Rationally coping with lapses from rationality

Thomas C. Schelling

pp. 49-53

in: Werner Leinfellner, Eckehart Köhler (eds), Game theory, experience, rationality, Berlin, Springer, 1998

Abstract

A man gave up smoking three months ago. For the first six or eight weeks he was regularly tormented by a desire to smoke, but the last three or four weeks have been less uncomfortable and he is becoming optimistic that he has left cigarettes behind for good. One afternoon a friend drops in for a business chat. The business done, our reformed smoker sees his friend to the door; returning to the living room he finds, on the coffee table, an opened pack of cigarettes. He snatches up the pack and hurries to the door, only to see his friend's car disappear around the corner. As he will see his friend in the morning and can return the cigarettes, he puts the pack in his jacket pocket and hangs the jacket in the closet. He settles in front of the television with a before-dinner drink to watch network news. Twenty minutes into the news he walks to the closet where his jacket hangs and takes the cigarettes out of the pocket, studies the pack for a minute, and walks into the bathroom, where he empties the cigarettes into the toilet and flushes it. He returns to his drink and his news.