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People with good self-control - those who, when faced with delicious but unhealthy food, grit their teeth and fight temptation until it disappears - live well. But why? - asks the author of Vox .
For a long time it was believed that such people are good at suppressing their impulses, that they have well-developed willpower and they know how to use it. Those who struggle with temptation poorly are presumably lacking in willpower or too lazy to develop it — this perspective has deep cultural and moral roots (think of Adam, Eve, and original sin). She is also deeply rooted in popular psychology. “A person is most happy and healthy when his“ I ”and the world around him correspond to each other as much as possible, and this fit can be significantly strengthened by adapting himself to the world," said the author of a famous work in 2004, which included a questionnaire assessing the level of self-regulation the respondent.
However, this idea - that people have developed self-control because they have well-developed willpower - is now becoming more and more like a myth.
It seems that composure (and all its benefits) has nothing to do with suppressing impulses and impulses at all. Once we dismiss the concept of willpower, we can understand what helps a person achieve goals - and immediately fulfill all the points of our New Year's promise.
The concept of willpower began to fall out of use as scientific tests for willpower improved.
There are two main ways to measure your level of self-control.
The first is a self-control scale published in 2004. The respondent must agree or disagree with statements such as “I am good at resisting temptation” and “I am not very good at keeping secrets”.
"This simple scoring system is good at predicting a 'successful life,'" says Michael Inzlicht, a psychologist studying self-control at the University of Toronto.
Those who score high on this scale are better at building relationships, are more likely to refrain from overeating and drinking, have academic success, and are generally happier.
The second way to measure a person's level of self-regulation is to check in a real situation. In a classic (and increasingly contested) study of self-control, psychologist Roy Baumeister asked participants to resist the scent of freshly baked cookies. Today psychologists are more likely to turn to puzzle tasks; they create a cognitive conflict that participants must use willpower to overcome.
Inzlicht explains that for many years, scientists have assumed that self-control as measured by a questionnaire and will as measured by behavioral tests are one and the same. Inzlicht and his associates decided to check whether this is so.
Do people who believe that they have enviable self-control (and who can cite their success in life as proof) really know how to gather their willpower at the right time?
To test this, scientists conducted a series of studies involving 2,400 people. They first answered the questions in the questionnaire and then completed the behavioral tasks. One of them is the Stroop test, and it is difficult. Participants are shown words that name different colors, but the font with which these words are printed is of a different color. Here's an example. Even just looking at it hurts me!
Participants must name the color they see and ignore the meaning of the word itself. "When the meaning of a word contradicts the color of the font, you experience an inner conflict," says Inzlicht. And in theory, here you resort to self-control in order to order the brain to overcome the conflict and come to the right answer.
Other studies have used the Eriksen test for collateral stimuli. The competitor sees a row of arrows and must indicate where the center arrow is pointing. The task becomes difficult when the center arrow points in the opposite direction to all other arrows. It takes an effort to resist the temptation to claim that all arrows point in the same direction.
You’ll be guessing: people who claim to have good self-control have the highest score on this problem, right?
But no. The results showed that "the relationship between the two types of assessment is either very little, almost negligible, or none at all," says Blair Saunders, a psychologist at the University of Dundee in the UK and study leader. “This is the strictest conclusion that can be drawn,” he says.
Just think about it. According to these rigorously scientific tests, those who claim to be the kings of self-control actually control themselves no better than everyone else.
The work about Stroop's problem by Inzlicht has not yet been published in a scientific journal, its results are preliminary - the authors first posted the work on the Web to generate a discussion. Yet arguments against willpower as a means of achieving goals are increasingly gaining ground in the scientific literature. For example, in a study published in 2011 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, scientists observed 205 people in Germany for a week. Participants were given BlackBerry phones, which randomly asked questions about the desires, temptations and self-control that a person experiences at one time or another.
The researchers stumbled upon a paradox: those who more often agreed with statements like “I am good at resisting temptations,” reported fewer temptations that arose during the study period.
Simply put, those who consider themselves masters of self-restraint practically do not resort to it.
Recently, Inzlicht and his colleague Marina Milyavskaya (co-author of the latter work) confirmed and developed this idea. In the course of the study, they also studied 159 McGill University students for a week.
If resisting temptation is a virtue, then the more effort and resistance, the higher the achievement, right? Yet the results of the work, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, reveal something completely different.
Students who practiced more self-control than others were not more successful in achieving their goals. The most successful of all were those who experienced fewer temptations in principle.
Moreover, the participants who made the most effort to control their desires felt more devastated. That is, they not only failed to achieve their goals, but also depleted their strength in an attempt to achieve them.
So who are these lucky ones who are rarely subjected to the torments of temptation? They are clearly doing something right. Recent studies show what can be learned from them.
1. Self-controllers really enjoy things that generate inner protest in many, such as eating healthy, studying, or exercising.
For them, these activities are not a duty. They give them joy. “It is easier to achieve the desired goals than the“ necessary ”ones, explains Milyavskaya. - These goals are easier to pursue. They require less effort."
If you go jogging because you “have to” be in shape, but find the activity itself pretty lousy, chances are you won't be interested in running for long. You are more likely to do what you enjoy than what you hate.
2. Those with higher self-control have adopted better habits
In 2015, psychologists Brian Galla and Angela Duckworth published a meta-study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that looked at six studies and 2,500 people. They found that those with high self-control also had good habits such as exercising regularly, eating healthy, getting adequate sleep and studying.
“Self-mastery masters seem to design their lives to avoid self-control decisions in the first place,” Galla explained to me. And structuring your life is a skill.
Anyone who is doing the same thing every day at the same time, like jogging or meditation, can more easily achieve their goals: not because of developed willpower, but because routine makes everything easier.
The secret to getting up quickly in the morning is to set an alarm in another corner of the room. The role here is not the momentary manifestation of willpower, but planning.
This theory brings us back to one of the classic studies on self-control, Walter Michel's Marshmallow Test, conducted in the 1960s and 70s. The children participating in the experiment were asked to either eat one marshmallow put in front of them right now, or be patient and get two whole later. They found that the ability to resist the prospect of immediate gratification was associated with positive aspects of life, such as school exam results and BMI. However, the children who passed the test best were not always the best at resisting temptation. They simply resorted to an effective strategy.
“Michelle has pointed out many times that the key factor in the case of a delayed award was the ability to change your perception of an object or action that you want to resist,” wrote the author of the article in New Yorker in 2014. This means that children who did not eat the first marshmallow found ways not to look at it or to imagine it as something else.
"A diet master won't buy a cupcake," Ohio State University psychologist Kentaro Fujita explained in 2016. "He has an automatic reaction to keep away from the source of the seduction instead of getting closer to it."
3. Some people are simply less tempted than others.
Our character is determined in part by heredity. Some are more insatiable than others. Someone likes gambling or shopping. Conscious people (this trait is mostly genetically laid down!) Are usually healthier and study harder. In terms of self-control, these people just won the genetic lottery.
4. Self-control is easier when you are rich.
When the marshmallow test is done on poor children, the trend is clear: they perform worse and show less tendency to resist the temptation that lies right in front of their noses.
There is a good reason for this. Elliot Berkman, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon, argues that someone who grows up in poverty is more likely to focus on immediate, immediate reward than long-term delayed reward, because when you're poor, the future is more uncertain.
Why is the myth of willpower dangerous?
Anyone who has tried to diet knows that willpower doesn't work in the long run - and that failure to limit yourself is too often seen as a moral failure.
We blame a lack of willpower for weight gain, even though it's genetics and calorie-laden environments that are conspiring against our waistline. We blame drug addicts for not holding back their urges, even though their addiction has biologically invaded their brains.
In general, psychologists abandon the concept, as years of research show that willpower is finite and has limits. The source itself was carefully studied.
In special situations, of course, you can gather your will and save yourself from falling back into a bad habit. But relying solely on willpower to achieve a goal “is like relying on the emergency braking system when driving,” Saunders says. "You need to focus on the things that push you toward your goals, and not resist the things that get in your way." Moreover, the human "emergency braking system", that is, willpower, can fail and cause an accident.
It's time to listen. Focusing on willpower failures leads to shame, both personal and public, and limits our curiosity in finding and applying solutions that actually work.
For a long time it was believed that such people are good at suppressing their impulses, that they have well-developed willpower and they know how to use it. Those who struggle with temptation poorly are presumably lacking in willpower or too lazy to develop it — this perspective has deep cultural and moral roots (think of Adam, Eve, and original sin). She is also deeply rooted in popular psychology. “A person is most happy and healthy when his“ I ”and the world around him correspond to each other as much as possible, and this fit can be significantly strengthened by adapting himself to the world," said the author of a famous work in 2004, which included a questionnaire assessing the level of self-regulation the respondent.
However, this idea - that people have developed self-control because they have well-developed willpower - is now becoming more and more like a myth.
It seems that composure (and all its benefits) has nothing to do with suppressing impulses and impulses at all. Once we dismiss the concept of willpower, we can understand what helps a person achieve goals - and immediately fulfill all the points of our New Year's promise.
The concept of willpower began to fall out of use as scientific tests for willpower improved.
There are two main ways to measure your level of self-control.
The first is a self-control scale published in 2004. The respondent must agree or disagree with statements such as “I am good at resisting temptation” and “I am not very good at keeping secrets”.
"This simple scoring system is good at predicting a 'successful life,'" says Michael Inzlicht, a psychologist studying self-control at the University of Toronto.
Those who score high on this scale are better at building relationships, are more likely to refrain from overeating and drinking, have academic success, and are generally happier.
The second way to measure a person's level of self-regulation is to check in a real situation. In a classic (and increasingly contested) study of self-control, psychologist Roy Baumeister asked participants to resist the scent of freshly baked cookies. Today psychologists are more likely to turn to puzzle tasks; they create a cognitive conflict that participants must use willpower to overcome.
Inzlicht explains that for many years, scientists have assumed that self-control as measured by a questionnaire and will as measured by behavioral tests are one and the same. Inzlicht and his associates decided to check whether this is so.
Do people who believe that they have enviable self-control (and who can cite their success in life as proof) really know how to gather their willpower at the right time?
To test this, scientists conducted a series of studies involving 2,400 people. They first answered the questions in the questionnaire and then completed the behavioral tasks. One of them is the Stroop test, and it is difficult. Participants are shown words that name different colors, but the font with which these words are printed is of a different color. Here's an example. Even just looking at it hurts me!
Participants must name the color they see and ignore the meaning of the word itself. "When the meaning of a word contradicts the color of the font, you experience an inner conflict," says Inzlicht. And in theory, here you resort to self-control in order to order the brain to overcome the conflict and come to the right answer.
Other studies have used the Eriksen test for collateral stimuli. The competitor sees a row of arrows and must indicate where the center arrow is pointing. The task becomes difficult when the center arrow points in the opposite direction to all other arrows. It takes an effort to resist the temptation to claim that all arrows point in the same direction.
You’ll be guessing: people who claim to have good self-control have the highest score on this problem, right?
But no. The results showed that "the relationship between the two types of assessment is either very little, almost negligible, or none at all," says Blair Saunders, a psychologist at the University of Dundee in the UK and study leader. “This is the strictest conclusion that can be drawn,” he says.
Just think about it. According to these rigorously scientific tests, those who claim to be the kings of self-control actually control themselves no better than everyone else.
The work about Stroop's problem by Inzlicht has not yet been published in a scientific journal, its results are preliminary - the authors first posted the work on the Web to generate a discussion. Yet arguments against willpower as a means of achieving goals are increasingly gaining ground in the scientific literature. For example, in a study published in 2011 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, scientists observed 205 people in Germany for a week. Participants were given BlackBerry phones, which randomly asked questions about the desires, temptations and self-control that a person experiences at one time or another.
The researchers stumbled upon a paradox: those who more often agreed with statements like “I am good at resisting temptations,” reported fewer temptations that arose during the study period.
Simply put, those who consider themselves masters of self-restraint practically do not resort to it.
Recently, Inzlicht and his colleague Marina Milyavskaya (co-author of the latter work) confirmed and developed this idea. In the course of the study, they also studied 159 McGill University students for a week.
If resisting temptation is a virtue, then the more effort and resistance, the higher the achievement, right? Yet the results of the work, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, reveal something completely different.
Students who practiced more self-control than others were not more successful in achieving their goals. The most successful of all were those who experienced fewer temptations in principle.
Moreover, the participants who made the most effort to control their desires felt more devastated. That is, they not only failed to achieve their goals, but also depleted their strength in an attempt to achieve them.
So who are these lucky ones who are rarely subjected to the torments of temptation? They are clearly doing something right. Recent studies show what can be learned from them.
1. Self-controllers really enjoy things that generate inner protest in many, such as eating healthy, studying, or exercising.
For them, these activities are not a duty. They give them joy. “It is easier to achieve the desired goals than the“ necessary ”ones, explains Milyavskaya. - These goals are easier to pursue. They require less effort."
If you go jogging because you “have to” be in shape, but find the activity itself pretty lousy, chances are you won't be interested in running for long. You are more likely to do what you enjoy than what you hate.
2. Those with higher self-control have adopted better habits
In 2015, psychologists Brian Galla and Angela Duckworth published a meta-study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that looked at six studies and 2,500 people. They found that those with high self-control also had good habits such as exercising regularly, eating healthy, getting adequate sleep and studying.
“Self-mastery masters seem to design their lives to avoid self-control decisions in the first place,” Galla explained to me. And structuring your life is a skill.
Anyone who is doing the same thing every day at the same time, like jogging or meditation, can more easily achieve their goals: not because of developed willpower, but because routine makes everything easier.
The secret to getting up quickly in the morning is to set an alarm in another corner of the room. The role here is not the momentary manifestation of willpower, but planning.
This theory brings us back to one of the classic studies on self-control, Walter Michel's Marshmallow Test, conducted in the 1960s and 70s. The children participating in the experiment were asked to either eat one marshmallow put in front of them right now, or be patient and get two whole later. They found that the ability to resist the prospect of immediate gratification was associated with positive aspects of life, such as school exam results and BMI. However, the children who passed the test best were not always the best at resisting temptation. They simply resorted to an effective strategy.
“Michelle has pointed out many times that the key factor in the case of a delayed award was the ability to change your perception of an object or action that you want to resist,” wrote the author of the article in New Yorker in 2014. This means that children who did not eat the first marshmallow found ways not to look at it or to imagine it as something else.
"A diet master won't buy a cupcake," Ohio State University psychologist Kentaro Fujita explained in 2016. "He has an automatic reaction to keep away from the source of the seduction instead of getting closer to it."
3. Some people are simply less tempted than others.
Our character is determined in part by heredity. Some are more insatiable than others. Someone likes gambling or shopping. Conscious people (this trait is mostly genetically laid down!) Are usually healthier and study harder. In terms of self-control, these people just won the genetic lottery.
4. Self-control is easier when you are rich.
When the marshmallow test is done on poor children, the trend is clear: they perform worse and show less tendency to resist the temptation that lies right in front of their noses.
There is a good reason for this. Elliot Berkman, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon, argues that someone who grows up in poverty is more likely to focus on immediate, immediate reward than long-term delayed reward, because when you're poor, the future is more uncertain.
Why is the myth of willpower dangerous?
Anyone who has tried to diet knows that willpower doesn't work in the long run - and that failure to limit yourself is too often seen as a moral failure.
We blame a lack of willpower for weight gain, even though it's genetics and calorie-laden environments that are conspiring against our waistline. We blame drug addicts for not holding back their urges, even though their addiction has biologically invaded their brains.
In general, psychologists abandon the concept, as years of research show that willpower is finite and has limits. The source itself was carefully studied.
In special situations, of course, you can gather your will and save yourself from falling back into a bad habit. But relying solely on willpower to achieve a goal “is like relying on the emergency braking system when driving,” Saunders says. "You need to focus on the things that push you toward your goals, and not resist the things that get in your way." Moreover, the human "emergency braking system", that is, willpower, can fail and cause an accident.
It's time to listen. Focusing on willpower failures leads to shame, both personal and public, and limits our curiosity in finding and applying solutions that actually work.
