The Rise and Fall of Self-Control

Abstract

Environmental cues of temptation generally frustrate people’s long-term goal attainment. However, recent research suggests that temptation cues promote, rather than hamper long-term goal congruent effects in successful self-regulators. While previous work has started to shed light on the cognitive features of this rise and fall of self-control, the present research aims to significantly advance this study by exploring important implications for actual behavior in the domain of dieting. In combining a temptation cue exposure procedure with a concurrent schedules task, results of two studies demonstrated that tempting food cues increased unsuccessful, but not successful dieters’ effortful behavior toward high-calorie food. In contrast, tempting food cues increased successful dieters’ efforts toward low-calorie food, but did not affect unsuccessful dieters. The findings suggest that the behavior of both unsuccessful and successful dieters in response to tempting food cues is goal-directed rather than impulsive.