipline to adhere to a superior strategy that doesn't "feel" right. Reasoning in a way that sometimes "feels" wrong takes discipline.

-- Michael Bishop, Epistemology and the psychology of human judgement

A lot of people always study in the last days prior to an exam.

I was one of them. It worked for me, and I don't see why I should have done it differently.

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