If it feels bad, do it!

[archerships]

Emotional Distress Regulation Takes
Precedence Over Impulse Control: If You
Feel Bad, Do It!

Dianne M. Tice
Department of Psychology
Case Western Reserve University

Ellen Bratslavsky
Department of Psychology
Case Western Reserve University

Roy F. Baumeister
Department of Psychology
Case Western Reserve University


ABSTRACT
Why do people's impulse controls break down
during emotional distress? Some theories propose
that distress impairs one's motivation or one's
ability to exert self-control, and some postulate
self-destructive intentions arising from the
moods. Contrary to those theories, Three
experiments found that believing that one's bad
mood was frozen (unchangeable) eliminated the
tendency to eat fattening snacks (Experiment 1),
seek immediate gratification (Experiment 2), and
engage in frivolous procrastination (Experiment
3). The implication is that when people are upset,
they indulge immediate impulses to make
themselves feel better, which amounts to giving
short-term affect regulation priority over other
self-regulatory goals.

An interesting passage:

Children who were instructed to reminisce about a sad event
were subsequently less able to resist the temptation to play
with a forbidden toy than were children who reminisced
about a happy event ( Fry, 1975 ). More generally, when
people face a choice between immediate small rewards and
larger but delayed rewards, emotional distress causes people
to shift toward the former ( Mischel, Ebbesen, & Zeiss, 1973
; Underwood, Moore, & Rosenhan, 1973 ; Wertheim &
Schwartz, 1983 ).