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.

中文翻译：

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利用机会成本的显著性实现轻松的自我控制


传统的心理学模型将自我控制描述为一个本质上很费力的过程，依靠深思熟虑和认知要求高的策略来抵制冲动的诱惑。借鉴行为经济学文献，我们研究了机会成本显著性作为一种有效的干预措施，可以以最小的努力增强自我控制。具体来说，我们证明了机会成本显著性有助于直观地检测自我控制冲突，并通过改变自我控制困境中当前和未来结果的主观价值来激励追求有价值的长期目标。此外，我们讨论了未来的研究方向和政策影响，探讨了这个强大而简单的经济概念如何在不同的人格特征和迫切需要自我控制的情况下增强自我控制。