Undermining Desire: The Persuasive Power of Short-Term (vs. Long-Term) Consequences of Indulging

• Published in: Advances in Consumer Research Vol. 49; p. 491
• Main Authors: Stillman, Paul, Woolley, Kaitlin
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Urbana Association for Consumer Research 01.01.2021
• Subjects: Consumers; Self control
• ISSN: 0098-9258

A major struggle facing consumers is how to avoid temptations and instead pursue long-term goals. Consumers want to eat healthier, exercise more, and drink less. Yet they are often tempted by immediate, short-term desires that prevent them from acting in line with these goals (Ariely & Wertenbroch, 2002; Baumeister, 2002; Fujita, 2011; Hoch & Loewenstein, 1991; Hofmann et al., 2008; Myrseth & Fishbach, 2009)2009. Self-control conflicts - dual motive conflicts between superordinate, long-term goals and subordinate, immediate temptations - involve choosing whether or not to engage in behaviors that provide immediate benefits with (often disproportionately large) delayed consequences. For example, eating candy provides benefits in the moment, but harms long-term health, whereas forgoing candy means sacrificing immediate pleasure for improved health in the long-term. The importance of these conflicts has generated an interdisciplinary research effort to provide a wide array of strategies for overcoming temptations. For one, consumers can focus on the long-term costs that temptations carry (Donnelly et al., 2018). Additionally, consumers can highlight the benefits of the long-term goal (Kuhl & Beckmann, 1985; Mischel et al., 1989), and make the immediate pursuit of long-term goals more enjoyable to increase persistence (Milkman et al., 2013; Woolley & Fishbach, 2016)2016. Thus, focusing on the long-term consequences of temptations or the positive aspects of goal pursuit can motivate consumers. We suggest an alternative. Rather than focusing on benefits of goal pursuit or long-term costs of indulgence, the present research investigates an often-overlooked component of many temptations: short-term costs. Eating candy, for instance, carries negative consequences that are realized in the short-term - on the order of minutes and hours rather than months and years - such as consequences of a sugar spike and crash (e.g., feeling jittery, losing focus, becoming moody). While long-term costs are believed to be motivating because of their severity, short-term costs may be motivating because they are felt immediately. Specifically, although short-term consequences of indulging are less severe than long-term consequences, we suggest that a focus on short-term consequences can systematically reduce consumers' likelihood of indulging compared with a focus on long-term consequences. We propose that this occurs because short-term consequences undermine the attractiveness of the temptation, making consumers anticipate enjoying the indulgence less. We tested our hypotheses across eight experiments and three prototypical self-control conflicts: consuming alcohol, high-fat foods, and high-sugar foods. We choose these because engaging in these behaviors has deleterious consequences for consumers' long-term health (Duckworth et al., 2018), and because many consumers struggle with these temptations. First, we find that consumers are less interested in engaging in these unhealthy behaviors when focusing on short-term (vs. long-term) consequences (studies 1a-1c). Further, they are less interested in consuming alcohol or sugary foods when focusing on short-term consequences compared to both long-term consequences or no such focus (study 2a), which holds when making real decisions in an incentive compatible design (study 2b). Holding the consequence of indulging constant (i.e., indigestion), framing the consequences as more (vs. less) immediate further reduced interest in indulging (study 3). Examining our proposed process, we demonstrate that considering short-term (vs. long-term) consequences reduces indulgence because doing so decreases anticipated enjoyment, a primary driver of these behaviors. As such, reduced anticipated enjoyment mediated the effect of consequence timing on actual choice of a sugary snack in an incentive-compatible design (study 4). As further process evidence, this effect is moderated by the presence of an enjoyment (vs. a charity) goal: focusing on the short-term (vs. long-term) consequences of sugar consumption decreased interest in purchasing candy when consumers held an enjoyment goal, which attenuated when their candy purchases were driven by their goal to support charity (study 5). Overall, these results provide converging evidence that short-term consequences can undermine the attractiveness of temptation, leading consumers to be less likely to indulge. These results have several practical and theoretical contributions. First, for consumers who would like to indulge less often, our results suggest a readily implementable intervention: consideration of short-term consequences. Second, for marketers of health products, these results suggest that using short-term consequences can sometimes be more effective than comparatively more severe (but less connected) long-term consequences. Third, our results suggest a new avenue for self-control research: targeting the attractiveness of temptations. In other words, rather than focusing on effortful control strategies or situation selection, the present work suggests the utility of making temptation less appealing to begin with. Consumers often see the world in terms of stark black-and-white tradeoffs. Self-control is no different: we overwhelmingly view indulging in temptation as a tradeoff between immediate and delayed gratification - a tradeoff we too often accept. This black-and-white, good-now/bad-later conceptualization obscures the many consequences that indulgences can carry in the short-term. By sensitizing consumers to these consequences, we can more effectively reduce the attractiveness of temptation, allowing people to better stick to a healthy lifestyle.