Bedeviled

The trouble can start at the refrigerator, in the bedroom or on the job. An overpowering urge beckons you to inhale a carton of Haagen-Dazs, cheat on your spouse or sneak to the beach instead of writing a newspaper story that was due two weeks ago.

Since the dawn of time, humans have wrestled with temptation. “I don’t understand myself,” St. Paul lamented in the 1st century. “I want to do what is right but I do not do it. Instead, I do the very thing I hate.”

And that was before Krispy Kreme and Internet porn. If Paul were alive today, he’d really be tormented. Psychologists say America’s “instant-gratification” culture has made resisting temptation harder than ever.

Just ask anyone who’s holding out against a favorite vice during these last few days of Lent.

But researchers are discovering ways to boost willpower. Curiously, many of their methods echo what religious mystics taught centuries ago, with some modern twists thrown in.

Marshmallow experiment

At first glance, temptation might not seem like an urgent national problem. But experts say its tentacles weave through a host of social ills -- divorce, obesity, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, even general misery (studies show that people with strong self-control are happier).

In the 1970s, scientists at Stanford University used marshmallows to investigate temptation’s power. Preschoolers were left alone with instructions that they could eat one marshmallow right away, or wait 15 minutes and get two marshmallows.

Some went for the immediate payoff; others held back, distracting themselves from the puffy white treat by singing, trying to sleep or covering their eyes.

A decade later, researchers tracked down the children and, according to news reports, found that those who had waited for the second marshmallow were smarter and more self-confident.

No surprise there, says psychologist Nick Baylis of Cambridge University. Although self-control might seem limiting, it actually “enables us to behave in line with our deepest principles and most treasured goals” by freeing us from “slavery to temporary appetites.”

Unfortunately, second-marshmallow thinking has nose-dived in recent years.

In some quarters, temptation is embraced as a marketing tool. Fox built an entire TV show around the concept: “Temptation Island.” And other companies have enshrined the word in product names for cereals, body lotions and fast food (Wendy’s is rolling out a new line of sandwiches dubbed Chicken Temptations).

Preaching resistance

Across the street from a Cracker Barrel restaurant in South Carolina, Howard J. Rankin works on the front lines against temptation. The London-trained psychologist plunged into the field 30 years ago, conducting experiments that “you probably couldn’t ethically do now,” such as pouring martinis in front of recovering alcoholics. Today he leads seminars on how to conquer cravings and addictions.

Resisting temptation is a dying art, Rankin says. Part of the problem is that technology and pop culture have trained people to expect instant gratification of their desires. So when a temptation comes along, they’re inclined to indulge it, he says. Exhibit A: 61% of Americans are now overweight.

Lack of willpower can also fuel unfaithfulness in relationships, he suggests: “The requirements for a loving relationship run completely counter to the mentality of an instant, disposable and user-friendly society. We are bombarded with messages about ease and convenience but come home to relationships that simply do not fit that mode.”

On a deeper level, temptation is driven by “dissatisfaction with life and what you’ve got,” says Dallas Willard, a USC philosophy professor. The No. 1 antidote, he says, is to “find a way to be grateful and thankful, and then dwell on it, because temptation thrives on dissatisfaction.”

The ‘radish effect’

One of the Catch-22s of temptation is that successfully deflecting one enticement can undermine resistance to others.

That’s because willpower fades after each use, researchers say. Roy Baumeister, a psychology professor at Florida State University, documented the phenomenon using a stash of radishes. He assembled a crew of student guinea pigs, starved them for several hours, then handed each person a plate of chocolate chip cookies and radishes. One group was allowed to feast on the cookies; the rest were asked to steel their resolve and eat only the radishes.

Next, both groups were instructed to perform a tedious task for as long as they could. The upshot was that the students who had expended mental energy avoiding the cookies gave up on the tedious task sooner than everyone else. “Resisting temptation is often morally necessary, but it has a psychological cost,” Baumeister concluded.

The “radish effect” might also help explain why rock stars and Hollywood celebrities seem to have such trouble withstanding the lure of infidelity and drugs. The sheer volume of temptations overwhelms their ability to resist. As actress Amy Smart recently told an interviewer: “The only downside in this business is temptation -- all the pretty people, the glamour, the parties, the opportunities.”

But even against long odds, temptation can be tamed, experts say. The tricks of the trade include “urge surfing,” writing with your opposite hand and practicing holding your breath.

At the University of Washington, researchers created an anti-temptation program based on a “cognitive behavioral model” of the “thoughts, feelings and beliefs” that come into play during a craving. It’s a defensive approach, says G. Alan Marlatt, director of the university’s Addictive Behaviors Research Center and a member of Jenny Craig’s medical advisory board: “We teach people to anticipate temptations before they crop up and plan accordingly.”

Step one is to figure out your “high-risk situations” -- the moods (such as loneliness), times of day (such as happy hour), locations and other patterns that tend to trigger unwanted impulses. “It’s Pavlovian,” Marlatt says. Once you identify the catalysts, try to steer clear of them, he advises. It’s a secular version of the old Catholic admonition to “avoid the occasions of sin.”

Nicotine fiend Becky Farina knows the drill. When the 34-year-old Hollywood resident decided to stop smoking two years ago, “I stayed home for a month and didn’t go out with friends” because social settings sparked her desire for tobacco. Booze was another trigger, so she locked the liquor cabinet.

But even with such safeguards in place, cravings still sneak through. When an urge hits, Marlatt recommends “surfing” it. “Temptation comes on and builds like a wave,” he says. “When it peaks, you’re more likely to give in,” but if you can ride it out for even one or two minutes -- imagining yourself surfing and observing the wave, or distracting yourself with some other activity or thought -- it usually subsides.

Farina’s diversion of choice was housecleaning. “It worked,” she says. “And my home ended up spotless.”

After six months, however, the tobacco demon returned. Her new battle plan entails making her smoker boyfriend go outside when he lights up. “That eliminates one big trigger,” she says. “Now if I can just remove alcohol, friends who smoke and any references to cigarettes in film and television, it should be a piece of cake, right?”

People can trip up in a couple of ways, Marlatt says. One is to reward themselves with a “one-time-only” surrender to the temptation. The other is to “put a story line” on an urge.

USC’s Willard agrees. In a twisted sense, “we enjoy temptation,” he says. “We like to turn it over in our minds and think about how it would be if we gave in.” Once that happens, “your feet are on the ice.”

Unless you keep going with the story line. In Alcoholics Anonymous, this technique is called “think through the drink,” Marlatt says. Let your imagination run past the pleasure of satisfying the impulse to the guilt you’ll feel after giving in, and to long-range health, relationship and career consequences. “Usually there are bigger costs down the line.”

Rankin, the South Carolina psychologist, endorses much of Marlatt’s method but says it doesn’t go far enough. If you merely try to avoid temptations, they still have some control over you, he writes in “The TOPS Way to Weight Loss.” “It’s an admission that you can’t manage them.” His advice: Instead of waiting for temptation, “go out and hunt it down.”

But take baby steps, he warns. In Rankin’s program, willpower-deficient patients build immunity to temptation through gradual exposure to their vice.

If a woman craves ice cream, for example, the process might begin with having her enter an ice cream parlor and then immediately leave. Phase two might be to visit the parlor with friends and stand by while they scarf down some rocky road.

“As confidence develops and you learn what it feels like to exercise self-control, more difficult situations can be confronted,” he explains.

Ahead of each step, Rankin has patients visualize their success, a gimmick he stumbled across during his experiments with alcoholics. Practicing resistance in the mind improves willpower in real life, he says.

Perhaps the oddest-sounding temptation remedy comes from Baumeister, the Florida psych professor. He claims that any kind of self-discipline -- holding your breath, fasting, writing like a southpaw if you’re right-handed -- can strengthen willpower.

Don’t laugh, says Willard. It’s really just a modern spin on ancient wisdom. “The old spiritual masters understood that if you’re good at fasting, you’re probably good at overcoming other desires. The human will works very much like a muscle.... If you train yourself not to do something” in one arena, it spills over.

That’s the theory behind Ramadan. During the monthlong observance, Muslims practice a daily fast from food and sex, believing it will hot-wire their ability to resist temptation the rest of the year.

Likewise, when Christians renounce favorite habits during Lent, they bulk up their willpower muscle, says Willard, who writes about spiritual disciplines from a Christian perspective.

Religious faith is a useful tool for whipping temptation, says sociologist Jackson Toby of Rutgers University. “It’s one thing to think drinking too much alcohol is bad for you, but if you think it’s bad for you and that God doesn’t like it, it adds a different dimension.”

Still, no anti-temptation system is foolproof. Failures and slips are inevitable. And therein lies one of the biggest dangers, experts say. Many people assume backsliding “proves” they have no willpower, Marlatt says. Instead of analyzing what went wrong and developing a new strategy, they give up.

Or they assume they’re “addicted,” a word that drives sociologist Toby up the wall. “A lot of what we call addictions these days are really just old-fashioned temptations,” he says. But by labeling them “compulsions,” medical authorities give people the mistaken impression resistance is futile, he argues. Toby cites gambling, overeating and promiscuity as undeserving of the addiction tag.

Although he concedes that some addictions have a biological component, he insists “there’s almost nothing that humans can’t resist if they feel strongly enough or think it’s wrong enough.”

How else could smokers survive not puffing during a long plane trip? And how, during the siege of Leningrad in World War II, did thousands of people suppress their survival instincts and starve to death rather than resort to cannibalism, he asks. “Apparently, ‘compulsive’ does not mean that biological needs take control of the individual so [powerfully] that he cannot suppress them,” he wrote in the Public Interest, a journal of politics and culture.

In other words, temptation is all in your head, Toby says.

However, for those who don’t have the energy to drive it out, there is one alternative. In the words of playwright Oscar Wilde, “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”