Information loaded introduction. The very first paragraph was very interesting, saying the two traits psychologists have found to strongly correlate with success are intelligence and willpower, but that while they haven’t been successful in finding any way to increase someone’s intelligence, willpower is trainable.
It had a brief history of willpower from when it was at a peak during the victorian era to how it has been declining since WWII as the self help movement moved to a feel good approach focusing on the alleged benefits of self esteem and “empowerment.”
It was the famous Marshmallow Study that really discovered the important of self control. They found that the four year olds who resisted the urge to eat the marshmallow for the full 15 minutes scored 210 points higher on the SAT than those who caved within the first 30 seconds. They also had better grades, were more popular, earned higher salaries, were less overweight, and had fewer drug problems. This was really huge, as he said it was very rare for things measured in early childhood to predict anything adult statistically significantly. Self control is a better predictor of grades than IQ or SAT score, which makes sense to me, sense grades are more about being a hard worker and conscientious than being brilliant, but I would bet that IQ is a better predictor of SAT scores than self control.
People with self-control are rated higher by coworkers and subordinates, are more stable mentally with less behavioral/mental disorders, are less likely to be domestically violent, have fewer STDs, are less likely to be alcoholic, are more likely to own a home, are less likely to have children as a single parent, and are less likely to go to prison. Obviously these things are also correlated with intelligence and socioeconomic status and race, but their relationship to self-control remained statistically significant after taking those into account. I’d be curious what the relative strengths of the correlations are for IQ vs self control, but he didn’t say.
There is now a mountain of evidence that people have a finite amount of willpower that depletes as it’s used and that all kinds of different tasks use the same stock of willpower.
The radish experiment showed that those who exerted willpower to resist the temptation to eat cookies had lower levels of perseverance working on puzzles than those who hadn’t previously used their willpower.
People also subconsciously will conserve willpower When warned that their will be another round of (willpower depleting) exercises after this one, participants performed worse on the current one, saving willpower for later, and when surprised with an extra round they weren’t expecting, people performed terribly
People with depleted willpower (fancy psychological term: ego depletion) have slower brains, specifically in the anterior cingulate cortex, which watches for mismatches between what you are doing and what you intend to do.
Students have extreme ego depletion by the time final exams roll around.
Ego depletion seems to be tied to glucose. Doing ego depleting tasks can significantly reduce your blood glucose levels, and studies have repeatedly found that giving someone a sugared lemonade restores their willpower after an ego depleting task, compared to giving them lemonade with an artificial sweetener, which didn’t help at all. Studies have also shown that diabetics and hypoglycemics have more outburst issues, again possibly tied to their blood glucose levels.
The craziness of women while PMSing may be tied to a scarcity of glucose, as their reproductive systems require more than normal, starving the rest of the body. This also explains the stereotypical crazing for chocolate. However, in the real world, it is better to eat something that will break down into glucose slowly over time than have a quick sugar hit, except maybe in the case of emergencies.
There was one chapter on Decision Fatigue, the phenomena of us being less able to make decisions the more decisions we make. Interesting example of car companies that can increase the cost of car options bought with a new car by $1500 by having more expensive default options near the end of the choices after customers had already made many mentally taxing decisions. Another example of judges being less likely to parole prisoners who aren’t the first case of the day (or the first case after a meal/snack).
A study of korean employees showed that focusing on what you’ve already accomplished causes contentment and increases current satisfaction, but focusing on what you want to achieve in the future stokes motivation and ambition.
Now on to improving self-control. They did studies where students were tasked with working on 1 thing for two weeks (and logging how they did) such as standing up straight instead of slouching. When their willpower was tested after two weeks there was significant improvement. But interestingly, the improvement was not mostly in the absolute amount of willpower, that was about the same, but in its resistance to ego depletion, or stamina. Even just having students log what they eat for 2 weeks caused the same improvement.
Basically, working on changing a habitual behavior will increase your willpower overall. This can be as simple as brushing your teeth with your left hand or cutting out phrases like “like” or “you know” from your vocabulary. Or it can be something ambitious like regularly exercising.
One note, I don’t know if it’s necessary, but all the students mentioned also involved the subjects keeping a log or diary to monitor progress. This ties in with one of the findings he discussed that self-awareness (such as having a mirror present) will increase people’s self-control.
There is a crossover with this willpower improvement into other areas of people’s lives. Studies have shown those following a fitness program will study more diligently, those following a study-discipline program exercised more often and cut excessive spending, etc. People successfully exercising self-control in one area have it improve in all areas of their life: They smoke fewer cigarettes, drink less alcohol, do laundry more often, don’t leave dishes in the sink, & eat less junk food.
It takes willpower to establish patterns of healthy behavior, but once the habits are established, life can proceed smoothly.
Interesting section on the “hot-cold empathy gap,” our inability, during cool rational moments to appreciate how we’ll behave during the heat of passion or temptation. Brought up in the context of the fall into savagery of Englishmen doing their expedition through Africa. Study proof of concept: Men were asked to answer questions regarding what they would be willing to do sexually, once in a normal state, and once while aroused, and they rated all possibilities, including many “deviant” things, as much more likely when they aroused.
Ultimately, to achieve lasting change, you have to get to the point where the thing you’ve changed no longer requires willpower to do; it has become a habit. Once your self-control has established a daily habit, you’ll produce more with less effort in the long run.
Establishing orderly habits can carry over, improving other aspects of your life.
Alcohol reduces self-control. And it does this via 2 processes: lowering blood glucose and reducing self-awareness.
Peer pressure aka social support is extremely influential on our behavior, both for good and bad. Resolutions made in the presence of others are more likely to be followed, especially if the other person is their significant other. Women who regularly received feedback on how their saving compared to their peers saved significantly more money than those who did not.
Religious people have higher levels of self-control because of all the ways religiosity requires it. Social pressure, the belief that God is watching, etc. The social pressure caused changes that make people more outwardly moral are the people with an appearance of godliness but denying its power. However, interestingly, researchers found that those who attend church for extrinsic reasons, like wanting to impress others or make connections, don’t have the same high levels of self-control as believers.
Interesting concept of the “Bright Line” as a necessary rule when significant levels of self-control are going to be required. Saying you’ll drink “moderately” is not a bright line, it’s fuzzy and there’s no obvious point where you go beyond it. Zero tolerance however is a bright line. When you commit to following a bright line rule, it will actually help your self-control by increases your belief that you’ll follow it, since you know exactly what it is. This concept has obvious applications to Christian dating, where many have no clear idea what is acceptable, outside of the obvious “no sex.” But regarding kissing vs kissing vigorously vs whatever else, people don’t have clear cut offs so often are pulled along farther than they would have wanted in hindsight.
It’s chapter on parenting was really good. Up to this point I had been noticing that this book, while including some research, relied much more on individual stories than hard data, compared to the Against Empathy or Lifecycle Investing, the last 2 books I’d read, but this chapter was chock full of useful information.
The huge emphasis put on self-esteem started based on research that showed low self-esteem was associated with bad grades, unwed pregnancies, drug addiction, and criminality. This kickstarted the push to improve people by making them think they were better. The participation trophy, emphasis on “being unique.” Unfortunately, it turned out that high performance predicted later high self-esteem, but not vice versa. So what ended up happening was students across the whole country had their self-esteem go up as their performance went down. While the correlation between low self-esteem and bad behavior does exist, the causality goes one way. His quote, “Being a sixteen-year-old pregnant heroine addict can make you feel less than wonderful about yourself.” The only real benefit of high self-esteem is that it prevents depression.
One interesting study, narcissists were initially rated as people’s favorite person in weekly meeting groups, but after a few months they dropped to the bottom. They wear on you. Narcissism has increased over the past few decades in America.
He argued Asians turn out great because of their exceptional parenting. They couldn’t care less about “self-esteem,” rather they heavily promote self-control and discipline. Asians overperform professionally relative to their IQ because of their discipline. They give things to their children, but as rewards for accomplishing things. In studies on mother’s attitudes on how to contribute to their children’s academic success, immigrants from China mentioned setting high goals and enforcing tough standards. American white women mentioned not overemphasizing academic success, stressing social development, and pushing the idea that “learning is fun,” as well as promoting their child’s self-esteem.
For children, the speed of the punishment is important, delayed punishment doesn’t have the same effect, but the punishment doesn’t have to be draconian. But the single most important thing is consistency, rules and punishment must be consistent. You cannot punish based on your mood and whether you want to deal with the hassle right now. Parents must exercise self-control to consistently discipline for bad behavior. This will make their lives much easier in the long run.
Children from single parents perform terribly. Some may be genetic, their parents often don’t have much self-control, as witnessed by their behavior. But children with fathers stationed overseas still underperform, though to a lesser extent, suggesting that with this, as with pretty much everything. Genetic and environmental causes both play a role, building upon each other.
Dieting is a double whammy, because avoiding unhealthy foods for dieters requires willpower, which exhausts blood glucose, causing cravings for unhealthy foods. Keeping unhealthy foods out of sight is big, as the closer the food is, the faster your willpower is exhausted resisting it. Another good technique is “implementation intention” where you predetermine responses in certain situations. “If x then y.” “If I have a strong craving for x I will immediately go and eat y” is a good way to avoid the unhealthy food and minimize the depletion of willpower.
One topic he’s mentioned throughout the book that I haven’t written about yet is “precommitment.” Precommitment can be pretty effective. An example of precommitment related to food would be to not go to a get together where there will be unhealthy food. You are precommitting to not eat the food, and thus conversing willpower.
The common notion that you shouldn’t weigh yourself everyday is actually wrong because of the larger principle the book discussed about self-monitoring/self-awareness leading to more self-control. Those who weigh daily actually are more successful.
Perhaps the biggest overarching point is that those with more willpower are not more successful because they use that willpower to better resist huge temptations all the time, but because they use that willpower to structure their life in an ordered way where they aren’t being bombarded with temptation.
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