2/22/12
We Can Resist Anything Except Temptation – and Twitter

Researchers out of Chicago University’s Booth Business School recently conducted a study on people’s ability to resist their desires. It turns out that people can resist cigarettes, they can resist alcohol, they can resist sex, and they can resist the urge to spend money… but what they really really can’t resist is the urge to engage in social and other types of media. In other words, checking email, browsing Facebook, posting to Twitter, etc.

Unlike most studies of this type, which attempt to recreate temptation in a lab setting, this experiment was conducted out there in the real world. (In the German city of Wurtzburg, to be precise — we’re not exactly sure why this place was chosen to study willpower.) Researchers messaged participants seven times a day for a week to find out if they were experiencing any desires — or had done in the past half hour — and if so, whether these desires conflicted with others, and whether they resisted or gave in. Not surprisingly, willpower waned as the day went on, but at any time of day, the highest “self-control failure rates” were with media. The researchers think that this is because the opportunity cost for each individual occurrence seems so low (compared to, say, having a drink), therefore we give in again, and again, and again. Resisting the desire to work was also way up there, which is unbelievably depressing.

Read the rest of this post on SUNfiltered

 



One Comment

  1. I think it’s pretty clear that whatever has the most addicting power combined with the lowest level of friction to perform, wins. Technology makes it so easy to click a button and check out our social tools, it’s almost a no-contest!

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