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Interesting, but the experiment there seems to be flawed. Cookies have a lot more sugar/glucose than radishes and it changes your blood sugar levels a lot more
by ardit33 16y ago
Interesting, but the experiment there seems to be flawed. Cookies have a lot more sugar/glucose than radishes and it changes your blood sugar levels a lot more, so you'd expect right after eating the people that ate cookies will have more energy to persist on the task.
It doesn't quite prove what they are trying to prove (that self control and change are exhausting). They should have tried it with something else that was tempting and that was not food.
- eavc 16y agoGood point. A simple fix would be to figure out what a normal score on the exercise would be without cookies. If it's the same as with cookies (or close), it's safe to conclude that it's the temptation of the cookies moreso than the sugar that makes the difference. They might have actually done this.
- eavc 16y agoThere's another study (that I can't find right now, maybe someone will help me) in which self-control was measured by how long someone could keep their arm submerged in icy water. Ones who had their discipline taxed before the exercise performed dramatically worse than those who hadn't. So that one had nothing to do with food and showed similar results.
- joe_the_user 16y agoYes, there are apparently lots of studies about this. Where would summary of these result be found? Well, here's a couple http://management.ucsd.edu/faculty/seminars/2009/papers/rangel.pdf http://management.ucsd.edu/faculty/seminars/2009/papers/rang... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion
- eavc 16y agoGreat find, thank you.
- zasz 16y agoYour second sentence sounds like you actually agree with the study. The people with heightened levels of blood sugar pursued the impossible task a lot longer than the people with lower levels of blood sugar. Determination in the face of frustration is an important part of self-control. It sounds like they've showed such determination is tied to blood glucose levels, which certainly do get depleted after difficult tasks.
- houseabsolute 16y agoI don't think that's what they were trying to show, nor do I think it is strongly shown by the study as presented.
- necrecious 16y agoThere have been other studies that shows that sugar replenishes self control.
- houseabsolute 16y agoBe that as it may, it has little to do with the discussion at hand.