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TOO MANY TEMPTATIONS
When was the last time you starting browsing the Web for “only a few minutes” but ended up spending more than an hour on your favorite websites? Have you ever visited an online store “just to look” but left with a lighter wallet? Have you looked at a deal on Amazon or Groupon and impulsively clicked the “buy now” button? If you said yes or even maybe to any of these questions, you’ve heard the call of temptation on the Internet. In addition to our hard-earned money, we spend much of our limited time on social media, games, blogs, videos, music, news, and online chat. Add it up and we can see that temptations for spending time and money are multiplying on the Internet. And these temptations will only increase in the future as the Internet offers ever more brands, retailers, entertainment, and media from around the world.
The Costs of Temptation
Temptations present us with a dilemma: Should we resist in the interest of long-term goals such as saving money for retirement, or should we indulge for the sake of immediate pleasure? Giving in to temptation is not always a bad thing. We sometimes find great deals online for spas, restaurants, and vacations – things that make life more fun at a price within our reach. We sometimes expand our horizons by stumbling across new music, movies, books, and points of view that we might never have considered otherwise. At other times, however, temptation has a cost. Online sales events can tempt us into buying things we neither need nor can afford. Buying a new handbag, smartphone, or watch might make us feel good momentarily, but the credit card bill later will bring us back to earth. The most depressing day of the year is said to be “blue Monday” – a Monday in the middle in the January – when the glow of Christmas has worn off, summer vacations are far away, and the credit card bills start arriving. The more we spend today, the more debt we incur, the less savings we have, and the less is our security in old age. Wasting time is also costly; the more time we spend online, the less time we have for our loved ones and the less productive we are at work.
Giving in to temptation not only has short-term costs – credit card bills and missed deadlines – but also long-term implications for success and happiness in life. Researchers at Stanford University examined this issue in a study conducted in the 1960s which has become famous as the “marshmallow experiment” (Mischel, Ebbesen, & Raskoff Zeiss, 1972). These researchers wanted to answer a simple question: Do children with more self-control enjoy greater success and happiness in adult life, compared to children with lower self-control? The researchers suspected that the answer was yes, because children who show higher self-control are likely to have desirable personality traits such as focus and perseverance that favor greater success in adult life as well.
So what might tempt a child? Obviously candies and snacks, which the researchers used as temptations in this study. The researchers went to a nursery school near San Francisco and secured permission to recruit children between the ages of four and six to take part in the study. The children were brought one by one into an empty room and seated at a table facing a bowl of their favorite treat. This was a bowl of marshmallows – hence the name of the experiment – but other treats such as Oreo cookies and pretzel sticks were also used in later studies. The children were told that the teacher would leave the room for 15 minutes, and while waiting for their teacher to come back, they could have one (and only one) marshmallow if they wanted. If, however, they waited for the teacher to come back without eating anything, they could have two marshmallows instead of one. The teacher then left the room and the children’s behavior was secretly recorded for the next 15 minutes.
What did the researchers find? Their first finding is not particularly surprising, especially for those of us who have children. Of the 600 or so children who participated in the experiment, more than 60 percent did not wait for 15 minutes to collect their two promised marshmallows, instead promptly eating one marshmallow in their teacher’s absence. The researchers then observed these two groups of children – those who ate one marshmallow without waiting, and those who waited for their two marshmallows – for the next 30 years. What they found was quite remarkable. The children who gave in to temptation during the experiment by eating a marshmallow as soon as the teacher left did worse than those who waited on many indicators of success, such as school grades, SAT scores, income, divorce rates, and physical health. On all of these outcomes, the conclusion was clear – the ability to resist temptation and postpone gratification at an early age, on a seemingly minor task, was related to many later successes in life.
Of course, there is an important caveat for studies like this which unfold over an extended period of time. It is possible that the two groups of children in the study – those who waited and those who did not – had different life experiences after the marshmallow task, and these life experiences could be driving the difference in outcomes between the groups. Even allowing for this caveat, it is worth noting that the results were consistent across virtually every measure in the study, suggesting that its basic finding is reliable – early self-control in the face of temptation is an indicator of later success in life.
Another danger is that temptations can sometimes mutate into addiction. An addiction is where a person engages in activity that is pleasurable at the present moment but harmful to other responsibilities in life such as work, relationships, or health. Three types of addictive behaviors are especially prevalent on the Internet: gaming, shopping, and pornography. Gaming has grown from simple Pac-Man-style arcade entertainment to complex online games such as World of Warcraft, featuring multiple levels, intricate plots, and multiplayer interaction. Addiction to online gaming seems to be greater among teenagers in South Korea, China, and the United States (Ferguson, 2010). Hardcore gamers are known to spend more than 18 hours a day playing online games, in a thriving gamer subculture with its own discussion boards, tournaments, and annual conventions. Online shopping is another form of addiction, and some have estimated that 5–8 percent of Americans compulsively buy things online (Trotzke, Starcke, Müller, & Brand, 2015). Pornography is yet another popular pastime on the Internet. Depending on the survey, between 25 percent and 40 percent of men – but far fewer women – say they watch online pornography on a regular basis, and more than half of all online search words are related to pornography (Griffiths, 2001). Even if a small percentage of those who watch online pornography are addicted, it would still constitute a significant number of Internet users.
We have seen that the Internet tempts us in many ways, and giving in to temptation has significant costs in the form of reduced chances of success in life, diminished happiness, and increased risk of addiction. But is the Internet uniquely tempting? Temptations have been with us forever, starting with the apple in the Garden of Eden and in modern times with books, movies, supermarkets, malls, television, video games, and now the Internet. We will see that the Internet is an especially seductive incarnation of temptation because it undermines us in two important ways at the same time – it increases our desires and lowers our self-control.
Increased Desire
Desire is the wish for something – the stronger the wish, the greater is desire. The intensity of desire is said to depend on the gap between our ideal and actual states (Baumeister, 2002). Let’s illustrate this with an example. Imagine you’re browsing an Ikea store for home decor ideas. The actual state here would be your own home with all its flaws and charms – worn furniture, missing cutlery, dated lighting, and unkempt garden. The ideal state would be the staged home display in Ikea showing its latest products, furnishings, and accessories. As you’ve probably noticed, the staged displays at Ikea are designed to look like perfect homes that we can easily compare in our mind’s eye with our not-so-perfect homes. It is this gap between actual and ideal states that creates desire and tempts us into buying things. Of course, there are many other aspects of stores like Ikea that encourage impulsive shopping – like putting attractive items at the entrance and giving extra-large shopping bags to customers – but let’s focus for the moment on actual and ideal states. The Internet has magnified the gap between ideal and actual states and thereby strengthened our desire to spend money and time online.
Ideal States
Imagine you’re looking for a hotel to stay in during your upcoming vacation. If you search on TripAdvisor or Hotels.com, you can see the best hotels of the world with professionally shot pictures, videos, and even 3D walkthroughs of their stunning premises. Instagram is full of perfect pictures of jewelry, meals, beaches, clothes, and concerts. Reddit has pages devoted to food porn, where users post perfect pictures of meals in exotic settings. If you search for watches, electronics, or shoes online, you will find websites filled with desirable brands from around the world. If you are looking for love, you can browse dozens of dating websites featuring more attractive members than you could ever possibly meet in the real world.
The Internet is full of desirable options, options which are really a barrage of ideal states that follow us wherever we go. People now surf the Internet anytime anywhere using smartphones and tablets, and this constant immersion in the online world has increased our exposure to ideal states. The more we see ideal states, the greater is the gap between these ideals and our actual states, and the stronger is our desire to reduce this gap by purchasing products and services. Social media plays an important part in this process. When I first started using Facebook, I was curious about my friends and family and regularly browsed their status updates and pictures. I soon got the feeling that everyone except me was having a good time: partying, traveling, dining, and shopping. Could it be that that my friends have exceptionally interesting lives? Was my life really so boring in comparison? Or is it possible that people are posting only their happy stuff on Facebook? To answer these questions, I conducted a research study where I asked students at my university to look at pictures posted by their Facebook friends and to classify these pictures into three categories: those that showed people having a good time versus a neutral time versus a bad time (Auschaitrakul & Mukherjee, 2014). The results couldn’t be clearer. The vast majority of pictures posted on Facebook were of people having a good time, with some neutral pictures thrown in and hardly any negative pictures. If we went by Facebook postings, we would conclude that life is a whirl of parties, beach vacations, and trips to Vegas. But common sense and personal experience tell us that life is not always perfect, and people are probably cherry-picking their best experiences to post on social media. Social media is putting a filter on our view of the world, showing a collage of ideal states that hides the more humdrum reality of our lives. Constant exposure to these ideal states will increase the gap between our actual lives and the idealized lives we see online, leading to greater desire for things we don’t have.
Another way the Internet increases desire is by tailoring ideal states to our unique needs and wants. If you type a term into a Google search, the ads that appear will be based on your search term, browsing history, and Gmail profile. If you log in to websites using your Facebook account, you will soon start receiving online offers tailored to your Facebook profile, likes and dislikes on Facebook, and Facebook friends’ likes and dislikes. Stores often send text messages with coupons to mobile phone users who are physically close to the store, and customers within stores receive offers specific to the aisle they are browsing in. These tailored offers constitute ideal states engineered to be highly relevant to our specific needs and wants at that particular time. Because we pay more attention to personally relevant information (Pieters & Warlop, 1999), tailored ideal states stand out and contrast more sharply with actual states in our minds. This heightened contrast increases the intensity of desire and the likelihood of us giving in to temptation.
Ideal states are often presented on websites in an audiovisual format with pictures, video, and sound. Evolutionary psychology suggests that audiovisual information is likely to have a bigger effect on our judgments and decisions than written information (Confer, Perilloux, & Buss, 2010). For millennia, our hunter-gatherer ancestors relied on their eyes and ears – not written instructions – to hunt for food, avoid predators, and find mates. Because of this history, our brains have evolved to rely primarily on audiovisual information. So when we see videos or pictures online, we are engaging a part of the brain that has evolved to process information quickly and generate strong emotions. If you look at online games like World of Warcraft or Halo, you will see that they effectively use audiovisual design to hook users. These games feature immersive environments that mimic the sights and sounds our brains have been trained to respond to over thousands of years and so provide a primeval pleasure that makes gamers susceptible to addiction. Virtual reality headsets will soon make immersive experiences commonplace, and we will be living in realistic virtual worlds full of ideal states. Imagine going on a virtual reality tour of Bora Bora or Ibiza and then setting out on your daily commute through smog and traffic. Wouldn’t you be tempted to book your next vacation right away?
Actual States
Another way the Internet increases desire is by reminding us of our low actual states. Before the Internet, we were often unaware of our actual states on a moment-to-moment basis. We received snail mail once a day and bank statements once a month. In contrast, we can now check our investments, emails, and text messages whenever we want. These up-to-the-second updates make our actual states visible to us at all times. And the more we are aware of our actual states, the easier it is to compare actual and ideal states and to experience stronger feelings of desire.
Unfortunately, our minds are wired to keep ideal states above actual states through a psychological process called the hedonic treadmill (Loewenstein, 2005). The hedonic treadmill is a tendency for people to automatically move their ideal states upward over time, thus creating a permanent gap between ideal and actual states. For example, if we own an iPhone, the hedonic treadmill makes us want the latest model – the ideal state – even if the model we currently own works just fine. Research suggests that the hedonic treadmill might run faster when we are exposed to new ideal states on a regular basis (Diener, Lucas, & Scollon, 2006). This is bad news for us, because seeing a constant stream of new products online will quickly move our ideal states upward to the next object of desire. The hedonic treadmill also explains the attraction of Internet pornography – the more often we see arousing images online, the more likely we are to raise our ideal states for gratification. In this way, the gap between ideal and actual is maintained, leading to an endless and ultimately futile quest for pleasure.
Lower Self-Control
The Internet makes us vulnerable to temptation by reducing self-control. Self-control is our mental capacity to make choices that favor long-term over short-term goals (Ainslie, 1992; Faber & Vohs, 2004). We often have long-term goals that are accomplished over an extended period of time, such as being healthy, staying fit, losing weight, saving money, getting a promotion, or learning a new language. In addition, we also have short-term goals pursued in the here and now, such as completing a school assignment, closing a sale, or savoring a fine Scotch whisky. Remember the marshmallow experiment? The children who chose to eat one marshmallow right away showed lower self-control because they focused on the short-term goal of instant pleasure rather than the long-term goal of maximizing marshmallows. We shall see that our self-control is often lower when we go online because of goal conflict, goal clarity, the foot-in-the-door effect, lower energy, and product pricing on the Internet.
Goal Conflict
Imagine it’s a Friday evening. Your friends are planning to meet for dinner and then go partying at the new club downtown. You feel torn because, although you would love to join them, you have a big exam coming up on Monday that you need to study for. This is an example of goal conflict: two goals – partying and studying – are pulling you in different directions. Research suggests that failing to resolve goal conflict early weakens our self-control, making it more likely that we will ultimately give in to temptation (Stroebe, Mensink, Aarts, Schut, & Kruglanski, 2008). For example, if we are facing a goal conflict between partying and studying, we are more likely to end up partying if we put off resolving this conflict until the last minute. In contrast, if we resolve this conflict early by thinking about the pros and cons of studying versus partying, we are more likely to stay in and study for the exam.
Goal conflict often arises online as well. When we idly browse Amazon or eBay “just to look,” we have probably not clarified in our own mind whether we are looking for a cheaper product or a higher-quality product. Price and quality are conflicting goals, since it is difficult if not impossible to pay the lowest price and get the highest-quality product. Failing to decide in advance whether price or quality is more important creates goal conflict. This goal conflict reduces self-control, making it more likely that we will end up buy something impulsively online.
Goal Clarity
Another factor that reduces self-control is lack of goal clarity (Campbell et al., 1996). This is why window shoppers usually make more impulse purchases than those with a shopping list in hand. The act of writing a shopping list clarifies our shopping goals by expressing clearly what we are looking for. Those without a shopping list, in contrast, have not clarified their shopping goals, which undermines their self-control when they are faced with temptation. The Internet has made it easier for us to window-shop because we can now effortlessly browse many websites without getting up from the couch. The more we browse in this manner without clear shopping goals, the lower will be our self-control and the higher will be the likelihood of buying something on impulse.
Foot-in-the-Door
Browsing products on the Internet can reduce our self-control because of the foot-in-the-door effect (Cialdini, 2001). Foot-in-the-door is a psychological process whereby taking a small step towards an object increases the chances that we will take a bigger step towards the same object later. Car salespeople sometimes use foot-in-the-door to influence customers. Imagine you’re at a dealership checking out your favorite car. As you’re admiring the vehicle, a salesperson approaches and offers you an attractive price – lower than you had expected to pay – on the condition that you complete the paperwork right away. You accept the offer since the price is great and you wanted this car anyway. The salesperson then takes your completed forms to the manager’s office for final approval. Minutes turn into an hour while you cool your heels at the salesperson’s desk. At last, the salesperson emerges and says apologetically that he did his best but his manager simply would not approve the price offered earlier. Instead, the salesperson now offers you a higher “final price” that is supposedly the absolute best price he could get you. In situations like this, many customers agree to buy at the higher “final price” even if this price was more than what the customer had originally intended to pay. This is an example of foot-in-the-door because filling out the paperwork is a small step towards the car, which increases the chances of the later (and bigger) step of actually buying the car. Similarly, browsing the websites of online retailers is a small step towards the products being offered, which is a foot-in-the-door towards our eventual purchase of these products.
Lower Energy
Research shows that self-control depends on our energy level: the more tired we are mentally or physically, the less self-control we have (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). For example, studies have shown that asking people to resist the urge to eat chocolate cookies placed in front of them makes them less persistent when solving math problems later. Resisting the urge to eat cookies tires us out mentally, which reduces the self-control we need to solve math problems. Similarly, the more time we spend walking around a mall – and hence the more physically tired we get – the more likely we are to buy things on impulse (Baumeister, 2002).
When we browse on eBay or Amazon, we are constantly resisting temptation in the form of attractive products and services. The resulting mental effort can tire us out and eventually reduce our self-control. The process of ordering products online also reduces our self-control. Unlike buying pizza at a food court, where we usually make up our minds quickly, ordering pizza online from Domino’s or Pizza Hut is a more leisurely affair. We can take our time to browse the extensive selection of crusts, toppings, and desserts, every option being illustrated with professionally shot, mouth-watering pictures. The more we browse under these circumstances, the less our self-control and the bigger our waistlines. And when we are ready to order online, we are often asked if we want to “cheese it up” or upsize the drink for a few cents. If we have already spent $15 on a pizza, what’s a few cents more for extra toppings or a larger drink?
If self-control requires mental energy, an important corollary is that we need time to summon our mental energy when we are ready to make a choice. Online services like Snapchat feature short-lived “disappearing” messages that reduce the time available to think through our responses and thus reduce our self-control. The idea that tiredness reduces self-control also applies to the marshmallow experiment discussed earlier. Recall that children in the marshmallow experiment were asked to resist temptation in the form of forbidden sweets staring them in the face. If resisting temptation makes us tired, then the children who successfully waited for 15 minutes without eating any marshmallows probably had lower self-control immediately after the experiment. As time went by, however, their energy levels – and hence self-control – went back up, along with the increased self-confidence that comes from having proved their capacity for self-control. Confidence in one’s ability to exert self-control would then create a virtuous cycle of greater self-control that shows up as better choices over a lifetime.
Product Pricing
Another way the Internet reduces self-control is through all-inclusive product pricing, such as unlimited movies on Netflix, songs on Spotify, or TV shows on Hulu for a flat monthly fee. Research indicates that people often overestimate how much they will use a product after buying it (Goodman & Irmak, 2013). Thus, if we sign up for Netflix, we are likely to imagine that we will watch a lot of movies every month because, well, we’ve already paid for it. In fact, most people end up watching fewer movies on Netflix than they expected to. This overestimation bias for future consumption is even stronger when the product is available in large quantities. The virtually unlimited selection of music on Spotify might lead us to believe that we will listen to a large number of songs every month to take full advantage of the service. The more we overestimate our future usage, the more likely we are to subscribe to online services offering all-inclusive pricing.
The Internet reduces our self-control in other ways as well. Research has found that people are loath to give up something they already have, since losses loom larger in our minds than gains (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983). This is why many of us hang on to our cable TV subscriptions with more than 100 channels – most of which we never watch – because the psychological pain of giving up channels outweighs the gain from paying less on our cable bill. Another aspect of the Internet that reduces self-control is the “buy now” or “one-click purchase” buttons often seen on e-commerce websites such as Amazon and iTunes. These buttons shorten the time between consideration of a product and its purchase, thus reducing our ability to muster the mental energy needed for self-control (Loewenstein, 1996).
The Internet can create a state of “flow” where we lose track of time (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). Flow happens when we are doing highly interesting tasks that are moderately challenging. Online games often induce a state of flow, because they are designed to be very engaging and reasonably challenging at each level of game play. Online games are also designed to remain interesting after repeated use because players are always being moved into higher levels of game play with new plot elements. A state of flow while playing online games makes it difficult to keep track of time and thus increases time wasted online.
Research shows that frequent Facebook users buy more products and services than occasional users of social media (Wilcox & Stephen, 2013). Thus, the increasing use of social media around the world might lead to more online shopping, especially when more online retailers start offering one-click purchase of products mentioned in social conversations. Facebook advertising also increases online purchases because this form of advertising is tailored to our unique preferences as expressed in our Facebook profile, likes and dislikes, and recent browsing history. And finally, failures of self-control can create a vicious cycle of negative emotions and lower self-control (Atalay & Meloy, 2011). When we succumb to temptation and buy something we know we shouldn’t have, we often feel guilty and ashamed. To counteract these negative emotions, we might undertake shopping therapy to feel better about ourselves. But these new purchases only end up making us feel worse, fueling a downward spiral of negative emotions and overindulgence.
What Can We Do?
We have seen that temptations on the Internet can lead us astray. The good news is that we can take several steps to keep this danger at bay: set up structural barriers to temptation, pre-commit to pleasure, increase goal clarity, visualize positive outcomes, revoke the license to sin, create positive habits, and increase belief in our self-control.
Structural Barriers
A useful technique for increasing self-control is to set up structural barriers to temptation (Ajzen, 2002). We can think of structural barriers as moats that we dig in our “cold” or rational moments between ourselves and objects of desire, barriers that can’t be easily crossed in “hot” or tempting moments. This is not a new idea. In Homer’s Odyssey, Ulysses asked his sailors to tie him to a mast before their ship approached the island of Sirens. This was a wise precaution; Ulysses knew that hearing the Sirens’ sweet melody would render him incapable of rational thought, and he would jump to his death trying to reach the island of pleasure.
Similar to Ulysses, problem gamblers can put themselves on exclusion lists from casinos before the gambling bug bites; drivers can install car breathalyzers in their sober moments; and smokers can choose to live far from smoky bars. In all these cases, people are setting up external restraints on their behavior before temptation strikes. Other examples of structural barriers are hiding friends on Facebook to avoid seeing their postings or deleting the Facebook application itself from smartphones. To minimize wasting time on the Internet, we can install software that limits the number of websites we can access and the amount of time we can spend online in any given day. We could also install software designed to block pornographic, gambling, or gaming websites. An important characteristic of successful structural barriers is that they must be difficult to reverse in our “hot” moments. This principle is baked into commercial software for restricting Internet use, since they require users to jump through many hoops before their settings can be changed. Going through an extended modification process gives users the opportunity to think about what they are doing, thus increasing their self-control in the face of temptation.
Pre-commitment to Pleasure
Another technique for increasing self-control is pre-commitment to pleasure. For example, we might recognize that quitting Facebook completely is unrealistic. So instead of deleting Facebook from our devices, we might set aside a designated block of time every day for browsing Facebook. If we’re addicted to online shopping, we could set aside a budget at the beginning of each month for online purchases. Setting budgets is also useful because it allows us to track our behavior against the budget. We can now do this easily with apps that track how much money we spend, how many steps we have walked, and how many calories we have burned every day. Data about our behavior can be accumulated over time and compared to our targets for saving or exercise. If we see that our behavior is meeting or exceeding targets, we are likely to have greater self-control going forward. If, on the other hand, our behavior falls short of targets, we could consider setting lower targets because meeting more achievable targets is likely to increase our self-control in the future.
Goal Clarity
Since self-control increases with goal clarity, we should make an effort to clarify our goals before browsing e-commerce retailers. For example, we could decide in advance to look only at a limited number of brands before we purchase and decide early on which features are more or less important to us. We can increase our self-control by going online earlier in the day when we have more energy, rather than later in the day when we have less energy after hours of working and commuting.
Visualize Positive Outcomes
We can increase our self-control by visualizing positive outcomes. For example, if we want to save money, we could put pictures of our dream retirement home as the screen saver on our computers, tablets, and smartphones. This would remind us of the goal we are working towards, thus increasing our motivation to pursue this goal. In the abstract, most of us know that our savings earns compound interest to grow exponentially over time. But many people miss out on the magic of compounding by finding excuses to delay long-term savings in favor of more tempting immediate pleasures. To make the benefits of compounding come alive, we could set up a spreadsheet on our mobile device that displays the future compounded value of our monthly savings plan if we save on a daily basis. This compounded future value is likely to be a large number, which will increase our motivation for saving every day.
License to Sin
We should be careful about acting impulsively after we have done good deeds: research shows that we feel licensed to sin as a reward for good behavior (Khan, Dhar, & Wertenbroch, 2005). For example, if we have just completed an assignment or recently given to a charity, we should be extra careful about our shopping behavior thereafter. If we do buy things, we should prefer to buy experiences such as travel and dance lessons, rather than physical products such as watches or phones, because research shows that consuming experiences usually makes us happier in the long run than accumulating physical products (Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003).
New Habits
Temptations can harden into habit over time. If someone feels they can’t stop looking at online pornography, it could be because pornography has become an automatic response to external and internal cues. For example, sitting down at the computer when no one is around can be an external cue triggering the habitual behavior of browsing pornographic websites. Similarly, feelings of boredom or stress could serve as internal triggers for pornography. An important characteristic of strong habits is that they are difficult to change head-on. Habits once learned create grooves in the mind that rarely disappear completely. Instead, a more effective approach is to create parallel grooves – parallel good habits that replace bad habits over time (Wood & Neal, 2007). For example, if sitting down at the computer is associated with pornography or wasting time online, we can start a new habit of checking our email first when we go online. And while doing so, we could send an email to ourselves listing the things we need to accomplish today. If repeated regularly, this good habit will gradually supplant our bad habits and increase our daily productivity.
Belief in Self-Control
It is important to believe that we have a large mental store of self-control that we can draw upon whenever needed. This was shown in a research study that looked at people’s New Year resolutions (Mukhopadhyay & Johar, 2005). Participants in this study were recruited in November, when most people are starting to think about resolutions for the next year. One group of participants was asked to read scientific articles stating that self-control is a limited mental resource that can easily be exhausted, while another group read articles stating that self-control is an unlimited resource that can be drawn upon whenever needed. The two groups were then asked to write down their New Year resolutions for the next year. In February, respondents were contacted again and asked to report the extent to which they had kept their resolutions. Results showed that belief about self-control matters for both setting and keeping resolutions. Those who believed self-control was an unlimited resource that can be drawn upon whenever needed set more New Year resolutions than those who thought self-control was a limited resource. And those who set more resolutions also tended to follow through and accomplish more of their goals over time. The moral of this study is that it is important to believe our self-control has no upper limit, because thinking optimistically about our capacity for self-control makes us stronger in the face of temptation.