ABSTRACT
I f you fi nd yourself in the local fast-food establishment, eating a juicy cheese-burger with fries just a day after you promised yourself that you would lose a few pounds, you are yet again confronted with the fact that behavior is not always easy to control. People have always done things against their better judgment, in fact, Plato and Socrates wrote about this reality (see Davidson, 1980; Myrseth & Fishbach, 2009). Socrates called the experience of acting against one’s will akrasia, which can roughly be translated as “weakness of will.”
