Resisting one temptation makes you vulnerable to another

Recent research suggests that:

As hu­mans, we have lim­it­ed re­sources to con­trol our­selves, re­search­ers say; all acts of con­trol draw from one source. So when us­ing this re­source in one do­main, such as di­et­ing, we’re more likely to run out of it in an­oth­er do­main, like stu­dy­ing hard.

Once these re­sources run out, our self-con­trol abil­ity is di­min­ished, ac­cord­ing to sci­ent­ists.

In an experiment, the scientists:

asked par­ti­ci­pants to sup­press their emo­tions while watch­ing an up­set­ting mov­ie. The idea was to de­plete their re­sources for self-con­trol. The par­ti­ci­pants re­ported their abil­ity to sup­press their feel­ings on a scale from one to nine. Then, they com­plet­ed a Stroop task, which in­volves nam­ing the col­or of printed words (i.e. say­ing red when read­ing the word “green” writ­ten in red), yet an­oth­er task that re­quires self-con­trol.

The re­search­ers found that those who sup­pressed their emo­tions per­formed worse on the task, in­di­cat­ing that they had used up their self-con­trol re­sources while hold­ing back their tears dur­ing the film.

See full article. Scott Adams has a humorous take on this that might amuse you.