A Motivational Approach to Hyperopia : The Impact of Future Self-Continuity and Fragile Self-Esteem

Abstract

Some consumers experience difficulties allowing themselves to indulge. This behavioural tendency, characterized as hyperopia, refers to the difficulty of deviating from what is perceived to be the virtuous and right thing to do, at the expense of long-term regret.

While research has shown that self-control can be used to resolve hyperopic decision-making conflicts, there is little evidence of the motives underlying hyperopic decision-making. The conceptualization of hyperopia depends on self-control paradigms. Therefore, hyperopia research is often concerned with managing self-control conflicts rather than understanding what drives consumers to hyperopic tendencies in the first place. The purpose of this research is to develop and test a motivational approach to explain hyperopia. This is carried out by examining the impact of self-esteem and future self-continuity on hyperopia among Finnish university students. A pilot study targeted at Finnish university students (n = 439) was conducted to find preliminary evidence of motivational antecedents of hyperopia. A mixed-method approach was employed, incorporating an extensive integrative literature review and a quantitative correlational research design.

Results suggest that an increased sense of future self-continuity negatively diminishes hyperopic decision-making tendencies. In contrast, results showed that people with fragile self-esteem tend to be more hyperopic. This research argues that hyperopia is motivated by the need to protect and enhance fragile self-esteem at the expense of truly farsighted decisions. Results indicate that hyperopic students' self-worth is relatively dependent on external domains of contingency, such as academic competence and others' approval, and therefore more likely to be influenced by introjected expectations rather than more intrinsically aligned preferences, decreasing autonomous self-regulation, and increasing the likelihood of hyperopic decision-making tendencies. Hence, hyperopic consumers tend to neglect truly farsighted decisions at the expense of introjected self-esteem goals, leading to controlled regulation, difficulties in justifying indulgence, and a lack of experienced pleasure.