Impulsivity is the tendency to be drawn into action by current temptations, even when those temptations are bad in the long-run. For example, an impulsive person might be steal a wallet full of cash sitting on a library table, even though there are serious consequences to being caught.

For a serious temptation, there are two components that are important. First, there is the temptation itself. For example, for someone on a diet, rich desserts are a serious temptation. Second, there is the goal that provides the resistance to the temptation. For the dieter, the goal to keep the diet is the resistance.

When you face a temptation, there are basically two outcomes. You might give in to the temptation (and have too much of the rich dessert) or you might successfully resist the temptation (and virtuously have a small wedge of melon).

The results of the current study suggest that if you are not very impulsive, then you should think about past experiences in which you successfully overcame a temptation when you face that temptation again. Thinking about this success will allow the goal to resist the temptation to gain in strength. In one study in the paper by Mukhopadhyay and colleagues, dieters were given the opportunity to eat cheese balls. If they were not very impulsive people, they ate fewer cheese balls after thinking about a situation in which they successfully overcame a temptation than after thinking about a situation in which they were not successful in overcoming a temptation.

The strange finding, though, is that people who are highly impulsive show the opposite result. The idea is that an impulsive person thinking about a past success will have a harder time dampening the activation of the temptation, and will paradoxically be more likely to give into temptation in the future than will an impulsive person who thinks about a past failure. Indeed, in the study with the cheese balls, impulsive people ate more when they thought about a past success overcoming a temptation than when they thought about a past failure.

So, before you decide how to overcome temptation in this coming holiday season, start by thinking about how impulsive you are. Are you the kind of person who buys candies and magazines at the checkout counter of stores? Do you make decisions quickly and without thinking through the consequences? If so, you may be impulsive. If you want to be sure, you can do an internet search for impulsivity scales like the BAS questionnaire (Behavioral Activation Scale). Researchers like Alan Pickering and Jeffrey Gray have looked at many measures of impulsivity, and you can find their work on Google Scholar.

Finally, findings like this demonstrate exactly how hard it is to give advice to people. The human cognitive system is a complex device with lots of interacting parts. It is rare that there is any kind of one-size-fits-all advice. Worse yet, strategies that will work for one kind of person will utterly backfire for another. So, be wary when you read an advice column that tries to give you advice without knowing anything about you.