Treat yourself: both positive and negative affect can provide justifications for self-regulatory indulgence

ABSTRACT

Temptations are ubiquitous in daily life. In the present studies, we examined reflective justifications for indulging in these temptations. In Study 1, people reported deserving pleasurable activities (at the expense of goal pursuits) after imagining positive events for which they were responsible or negative events for which they were not responsible. In Study 2, participants reported more indulging and less goal progress when they considered negative events if they were given a chance to reflect on their lack of responsibility for those events. Combined, this evidence suggests people might frequently reflect on their experiences in ways that promote indulging.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-regulation
• self-control
• justification
• temptation
• affect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2023.2244725

Code availability

All code and data are available on OSF: doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KM7WF

Consent/ethics statement:

Informed consent was obtained from all participants. All data were collected in accordance with ethical standards for human subjects and all studies were approved by the ethics committee at the University of Georgia (PROJECT00004567, PROJECT00002847, PROJECT00003545).

Notes

1. Per our preregistration plan, because of this high internal consistency, we included the pet item for all participants.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no external funding.Conflict of Interest:For all authors, there are no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests to report.