What is Instant Gratification? A Definition + 16 Examples and Quotes
Is there something else you should be doing right now?
Working on a project? Writing a paper?
Putting away that load of laundry that’s been in the dryer for two days?
If so, you’re in good company. We all find ourselves distracted from meeting more long-term goals by more enjoyable short-term activities. Each of us likely struggles with these urges to procrastinate every day—with varying degrees of success.
Why is it so hard to stay the course on our long-term projects, even when we are certain that the advantages of sticking to it will far outweigh the more immediate benefits of putting them off?
The answer is instant gratification.
What is the Meaning of Instant or Immediate Gratification?
Instant (or immediate) gratification is a term that refers to the temptation, and resulting tendency, to forego a future benefit in order to obtain a less rewarding but more immediate benefit. When you have a desire for something pleasurable—be it food, entertainment, or sex—you rarely think thoughts like, “My stomach is rumbling and I would love to have that delicious dish, but I’d rather wait another hour.”
It’s a natural human urge to want good things and to want them NOW. It has almost certainly provided an evolutionary advantage for humans and their ancestors, as life for pre-modern humans hinged on decisions made and actions taken in the immediate far more than those intended for long-term gain.
It’s all well and good to plan for the future, but actions that are taken to benefit you in the here and now are much more advantageous when you’re being stalked by a fierce predator or offered the opportunity to eat your fill in a time when starvation was a much bigger concern than obesity.
The flip side of instant gratification is delayed gratification, or the decision to put off satisfying your desire in order to gain an even better reward or benefit in the future. It’s easy to see how delayed gratification is generally the wiser behavior, but we still struggle on a daily basis with the temptation to give in to our immediate desires. Why is it so difficult to choose delayed over instant gratification?
Instant Gratification Theory in Psychology
At the heart of instant gratification is one of the most basic drives inherent in humans—the tendency to see pleasure and avoid pain. This tendency is known as the pleasure principle.
The term was first used by Sigmund Freud to describe the role of the “id,” his proposed component of the unconscious mind that is driven purely by baser instincts (Good Therapy, 2015). Although Freud’s conceptualization of the human mind has largely been relegated to the “interesting idea, but it doesn’t really pan out” category of psychological theories, the pleasure principle was one of his more enduring propositions.
It’s clear that humans are, to at least some extent, driven by the desire to experience pleasure.
You could even argue that self-defeating behavior that seems to bring no immediate benefits is in line with the pleasure principle—for example, a person who frequently starts fights with his spouse may seem to be getting no benefit from his actions, but perhaps the apology or make-up period after the fight has passed outweighs the short-term discomfort of the argument (Good Therapy, 2015).
However you slice it, the lure of short-term pleasure is a tough temptation to avoid. Psychologist Shahram Heshmat outlines 10 reasons why it is so difficult to sidestep this urge (2016):
A desire to avoid delay: it’s uncomfortable to engage in self-denial, and all of our instincts are to seize any opportunity for pleasure as it comes.
Uncertainty: generally, we are born with nearly infinite certainty and trust in others, but over time we learn to be less sure of the reliability of others and of our future; this uncertainty can cause us to value the less beneficial but certain-and-immediate over the more beneficial uncertain-and-long-term.
Age: as you have likely already noted, younger people have a tendency to be more impulsive, while older people with more life experience are better able to delay and temper their urges.
Imagination: choosing delayed gratification requires the ability to envision your desired future if you forego your current desire; if you cannot paint a vivid picture of your future, you have little motivation to plan for it.
Cognitive capacity: higher intelligence is linked to a more forward-thinking perspective; those who are born with more innate intelligence have a tendency to see the benefits of delayed gratification and act in accordance.
Poverty: even when we see the wisdom in delaying gratification, poverty can make the decision complicated and even more difficult; if you have an immediate, basic need that is begging to be met (e.g., food, shelter), it’s unlikely you will choose to forego that need in order to receive any future benefit.
Impulsiveness: some of us are simply more impulsive or spontaneous than others, which makes delaying gratification that much more difficult; this trait is associated with problems like substance abuse and obesity.
Emotion regulation: individual differences in emotion regulation also impact our tendency towards instant vs. delayed gratification; emotional distress makes us lean towards choices that will immediately improve our mood, and those who have developed emotion regulation problems are especially at risk.
Mood: even those with healthy emotion regulation can be led astray by their current mood; we all experience bad moods, boredom, and impatience—all of which serve to make immediate desires that much more seductive.
Anticipation: finally, the experience of anticipation can influence our decisions to delay gratification or seek it immediately in either direction; humans generally like to anticipate positive things and dislike the anticipation of negative things, which can lead to decisions to put things off or to engage in them as quickly as possible to seek pleasure or avoid discomfort.
How to Overcome an Instant Gratification Bias
I won’t sugarcoat it (pun intended)—saying no to immediate gratification is no easy feat. If it was, we would all be trim, healthy, and have a reasonable amount of money in our savings account.
However, there are some things you can do to get better at avoiding the temptation to give in to instant gratification, including:
Empathize with your future self. Before making a decision between instant and delayed gratification, take a moment to think about your future mental state—if you opt for instant gratification, how will the future you feel? Will she be happy you made this decision the way you did, or will she wish you had opted for delayed gratification?
Precommitment. One of the best ways to protect yourself from the temptation of instant gratification is to make some decisions beforehand. If you can set some of your most important decisions in stone now, you will be less likely to change your mind or go through the hassle of backtracking and undoing your preparations when you come face to face with the decision.
Break down big goals into small, manageable chunks. Big goals are fun set and can be motivating, but they can also seem overwhelming or far off. When you must decide between instant, easy gratification and delaying gratification in the attempt to meet a big, distant goal, it’s hard to stick to your long-term goal. Breaking these big goals into smaller pieces with rewards after each step makes you more committed and more likely to make the best decisions (Mani, 2017).
When you give your future self some consideration, make important decisions ahead of time, and split your big goals up into smaller, more manageable goals, you will find it much easier to say no to immediate temptations.
Instant Gratification and its Effects on Relationships
“We’re becoming impatient and lazy and we’re allowing this to shape our approach to our relationships. But successful relationships aren’t handed over on a plate, or downloaded at the click of a button, or ours in twenty-four hours for just £9.99 extra. Relationships are up there with food, water, clothing and shelter and you can’t just buy them or trade them in for an upgrade.”
Sam Owen
It will not come as a surprise to you to learn that instant gratification can have a markedly negative impact on relationships. When we are consumed with our desire for immediate pleasure or satisfaction, we rarely make decisions that benefit our long-term future with our partner.
Whether these decisions are more innocuous, like putting off something you promised your partner you would do to binge a new show on Netflix, or more serious, like satisfying a desire to sleep with someone who is not your partner, instant gratification is not part of the standard recipe for a happy and healthy relationship.
How does instant gratification harm relationships? Laura Brown from Meet Mindful explains:
Relationships must be respected as organic, living creations that develop and grow at their own pace; people are also on their own unique path that may result in a different pace than their partner’s. The desire to get the relationship you want right now or force a commitment in a relationship that is simply not mature enough yet is a great way to ensure that the relationship fails.
Communicate, communicate, communicate! We all know communication is important, but the quality of communication is even more important than the quantity. It might feel good to shoot off an angry text or discuss what seems like an urgent issue right now, regardless of you and your partner’s current emotional state, but these actions can be extremely detrimental. High-quality, face-to-face communication beats out 160-character messages and taking the time to explore your feelings and reflect beats blurting out the first thing that pops into your head.
Not every relationship SHOULD evolve, meaning that not all relationships will last ‘til-death-do-us-part, and that’s okay! It might feel extremely important to you to push your relationship to the next level—or to whatever level you desire—but forcing a relationship into a stage or a mold that doesn’t fit will only end in pain. Sometimes the best decision is to let a relationship go, even if it seems unbearably painful in the moment.
Patience is a virtue. There’s a reason that on-the-fly marriages in Las Vegas are less likely to last than those between two long-term partners who have planned their future together: it takes time to get to know your partner, to get to know yourself, and to create a healthy, nurturing relationship. The poets and romantic comedies may push the idea of love at first sight, but it simply doesn’t exist; you must actually know someone to truly love them (although newborns have a unique tendency to capture our hearts pretty quickly). If you don’t spend the time and put in the effort to build a strong foundation, your relationship is at risk of folding at the slightest breeze (Brown, n.d.).
More....
Working on a project? Writing a paper?
Putting away that load of laundry that’s been in the dryer for two days?
If so, you’re in good company. We all find ourselves distracted from meeting more long-term goals by more enjoyable short-term activities. Each of us likely struggles with these urges to procrastinate every day—with varying degrees of success.
Why is it so hard to stay the course on our long-term projects, even when we are certain that the advantages of sticking to it will far outweigh the more immediate benefits of putting them off?
The answer is instant gratification.
What is the Meaning of Instant or Immediate Gratification?
Instant (or immediate) gratification is a term that refers to the temptation, and resulting tendency, to forego a future benefit in order to obtain a less rewarding but more immediate benefit. When you have a desire for something pleasurable—be it food, entertainment, or sex—you rarely think thoughts like, “My stomach is rumbling and I would love to have that delicious dish, but I’d rather wait another hour.”
It’s a natural human urge to want good things and to want them NOW. It has almost certainly provided an evolutionary advantage for humans and their ancestors, as life for pre-modern humans hinged on decisions made and actions taken in the immediate far more than those intended for long-term gain.
It’s all well and good to plan for the future, but actions that are taken to benefit you in the here and now are much more advantageous when you’re being stalked by a fierce predator or offered the opportunity to eat your fill in a time when starvation was a much bigger concern than obesity.
The flip side of instant gratification is delayed gratification, or the decision to put off satisfying your desire in order to gain an even better reward or benefit in the future. It’s easy to see how delayed gratification is generally the wiser behavior, but we still struggle on a daily basis with the temptation to give in to our immediate desires. Why is it so difficult to choose delayed over instant gratification?
Instant Gratification Theory in Psychology
At the heart of instant gratification is one of the most basic drives inherent in humans—the tendency to see pleasure and avoid pain. This tendency is known as the pleasure principle.
The term was first used by Sigmund Freud to describe the role of the “id,” his proposed component of the unconscious mind that is driven purely by baser instincts (Good Therapy, 2015). Although Freud’s conceptualization of the human mind has largely been relegated to the “interesting idea, but it doesn’t really pan out” category of psychological theories, the pleasure principle was one of his more enduring propositions.
It’s clear that humans are, to at least some extent, driven by the desire to experience pleasure.
You could even argue that self-defeating behavior that seems to bring no immediate benefits is in line with the pleasure principle—for example, a person who frequently starts fights with his spouse may seem to be getting no benefit from his actions, but perhaps the apology or make-up period after the fight has passed outweighs the short-term discomfort of the argument (Good Therapy, 2015).
However you slice it, the lure of short-term pleasure is a tough temptation to avoid. Psychologist Shahram Heshmat outlines 10 reasons why it is so difficult to sidestep this urge (2016):
A desire to avoid delay: it’s uncomfortable to engage in self-denial, and all of our instincts are to seize any opportunity for pleasure as it comes.
Uncertainty: generally, we are born with nearly infinite certainty and trust in others, but over time we learn to be less sure of the reliability of others and of our future; this uncertainty can cause us to value the less beneficial but certain-and-immediate over the more beneficial uncertain-and-long-term.
Age: as you have likely already noted, younger people have a tendency to be more impulsive, while older people with more life experience are better able to delay and temper their urges.
Imagination: choosing delayed gratification requires the ability to envision your desired future if you forego your current desire; if you cannot paint a vivid picture of your future, you have little motivation to plan for it.
Cognitive capacity: higher intelligence is linked to a more forward-thinking perspective; those who are born with more innate intelligence have a tendency to see the benefits of delayed gratification and act in accordance.
Poverty: even when we see the wisdom in delaying gratification, poverty can make the decision complicated and even more difficult; if you have an immediate, basic need that is begging to be met (e.g., food, shelter), it’s unlikely you will choose to forego that need in order to receive any future benefit.
Impulsiveness: some of us are simply more impulsive or spontaneous than others, which makes delaying gratification that much more difficult; this trait is associated with problems like substance abuse and obesity.
Emotion regulation: individual differences in emotion regulation also impact our tendency towards instant vs. delayed gratification; emotional distress makes us lean towards choices that will immediately improve our mood, and those who have developed emotion regulation problems are especially at risk.
Mood: even those with healthy emotion regulation can be led astray by their current mood; we all experience bad moods, boredom, and impatience—all of which serve to make immediate desires that much more seductive.
Anticipation: finally, the experience of anticipation can influence our decisions to delay gratification or seek it immediately in either direction; humans generally like to anticipate positive things and dislike the anticipation of negative things, which can lead to decisions to put things off or to engage in them as quickly as possible to seek pleasure or avoid discomfort.
How to Overcome an Instant Gratification Bias
I won’t sugarcoat it (pun intended)—saying no to immediate gratification is no easy feat. If it was, we would all be trim, healthy, and have a reasonable amount of money in our savings account.
However, there are some things you can do to get better at avoiding the temptation to give in to instant gratification, including:
Empathize with your future self. Before making a decision between instant and delayed gratification, take a moment to think about your future mental state—if you opt for instant gratification, how will the future you feel? Will she be happy you made this decision the way you did, or will she wish you had opted for delayed gratification?
Precommitment. One of the best ways to protect yourself from the temptation of instant gratification is to make some decisions beforehand. If you can set some of your most important decisions in stone now, you will be less likely to change your mind or go through the hassle of backtracking and undoing your preparations when you come face to face with the decision.
Break down big goals into small, manageable chunks. Big goals are fun set and can be motivating, but they can also seem overwhelming or far off. When you must decide between instant, easy gratification and delaying gratification in the attempt to meet a big, distant goal, it’s hard to stick to your long-term goal. Breaking these big goals into smaller pieces with rewards after each step makes you more committed and more likely to make the best decisions (Mani, 2017).
When you give your future self some consideration, make important decisions ahead of time, and split your big goals up into smaller, more manageable goals, you will find it much easier to say no to immediate temptations.
Instant Gratification and its Effects on Relationships
“We’re becoming impatient and lazy and we’re allowing this to shape our approach to our relationships. But successful relationships aren’t handed over on a plate, or downloaded at the click of a button, or ours in twenty-four hours for just £9.99 extra. Relationships are up there with food, water, clothing and shelter and you can’t just buy them or trade them in for an upgrade.”
Sam Owen
It will not come as a surprise to you to learn that instant gratification can have a markedly negative impact on relationships. When we are consumed with our desire for immediate pleasure or satisfaction, we rarely make decisions that benefit our long-term future with our partner.
Whether these decisions are more innocuous, like putting off something you promised your partner you would do to binge a new show on Netflix, or more serious, like satisfying a desire to sleep with someone who is not your partner, instant gratification is not part of the standard recipe for a happy and healthy relationship.
How does instant gratification harm relationships? Laura Brown from Meet Mindful explains:
Relationships must be respected as organic, living creations that develop and grow at their own pace; people are also on their own unique path that may result in a different pace than their partner’s. The desire to get the relationship you want right now or force a commitment in a relationship that is simply not mature enough yet is a great way to ensure that the relationship fails.
Communicate, communicate, communicate! We all know communication is important, but the quality of communication is even more important than the quantity. It might feel good to shoot off an angry text or discuss what seems like an urgent issue right now, regardless of you and your partner’s current emotional state, but these actions can be extremely detrimental. High-quality, face-to-face communication beats out 160-character messages and taking the time to explore your feelings and reflect beats blurting out the first thing that pops into your head.
Not every relationship SHOULD evolve, meaning that not all relationships will last ‘til-death-do-us-part, and that’s okay! It might feel extremely important to you to push your relationship to the next level—or to whatever level you desire—but forcing a relationship into a stage or a mold that doesn’t fit will only end in pain. Sometimes the best decision is to let a relationship go, even if it seems unbearably painful in the moment.
Patience is a virtue. There’s a reason that on-the-fly marriages in Las Vegas are less likely to last than those between two long-term partners who have planned their future together: it takes time to get to know your partner, to get to know yourself, and to create a healthy, nurturing relationship. The poets and romantic comedies may push the idea of love at first sight, but it simply doesn’t exist; you must actually know someone to truly love them (although newborns have a unique tendency to capture our hearts pretty quickly). If you don’t spend the time and put in the effort to build a strong foundation, your relationship is at risk of folding at the slightest breeze (Brown, n.d.).
More....
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