Self-gratification

Some retirees react to total leisure as a selfish way to live—self-gratification without concern or compassion for others. Not so. You can adopt Plan A as your retirement lifestyle and still make contributions to the lives of others on a personal, one-on-one basis. You can continue to pay your human and social dues. Plan A just means that you refuse to have organizational connections that require responsibilities. Participate in church life, but refuse to assume a leadership role. Be a member of a fraternal organization, but refuse to accept an office. Enjoy country-club life, but back away when it comes to being on a committee. You... 

MANY OBSERVERS suspect that self-control problems and related time inconsistencies play an important role in the consumption of addictive, products, leading people to develop and maintain addictions against their long-run interests. People often consume addictive products despite an expressed desire to quit. For many people, it would appear that the long-run harm caused by an addiction outweighs its short-run benefits. In extreme cases, people destroy their lives with harmful addictions. Our goal in this chapter is to carefully explore the role that self-control problems—and people s awareness of those problems— play in harmful addictions. To do so, we develop a formal model of the decision to consume addictive products that explicitly incorporates a time-inconsistent taste for immediate gratification. 

Like the rational choice models of addiction, our model assumes that the choice to consume an addictive product is volitional, in the sense that people balance their current desire for the addictive product against their perceptions of the future consequences of current consumption. Our model is quite different, and less extreme, than rational choice models, however, because it assumes that people may be overattentive to their immediate gratification (that is, they may have self-control problems) and... 

Evidence suggests that people have self-control problems People tend to pursue immediate gratification in a way that they do not appreciate from a long-run perspective. For example, suppose people are presented with a choice between doing seven hours of an unpleasant task on April 1 versus eight hours on April 15. We suspect that if asked on February 1 (that is, from a long-run perspective), virtually everyone would prefer the seven hours on April 1. Yet if given the same choice on April 1, most people would choose to put off the work until April 15.7... 

If the taste for immediate gratification in even periods were sufficiently strong, of course, they would (fortunately for them) procrastinate in attempting to withdraw. This example does not rely on the extreme assumption that there is no self-control problem in even periods so long as ft >. 8 for / even naifs would repeatedly try to quit... 

This is perhaps the most intense period of adolescent growth, as the boy or girl becomes extremely self-concerned. Now the teenager is increasingly focused on immediate gratification and is more likely to act inconsiderate of parents. In response, they often have to confront to get heard, interrogate to get important information, argue to get their household needs met, and do battle to get compliance with family rules. 

Extreme focus on self, impatience for immediate gratification, contempt for authority, an entitled sense of individuality, a determination to live outside "the system," treating peers as more important than parents, communicating less and isolating when at home, and lying for freedom s sake are just a few common characteristics that may accompany a young person s entry into substance abuse. And when these characteristics do occur, more conflict between parents and... 

The rationale for offering incentives has been extended to the domain of (ill) health as far as this is dependent on lifestyle. With this extension, self-protective behaviour, or the lack of it, is arguably a function of the degree to which people expect more (or less) from their future and their inclination (or disinclination) to plan ahead for that future. The more people expect from their future, the less they will be inclined to endanger it in exchange for inunediate need gratification, and vice versa. The key to safety and health promotion, therefore, is a policy that enhances people s future expectations. 

Shoda, Y, Mischel, W., and Peake, P. K., Predicting adolescent cognitive and self-regulatory competencies from preschool delay of gratification, Dev. Psychol., 26,978,1990. 

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