Restraint Bias

Loran Nordgren, Frenk van Harreveld, and Joop van der Pligt identified and named the bias in a 2009 paper in Psychological Science. Their four studies showed that inflated impulse control beliefs led people to overexpose themselves to temptation — and ultimately to higher rates of giving in. Recovering smokers who rated themselves as highly self-controlled exposed themselves to more smoking situations and relapsed at higher rates than those with more realistic self-assessments four months later.