Self Control In Popular Culture

Words: 1986
Pages: 8

Self control is an idea that has been satirized in modern American popular culture. Anything from comedians making self deprecation jokes about how many of their life problems occur due to their lack of self control. To the common cocktail story that one hears in modern America involving a family size potato chip bag and the lack of self-control surrounding it. The story usually goes where a person is eating from the bag by himself or herself while doing something monotonous like watching TV. Then, over the course of a few hours, the person ends up eating the whole bag of chips themselves. The story ends with the person jokingly saying, “Oh my I have no self control” and the listeners end up laughing. Really, self control has become a …show more content…
The journal article “The Flat Rate Pricing Paradox: Conflicting Effects of “All-You-Can-Eat” Buffet Pricing” by David R. Just and Brian Wasnik both at Cornell University looks at how much an “All-You-Can-Eat” or fixed price setting effects the amount of food one eats. They discovered that the fixed price setting makes people eat less food than they would normally. In addition, “Time Inconsistent Preferences and Consumer Self Control” by Stephen J. Hoch and George F. Loewenstein looks at what makes consumers lose self control. They believe desire and will power have to largest effects on consumers self control. The last scholarly article looked regarding self control is “Parenting Behavior and Adolescent Behavioral and Emotional Problems: The Role of Self Control” by Catrin Finkenauer, Rutger Engles and Roy Baumeister that looks to answer what parenting behaviors makes good and bad behaviors more likely, and they discovered that the practice of self control by the parents does make good or bad behavior more likely. Still, none of the literature looks at peer pressure and stranger observations effects on self control in a restaurant setting or specifically high school and college students, so the experiment is looking at unanswered questions in the …show more content…
The experiment will only use BWWs and Golden Corrals from one state to make the subjects as similar as possible in anything but age. A random number generator will choose this state. Then, the experiment team will given the phone number of every person in the state, and a quarter will be randomly selected to have the possibility to participate in the study. From then on, a random number generator will decide if these subjects will get one of four coupons. The subjects can be given a coupon that says twenty percent off all you can eat wings if the subject goes to BWW alone meaning they can participate in treatment one or two, a coupon that says twenty percent off unlimited wings if the subject goes to BWW with a group of three or more meaning they can participate in treatment three or four, a coupon that says twenty percent off a dinner at Golden Corral if they come alone meaning they can participate in treatment five or six and a coupon that says twenty percent off a dinner at Golden Corral if the subject comes to the dinner with a group of three or more meaning they can participate in treatment seven or eight. These coupons can only be used by the people they are given to because one does not want the random assignment of the experiment to be tarnished. The experimenters will play all of the coupons, so BWW and Golden Corral do not lose money. Everyone given a