Cognitive Design

Trying to control our own thoughts and behaviors especially as they relate to consumption, procrastination and truth-telling can be a real struggle.  Turns out that framing our self-control challenges as a struggle or a work task versus something that will be fun and pleasurable is self defeating. A new study reported in ScienceDaily as  Could Learning Self Control be Enjoyable?, reveals:

“Self-control failures depend on whether people see activities involving self-control (e.g., eating in moderate quantities) as an obligation to work or an opportunity to have fun,” write authors Juliano Laran (University of Miami) and Chris Janiszewski (University of Florida, Gainesville).

The study also found that reframing self control as an opportunity to have fun improved outcomes even for impulsive individuals.  Why? A pleasurable task brings intrinsic motivations and mental energy especially when it is completed. An obligation to work requires extrinsic motivation and depletes mental energy increasing the chance for a failure in self regulation.  As cognitive designers know, changing the mental energy of a task or interactions can make all the difference when it comes to shifting behaviors.

To dig in check out the free 57-page early version of the study. The details are revealing but unfortunately there is no guidance on how we can frame our thinking about specific self control tasks to take advantage of this effect.  I did find one suggestion on the CalorieLab Blog:

 ”It’s me versus the doughnut. If I resist eating this, I have won the game. Let yourself know that the cards are being dealt and the game is about to begin. Keep score and give yourself a point in your food journal. Every time you succeed, you have strengthened your healthy habits.”

Interested to hear from readers that have other ideas on how to take our self control challenges and reframe them as something fun to do.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 27th, 2010 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Behavior Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.