Improve your self control by resisting chocolates popping from the chocolate machine

You might think you need yoga and meditation to improve your will power, but psychologists don’t seem to concur with you. What they rather believe is for you to have this Chocolate machine installed at your cubicle or at home that pops up a chocolate ball every now and then. The trick to this lies in trying to avoid falling for the lure and feeding the chocolate balls back to the machine. We do admit in case you’re a huge chocolate fan it might end up being a daunting task for you.

Improve your self-control by resisting chocolates popping from the chocolate machine

The Chocolate Machine is the idea manifested by German psychologists and designers that exploits the concept of ego depletion given by the famous psychologist Roy Baumeister. Baumeister, in one of his experiments, asked people to choose between radishes and chocolate chip cookies followed by some complex puzzles. Surprisingly, he found that people who preferred radishes gave up on the puzzle easily, the reason being their forcing themselves to eat radishes that depleted their will power. Marc Hassenzahl, who conceptualized the machine, conducted the experiment on a group of 24 people with 10 among them using the machine. Seven of them reported to have significant improvement in their self-control.

The science says that will power can be built just like your muscles with practice and mental exercise. The counter on the machine keeps track of how many mental sit-ups you did for the day by avoiding the chocolate balls. Why not bring the whimsical device to your office and tell your colleagues about your mental “muscle”?

Via: BusinessWeek