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self control
A minor lapse in control leads to a total collapse.
The 'what-the-hell' effect describes how a small violation of a goal leads to the abandonment of that goal entirely.
When people on a diet eat one 'forbidden' cookie, they often interpret this as a complete failure. Having already 'broken' their progress, they decide they might as well eat the whole box since they have already ruined their streak.
You turn a small bump in the road into a dead end.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Polivy and Herman, 1985, Journal of Abnormal Psychology
- What the check found
- The attribution is accurate in substance, as Polivy and Herman are the primary architects of the 'what-the-hell' effect in restraint theory, though it is the result of a body of work rather than one study.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.