Experiencing and Regulating Desire

Abstract

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Mental Logout: Behavioral and Neural Correlates of Regulating Temptations to Use Social Media

“…Neurally, attentional distraction successfully modulated LPP amplitudes, denoting reduced initial attention allocation toward Facebook stimuli and enhanced neural regulatory success. This LPP finding joins results of prior studies showing that distraction results in neural regulatory success (modulated LPPs) for multiple other temptations (for reviews, see Hofmann & Van Dillen, 2012, 2018). Taken together, these findings show that the potent temptation to use social media, which affects millions of people, can be self-regulated via a central attentional-distraction strategy.…”

“…First, despite having clear potential benefits, attentional distraction is also associated with clear long-term costs. Early attentional disengagement before temptations are processed and represented in WM does not allow exposure to, and making sense of, temptations that are needed to facilitate gradual habituation (for a review, see Hofmann & Van Dillen, 2018). Future studies should examine the combination of attentional distraction that provides strong short-term efficacy with other self-regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal that allow meaning making and provide long-term benefits (for a review, see Sheppes, 2020).…”

“…Therefore, we cannot determine whether our results are specific to self-regulation of Facebook temptations or can be generalized to other domains. It should be noted that multiple studies showed that attentional distraction successfully regulates multiple temptations (for a review, see Hofmann & Van Dillen, 2018). Given this general efficacy pattern, our conservative prediction would be that attentional distraction would be effective in regulating desire toward other social-media platforms.…”

“…To fill these gaps, we aimed in the present study to provide direct causal evidence for self-regulation of potent social-media content and to also identify a possible underlying neural mechanism. Building on canonical self-regulation models (e.g., Barrett et al, 2004; Hofmann & Van Dillen, 2018), we posited that successful self-regulation is strongly influenced by the ability to control or limit the mental representation of temptations in working memory (WM), an on-line limited-resource buffer that maintains relevant information in an active state (Engle, 2002). Specifically, strong mental representation of tempting stimuli can hijack the limited resources of WM to focus attention on initiating concrete behavioral intentions (action plans) that may result in giving in to tempting objects (Hofmann & Van Dillen, 2012).…”

“…One potent control mechanism is attentional distraction , which involves loading WM with neutral content, thereby restricting the mental representation of temptations and their associated consumption intentions (for a review, see Hofmann & Van Dillen, 2018). Multiple studies have shown that attentional distraction successfully reduced food cravings (Van Dillen et al, 2013), processing of smoking-related cues (Littel & Franken, 2011), romantic feelings toward ex-partners (Langeslag & Sanchez, 2018), and sexual desire (Shafir et al, 2018).…”