I was recently reading a blog here, that referenced a paper done in 1999 by Baba Shiv and Alex Fedorikhin (Heart and Mind in Conflict: The Interplay of Affect and Cognition in Consumer Decision Making). In it, volunteers are asked to memorise short or long numbers and then asked to chose a snack as a reward. The snack is either fruit or cake. The actual paper seems to go into a lot of details that are irrelevent to the blog post, but doesn't actually seem to contradict anything the blog post says. The result seems to be that those with a higher cognitive load were far more likely to chose the cake than those who weren't.
I was wondering if anyone has read any further on this line of research? The actual experiment seems to imply that the connection between cognitive load and willpower may be an acute effect - possibly not lasting very long. The choice of snack is made seconds after memorising a number and while actively trying to keep the number in memory for short term recall a few minutes later. There doesn't seem to be anything about the effect on willpower minutes or hours later.
Does anyone know if the effect lasts longer than a few seconds? If so, I would be interested in whether this affect has been incorporated into any dieting strategies.
Anecdotally, I am better at sticking to brain-dead simple diet changes (when buying bread, pick the wholemeal rye, not the white wheat) than when people just tell me "well calculate your micros and macros", yeah, how about not having to break down every single family recipe and build them up again, no thanks.
It is not that I dislike thinking... I just dislike thinking about unpleasant things. I would rather do unpleasant things in brain turned off autopilot mode.
This is why boxing is also working better for me as an exercise than going to a gym to lift weights. The algorythm for boxing is 1. show up 2. turn off brain and do what the trainer says. The algorythm for gym stuff is 1. show up 2. is my form right and am I warmed up enough and how much did i lift the last time and and and and... no thanks.
So as far as I am concerned, the answer is yes.
The more unpleasant a task is, the lower-IQ mode I am operating in. Ask me to wipe someone's smelly butt and I will probably ask for special-ed level instructions because I will dedicate about four brain cells to the task and the rest will be fantasizing about something pleasant.
The question is, is everyone like that or it is unusual?