Research Bias

Ericca Olney
Intro to Psychology-Research Summary and Analysis Paper
The Restraint Bias

Loran F. Nordgren, Frenk van Harreveld, and Joop van der Pligt

Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and University of Amsterdam

Association for Psychological Science

Volume 20-Number 12

Copyright 2009

Pages 1523-1527

Abstract

This paper explores four studies that were done to provide evidence for a restraint bias, which is: a tendency for people to overestimate their capacity for impulse control.  The authors of this article wanted to examine how other people’s beliefs about impulse control influenced their self-control.  The studies included examining impulses such as hunger, smoking and mental fatigue.  This study was done to show that “inflated impulse control beliefs lead people to overexpose themselves to temptation, thereby promoting impulsive behavior.”  The methods of the four studies were to randomly assign different subjects into two separate groups.  In each study the separate groups were assigned a task to complete.

 In study one, a group of students were assigned to two separate groups. One group was the tired group, the other was the non-tired group.  This study was being done to examine “how beliefs about mental fatigue influence study schedules.”  This first study took seventy-two students and assigned them to the fatigue or non-fatigue group. The tired group was asked to complete a strenuous memory task that had been shown to induce fatigue. (Nordgren et al. 2006)  This task was performed by them for nearly 20 minutes. Participants that were assigned to the group that was not fatigued were asked to do the same test, however, it only lasted a couple of minutes.  Following the completion of the task, the students were asked to specify how tired they were, and evaluate how much control they thought they had over their mental exhaustion. These students were then asked to rate statements and estimate what percentage of studying they would leave until the last minute for the next semester.

Study two was done to test the restraint bias as it pertained to hunger.  Seventy-nine people, who were a mix of university students and faculty, were approached either coming in to (the hungry condition) or out of (the satisfied condition) the cafeteria. They were all shown seven snacks and asked to rate least to most favorite. They were then told they could chose a snack and either eat it whenever they wanted, or if they could hold on to it for a week and bring it back they would be paid four dollars and would get to keep the snack. Those who said they would likely eat it were taken out of the study. Next, the participants were asked to complete a questionnaire about their hunger at the moment and how it reflected on their ability to control the impulse to eat the snack. Snacks were stickered to make sure they were the exact ones being returned a week later.  

Study three was done to manipulate impulse control beliefs and to test the direct effect of those beliefs on exposure to temptation.  This test was done by taking fifty-three university students and assigning them to either a “high-control” or “low-control condition.  These students were given a fake “implicit-measures” test. The students were then told they either had the low control or high control based upon which group they were assigned to.  After the students were given the “results” of their test, they were asked to play a self-control game where they were asked to watch a film called Coffee and Cigarettes (Jarmusch, 2003) without smoking.  If the students resisted the temptation to smoke they were told they would have the opportunity to win money.   Students were then asked to choose from four different levels of temptation to tolerate while watching the film.  The first level was keep the cigarette in another room (paid $2), the second level was to keep the cigarette on the desk in the cubicle (paid $4), the third level was to hold an unlit cigarette in their hand while watching the film (paid $6), and the fourth was to hold an unlit cigarette in their mouth for the entire film (paid $8).  All participants were only able to be paid if the succeeded in refraining from smoking throughout the film.

The article then explains how the fourth study was done to show how the restraint bias could hopefully help explain why people tend to go back to a particular addiction even after the physical withdrawal symptoms are gone.  The study was done to show how people who are addicted to something will think they have overcome the addiction because they have stopped for a period of time. Because of this, as time passes, people who think they have overcome the addiction will begin to place themselves in situations where there is more temptation.  These people believe that because they have stopped they will not succumb to the addiction again.  To test the theory, they contacted fifty-five smokers who had recently overcome withdrawal symptoms. The smokers had not had a cigarette for three weeks.  They were asked to assess their ability to control cravings and specify the amount of temptation they exposed themselves to.  The predictions were that the smokers with high impulse control beliefs would report a larger exposure to smoking temptation and would have a higher likelihood of relapse. They were then assessed four months later and asked how often they were now smoking. The response option were, “not at all,” “once or twice a week,” “once or twice a day,” “half a pack a day,” and “a pack a day or more.”