You want that new video game so badly, but you’re trying to knock your credit card balance down. Or you’re binging your favorite TV show and can’t wait to find out if a character lives, but it’s late, and you need to be alert for work tomorrow. Just exert a little self-control, you tell yourself. But it’s so hard!
People frequently think of self-control as something that requires willpower—the effort of giving up some immediate pleasure for a long-term goal. A study from last year found that people in the U.S., the Netherlands and China tend to write about self-control with words such as “difficult” and “unpleasant” and about people who show self-control as “virtuous.” For decades, psychologists held a similar view. In fact, one prominent theory in the 1990s…
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Source www.scientificamerican.com
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