Restraint bias

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Restraint bias is the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control impulsive behavior. An inflated self-control belief may lead to greater exposure to temptation, and increased impulsiveness. Therefore, the restraint bias has bearing on addiction. For example, someone might use drugs, simply because they believe they can resist any potential addiction. [1] An individual's inability to control, or their temptation can come from several different visceral impulses. Visceral impulses can include hunger, sexual arousal, and fatigue. These impulses provide information about the current state and behavior needed to keep the body satisfied. [1]

Empathy Gap Effect: The Empathy Gap Effect deals with individuals having trouble appreciating the power that the impulse states have on their behavior. There is a cold-to-hot empathy gap that states when people are in a cold state, like not experiencing hunger, they tended to underestimate those influences in a hot state. The underestimation of the visceral impulses can be contributed to restricted memory for the visceral experience which means the individual can recall the impulsive state but cannot recreate the sensation of the impulsive state. [1]

Impulse Control and Attention: Studies have concluded that when people believe that they have stronger sense of self-control over situations in their environment, they have greater impulse control. Individuals also tend to overestimate their capacity for self-control when one is told that they have a high capacity for self-restraint. [1] The more someone is told that they have a high capacity for self-restraint, the more they believe it and display higher levels of impulse control. Attention has a lot to do with biases, self and impulse controls in our environment. The less attention an individual pays to something, the less control they have over whatever they are doing. Focusing attention to oneself can lead to successful self-control which can be helpful in many aspects of life. Self-control engages conflict between competing pressures, pressures that can be brought on by situational or internal prompts from the environment. Some of the cues make the individual act on or engage in that behavior or act to prevent the individual from taking action. [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

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Impulsivity Tendency to act on a whim without considering consequences

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Inhibitory control Cognitive process

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Personality theories of addiction are psychological models that associate personality traits or modes of thinking with an individual's proclivity for developing an addiction. Models of addiction risk that have been proposed in psychology literature include an affect dysregulation model of positive and negative psychological affects, the reinforcement sensitivity theory model of impulsiveness and behavioral inhibition, and an impulsivity model of reward sensitization and impulsiveness.

Present bias is the tendency to rather settle for a smaller present reward than to wait for a larger future reward, in a trade-off situation. It describes the trend of overvaluing immediate rewards, while putting less worth in long-term consequences. The present bias can be used as a measure for self-control, which is a trait related to the prediction of secure life outcomes.

An empathy gap, also sometimes referred to as an empathy bias, is a breakdown or reduction in empathy where it might otherwise be expected to occur. Empathy gaps may occur due to a failure in the process of empathizing or as a consequence of stable personality characteristics, and may reflect either a lack of ability or motivation to empathize.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Nordgren, Loran F.; van Harreveld, Frenk; van der Pligt, Joop (2009). "The Restraint Bias: How the Illusion of Self-Restraint Promotes Impulsive Behavior" (PDF). Psychological Science. 20 (12): 1523–1528. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02468.x. PMID   19883487. Archived from the original on 2016-05-16.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  2. Mann, Traci; Ward, Andrew (2007). "Attention, Self-Control, and Health Behaviors" (PDF). Current Directions in Psychological Science. 16 (5): 280–283. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00520.x. Archived from the original on 2016-02-21.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)