Harnessing opportunity cost salience for effortless self-control

Abstract

Traditional psychological models characterize self-control as an inherently effortful process, relying on deliberate and cognitively demanding strategies to resist impulsive temptations. Drawing on behavioral economics literature, we investigate opportunity cost salience as an effective intervention to enhance self-control with minimal effort. Specifically, we demonstrate that opportunity cost salience facilitates the intuitive detection of self-control conflicts and motivates the pursuit of valued long-term goals by altering the subjective value of present and future outcomes in self-control dilemmas. Moreover, we discuss future research directions and policy implications, exploring how this powerful yet simple economic concept can bolster self-control across diverse personality traits and in situations where self-control is critically needed.