1 The pleasure principle: is a little bit of

2 indulgence the secret to success?

3 David Robson
4
5 We may live in a largely secular society, but the Protestant work ethic is still alive and strong. The
6 “lazy” and “entitled” millennials, we have been told, are workshy and self-indulgent. They spend too
7 much and save too little – behaviour that is not only harming their future prospects, but those of the
8 world economy.
9 We should have the grit of our elders, apparently – who weren’t scared to suffer some hardship with
10 the promise of a better life ahead. Except they too are coming under criticism for enjoying the life that
11 they struggled to earn. According to the UK chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, it is time for the over-50s to put
12 away their golf clubs and start contributing to the economy again.
13 The gospel of self-restraint clearly runs very deep in the cultural psyche and, until recently,
14 psychological research had seemed to confirm that delayed gratification was indeed the secret to long-
15 term success. Yet some recent research has come to question these ideas. While moderate levels of
16 willpower are almost certainly beneficial, people who attempt to avoid all kinds of indulgences are
17 neither happier, nor healthier. They are not even more successful at achieving their goals.
18 By embracing rather than shunning our short-term desires, and knowing when and how to indulge
19 them, we may enjoy greater wellbeing with no cost to our productivity.

20 The long and the short of it

21 By definition, delayed gratification is the idea that putting off temporary pleasure in the moment will
22 lead to greater contentment once we have met our longer-term targets.
23 The research may be best represented by the famous “marshmallow test”, in which children were asked
24 to resist eating one marshmallow immediately with the promise of enjoying two marshmallows a
25 quarter of an hour later. Years later, those who had succeeded in the marshmallow test got better grades
26 at school and progressed more quickly in their careers.
27 The finding proved to be so influential that it inspired education programmes devoted to building
28 character; the idea even infiltrated Sesame Street, as the Cookie Monster learned to deal with his
29 cravings – and taught viewers to do the same. “Me want it but me wait,” he sang in the accompanying
30 electropop pastiche.
31 But does delayed gratification always lead to better wellbeing? Signs that this might not be the case
32 were already apparent in the 1990s. Analysing the state of the evidence, Prof David Funder at the
33 University of California, Riverside found that children who scored well on self-control also grew up
34 to be overly reserved and lacked curiosity. He also pointed to research showing that women with very
35 high levels of self-control tend to be at greater risk of depression, for instance. “The correlates of delay
36 of gratification are definitely a mixed bag,” he concluded.
37 Later research suggested that people with the highest levels of self-control may suffer from feelings of
38 regret. They can struggle to appreciate the present moment, and when looking back over their lives,
39 they come to resent the sacrifices they have made.
40 To investigate this possibility, Prof Ran Kivetz of Columbia University and his doctoral student Anat
41 Keinan asked university alumni to reflect on their winter breaks from 40 years previously. The
42 researchers found that the ageing graduates were much more likely to lament having had too much
43 self-control than too little at this key moment in their youth. Their regret over the pleasures that they
44 had missed from being too sensible, such as turning down the chance to travel, was much greater than
45 any guilt over their moments of indulgence – the times they had skipped their studies, spent too much
46 and acted irresponsibly.
47 Interestingly, the researchers found exactly the opposite views among current undergraduates: these
48 students were much more likely to endorse the standard view that self-control was preferable to
49 indulgence. It was only with the perspective of a lifetime that the alumni could recognise how much
50 richer their life might have been if they had practised a little less self-denial.
51 People with low self-control are often said to have a kind of psychological myopia, but Kivetz and
52 Keinan proposed that many suffer the opposite problem – a psychological longsightedness that leaves
53 them so deeply focused on their future goals, they cannot enjoy all the delicious distractions of the
54 present moment.

55 Strategic indulgence
56 Besides ignoring these long-term regrets, historical psychological research might have overstated the
57 short-term consequences of momentary indulgences. According to one prominent theory, any lapse
58 would only encourage more slip-ups, as we find ourselves falling for further temptations.
59 If you are on a diet, for instance, one slice of cake may soon lead to another, until all your good
60 intentions are in tatters. Similarly, once you start watching videos on YouTube, you may find that the
61 whole morning has passed by without you getting any work done. For this reason, indulgences were
62 seen as “failures” that should be avoided.
63 This idea also has religious origins. “This abstinence idea has its roots in Christianity,” says Prof Lile
64 Jia at the National University of Singapore. Yet recent research shows that intermittently giving in to
65 our desires can often be better for our wellbeing, without putting us on a slippery slope to failure. The
66 trick, it seems, is to plan the indulgences in advance.
67 Consider a study of dieters, aptly titled The Benefits of Behaving Badly on Occasion, conducted by
68 Prof Rita Coelho do Vale at the Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics in Portugal and
69 colleagues at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. All the participants wished to lose weight and
70 aimed to consume an average of 1,500 calories a day. For those in the control condition, there was no
71 opportunity for variation. Those in the “behaving badly” condition, however, were asked to eat just
72 1,300 calories on six days of the week; they could then enjoy a blowout of 2,700 calories on the
73 seventh. Over the first two weeks, the researchers tracked the participants’ feelings of motivation and
74 their general mood. They then followed up again one month later to find how much progress they had
75 made.
76 As you might expect of people on calorie-restricted diets, the participants in both conditions lost a few
77 kilos. On average, their body mass index dropped from about 25, which is considered overweight, to
78 about 24, which is just within the “normal” category. There were, however, significant differences in
79 their experiences of the diet: the people who had planned those days of indulgence reported more
80 positive feelings and remained more motivated throughout. The participants who simply cut their
81 calories without the treat days, in contrast, seemed to find it much harder work to maintain their self-
82 control and stick to the diet. That could be crucial for a dieter’s long-term success.
83 Jia has noted similar phenomena in his research comparing the habits of students with high and low
84 grade point averages (GPAs) at US universities. He was interested in the ways that they responded to
85 big-time collegiate sports games – American football, basketball and baseball. These are an important
86 part of student life in the US, but also a huge distraction from their studies. If successful self-control
87 simply involves avoiding short-term pleasures in the pursuit of long-term goals, then you would expect
88 the high-GPA students to have shunned the matches in the run-up to their exams.
 89 To find out if this was the case, Jia and a colleague at Indiana University Bloomington asked 409
90 students to take an online questionnaire a week before a home basketball game against a long-standing
91 rival team. They reported their general attitudes to basketball, and then gave an hour-by-hour plan for
92 their studies on the day before the game, the day itself and the day afterwards.
93 Overall, the low- and high-GPA students hoped to devote roughly the same amount of time to studying
94 over those three days; the big difference lay in the way they distributed those studies. The more
95 successful students planned to take much more time off on the day of the game, but compensated for
96 that with a few extra hours on the days either side of the match. The low-GPA students, in contrast,
97 planned to skip the game entirely.
98 Crucially, a follow-up study confirmed that the more academically successful students were much
99 more likely to have actively participated in watching the collegiate games and celebrating afterwards
100 – and this brought significant pleasure. “They were enjoying the activities more,” says Jia. That would
101 have then put them in a better psychological state to continue their studies the next day.
102 Jia’s latest research suggests that the advantages of “strategic indulgence” may come from an increased
103 sense of autonomy – a finding that may be useful for anyone hoping to avoid procrastination at work.

104 Avoiding guilt

105 There are many ways that we could incorporate this new view of self-control by including a few
106 strategic indulgences into our own lives. We can set up pleasant diversions in a long working day or
107 schedule regular treats during our health kicks. If we’re saving money, we may set a date each month
108 to enjoy the odd luxury as a reward for our frugal living.
109 Just as importantly, this research should teach us to look a little more kindly upon those unplanned
110 indulgences that may accidentally take us a step away from our long-term goals. You may think that
111 guilt and self-criticism will help you to learn from your mistakes, but recent psychological literature
112 shows that they are often counterproductive. By increasing our stress levels, and reducing our sense of
113 self-efficacy, these emotions can impair our motivation. You would do much better to treat yourself
114 with a little self-compassion, relishing the pleasure before looking for practical means to get back on
115 track.
116 As the study of university alumni showed, balance is the key – we should aim to weigh up the needs
117 of our present or future selves to ensure that we are serving the health and happiness of each. And
118 contrary to the self-help puritans, a little bit of hedonism is sometimes exactly what you need.
119
120 David Robson is the author of The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life (Canongate,
121 £10.99).
122
123 Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jun/12/the-pleasure-principle-is-a-little-bit-of-indulgence-
124 the-secret-to-success