Long-Term Investors Should Skip Dessert

How to avoid instant gratification and learn patience, from The New York Times:

[P]eople often crave certain things after they see them. For example, a nearby dessert cart can prompt a diner to start hungering for a slice of pie.

But a new study in The Journal of Consumer Research suggests that “appetitive stimuli” can also make people more impulsive in unrelated areas. In one experiment, college students in Toronto were shown either pictures of desserts or pictures of nature, then offered a choice between a lottery ticket with a small, fast payout and one with a slightly larger but deferred payout. Those who had seen desserts preferred the first, and those who had seen nature preferred the second.

In a variation, students were shown pictures and then offered choices between what the study called “virtues” and “vices”: a bookstore coupon versus a movie ticket, or an apartment close to work versus one with a good view. In four out of five cases, the dessert group preferred the “vices” and the nature group preferred the “virtues.”

“People exposed to these stimuli think more of the short term than the long term,” said Xiuping Li, the study’s author.