The Taming of Desire: How Postponement can Facilitate Self-Control
Nicole Mead
Erasmus University
Desire is a prevalent part of human life. Although many desires are unproblematic,
others need to be tempered (at least occasionally) because too frequent enactment can
have detrimental consequences. Despite their best intentions and efforts, however,
people struggle to keep their desires under control. In the present research, we
examined a very different response to transient desires from the classic self-control
mechanism of restraint. Specifically, we hypothesized that people may do better by
saying, “some other time” instead of “no, not ever” to transient desires. A series of
experiments supported this hypothesis, demonstrating that postponement reduces
consumption of unhealthy food over the short and long term more effectively than
restraint. Additionally, the experiments provided support for the hypothesized
psychological mechanism, indicating that unspecific postponement indeterminably
suspends goal pursuit and weakens desire for the postponed pleasure. Findings shed
new light on the role of desire in self-control outcomes and suggest novel desirereduction avenues for self-control facilitation.