Impulsive? Use It to Your Advantage
Flipping the script on short-term incentives
Welcome back to The Brainlift. At some point in our lives, all of us have experienced a tug of war between our impulsive intentions and our longer-term hopes. For example, when we see a cake and a bowl of carrot sticks on a table, the battle begins: do I choose the sweet pleasure of the chocolate cake, or do I choose the health advantages of the carrots? Reframing how we think about these options may help to resolve the conflict.
Focus on “delicious” not “nutritious”
Researchers recently investigated whether simple language and marketing tricks would successfully boost healthy eating in university dining halls. They visited several universities and relabeled the food options over multiple days. Some days, vegetable dishes would have labels focused on taste (e.g. “Herb n’ Honey Balsamic Glazed Turnips”). On other days, the same dishes would have labels focused on health (e.g. “Nutritious Green Beans”). So did students find either of these labels more convincing?
On days where vegetable dishes were labeled according to taste rather than health, students ate 39% more vegetables overall. In other words, labels that appealed to their short-term impulsive brain were more successful than labels that appealed to their longer-term brain. Rather like children who push food away when they’re told it’s good for them, people typically believe that a healthy dish will taste worse than an unhealthy dish. The researchers even found that people expected food labeled “Nutritious Green Beans” to taste worse than food labeled “Green Beans”. Evidently, we don’t want our food choices to be contaminated by the thought of good health…
If you want to read my full article about this experiment, you can find it on my Medium profile.
How can we harness the power of our impulsive brain?
If you’re trying to develop a healthier habit, focus on how good it’s likely to feel today rather than how much it’s likely to benefit your later life (e.g. focus on the tastiness of healthy food, the emotional boost of physical exercise, or the pride of sticking to a new project). That way, it feels less like a sacrifice. You’re judging options using the parts of your brain that care about short-term rather than long-term incentives. Immediate rewards (e.g. “that’s delicious!”) are psychologically more powerful than delayed rewards (e.g. “this’ll help me live longer”).
When your unhealthy impulses become unmanageable, distract yourself. Play a game. Go for a walk. Call a friend. Meditation isn’t really distraction, but it can also help by focusing your mind on how your impulses feel rather than what they’re trying to make you do.
Don’t just try to abolish bad habits; replace them with good ones instead. This allows you to maintain at least the timing of your old habit, while replacing the action with a new one. Instead of smoking a cigarette when you normally would, pick up some chewing gum. Instead of “cutting down” on going for drinks with friends, suggest new things you could do together.
That final quote
No matter how amazing our lives become, we’re always looking for more. Our minds are designed to adapt to new environments, which often means we lose appreciation for our prior achievements. Today’s final words are over 2000 years old, and are attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus:
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
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