Will Power – A Scarce ResourceThe first year student sat at the .docx
- 1. Will Power – A Scarce Resource The first year student sat at the table. The room was heavy with the essence of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies from the small oven in the corner. The aroma was particularly noticeable given that it was noon and she hadn’t eaten anything since this morning, as she had agreed for this experiment. While she completed the consent forms and surveys on the small table in front of her, a plate of hot cookies sat piled with assorted chocolate candies. In a bowl next to it was a stack of bright red and white radishes piled equally high. When the forms were complete the experimenter in the room advised that she would be requested to eat a food, and only that food over the next five minutes. She was also instructed to not eat the assigned food for at least 24 hours after the experiment. At this point the experimenter advised her to eat radishes. She was to eat only the radishes at which point the experimenter left the room and watched through a one way mirror. The student looked at the cookies and then the radishes. She looked at the cookies again, picking the one at the top and bending it just a little. It was fresh just like she suspected and she put it down carefully and slid over to the radish bowl taking the minimum three radishes in her hand. She ate the radishes one by one intentionally not looking at the plate of cookies right next to her. They were cold, crunchy, and slightly spicy. As she ate them, the thought that these cold, crunchy and slightly spicy radishes were nothing like the cookies right next to her As promised the experimenter returned at five minutes with a handful of tests that involved tracing a geometric figure without lifting her pen from the paper. If she did, or had to start over, she could use as much paper as she needed. She was given a practice period where she had several similar puzzles, some of which she completed with ease. When the time was up, she was given the two main test figures, along with instructions that she can take as much time as she would like, and that she wouldn’t
- 2. be judged on her time nor on the number of attempts she made to solve the test. Her goal was to complete the task. There was a bell on the table that she should ring if she wished to stop before she finished the puzzle. Experimenter left the room. The student looked at the puzzle and immediately began tracing the figure as instructed. As she went along she could see that her strategy wasn’t going to work, so she folded the paper in half and moved it out of her way, aggravated at jumping into an obviously stupid strategy. She wasn’t achieving her goal. She thought - “Things like this come easy to me”. Taking another sheet of paper to try again she could still smell the cookies in the room. Every idea she had still ended up at the strategy she first used. After ten minutes and two other attempts she gave up. She just couldn’t figure this thing out. She rang the bell. The experiment was over. She wasn’t told until later that the puzzles she was given were insolvable. This happened one at a time to 67 college students. 21 were assigned to eat radishes, 23 were assigned to eat nothing, and 23 were assigned to eat the chocolate chip cookies. The question was: who would try longer to solve the insolvable puzzle? The choice was between hungry individuals who were tempted to eat cookies but were only allowed radishes, those that got to eat freshly baked cookies as they wished, or the control group who was given the test with no exposure to the cookies or radishes. The radish group failed. This experiment at the time was considered a significant breakthrough in the idea of “self-control”. That “will power” is like a muscle which can be developed, but it can also be depleted was at the time a surprise. It still is among many consultants and mainstream educators. Some psychologists call this “Agency”. The effects of this phenomenon have been well documented, from Walter Mischel’s Marshmallow Studies, where he measured children’s ability to forego the offer of a treat now, for two at a later time.
- 3. Children unable wait had significantly higher incidences of drug abuse, criminal convictions, high school drop-out and unemployment ten and twenty years later. Children able to wait experience far higher success trajectories. While the ability to predict a four year olds life by their choice in times for getting a marshmallow is remarkable, the fact that will power has such a critical role in our success as people is not. It is something all people struggle with – the ability to force ourselves to all of the things we need to ultimately get what we want. What the radish experiment revealed would be later called “Ego Depletion”, meaning “people’s diminished ability to regulate their thoughts, feelings, or actions”. Ego depletion is a source many of the shortfalls that we experience as we proceed through our days. It has even been labelled as an illness with no symptoms given that it doesn’t “feel” like anything, but had dramatic effects on people’s behavior. Sad movies are sadder, simple tasks become frustrating, odds of arguing or insensitive comments are higher, chances of breaking a goal, polishing off a quart of Haagen-Dazs or malt liquor, or jumping into a video game binge are extraordinarily higher. One popular personality trait for selecting employees is conscientiousness. The thing about personality traits is that psychological literature holds that traits are an immutable characteristic in a person. Your personality is steady throughout your life. It is the real you, and you cannot change it. That’s what many psychologists, and a whole industry of human resource consultants claim. Conscientiousness is defined by psychologist as the extent to which a person is organized, careful. Self-disciplined, and responsible. As such, it is one of the most sought after characteristics to be measured by employment surveys. Two Stanford psychologists performed a study to look at the correlation of various activities in students and conscientiousness. Their expectation was that behaviors such as “wears clean socks” and “turning in assignments on time” would positively correlate given they are both associated with
- 4. conscientiousness. To their surprise, the two were correlated, but negatively. On getting these results, the researchers hypothesized that what they were observing was a consequence of ego depletion, so they performed a new study, measuring the self control of students as their semester progressed. They found that as the semester proceeded, student performance on the laboratory self control tests fell, they went through a process in their life of losing many of the good habits that they had built up before the first day of class. The sock to study relationship was a result of a focus of will power on to studying, at expense of self control in other aspects of their life. They smoked more, drank more alcohol, exercised less, ate more. Washing dishes, returning phone calls, laundry and any number of personal hygiene behaviors declined as the semester went on. While this could be theorized as cutting corners to save time, students reported spending more time with friends instead of studying. Interestingly, while they didn’t study much more, they expended much more will power on trying to study. This is a critical point – will power can be diverted to one important goal, sacrificing all others, yet being completely burned up with no results on the goal of interest. Empirically, its been shown that the following conditions can erode will power: Decisions – having made too many decisions in a short period of time. “Decision Fatigue” is an actual phenomenon, and is recognized as a sales tactic where buyers of things like a car are given an endless list of features to choose, and after a number of choices, are given an expensive package of a group of options, to which they will agree more easily. Exerting Will Power – As the radish experiment in the first of this shows, pushing ourselves through one goal comes at the expense of using will power for others. Emotional Will Power - Page 29 – Watching movies and controlling emotions Unresolved Goals – One of the phenomena that the college
- 5. student study shows is that having a gola to which you want to accomplish will use as much will power whether you work on it or not. One way people work through this is by writing a plan of specific steps and when they will take them. Mentally this allows cognitions to move onto other activities as if the goal has been accomplished. Glucose – Our brains use a high amount of energy. Inadequate food drastically reduces will power. Many people have observed themselves, and probably others who are irritable when they haven’t eaten. Their lowered glucose levels reduces the energy needed to regulate their emotions and behaviors. This glucose to will power is a particularly difficult challenge for goals involving weight loss, where a swift resolution to glucose deficiency is sugar. It’s a good idea to work on some goals, especially weight, when you don’t have the need for will power over other aspect of your life. We saw that the idea of conscientiousness as a trait that is steady throughout a person’s existence varies quite drastically over the course of a person’s life, if not months or days. From the observations of the researchers, it is, if not will power, it is strongly related. Will power has a long history of being exercised and strengthened. This idea went out of fashion in the 1960’s from the idea of positive thinking and self esteem. Some attribute this to the emergence of Freud. Interestingly early work by Freud found that patients had a difficult time sharing their thoughts with Freud at the level he felt necessary to diagnose them. However once he prescribed a solution, they quickly adopted it. As the century progressed, he began to observe that people more easily shared their insights, but lacked the agency to carry out their solutions. On a societal level, starting in the 1930’s with Dale Carnegie’s Winngin Friends and Influencing People, Napolean Hill’s How to Think and Grow Rich to present day solutions focused on positive thinking, the idea that a person can build their will power, or that it even exists is rare. Martin Seligman, one of the drivers of
- 6. the Positive Psychology movement reviewed the work on self- control from the field, including Mischel’s Marshmallow experiments, and discounted the idea of self control, and doubted that anything from one’s childhood save grave tragedies would leave a persistent affect on a person. This isn’t what current research suggests. The focus of this next exercise is based on meta-analysis findings from DeRidder et al (2011), where they found individuals with the highest levels of will-power seldom exercised ot for the typical things that we associate wih will power. Most of what the individuals did with respect for eating, planning, exercising, work was shaped into a habit or routine. Their will power was reserved for exceptions to their routines. These individuals outsourced the things that many of us struggle with to automatic behaviors requiring little thought. What to eat? If it’s morning, they eat the same thing. Need to study? Always study immediately after eating dinner. Answer text or email? Always do it before lunch, or always do it immediately. While for reasons not always apparent to everyone, college students suffer many irregularities in their schedules that get in the way of routines, the returns are even greater in these situations. A steady schedule of planning and executing plans when possible will avoid burning our willpower on goals that we won’t make any progress on, and may compromise other things we still need to attend to. This is the cycle that soaks our agency out of where we need to spend it: I suck set goals to not suck fail feel guilty punish repeat. Instead of setting a magnificent goal, let’ s set up a habit. Think of your will power as a reservoir would be full at the beginning of the day, but we have to wake ourselves up, hurry to get to work or school, driving in bad traffic, change our schedules because of a group assignment and a problem group member, a hurried or no lunch. We get home, our apartment is a mess, we forgot to call our parents, we’re behind on studying for two classes. We should return the call from a headhunter
- 7. back, but we don’t have anything to say and just not ready for it now. By the end of the day, we will have less, if any of what we started with. Think of all of the things you don’t want to do that the need to do arises fairly regularly. In our program, this has included things like: · Reading technical information in an industry that you are interested in as a career. · Introducing ourselves to one person each time we are in a crowd of strangers. · Eating two servings of vegetables before anything else. Where a lot of people get caught up in this is when they mix the idea of goals with habits. “I want to be fit” seems easy – get a habit for exercising. But habits need a trigger – so that you can say “Everytime x happens, I will do y”. In the case of exercise, maybe easier would be “Every time there are stairs, I will use the stairs instead of the elevator”. With the above three items the students chose these cause – effect loops: “Every time I make breakfast, I will eat and read the information for 45 minutes.” “Everytime I am in line, I will find one person and ask them how there day is”. “Every time I eat a meal, I will eat two servigns of vegetables before I proceed to something else.” For all of these students, the activities became habitualized routines needing little if any will power. You obviously have agency, you are in college which is only possible through a series of accomplishments. What is a routine that you do already that probably conserves your will power? What is something that is something that is likely sapping a lot of your will-power? Think of someone you know that is struggling with getting keeping things together. What is their biggest crisis? What do you think are some of their will-power leaks?
- 8. What are three challenges you face that seem to be where your mind wanders, distract you, or keep you worried regularly? 1. 2. 3. What are some routines that can be regularly engaged that would take some of the stress or distraction away from the things you mentioned above? 1 2 3 Put one of these into a small routine that can be started and finished. Then identify a trigger for it so you can say “When (X) happens, I will do (Y)”. _________________________ Figure out a reward for this, so that you can replenish some of your will power when you complete the task. What would it be? ____________________________________________