Our relationship with temptation stretches back to stories from the bible and antiquity. Whether it is eating the forbidden fruit or opening Pandora’s box, temptation seems intimately linked to human nature. But is it our responsibility to remove temptation from others or is this an area where the so-called nanny state seeks to interfere with our personal choices?

In this week’s podcast, we discuss temptation. We focus our attention on the example of bringing cake into the office. In doing so, we discuss deontology and consequentialism, ego depletion, the marshmallow test, and the economic theory of time inconsistency. Nick presents his temptability index and we reveal our favourite cakes and gastronomic temptations.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:


- Bringing cake to the office is as harmful as passive smoking https://news.sky.com/story/bringing-cake-to-office-as-harmful-as-passive-smoking-uk-food-watchdog-says-12789287
- The psychology of temptation https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/473700
- House of Lords: Regina v Looseley https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200102/ldjudgmt/jd011025/loose-1.htm
- Ten prohibited advertising categories https://www.asa.org.uk/type/broadcast/code_section/10.html

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Image by Dennis Wilkinson via Flickr

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