In Mischel’s view, emotions are the bane of self-control: These “hot” responses make us impatient and cloud our logical judgment of what’s valuable. And so in his experiments, Mischel had children try to override their emotional responses to the marshmallow by having them use “cool” strategies like singing to distract themselves, focusing solely on the treat’s color, or pretending it was a cotton ball. When children tried these approaches, they demonstrated more willpower in resisting temptation. (...)
The trouble with all this is that willpower, for all its merits, is full of holes. Maintaining it requires not only a good deal of effort but also a conducive environment. The University of Minnesota psychologist Kathleen Vohs, one of the nation’s leading experts on willpower, has shown that seemingly irrelevant factors like being at home versus being at work, or even the need to make simple decisions unrelated to resisting temptation (“Should I wear a white shirt or a blue one?”) can diminish self-control. The result? People whose willpower is taxed fail to resist about one out of every six temptations they face, according to Vohs, even when they try using cognitive strategies to manage their “hot” responses. Willpower also appears to be quite finite in supply. One of Baumeister’s famous experiments demonstrated that, when people avoid eating chocolate chip cookies placed in front of them by using sheer determination and willpower, they become much more likely to give in to the temptation to shirk on a difficult task a few minutes later. If people don’t rest between temptations, it puts them in something of a death spiral in which each willpower success perversely increases the likelihood of willpower failure when facing the next temptation. In fact, Vohs’s most recent work shows that the people who appear the best at maintaining self-control succeed not because their willpower is actually greater, but because they employ the simple strategy of avoiding coming into contact with temptation in the first place.
So where does that leave us? There’s abundant evidence that self-control is an important skill for success and societal functioning, but we don’t have much to show for all our efforts aimed at devising strategies to cultivate it. As Duckworth herself has written, no one really yet knows how to teach people to cultivate self-control and grit in a way that endures.
It’s a safe bet that research on how to boost willpower will continue apace. But to my mind, our troubles may stem not so much from a failure to unlock some secret about willpower as from a rut in our thinking about emotion. (...)
Now, it’s certainly possible that this divergence from the usual set of cool, cognitive strategies for resisting temptation arises from the possibility that the brains of addicts, as some suggest, aren’t like those of the rest of the population. It’s also true that the efficacy of strategies like counting one’s blessings has yet to be subjected to rigorous scientific analysis in the context of addiction; it’s possible such strategies don’t work quite as well as 12-step advocates think they do.
But there’s another equally likely, and potentially profound, possibility that’s worth considering when it comes to understanding how self-control works. It’s a possibility that my lab at Northeastern University has been exploring in a series of experiments for the past few years: Maybe these kinds of emotion-based strategies have persisted in support groups because the usual methods to combat temptation—those based on willpower—simply aren’t strong enough to do the job. Maybe we, as individuals and as a society, have bet on the wrong horse. Maybe shortsightedness in decisions among the general populace is so widespread because we’re not using the most powerful weapons against temptation that are available to us—the ones based on emotion, not reason and cognitive control.
The idea that emotional responses can only hinder long-range thinking makes very little sense when you step back and think about how the mind truly works. There is almost universal agreement among psychologists studying emotion that these mental states exist to aid humans in meeting challenges. They are the engines that drive us toward adaptive behaviors in rapid and efficient ways. The state we call fear, for example, prepares our body to deal with threat and alters our decisions, making us proceed more cautiously. We don’t have to “think” about and institute such preparations; they happen automatically. And although it’s true that emotions can be problematic when experienced in inappropriate contexts or too intensely, it’s just as true that if emotions were always troublesome—if they always resulted in negative outcomes—they would have been extinguished by natural selection long ago.
The trouble with all this is that willpower, for all its merits, is full of holes. Maintaining it requires not only a good deal of effort but also a conducive environment. The University of Minnesota psychologist Kathleen Vohs, one of the nation’s leading experts on willpower, has shown that seemingly irrelevant factors like being at home versus being at work, or even the need to make simple decisions unrelated to resisting temptation (“Should I wear a white shirt or a blue one?”) can diminish self-control. The result? People whose willpower is taxed fail to resist about one out of every six temptations they face, according to Vohs, even when they try using cognitive strategies to manage their “hot” responses. Willpower also appears to be quite finite in supply. One of Baumeister’s famous experiments demonstrated that, when people avoid eating chocolate chip cookies placed in front of them by using sheer determination and willpower, they become much more likely to give in to the temptation to shirk on a difficult task a few minutes later. If people don’t rest between temptations, it puts them in something of a death spiral in which each willpower success perversely increases the likelihood of willpower failure when facing the next temptation. In fact, Vohs’s most recent work shows that the people who appear the best at maintaining self-control succeed not because their willpower is actually greater, but because they employ the simple strategy of avoiding coming into contact with temptation in the first place.So where does that leave us? There’s abundant evidence that self-control is an important skill for success and societal functioning, but we don’t have much to show for all our efforts aimed at devising strategies to cultivate it. As Duckworth herself has written, no one really yet knows how to teach people to cultivate self-control and grit in a way that endures.
It’s a safe bet that research on how to boost willpower will continue apace. But to my mind, our troubles may stem not so much from a failure to unlock some secret about willpower as from a rut in our thinking about emotion. (...)
Now, it’s certainly possible that this divergence from the usual set of cool, cognitive strategies for resisting temptation arises from the possibility that the brains of addicts, as some suggest, aren’t like those of the rest of the population. It’s also true that the efficacy of strategies like counting one’s blessings has yet to be subjected to rigorous scientific analysis in the context of addiction; it’s possible such strategies don’t work quite as well as 12-step advocates think they do.
But there’s another equally likely, and potentially profound, possibility that’s worth considering when it comes to understanding how self-control works. It’s a possibility that my lab at Northeastern University has been exploring in a series of experiments for the past few years: Maybe these kinds of emotion-based strategies have persisted in support groups because the usual methods to combat temptation—those based on willpower—simply aren’t strong enough to do the job. Maybe we, as individuals and as a society, have bet on the wrong horse. Maybe shortsightedness in decisions among the general populace is so widespread because we’re not using the most powerful weapons against temptation that are available to us—the ones based on emotion, not reason and cognitive control.
The idea that emotional responses can only hinder long-range thinking makes very little sense when you step back and think about how the mind truly works. There is almost universal agreement among psychologists studying emotion that these mental states exist to aid humans in meeting challenges. They are the engines that drive us toward adaptive behaviors in rapid and efficient ways. The state we call fear, for example, prepares our body to deal with threat and alters our decisions, making us proceed more cautiously. We don’t have to “think” about and institute such preparations; they happen automatically. And although it’s true that emotions can be problematic when experienced in inappropriate contexts or too intensely, it’s just as true that if emotions were always troublesome—if they always resulted in negative outcomes—they would have been extinguished by natural selection long ago.
When it comes to self-control, there’s certainly evidence thatsome emotions work against long-term thinking. In the buzzing world of neuroeconomics, brilliant scholars like the Harvard economist David Laibson and the Carnegie Mellon decision scientist George Loewenstein have shown that limbic systems of the brain—areas thought to involve emotion—specifically devalue future rewards. But there’s little reason to believe that this research examines the full range of human emotions. Yes, there are emotions that can lead to vice (envy, lust, anger). But there are also emotions associated with virtue (gratitude, compassion, love). At the same time, while it’s true that reason and willpower can engender virtuous action—as when people adhere to a code of ethics or a long-range plan—they can just as easily be used to motivate and justify quite impulsive behavior. (More on this later.) The first step in understanding how self-control really works, then, is to give up the idea that emotions necessarily lead to impatience.
by David Destend, Pacific Standard | Read more:
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