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Inhibitory Spillover and the DP Game


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Given the interests of the average reader on this site, you may have heard that needing to pee can improve your decision-making skills. Limited research has been made on the subject of how pee desperation impacts cognition, so the results may need to be taken with a grain of salt. However, what this research does indicate is that having a full bladder makes your reflexes worse, while also making your decision making more forward-thinking and less impulsive. Tuk et al humorously call this effect “inhibitory spillover”, where being forced to exercise inhibition in one area (in this case, holding one’s pee) results in improved inhibition in other areas as well, such as making decisions that are better long-term rather than in the short-term.

This is of course highly related to the DP Game, which is all about making decisions with a full bladder. Does this mean participants of the DP Game would be more likely to make good long-term decisions as they grew more desperate? Perhaps, though it’s probably not quite that simple. After all, the choices participants face in the DP Game are not always so simple that they can be broken down into long-term and short-term benefits. Many complex variables such as trust, self-assessment of one’s ability to hold, altruism all come into play. Choosing “Ally” in the DP Game may be beneficial in the long-term, since it will promote trust among the group and cause others to choose “Ally” against you in the future. However, if a participant believes they can’t hold it long enough if they repeatedly choose “Ally”, that calculation is suddenly not so simple.

In addition, if the DP Game were to be performed in the real world, it would be a highly unethical experiment. Participants are forced to hold their pee to a far more severe degree than what you would see in any real-world study. The level of danger present in the DP Game, coupled with the immense desire to urinate some participants would experience, may impact cognition in ways we do not yet know.

 

References
Tuk, Trampe, D., & Warlop, L. (2011). Inhibitory Spillover: Increased Urination Urgency Facilitates Impulse Control in Unrelated Domains. Psychological Science22(5), 627–633. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611404901

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