More and more people struggle with debt, and while people differ in their motivations, preferences, and their reasons not to pay, debt collection practices rarely take these factors into account. Using psychological insights, debt collection can be made more debtor-friendly and effective. The results: increased repayments for companies and a lower financial burden for consumers.
We’re generally poor at predicting how events will impact future states of happiness. And yet, if we’re going to make good decisions in the present, we need to empathize with our future selves at some level. How can we reconcile this? The answer may lie with art, visualization, and social cognition.
In the typical self-control experiment, participants are given a choice between a hedonic vice-food (e.g., chocolate) and a utilitarian virtue-food (e.g., fruit). Choosing the hedonic vice is interpreted as a self-control failure. We argue that self-control failures are better captured as choices that violate one’s long-term goals and induce regret. Accordingly, the consumption of hedonic food is not necessarily a self-control failure, and self-control does not necessarily entail a trade-off between pleasure and health. Our conceptualization has far-reaching consequences for consumers and policy-makers who try to help consumers exert self-control.
