Farsightedness
Farsightedness
EVIDENCE AND REMEDIES OF HYPEROPIA
Our religions, mythologies, and fables admonish us to overcome temptation, exercise self-discipline, and heed the future—consider Adam and Eve, Odysseus, and the Ant and the Grasshopper. Social scientists too offer helpful strategies for increasing willpower and avoiding indulgence (e.g., Ainslie 1975; Trope and Fishbach 2000; Wertenbroch 1998). The seemingly universal espousal of prudence and farsightedness as noble goals is reflected in the voluminous literature in the social sciences on self-control. This body of research is premised on the notion that people are shortsighted (myopic) and easily tempted by hedonic “sins,” such as overbuying (oniomania), splurging on tasty but unhealthy food, and indulging in luxuries (see, e.g., Prelec and Herrnstein 1992; Thaler 1980).
An alternative research paradigm challenges the universality of myopia and proposes that people often suffer from a reverse self-control problem, namely excessive farsightedness (“hyperopia”) and overcontrol (Kivetz and
Simonson 2002b; Kivetz and Keinan 2006; Keinan and Kivetz 2007). Such hyperopia leads people to deprive themselves of indulgence and instead overly focus on acting responsibly, delaying gratification, and doing “the right thing.” Research on farsightedness examines the underlying processes (e.g., guilt, justification), the way people cope with hyperopia (e.g., by precommitting to indulgence), and the consequences of overcontrol (e.g., long-term regret).
Ran Kivetz and Yuhuang Zheng (2006) shed light on the antecedents of hyperopia by highlighting the role of justification and guilt in self-control decisions (see also Kivetz and Simonson 2002a). Building on prior analyses in the social sciences, they propose two complementary routes to justifying self-gratification: the first through hard work or excellent performance (an entitlement justification) and the second through the attainment of indulgence without depleting income or monetary resources. Consistent with the two routes to justification, it is demonstrated that (1) higher required effort enhances preference for indulgence rewards over more prudent necessities, but a reverse effect is observed when the interchangeability of effort and income is implied; (2) providing (bogus) excellence feedback on an effort task enhances choices of indulgence, unless the interchangeability of effort and income is suggested; and (3) sensitivity to effort and excellence (i.e., justification) cues is greater for individuals who experience stronger (chronic or manipulated) guilt.
EVIDENCE AND REMEDIES OF HYPEROPIA
Kivetz and Itamar Simonson (2002b) provide a more direct examination of the notion of excessive farsightedness and the strategies that people use to overcome this (reverse) self-control problem. They found that a large segment of people perceive themselves as having insufficient indulgence and seek ways to correct this imbalance in their lives. Such people force themselves to indulge in an attempt to avoid default forms of spending on utilitarian necessities and/or savings. In particular people who have difficulty choosing items that are perceived as indulgences or luxuries (e.g., a cruise) over necessities (e.g., saving for college education) and cash in everyday decisions use precommitments to future hedonic experiences. For example, a substantial segment of people choose hedonic luxury awards over cash of equal or greater value (the choices and incentives are real). People explain such choices based on the need to precommit to indulgence, to make sure that the award does not end up in the pool of money used for necessities.
Kivetz (2007) provides additional direct evidence for the concept of hyperopia (excessive farsightedness). It is shown that people select pleasurable vices when the consequences of their decisions are psychologically distal (e.g., temporally delayed, hypothetical, improbable, abstract, or self-irrelevant) but reverse their decisions when the consequences are psychologically proximal (e.g., temporally imminent, real, vivid, or self-relevant). These reversals are more pronounced among people with a chronic tendency to experience guilt.
CONSEQUENCES OF HYPEROPIA
Kivetz and Anat Keinan (2006) investigate the consequences of hyperopia for people’s well-being and long-term feelings. The extant literature on self-control suggests that people not only yield to temptations they had originally planned to resist but also subsequently reverse their preferences and regret their myopic behaviors (e.g., Schelling 1992). Although yielding to temptation certainly can be harmful, Kivetz and Keinan argue that excessive farsightedness can also have negative long-term consequences. In particular they propose that with the passage of time, choices of virtue over vice (e.g., work over pleasure) increasingly evoke regret. Accordingly they demonstrate that increasing the temporal separation between the actual decision and its assessment enhances the regret (or anticipatory regret) of righteous choices. Building on research on self-control and on affect (e.g., Kivetz and Simonson 2002b; Kahneman 1995; Metcalfe and Mischel 1999), Kivetz and Keinan show that greater temporal perspective allows people to escape the influence of indulgence guilt and causes them to experience a wistful feeling of missing out on the pleasures of life.
A great deal of research in psychology, economics, marketing, and other social sciences has examined self-control and time inconsistency. Such research has relied on a myopic premise. Late-twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century research advances an alternative perspective, namely that of excessive farsightedness and over-control. By exploring what is essentially a reverse form of self-control, this research contributes to a fuller understanding of self-regulation as a dynamic and general process. Some key discoveries that are diametrically opposed to the myopic premise include:
the finding that people require special entitlement justifications (hard work, excellence) to indulge;
the finding that people are motivated to work harder for hedonic luxuries than cash equivalents but are willing to spend more money on the latter;
the finding that people perceive themselves as suffering from excessive farsightedness and consequently correct this imbalance in their lives by precommitting to future hedonic experiences;
the finding that people are more likely to precommit to indulgence and to select vice when the consequences of their decisions are psychologically distal (e.g., temporally delayed, hypothetical, or abstract);
the detrimental impact of excessive farsightedness on well-being in the long run; that is, righteous choices of virtue over vice give rise to increasing regret over time, and considering long-term regret motivates people to select indulgence and luxury; and the fact that the preceding findings are more pronounced among people who experience stronger (chronic or manipulated) indulgence guilt.
SEE ALSO Behavior, Self-Constrained; Saving Rate; Self-Control
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ainslie, George. 1975. Specious Reward: A Behavioral Theory of Impulsiveness and Impulse Control. Psychology Bulletin 82 (April): 463–496.
Kahneman, Daniel. 1995. Varieties of Counterfactual Thinking. In What Might Have Been: The Social Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking, ed. Neal J. Roese and James M. Olson, 375–396. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Keinan, Anat, and Ran Kivetz. 2007. Remedying Hyperopia: The Effects of Self-Control Regret on Consumer Behavior. Working paper, Columbia University.
Kivetz, Ran. 2007. Hyperopia: A Theory of Reverse Self-Control. Working paper, Columbia University.
Kivetz, Ran, and Anat Keinan. 2006. Repenting Hyperopia: An Analysis of Self-Control Regrets. Journal of Consumer Research 33 (September): 273–282.
Kivetz, Ran, and Itamar Simonson. 2002a. Earning the Right to Indulge: Effort as a Determinant of Customer Preferences toward Frequency Program Rewards. Journal of Marketing Research 39 (2): 155–170.
Kivetz, Ran, and Itamar Simonson. 2002b. Self-Control for the Righteous: Toward a Theory of Pre-Commitment to Indulgence. Journal of Consumer Research 29 (2): 199–217.
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Ran Kivetz