Humans preconditioned to give into temptation
Source: Agencies |
January 5, 2011, Wednesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THE new year has just begun and already you're finding it hard to keep those resolutions to junk the junk food, get off the couch or kick smoking. There's a biological reason a lot of our bad habits are so hard to break - they get wired into our brains.
That's not an excuse to give up. Understanding how unhealthy behaviors become ingrained has scientists learning some tricks that may help good habits replace the bad.
"Why are bad habits stronger? You're fighting the power of an immediate reward," says Dr Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and an expert on the brain's pleasure pathway.
It's the fudge versus broccoli choice: Chocolate's yum factor tends to beat out the knowledge that sticking with veggies brings an eventual reward of lost pounds.
Immediate rewards
"We are hard-wired that way, to give greater value to an immediate reward as opposed to something that's delayed," Volkow says.
How that happiness becomes a habit involves a pleasure-sensing chemical named dopamine. It conditions the brain to want the reward again - reinforcing the connection each time - especially when it gets the right cue from your environment.
People tend to overestimate their ability to resist temptations around them, thus undermining attempts to shed bad habits, says experimental psychologist Loran Nordgren, an -assistant professor at -Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
"People have this self-control hubris, this belief they can handle more than they can," says Nordgren, who studies the tug-of-war between willpower and temptation.
In one experiment, he measured whether heavy smokers could watch a film that romanticizes the habit - called "Coffee And Cigarettes" - without taking a puff. Upping the ante, they'd be paid according to their level of temptation: Could they hold an unlit cigarette while watching? Keep the pack on the table? Or did they need to leave the pack in another room?
Path of resistance
Smokers who'd predicted they could resist a lot of temptation tended to hold the unlit cigarette - and were more likely to light up than those who knew better than to hang onto the pack, says Nordgren.
It's not clear yet just how well a financial incentive substitutes as a reward. In one experiment, paying smokers at General Electric up to US$750 to kick the habit nearly tripled the number who did, says Dr Kevin Volpp, who directs the Center for Health Incentives at the University of Pennsylvania.
A similar study for weight loss found no difference, but environment may explain the conflicting results.
It's getting hard to smoke in public but "every time you walk down the street, there's lots of sources of high-calorie, low-cost food," Volpp says.
"What you want to be thinking about is, 'What is it in my environment that is triggering this behavior?'" says Nordgren. "You have to guard yourself against it."
That's not an excuse to give up. Understanding how unhealthy behaviors become ingrained has scientists learning some tricks that may help good habits replace the bad.
"Why are bad habits stronger? You're fighting the power of an immediate reward," says Dr Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and an expert on the brain's pleasure pathway.
It's the fudge versus broccoli choice: Chocolate's yum factor tends to beat out the knowledge that sticking with veggies brings an eventual reward of lost pounds.
Immediate rewards
"We are hard-wired that way, to give greater value to an immediate reward as opposed to something that's delayed," Volkow says.
How that happiness becomes a habit involves a pleasure-sensing chemical named dopamine. It conditions the brain to want the reward again - reinforcing the connection each time - especially when it gets the right cue from your environment.
People tend to overestimate their ability to resist temptations around them, thus undermining attempts to shed bad habits, says experimental psychologist Loran Nordgren, an -assistant professor at -Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
"People have this self-control hubris, this belief they can handle more than they can," says Nordgren, who studies the tug-of-war between willpower and temptation.
In one experiment, he measured whether heavy smokers could watch a film that romanticizes the habit - called "Coffee And Cigarettes" - without taking a puff. Upping the ante, they'd be paid according to their level of temptation: Could they hold an unlit cigarette while watching? Keep the pack on the table? Or did they need to leave the pack in another room?
Path of resistance
Smokers who'd predicted they could resist a lot of temptation tended to hold the unlit cigarette - and were more likely to light up than those who knew better than to hang onto the pack, says Nordgren.
It's not clear yet just how well a financial incentive substitutes as a reward. In one experiment, paying smokers at General Electric up to US$750 to kick the habit nearly tripled the number who did, says Dr Kevin Volpp, who directs the Center for Health Incentives at the University of Pennsylvania.
A similar study for weight loss found no difference, but environment may explain the conflicting results.
It's getting hard to smoke in public but "every time you walk down the street, there's lots of sources of high-calorie, low-cost food," Volpp says.
"What you want to be thinking about is, 'What is it in my environment that is triggering this behavior?'" says Nordgren. "You have to guard yourself against it."
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