"’We Can Do This the Easy Way or the Hard Way’: Negative Emotions, Self-regulation and the Law"

by George Loewenstein and Ted O'Donoghue

University of Chicago Law Review, 73, Winter 2006, 183-206.

Abstract

Many forms of self-regulation involve threatening oneself with emotional consequences, such as guilt and fear, if one succumbs to temptation. While such threats often lead to successful selfcontrol, they sometimes fail, and when they do, these emotions constitute a “deadweight loss” causing one to, in effect, pay twice for the lapse: in addition to negative material consequences, one also must experience the negative emotions. Moreover, firm behavior — and thus market institutions — can influence the effectiveness of negative emotions as a tool for self-regulation.  We discuss implications of these observations for legal and regulatory policies dealing with issues of self-control. We distinguish between four different legal approaches to enhancing self-control, and argue that the existence of negative emotions tends to favor two categories of interventions: those that involve restrictions on the supply of temptations, and those that recognize the inevitability of certain lapses in self-control and instead create “guilt-free zones” — permitting people to consume vices the “easy way”, without guilt.