Lost time undermines return behavior

People commonly experience long gaps of time between getting to do things they love to do. In principle, the longer it has been since people last enjoyed something, the quicker they should jump at the chance to enjoy it again. In practice, five experiments reveal a case of the opposite: The longer since people's last enjoyable experience, the more they postpone returning—in part because they demand their return be "extra special" to offset the wait. This effect emerged across many controlled parameters. For example, participants chose to avoid contacting close friends after large vs. small gaps in contact, all else equal—a choice that undermined their immediate happiness. This effect further extended to COVID-19 contexts, regarding people's returns from lengthy shutdowns: Somewhat nonobviously, we found that participants delayed returning to everyday activities even longer (as opposed to jumping back at their first sufficiently good chance) if it meant that they could better mark the occasion. Finally, this effect was uniquely attenuated by helping participants reconstrue any chance to return as "extra special." Together, these findings suggest that time delays create psychological barriers to returning, which people self-impose. People may increasingly avoid contacting loved ones, getting back into rewarding hobbies, and so on, the longer it has been since last time, promoting vicious cycles of deferment. Motivating people to return to experiences that would enhance their immediate happiness—experiences they still want to have and are now theirs to take—may be surprisingly difficult.