Lead us not into temptation: The seven deadly sins as a taxonomy of temptations

Abstract

People constantly experience a tug‐of‐war between their self‐control on one end and their temptations on the other. Although a great deal of research has examined such self‐control dilemmas, much of it has focused on the “push” of self‐control rather than the “pull” of temptations. To facilitate future work on this latter construct, we sought to create a taxonomy of temptations. Using a top‐down approach, we relied on the philosophical and historical concept of the seven deadly sins—gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, envy, pride, and wrath—to identify and define the most commonly experienced temptations. In support of this taxonomy, we review evidence for the role that self‐control plays in resisting each of these seven temptation domains, including work on trait self‐control and momentary exertions of self‐control. Where applicable, we identify areas where research is lacking and make suggestions for future work. Lastly, we discuss how this taxonomy offers researchers both theoretical and practical benefits.

Moral disciplining: the cognitive and evolutionary foundations of puritanical morality

“…Consistent with this idea, psychologists have noted that the "Seven deadly sins" (e.g. lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy), often opposed to the virtue of temperance, are essentially a taxonomy of the temptations typically experienced by the human mind (cravings for sex, food, money, rest, social status), associated with impulsive dispositions and potentially uncooperative self-control failures (Burkley et al, 2018). Relatedly, historians and social scientists have argued that the increasingly ascetic values of late medieval and early modern Europe were intimately tied to the activity of disciplinary movements attempting to promote a more self-controlled society -variously labelled "disciplinary revolutions" (Gorski, 1993(Gorski, , 2003, "civilizing offensives" (Eisner, 2014;Powell, 2013), "social disciplining" (Oestreich, 1982), "reformations of manners" (Ingram, 1996), or "reform of popular culture" (Burke, 1978).…”