About 2.4 million Americans engage in uncontrolled shopping. Around 25 million have a binge-eating disorder. More than 46 million binge-drink at least once a month. It would seem that we humans just can’t control ourselves.One explanation is that we have a limited supply of self-regulatory resources. As we wear out our selfcontrol muscles, it becomes harder to resist temptation. But new research offers a different perspective. It suggests that the success or failure of self-control is a natural consequence of how we perceive effortful behavior. If the behavior seems like work, it depletes our resources, and self-control becomes more difficult.

If the behavior feels like fun, it’s rejuvenating, and self-control becomes easier.“It’s self-reinforcing,” says Juliano Laran, assistant professor of marketing, who co-authored the research with Chris Janiszewski, the JCPenney Professor of Marketing at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business Administration. “For someone with low self-control, every time they resist eating chocolate cake, say, they become more likely to indulge later. And for a highself-control person, every time

they resist, they become more likely to resist again in the future.” Their paper was published in the April issue of Journal of Consumer Research.Laran and Janiszewski made this determination through a series of experiments. In the first, a set of individuals who identified as having low self-control and a set who identified as having high self-control both had to follow strict instructions to taste (but not eat) a small amount of candy. The participants were then asked to perform unrelated tasks while the candy was nearby. They key measure was whether they could resist eating the candy.

Next, participants had to make a series of tough choices involving tradeoffs among multiple options. After that, they had the opportunity to voluntarily evaluate products. The researchers measured how many voluntary product evaluations they performed, looking to see how the initial effortful behavior affected their ability to perform a tedious task later. What Laran and his colleague found is that people with low self-control viewed resisting the candy as work, while those with high self-control found it to be fun.

As a consequence, the low-self-control people later failed to self-regulate during the tradeoff and voluntary product evaluations tests. The high self-control people continued to achieve self-regulatory success. Subsequent experiments strengthened the findings and provided additional insights.

For example, high-self-control people could be made to act like low-self-control people when an activity was framed as work. Likewise, low-self-control people could be made to act like high-self-control people if an activity was presented as fun.Laran and Janiszewski also showed that when a behavior provided extrinsic instead of intrinsic rewards, high-self-control people no longer experienced rejuvenation from it. As a consequence, they were more likely to fail at self-regulation.

The findings have implications for public policy. “If a public policy simply tells people what to do, that’s an extrinsic motivation, and people will tend to fail,” Laran explains. “Instead, the focus should be on having people participate, so they can develop an intrinsic motivation.”That holds true in a business setting too. Weightloss companies, for instance, would benefit by making healthy choices feel like fun. “In our experiments, just using the word ‘fun’ to describe an activity changed people’s perception of it,” Laran notes.

There are also applications for employee motivation. “If a supervisor tells employees that something will be hard work, that depletes them,” Laran says. “But if you make it seem like it could be fun, or if people can come up with fun ways to achieve objectives, that can vitalize them. ”Laran concedes that these concepts could be used to consumers’ detriment. For example, retailers could place their most tempting items at the store’s entrance. The harder it is for customers to resist them, the more likely it is that they’ll indulge as they shop.