In a previous post, I’ve discussed how self-control training has the power to transform your life. Building up your self-control muscle (what many people think of as “discipline” or “willpower”) can help you be a better self-observer and to pause before acting impulsively. When faced with a choice between immediate pleasure and long-term benefit, your [...]

We know that the road to success often requires self-discipline, or choosing long-term gain over short-term pleasure: resisting a cupcake in the service of losing weight, enduring the hardship of homework in order to achieve good grades, spending hours in training in order to win an athletic championship, or passing up the unplanned purchases to [...]

Although we seem to worry the most about catching the flu, perhaps we should be equally worried about “catching” poor habits from other people. Research on the phenomenon of social contagion has shown that if we witness someone else giving in to temptation, it activates our desire to indulge, as well. For example, when we [...]

On January 1, positive feelings surround the clinking of the champagne glasses and the vow to make changes in the new year. For a moment, our feelings of self-disappointment, defeat, and frustration get replaced by hope and optimism. But are we using the promise of change to fix our feelings and NOT to fix our [...]

Last week, we looked at the vicious cycles that keep us trapped in a financial dilemma. Feelings of frustration, fear, or discouragement feed into unhelpful coping behaviors, and then the consequences of the unhelpful coping behaviors feed into the negative feelings. For example, consider Joe who was recently laid off from his job as a [...]

We know that people vary in their ability to choose successfully between conflicting desires and impulses. We also know that the road to success often requires self-discipline, or choosing long-term gain over short-term pleasure: resisting a decadent piece of cheesecake in the service of losing weight, enduring the hardship of homework in order to achieve [...]

When we’re trying to change a difficult financial behavior, the obvious question we ask ourselves is “What is getting in the way of doing the right thing?”  This helps us identify and problem-solve through barriers and obstacles. What we often forget, though, is another important question: “What is allowing the wrong behavior to continue?”  This [...]

As long as I’ve started the food theme, I’ll share another food-related piece of research that gives us insight into the nature of impulse control. Baba Shiv, a professor at Stanford University, studied two groups of undergraduates.  Members of one group were asked to remember a two-digit number, while members of the other group were [...]

It’s summer camping season, and along with camping comes the tradition of S’mores. This year, when I eat the marshmallows, I’ll be thinking of one of the greatest psychology experiments of all time.  Commonly referred to as the “marshmallow study,” it was conducted by Walter Mischel at Stanford University in the 1960’s. In the experiment, [...]

We are notoriously bad at predicting how we will think and feel and behave in the future.  Psychologist Daniel Gilbert has devoted much of his research and writing to the topic of the mistakes that we make when we try to imagine our “future selves.” It turns out, though, that meeting and getting to know [...]