THINK you can resist temptation? Then you are more likely to succumb, say and his colleagues at .
The team took 53 smokers and promised them money if they did not light up while watching a clip of the film . Each subject was given a cigarette and had to decide where to put it: in another room, on a desk, in their hand or in their mouth. The closer the unsmoked cigarette, the more money they would gain.
Before this, the smokers had been given a bogus psychological test and then split at random into two groups: one was told they had 鈥渁 high capacity for impulse control鈥� and the other was labelled 鈥渓ow鈥�. The latter group tended to put the cigarette far away, while those told they had good control risked holding it or putting it in their mouths. This bravado was their undoing, as the closer the cigarette, the more likely they were to smoke it.
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Experiments without the bogus test showed the same effect. People confident that they could keep a snack for a week without eating it were more likely to crack than self-doubters, they say in a paper to appear in . The way to stay out of trouble, says Nordgren, is to avoid temptation.