Delay strategies might seem to hold out the best promise for dealing with emotion-based irrationality. Since emotions tend to have a short half-life, any obstacle to the immediate execution of an action tendency could be an effective remedy. As I note later, public authorities do indeed count on this feature of emotion when they require people to wait before making certain important decisions. It is rare, however, to observe people imposing delays on themselves for the purpose of counteracting passion. The requisite technologies may simply be lacking.

Jon Elster, Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, Cambridge, 2007, p. 242