Low self-control may be even more beneficial for healthy food choices than high self-control in the presence of a heuristic. Exploiting situations of low self-control is a new and promising method to promote health on impulse.

a b s t r a c tUnder low self-control conditions, people often favor tempting but unhealthy food products. Instead of fighting against low self-control to reduce unhealthy food choices, we aim to demonstrate in a field study that heuristic decision tendencies can be exploited under these conditions. To do so a healthy product was associated with a social proof heuristic, referring to the tendency to adopt the option preferred by others.A healthy low-fat cheese was promoted with banners stating it was the most sold cheese in that supermarket. A state of low self-control was experimentally induced in the supermarket, and compared to a high self-control condition. Participants low in self-control were more likely to buy the low-fat cheese, when this product was associated with the social proof heuristic, compared to when it was not. This suggests that under low self-control conditions, presenting social proof cues may benefit healthy purchases.

Self-control relies on a limited resource that can get depleted, a phenomenon that has been labeled ego-depletion. We argue that individuals may differ in their sensitivity to depleting tasks, and that consequently some people deplete their self-control resource at a faster rate than others. In three studies, we assessed individual differences in depletion sensitivity, and demonstrate that depletion sensitivity moderates ego-depletion effects. The Depletion Sensitivity Scale (DSS) was employed to assess depletion sensitivity. Study 1 employs the DSS to demonstrate that individual differences in sensitivity to ego-depletion exist. Study 2 shows moderate correlations of depletion sensitivity with related self-control concepts, indicating that these scales measure conceptually distinct constructs. Study 3 demonstrates that depletion sensitivity moderates the ego-depletion effect. Specifically, participants who are sensitive to depletion performed worse on a second self-control task, indicating a stronger ego-depletion effect, compared to participants less sensitive to depletion.