People may default to abstinence strategies for goals when moderation might be more appropriate due to a bias where abstinence is perceived as demonstrating greater self-control.

“But this suggests to us is that there's a there may be a bias that when people are saying okay I want to go on a diet, I want to exercise more. I want to uh do whatever they might be defaulting to abstinence when in fact they might be better off doing some some version of moderation.”