Planning to avoid temptations helps in goal pursuit
Proactively planning to manage temptations may be more effective than simply responding to temptation when it arises, say UW Associate Professor Ben Wilkowski and recent UW psychology master’s degree recipient Zach Williamson.
Their research appears in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a journal of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology.
“People rely on several self-control strategies. The use of these strategies can be planned ahead of time, before a temptation is directly experienced,” the researchers say. “And, planning self-control ahead of time may be critically involved in achieving long-term goals.”
Wilkowski and Williamson conducted two studies of undergraduate college students to assess the effectiveness of five self-control strategies in their pursuit of long-term goals. Those are:
Situation selection
Situation modification
Distraction
Reappraisal
Response inhibition
The researchers found that the first four strategies, which might be more easily planned in advance, are generally more effective than the latter.
“We found evidence suggesting that participants sometimes formed plans for how to manage temptations and that these plans were indeed related to the initiation of diverse self-control strategies,” Wilkowski and Williamson say. “People can, indeed, proactively initiate self-control. And those who do so are better able to make progress toward their long-term goals.”