In many of the psychology courses that I’ve taken here at Penn State, I’ve learned about the concept of instant versus delayed gratification. Basically what this means is instant gratification is often linked to children and impulse control. As famously done by scientists in a test called the marshmallow test they were able to measure a child’s impulse control through their desire for instant or delayed gratification of receiving the marshmallow. As I was reading lesson 13 this popped in my head when I was reading about social traps (Gruman, 2016).
Social traps are short-term pleasure that leads to negative outcomes due to what I believe as a lack of delayed gratification. This can mean anything from smoking to overeating to using pesticides. Basically what this means is that people, individuals and companies may be doing things and taking resources from the environment that are going to have a negative impact long-term on their health and well-being however they are very convenient to use now.
As a BBH major this strikes hard for me because a lot of people that I see and learn about are struggling from obesity due to psychological issues often due to wanting instant gratification when it comes to food. This is interesting to me because I have personally seen the first hand effects of what overeating can do to negatively impact someone’s body. Social traps are a form of social dilemmas and this is because an individual is tasked with a choice to either help themselves or help the environment both short-term and long-term.
A specific example of a social trap would be if you are at a party and at this party you see individuals indulging in as many different foods as possible while also smoking cigarettes. and when you enter this party you don’t want to be the only one that’s not indulging in the food and smoking the cigarettes so as a result of attending this event, you yourself were also engaging in this behavior that may feel pleasurable now however in the long-term this will negatively impact your physical health and well-being.
Social traps are all around us and we should always be aware in order to help our health and well-being the most. While it may be hard to say no to food at a fun party, it is also possible to be aware that we need a sense of delayed gratification in order to stay healthy with our bodies and so that we don’t overindulge on the resources of our environment.
Applied Social Psychology : Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Jamie A. Gruman, Frank W. Schneider, and Larry M. Coutts . SAGE Publications . 2016
Your blog topic about social traps reminds me of the “self-care” that our society sometimes encourages, which is mostly related to short-term instant gratification. Our society pushes consuming as a form of “self-care” and purchasing and consuming goods. Amazon and other online retailers make it easy for us to find this instant gratification through shopping, especially how fast shipping is. For example, on a day off or on vacation society may influence us through advertisements or general culture to go shopping or consume large amounts of sugary and salty foods while at the movies spending over $40-$50 just to go have fun. When in reality, we don’t NEED any of those things, but we want them. And that’s completely ok until we stop paying attention to our mental health and anything relating to true wellness like spending our hard-earned money on therapy or true self-care items for hygiene. And although it’s not that serious and everyone has their own methods of coping, it’s definitely a social trap to think about.
Social Traps and beyond: The situation is hopeless but not serious. Mental Help Social Traps and Beyond The Situation is Hopeless But Not Serious Comments. (n.d.). Retrieved April 18, 2022, from https://www.mentalhelp.net/blogs/social-traps-and-beyond-the-situation-is-hopeless-but-not-serious/
I completely agree with you about how unhealthy instant gratification can be for us and for the environment as well. It seems to be an endemic among humans, especially with the introduction of technology. We can get instant gratification from scrolling through social media. There is also a more complex aspect to instant gratification for many people: mental illness. If we look at illnesses such as addiction (Heshmat, 2015), ADHD (Dipeolu, 2011), and bipolar disorder (Bernabei et al., 2018). The common denominator between these three examples and others that I have not listed are impaired executive functioning. While there are some that seek instant gratification because of peer pressure, because of how they were raised, or because of their culture might find it easier to break the habit of seeking instant gratification than those who are seeking it because of impaired executive functioning. Those with impaired executive functioning might need extra help such as cognitive behavioral therapy to curb these behaviors. In a society that encourages a certain level of instant gratification, this process could take months or even years before they go into remission and begin naturally seeking delayed gratification without professional help.
References:
Heshmat, S. (2015). Focus: Addiction: Behavioral Economics of Self-Control Failure. The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 88(3), 333.
Dipeolu, A. O. (2011). College students with ADHD: Prescriptive concepts for best practices in career development. Journal of Career Development, 38(5), 408-427.
Bernabei, L., Bersani, F. S., Delle Chiaie, R., Pompili, E., Casula, S., D’Aniello, G., … & de’Fornari, M. A. C. (2018). A preliminary study on hot and cool executive functions in bipolar disorder and on their association with emotion regulation strategies. Rivista di psichiatria, 53(6), 331-335.
Very good blog post about something we all encounter but probably are not aware of. The national debt comes to mind as “kicking the can down the road” for a problem that nobody wants to solve. Your example of a party and over indulging is perfect. Looking historical (my example is from 1973) there is nothing new to this but rather we just accept that “there are some things we cannot change” rather than attempting to completely better ourselves.
Reference:
Platt, J. (1973). Social traps. American Psychologist, 28(8), 641–651. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0035723