Over-confidence leads unto temptation

Have you ever been tempted to smoke?

Perhaps Oscar Wilde was speaking for all of us when he said: "I can resist everything except temptation."

Loran Nordgren at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Chicago and colleagues confirmed this while looking at the importance of "restraint bias" – the way people miscalculate how much temptation they can handle.

They found that the people who were least confident at their ability to resist fared best – because they kept temptation well out of their way.

In one experiment, 53 smokers were invited to undergo a battery of diagnostic tests. The first test was bogus and used only to sort them randomly into two groups. Members of one group were then told they had a "high capacity for impulse control", while the others were labelled "low".

The subjects were then asked to watch a 30-minute clip of the film "Coffee and Cigarettes" and told that they would win money if they managed not to smoke for the duration of the film. They were given a cigarette and had to decide where to leave it: in another room, on a desk, in their hand or in their mouth.

The closer to their mouth they left the cigarette, the more money they stood to gain if they resisted temptation.

Can you hack it...

People in the group that had been led to believe they had poor impulse control were more likely to leave the cigarette on the desk or in the other room.

Those who had been told they had good impulse control risked holding it or even putting it in their mouths but the closer to their mouth someone left the cigarette, the more likely they were to light up. "People with the most confidence were the most likely to fail," says Nordgren.

Other experiments supported this conclusion. In a field study, former smokers who had quit for three weeks were asked how confident they were about their self-control and what temptations they were actively avoiding.

Four months later, 60 per cent of the most confident, who were the least careful about avoiding triggers, had resumed smoking, whereas only 40 per cent of the more vigilant folks had.

"We don't appreciate how powerful temptation can be," says Nordgren, and our brains may prime us for addiction. Avoiding the temptation altogether is the only way to stay out of trouble, he says.

China Detains 13 people: Death At Internet Addiction Camp

Chinese police have detained 13 people for questioning, following the death by beating of a teenager at an Internet addiction camp in southern China.

The Qihang Salvation Training Camp, one of many boot camp-style centers for Internet obsession in China, was 'found to be unlicensed' and closed down on Friday, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Parents of 122 other students took them home from the camp in Guangxi province, whilst police investigate the case.

Deng Senshan killed
A week earlier, a 15-year-old boy Deng Senshan, was allegedly put in solitary confinement, scolded and beaten to death within one day of his arrival at the camp. The boy's father found his bloodied body in a local hospital, where camp staff said they had sent him because of a severe fever.

Family Divisions
Other Internet addiction camps in China are licensed and subsidised by the government. Conservative officials blame hugely popular online games like World of Warcraft for getting teens hooked on the Web, harming their grades in school, creating anti-social behaviour and causing divisions in the family, especially with their parents.

Shock Treatment
Some of the camps have used shock treatment and aversion therapy on students, but China has since banned this practice, last month.

Cybercrime
Separately, China in recent weeks detained two hackers for stealing 450 million won (US$368,000) from South Korean bank accounts, Xinhua said.

The suspects, based in a Chinese city that borders North Korea, had stolen the money from 86 South Korean nationals over more than a year, it said. South Korean police had asked China to help crack the cross-border case, the report said.

China Human rights violations: China Finally bans electric shock treatment for Internet addiction

Internet Webmasters and Bloggers have written about being tied down and given electric shocks for 30 minutes at a time at one notorious hospital

China has finally banned the use of shock therapy to treat, what they describe as, ' Internet addiction', after its use at one hospital sparked nationwide controversy.

Widespread Protests
The hospital drew widespread protests and media coverage in recent months after Internet users, claiming to have received shock treatment, wrote in their blogs and forums about being tied down and subjected to electric shocks for 30 minutes at a time.

Chinese Health Ministry
A statement on the Chinese health ministry's Web site said the practice had no medical foundation and forbid its clinical use. The order banned the practice nationwide but specifically mentioned the notorious hospital in eastern Shandong province.

Shandong Hospital
Calls to the notorious Shandong hospital went unanswered Wednesday morning, but a hospital spokeswoman last week said "sensationalised" media reports had already led it to a cesation of the shock treatment. The shocks were meant to cause subjects to associate a negative result with Internet use, according to the hospital. Subjects were forced to admit to faults in their behaviour and thinking, while receiving the electric shocks.

Government Funded
Government-funded treatment centers for Internet addiction have sprouted up around China in recent years, though the health ministry has not officially labeled it a diagnosable condition. Many children are coerced and tricked by parents into going to the centres, which often deliver a mix of military boot camp treat ment and shock therapy sessions.

World of Warcraft
Staff at the 'treatment centres' blame hugely popular online games like World of Warcraft for getting most Chinese teens hooked on the Web.

Many Chinese medical experts still believe that electric shock treatment for Internet addiction and other 'behavioural issues' does not harm children, but others disavow it, said Tao Ran, during a recent interview. He is the founder of a Beijing 'treatment centre' for Web-addicted teens. Experts meeting at the health ministry last month signed a document recommending its ban, he said.

Internet users celebrated the move

"This news should truly make people happy," one user wrote in a forum run by local search engine Baidu. "After all, this kind of thing is inhuman cruelty."