Ulysses revisited: how an expressed preference for external control reveals the limit of willpower

We use the revealed preference approach to identify a preference for external control for a decision maker facing a binding willpower constraint in the absence of such external control. We revisit the classic story of Ulysses and the Sirens to demonstrate that the choice behavior (over menus) exhibited by Ulysses can neither be accommodated by Gul and Pesendorfer (2001)’s model of costly self-control temptation preferences nor by Noor and Takeoka (2010)’s extension to an increasing (that is, “uphill”) self-control cost.