Four studies examined how impulse-control beliefs—beliefs regarding one's ability to regulate visceral impulses, such as hunger, drug craving, and sexual arousal—influence the self-control process.
The findings provide evidence for a restraint bias: a tendency for people to overestimate their capacity for impulse control. This biased perception of restraint had important consequences for people's self-control strategies. Inflated impulse-control beliefs led people to overexpose themselves to temptation, thereby promoting impulsive behavior.
-In Study 4, for example, the impulse-control beliefs of recovering smokers predicted their exposure to situations in which they would be tempted to smoke. Recovering smokers with more inflated impulse-control beliefs exposed themselves to more temptation, which led to higher rates of relapse 4 months later.
The restraint bias offers unique insight into how erroneous beliefs about self-restraint promote impulsive behavior.
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