What might cause a person to choose a doughnut for breakfast instead of a bowl of oatmeal?
This piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, explores reserach into temptation conducted by Melissa Ferguson, Cornell professor of psychology, and Paul Stillman, a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences at The Ohio State University.
"The metaphor of the devil and angel fits well with how psychologists have explained self-control: the push and pull between our impulsive, emotional system (that draws us toward indulgences) and our deliberative, logical system (that considers the long-term)," the authors write. "But psychologists have also argued that these two systems do not act simultaneously. We conducted a series of new studies to untangle when the devil and the angel show up once you’re confronted with a temptation."
Their work shows that focusing on willpower "may often be too little too late. Instead of steeling oneself against temptation, it may be more fruitful to put in work beforehand – by focusing on the small decisions that can help us avoid tempting impulses altogether," they say.
Read the entire San Francisco Chronicle article here.
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