Cooling the heat of temptation: Mental self-control and the automatic evaluation of tempting stimuli

The present research investigated whether mental self‐control strategies can reduce the automatic positivity elicited by tempting stimuli. In two studies employing chocolate as the temptation of interest, we found that participants instructed to imagine a chocolate product in a nonconsummatory manne...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of social psychology 2010-02, Vol.40 (1), p.17-25
Main Authors: Hofmann, Wilhelm, Deutsch, Roland, Lancaster, Katie, Banaji, Mahzarin R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Chocolate
Cognition
Consumption
Emotions
Evaluation
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Mind
Psychological aspects
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Self
Self Control
Self-management
Social attribution, perception and cognition
Social psychology
Stimuli
Studies
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Summary:The present research investigated whether mental self‐control strategies can reduce the automatic positivity elicited by tempting stimuli. In two studies employing chocolate as the temptation of interest, we found that participants instructed to imagine a chocolate product in a nonconsummatory manner exhibited significantly less automatic positivity with regard to the product as compared to participants instructed to imagine the hedonic, consummatory aspects of the product and control participants engaged in a neutral task. These findings were replicated in a second study. Additionally, in Study 2 we found that automatic evaluations of chocolate were lowest for participants instructed to form implementation intentions to refrain from consumption. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that mental self‐control strategies such as nonconsummatory transformation and implementation intentions extend to the level of automatic processing by reducing the positivity of automatically activated affective responses. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ISSN:0046-2772
1099-0992
DOI:10.1002/ejsp.708