Temptation at Work
PLoS One, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2013
15 Pages Posted: 28 Feb 2011 Last revised: 11 Jan 2014
Date Written: February 21, 2011
Abstract
To encourage worker productivity offices prohibit Internet use. Consequently, many employees delay Internet activity to the end of the workday. Recent work in social psychology, however, suggests that using willpower to delay gratification can negatively impact performance. We report data from an experiment where subjects in a Willpower Treatment are asked to resist the temptation to join others in watching a humorous video for 10 minutes. In relation to a baseline treatment that does not require willpower, we show that resisting this temptation detrimentally impacts economic productivity on a subsequent task.
Keywords: Temptation, Willpower, Lab Experiment
JEL Classification: C93, D01
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
By Andrew J. Oswald, Eugenio Proto, ...
-
Happiness and Time Preference: The Effect of Positive Affect in a Random- Assignment Experiment
By John Ifcher and Homa Zarghamee
-
Happiness as a Driver of Risk-Avoiding Behavior
By Robert J. B. Goudie, Sach N. Mukherjee, ...