You are the company you keep -- and that applies to behaviors like self control, too, according to a new study.
Researchers found that people who struggle with temptation could improve their self-control by surrounding themselves with strong-willed people.
"What we have shown is that low self-control individuals seem to implicitly surround themselves with individuals who can help them overcome temptation -- you get by with a little help from your friends," study researcher Catherine Shea, a psychological scientist at Duke University, said in a statement.
The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, included several experiments. In one of them, study participants watched a video that had words that came up on the screen. Some of the study participants were instructed not to read those words, while the other group wasn't told anything about reading the words. Then, researchers had all the study participants read descriptions of three kinds of office managers. The descriptions included a manager who had low self-control, a manager who had high self-control, and a manager with demonstrations of both high and low self-control.