Thinking won’t help you resist temptation

Yahoo:

Temptation comes in many guises — for a dieter, it’s a sweet treat; for an alcoholic, a drink; for a married man, an attractive woman.

How to defeat the impulse to gratify desire and stick to your long-term goals of slimness, sobriety, or fidelity? Don’t stop and think. Thinking may not help.

That is the surprising conclusion of a new study conducted by Loran Nordgren and Eileen Chou at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, the journal Psychological Science reported.

Nordgren and Chou wanted to make sense of two contradictory bodies of literature.

‘One shows that the presence of temptation contorts cognition (thinking) in ways that promotes impulsive behaviour,’ says Nordgren, according to a statement from the school.

‘Another shows that temptation engages protective (thought) processes that promote self-control. You show a dieter a piece of cake, and an early thought is ‘I’m dieting’—and ‘no thanks’,’ he adds.

Both stories leave out a crucial factor, he states.

Read the whole story: Yahoo