Self-Control Is Unnatural: Study

When you wolf down a box of cookies at midnight, it only shows you're being human and relinquishing your self-control, Meredith Small writes on LiveScience. A recent study supports your habit, showing that subjects following the story of a waiter who resists gourmet dishes finally have to eat the same food themselves. "Apparently, it's human nature to be out of control," Small writes.

But unlike our ancestors hunting in the savanna, compelled to kill more for the survival of the group, us modern folk control our urges to live together. "It takes a lot to live with people day after day and not kill them," Small writes. "But that kind of self-control has become so painful in the modern world because there is so much to want." It's only natural to to seek release by eating "half, or even a whole, box of cookies in one sitting." (More psychology stories.)