8 ms·

The Sugary Secret of Self-Control

236 points by gruseom 15y ago

rkalla 15y ago
A really excellent followup to the study that was linked to around here about 6 months ago that found out "willpower" is an exhaustible resource that needs to be managed throughout your day. The book[1] this article is reviewing discusses learning to exercise your will power through little mini tasks throughout the day (sit up straight, don't curse, don't eat the whole cake, pickup your desk before going to lunch, etc.) as a means of strengthening that skill. In their studies they found that employing little tasks like that actually made the willpower muscle (let's call it) stronger, leading to more control over your day. As to "why do I care?" both studies show that people with more willpower generally end up happier with their lives. This article does make an interesting point that people with ultimate willpower are not markedly happier than people with nominal amounts of it, so you don't necessarily need to train your willpower muscle to the point of entering the willpower olympics, just slightly stronger than you have now (assuming it is weakened) to enjoy a happier life. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human-Strength/dp/1594203075/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315079356&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- mechnik 15y ago
  Recent findings by Carol Dweck and others challenge the prevalent notion that willpower is an exhaustible AND finite resource. She found that the subjects who believed that exercising one's willpower strengthens it rather than depletes it actually increased their willpower. One's mindset was the key. http://www.stanford.edu/~gwalton/home/In_the_News_files/Job,%20Dweck,%20%26%20Walton,%202010.pdf http://www.stanford.edu/~gwalton/home/In_the_News_files/Job,...
  - ehsanu1 15y ago
    Why can't you believe both? The analogy to muscles and strength training is appropriate here. The day after a workout with very heavy weights, it's hard to lift much at all. So you need to recover. The thing is that recovery is as important as the actual exercising, because it is during recovery that muscle strength increases. It may be just like that with exercising willpower: it is depleted temporarily, but given time to recover, in the long-term, willpower strengthens.
    - mechnik 15y ago
      Of course one needs breaks. One interesting point is that people who view their willpower as limitless can be more productive with fewer breaks. Here is an article with comments from the researchers clarifying their findings: http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/10/25/willpower-can-be-an-unlimited-resource-study-says/ http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/10/25/willpower-can-be-an-...
  - tokenadult 15y ago
    Thanks for the links. I'm always interested to hear about Dweck's latest research. From the submitted article, this passage is food for thought: "The disasters reveal a limitation of the muscle metaphor: certain evolutionarily prepared drives seem to withstand even the most bulked-up powers of will. The authors note that people with the highest levels of self-control are only slightly better than average at controlling their weight, and they describe disturbing experiments that confirm the old saying 'When the penis stands up, the brains get buried' (it sounds better in Yiddish)." It would be interesting to test, by methodologies proposed by Dweck or by others, just how far willpower can go in controlling the most biologically driven behaviors. There are, of course, some problems with the ethics of human experimentation involved in setting up some of these experiments in rigorous fashion.
    - Jun8 15y ago
      "certain evolutionarily prepared drives seem to withstand even the most bulked-up powers of will..." From Kung Fu: When Grasshopper feels the first stirrings of love (and sexual needs), he remembers his teacher's guidance on the subject: "To suppress a truth is to give it force beyond endurance".
fractalcat 15y ago
The NYT only found out about this now? O.o Steve Pavlina (http://www.stevepavlina.com/ http://www.stevepavlina.com/) has some good stuff on training willpower (willpower is like D-Day, a huge violent bloody assault which was used to establish fortifications on the ground so that you didn't need to launch a huge violent bloody assault every time you wanted to get things done). Use willpower to build habits that will stay with you even when you have the mental energy of a marketroid.
- kristofferR 15y ago
  It's not an article abouth the subject of willpower (although it seems that way), but rather a book review of the book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.
  - fractalcat 15y ago
    So it is. Must remember not to read news at 0500. -_-
    - karaengindy 15y ago
      u l n a
sliverstorm 15y ago
As far as food & overeating/unhealthy foods- I've learned you don't necessarily need self-control. You can stop caring instead. That's how I wound up after going hungry for months, and got used to it. It's frighteningly effective. Right now, the last meal I remember was about 20 hours ago, and the last meal before that was another 20-24 ago. My stomach is aching, but it doesn't bother me. Of course, this is not without problems. It basically means I have to consciously remember to feed myself enough to stay healthy. You could say I am now approaching the problem from the opposite direction.
- rkalla 15y ago
  Interesting approach. A lot of people would say "that doesn't fix anything because you replaced one problem with another!" but I would say it does help; it gives you another perspective on the same problem. Eventually you'll find the middle ground that works for you, but I applaud you providing at least another unconventional alternative to tackling food-control.
- boredguy8 15y ago
  "Easier said than done, I know, but the thing I find helps most people is to understand that you can't refrain from doing something you like. You can, however, change the person you are into the kind of person who doesn't even like that stuff. Sugar Smacks still taste the same as they did under Carter, but I don't know anybody who still eats them. Do the same for soda."
  - kragen 15y ago
    For the other readers who are wondering what Sugar Smacks are, Wikipedia tells me they've been called Honey Smacks for a long time now, with a brief period of being just Smacks. I don't think I've ever had them. My parents were not big fans of sugary breakfasts, and Honey Smacks are apparently the sugariest of the sugary, over 50% sugar by weight!
- dualogy 15y ago
  Starving for hours and ignoring your body's warning signals? Whatever happened to "don't eat less, eat better" -- "don't reduce quantity, increase quality"? If you enjoy eating and don't enjoy the sounds made by a hungry stomach... you can munch down as many of those fresh veggies as you like and will feel all the better for it, while not gaining a pound. Something to consider. Not the same for fruits as they do contain sugars... but veggies, the sky is the limit!
w1ntermute 15y ago
> “Willpower”is filled with advice about what to do with your willpower. Build up its strength, the authors suggest, with small but regular exercises, like tidiness and good posture. Don’t try to tame every bad habit at once. This is the key. For example, instead of having a bunch of New Year's resolutions, come up with one resolution every month. Focus your (finite) willpower on making it into a habit, at which point it won't require willpower anymore. Next month, move onto another habit and do the same thing. You can drastically change your lifestyle in just 1 year by repeating this 12 times.
- byproxy 15y ago
  I made a New Years resolution (purely for convenience of logging time) to not eat meat on weekdays. So far, I've been pretty successful at keeping it. I guess the key here is that I'm able to eat meat on weekends as a treat, which refreshes my willpower weekly. Next year, I plan on restricting my diet further, but possibly keep the less-restricted, meat-free diet on weekends.
- RobertHubert 15y ago
  Also, I have found that "breaking" the willpower mind wall has to do with taking tasks (like good posture, delaying FB status updates, doing dishes) and rewarding yourself mentally along the way by thinking or even saying things like "This is great! or I win!" even so much as smiling while doing these things helps to reinforce the dopamine pathways and can overtime help in "re-coding" your brain to be will-powerful. It's about feeling good while doing things and your brain doesn't know the difference between fake good and real good and before you know it neither will you and that's the point :)
RobertHubert 15y ago
From my experience or learning rather while studying psych I came to believe that as all successful or enjoyable actions are rewarded by dopamine (everything from grasping a spoon so smoking crack). Also, the more closely an action and its reward are pared to one-another in time the greater the strength of the feeling of "that was a good choice or Success!". So it seems to follow that giving in sooner rather than later (for some potentially greater reward - delayed gratification) rewards the brain more and does so faster thus reinforcing that behavior model more and more successfully over and over. Because delayed gratification is well, delayed, the chemical reinforcements in the brain don't happen (or happen in some other way that is more conscious rather than instantaneous without reflection). So for a child who has not developed the ability to delay gratification it becomes now or never and that mental reward structure can really hurt them later in life. Thanks for posting.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  It's always funny and somewhat humbling to remember that children have to develop the ability to delay gratification.
rytis 15y ago
ok, so let's go back to this for example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2908015 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2908015 (I am nothing). As the author says: "I am nothing, and so I am finally free to be myself.". Does being 'myself' mean I lack willpower and thus just ignore everything and everyone else and focus on myself? Thing is, in my opinion having good self control wins over being myself (which I think is on the edge of being selfish). I wonder what you guys think on the question 'being myself' vs 'self-control' ?
dlytle 15y ago
I've been wondering if there's a good way to test this on a personal basis using something like compounding interest, only with candy. For example, keeping a bag of Reese's Pieces, and every consecutive (time period) you go without breaking goal X, you add (# of time periods) pieces of candy to a jar. Then at the end of the day, you cash out your jar. So, longer periods of self control would result in a larger reward, and a physical/visual representation of your progress so far would help reinforce your motivation to remain on track. Maybe if using candy, you get to eat half of what you'd put in immediately, and take advantage of the gradually escalating amount of sugar to help reinforce your willpower reserves? Mostly just brainstorming here. :P
wpietri 15y ago
Ooh, that's appealing. One of the authors, Roy Baumeister, gave this very interesting address on how cultures use genders differently: http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
schiptsov 15y ago
Nonetheless, the very idea of self-control has acquired a musty Victorian odor. - Rly? How about Eastern cultures who rely on self-control as a foundation for ages and ages? How about Art of War and other classic Chinese texts? How about The Book of Five Rings and other classics about mortal fights? What about Tibetan tradition which emphasizes self-control as a recruitment for self-transformation? Zen and other traditions based on Buddha's teachings? And, at last, what about Greek's 'Conquer yourself' maxim, which is the second most important one after 'Catch The Moment'? ^_^ It seems like modern journalist, same as modern hackers, are completely unaware, that all those self-help books, starting from Dale Carnegie's and Napoleon Hill's ones are mere compilations and oversimplifications of general western and some times eastern philosophy? But why, not everyone has a degree in Philosophy like the founder of this site. ^_^ The level of submissions and discussions on HN is somewhere below zero, after it became a huge mainstream site. Now being hacker is an ability to praise and admire some celebrities to silently down-vote people whom they can't appreciate or even understand. Is there any new small community, with at least a little bit above mediocre level? ^_^
- gruseom 15y ago
  "[H]as acquired a musty Victorian odor" says nothing about origins; that's the opposite of what "acquired" means. All you have to do is read the next sentence to see that Pinker is obviously talking about the arc of the idea in English-speaking modernity. Is he right about that? Maybe not, but your comment is irrelevant to his claim.
zach 15y ago
The application of this research on sports performance don't seem to have been explored much as far as I've found. Which seems surprising to me seeing that Dr. Baumeister is a professor at Florida State. You'd think at least the ability of offensive linemen to stay completely still would have the football program interested in this research.
tkahn6 15y ago
Forgive me for my ignorance, but shouldn't "Ulysses had himself tied to the mast" be "Odysseus had himself tied to the mast"? I haven't read Ulysses but I have read The Odyssey.
- _delirium 15y ago
  "Ulysses" is the Latin rendering of "Odysseus", so is sometimes used interchangeably.
  - tkahn6 15y ago
    Excellent! Thanks.
vishaldpatel 15y ago
I can't comment on willpower over everything, but if it is about working out / doing chores / getting to work, I have a hack for you: Well.. it isn't really a hack, but something to remind yourself every fucking time that you're stalling. All you need is enough motivation to do it for 5 minutes. FIVE MINUTES! Thats enough motivation to basically start an activity and forget about everything else in the process, and getting on with it. Just start doing it... FIVE MINUTES!!!
blahedo 15y ago
> (though not an indistinguishable beverage containing diet sweetener) Really? Indistinguishable? This presumably doesn't invalidate their results, but a lot of people can distinguish the taste very well. This just seems like sloppiness on their part.
- sjwright 15y ago
  Sloppy perhaps, but the point is still conveyed adequately. A diet beverage might not taste identical (Coca Cola Company acknowledges this, and in fact their diet products have a different flavour profile designed to better match the artificial sweeteners) but they certainly can be an adequate substitute when it comes to satisfying your brain's sugar cravings.
CMartucci 15y ago
Willpower is not a resource, and glucose is not willpower fuel. See the following links: http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2011/08/willpower-is-not-a-resource/ http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2011/08/willpower-is-not-a-res... http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2011/08/glucose-is-not-willpower-fuel/ http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2011/08/glucose-is-not-willpow... http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2011/09/willpower-meets-the-computational-theory-of-mind/ http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2011/09/willpower-meets-the-co... http://whatblag.com/2011/08/04/poverty-and-willpower-as-resource/ http://whatblag.com/2011/08/04/poverty-and-willpower-as-reso...
- csomar 15y ago
  This is interesting. Offer someone -untrained- $1million to not to connect for 30 days and they'll (most of them) do it. A trained person may fail to do that without the incentive. Now offer an untrained person to lift 100 Kg with the same incentive. They'll fail whatever the cash is. A trained person with the right physic power will do it. No incentives required. Conclusion: will power is not a muscle. Will Power is already strong, at its max. It's not about improving it, it's about creating incentives for it to perform. It's putting yourself in the right environment and making a strong plan.
stmartin 15y ago
There is no free will. Here is what exists - you're born, and you surrender -freely- until you get your first 'NO' or encounter your first "failure" or your first "embarrassing" incident or some "trauma." Then you surrender at 98% instead of at 100%. That is called "life". What you think of as "free will" is the choices imposed on you by the "clever" surrendering on your part, where you begin to see payoffs from surrendering - e.g. education, money, job, sex, marriage, etc. Everything else, you discard, e.g. do not surrender, thinking only a certain set of things matters enough to surrender to. Then you find out, those things didn't make you happy either, and then you've had your share of sex, drugs, failures, successes, money, fun, vacations, meditations, jerking off, etc - and then you are "satiated" with all that shit... except you are still 'unhappy', and robbed of real free will. So you NEVER have free will. The best approximation of FREE WILL is you are a passenger on an airplane flying at 600 mph, and you throw up this act for the audience on the plane of whom you've become by the time you're 35 and then complain, and make meaning of everything with your useless Ph.D..... and then you arrive at death, or the final test. Real choice, self-control and free will come from surrendering 100% to everything there is. Since only one person in the last 2000 years has accomplished this fully, you are mostly grasping at straws when you think you have free will or self-control. Get it through your head - you HAVE no free will to speak of. All you have is what's GIVEN to you. You can ASK for something to be given to you by the Source, and you get to choose that - whether it is given or not, you choose the outcome of what the Source delegates to your realm. Having said this - one can REGAIN free will, much as you had when you were 4 and surrendered fully (to the Source), but it takes an act of the Source to give you that. But before you can ask for the free will/self control to be given back to you, you have to give up the illusion that you have any semblance of free will/self-control to begin with. It's a bit of a conundrum, yes, but you have to CAPITULATE that you have ANY free will/self-control to speak of before you can regain it. If you don't believe me, keep thinking you have free will/self-control and see how you feel the moment before you croak - still as unhappy as you were since the first "NO" you got.
karaengindy 15y ago
aku setuju dengan persyaratan
radu_floricica 15y ago
Baumeister actually wrote a book about this?! It's definitely a must read. If you haven't picked up anything of his before - he's a very good writer, and one of the most "correct thinkers" I know. Not a shred of idea that's not justified by research.
mechnik 15y ago
A short opinion piece that touches on the Baumeister's study: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/opinion/02aamodt.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/opinion/02aamodt.html

236 points by gruseom 15y ago

A really excellent followup to the study that was linked to around here about 6 months ago that found out "willpower" is an exhaustible resource that needs to be managed throughout your day. The book[1] this article is reviewing discusses learning to exercise your will power through little mini tasks throughout the day (sit up straight, don't curse, don't eat the whole cake, pickup your desk before going to lunch, etc.) as a means of strengthening that skill. In their studies they found that employing little tasks like that actually made the willpower muscle (let's call it) stronger, leading to more control over your day. As to "why do I care?" both studies show that people with more willpower generally end up happier with their lives. This article does make an interesting point that people with ultimate willpower are not markedly happier than people with nominal amounts of it, so you don't necessarily need to train your willpower muscle to the point of entering the willpower olympics, just slightly stronger than you have now (assuming it is weakened) to enjoy a happier life. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human-Strength/dp/1594203075/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315079356&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human...

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mechnik 15y ago
Recent findings by Carol Dweck and others challenge the prevalent notion that willpower is an exhaustible AND finite resource. She found that the subjects who believed that exercising one's willpower strengthens it rather than depletes it actually increased their willpower. One's mindset was the key. http://www.stanford.edu/~gwalton/home/In_the_News_files/Job,%20Dweck,%20%26%20Walton,%202010.pdf http://www.stanford.edu/~gwalton/home/In_the_News_files/Job,...
- ehsanu1 15y ago
  Why can't you believe both? The analogy to muscles and strength training is appropriate here. The day after a workout with very heavy weights, it's hard to lift much at all. So you need to recover. The thing is that recovery is as important as the actual exercising, because it is during recovery that muscle strength increases. It may be just like that with exercising willpower: it is depleted temporarily, but given time to recover, in the long-term, willpower strengthens.
  - mechnik 15y ago
    Of course one needs breaks. One interesting point is that people who view their willpower as limitless can be more productive with fewer breaks. Here is an article with comments from the researchers clarifying their findings: http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/10/25/willpower-can-be-an-unlimited-resource-study-says/ http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/10/25/willpower-can-be-an-...
- tokenadult 15y ago
  Thanks for the links. I'm always interested to hear about Dweck's latest research. From the submitted article, this passage is food for thought: "The disasters reveal a limitation of the muscle metaphor: certain evolutionarily prepared drives seem to withstand even the most bulked-up powers of will. The authors note that people with the highest levels of self-control are only slightly better than average at controlling their weight, and they describe disturbing experiments that confirm the old saying 'When the penis stands up, the brains get buried' (it sounds better in Yiddish)." It would be interesting to test, by methodologies proposed by Dweck or by others, just how far willpower can go in controlling the most biologically driven behaviors. There are, of course, some problems with the ethics of human experimentation involved in setting up some of these experiments in rigorous fashion.
  - Jun8 15y ago
    "certain evolutionarily prepared drives seem to withstand even the most bulked-up powers of will..." From Kung Fu: When Grasshopper feels the first stirrings of love (and sexual needs), he remembers his teacher's guidance on the subject: "To suppress a truth is to give it force beyond endurance".

fractalcat 15y ago

The NYT only found out about this now? O.o Steve Pavlina (http://www.stevepavlina.com/ http://www.stevepavlina.com/) has some good stuff on training willpower (willpower is like D-Day, a huge violent bloody assault which was used to establish fortifications on the ground so that you didn't need to launch a huge violent bloody assault every time you wanted to get things done). Use willpower to build habits that will stay with you even when you have the mental energy of a marketroid.

kristofferR 15y ago
It's not an article abouth the subject of willpower (although it seems that way), but rather a book review of the book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.
- fractalcat 15y ago
  So it is. Must remember not to read news at 0500. -_-
  - karaengindy 15y ago
    u l n a

sliverstorm 15y ago

As far as food & overeating/unhealthy foods- I've learned you don't necessarily need self-control. You can stop caring instead. That's how I wound up after going hungry for months, and got used to it. It's frighteningly effective. Right now, the last meal I remember was about 20 hours ago, and the last meal before that was another 20-24 ago. My stomach is aching, but it doesn't bother me. Of course, this is not without problems. It basically means I have to consciously remember to feed myself enough to stay healthy. You could say I am now approaching the problem from the opposite direction.

rkalla 15y ago
Interesting approach. A lot of people would say "that doesn't fix anything because you replaced one problem with another!" but I would say it does help; it gives you another perspective on the same problem. Eventually you'll find the middle ground that works for you, but I applaud you providing at least another unconventional alternative to tackling food-control.
boredguy8 15y ago
"Easier said than done, I know, but the thing I find helps most people is to understand that you can't refrain from doing something you like. You can, however, change the person you are into the kind of person who doesn't even like that stuff. Sugar Smacks still taste the same as they did under Carter, but I don't know anybody who still eats them. Do the same for soda."
- kragen 15y ago
  For the other readers who are wondering what Sugar Smacks are, Wikipedia tells me they've been called Honey Smacks for a long time now, with a brief period of being just Smacks. I don't think I've ever had them. My parents were not big fans of sugary breakfasts, and Honey Smacks are apparently the sugariest of the sugary, over 50% sugar by weight!
dualogy 15y ago
Starving for hours and ignoring your body's warning signals? Whatever happened to "don't eat less, eat better" -- "don't reduce quantity, increase quality"? If you enjoy eating and don't enjoy the sounds made by a hungry stomach... you can munch down as many of those fresh veggies as you like and will feel all the better for it, while not gaining a pound. Something to consider. Not the same for fruits as they do contain sugars... but veggies, the sky is the limit!

w1ntermute 15y ago

> “Willpower”is filled with advice about what to do with your willpower. Build up its strength, the authors suggest, with small but regular exercises, like tidiness and good posture. Don’t try to tame every bad habit at once. This is the key. For example, instead of having a bunch of New Year's resolutions, come up with one resolution every month. Focus your (finite) willpower on making it into a habit, at which point it won't require willpower anymore. Next month, move onto another habit and do the same thing. You can drastically change your lifestyle in just 1 year by repeating this 12 times.

byproxy 15y ago
I made a New Years resolution (purely for convenience of logging time) to not eat meat on weekdays. So far, I've been pretty successful at keeping it. I guess the key here is that I'm able to eat meat on weekends as a treat, which refreshes my willpower weekly. Next year, I plan on restricting my diet further, but possibly keep the less-restricted, meat-free diet on weekends.
RobertHubert 15y ago
Also, I have found that "breaking" the willpower mind wall has to do with taking tasks (like good posture, delaying FB status updates, doing dishes) and rewarding yourself mentally along the way by thinking or even saying things like "This is great! or I win!" even so much as smiling while doing these things helps to reinforce the dopamine pathways and can overtime help in "re-coding" your brain to be will-powerful. It's about feeling good while doing things and your brain doesn't know the difference between fake good and real good and before you know it neither will you and that's the point :)

RobertHubert 15y ago

From my experience or learning rather while studying psych I came to believe that as all successful or enjoyable actions are rewarded by dopamine (everything from grasping a spoon so smoking crack). Also, the more closely an action and its reward are pared to one-another in time the greater the strength of the feeling of "that was a good choice or Success!". So it seems to follow that giving in sooner rather than later (for some potentially greater reward - delayed gratification) rewards the brain more and does so faster thus reinforcing that behavior model more and more successfully over and over. Because delayed gratification is well, delayed, the chemical reinforcements in the brain don't happen (or happen in some other way that is more conscious rather than instantaneous without reflection). So for a child who has not developed the ability to delay gratification it becomes now or never and that mental reward structure can really hurt them later in life. Thanks for posting.

sliverstorm 15y ago
It's always funny and somewhat humbling to remember that children have to develop the ability to delay gratification.

rytis 15y ago

ok, so let's go back to this for example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2908015 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2908015 (I am nothing). As the author says: "I am nothing, and so I am finally free to be myself.". Does being 'myself' mean I lack willpower and thus just ignore everything and everyone else and focus on myself? Thing is, in my opinion having good self control wins over being myself (which I think is on the edge of being selfish). I wonder what you guys think on the question 'being myself' vs 'self-control' ?

dlytle 15y ago

I've been wondering if there's a good way to test this on a personal basis using something like compounding interest, only with candy. For example, keeping a bag of Reese's Pieces, and every consecutive (time period) you go without breaking goal X, you add (# of time periods) pieces of candy to a jar. Then at the end of the day, you cash out your jar. So, longer periods of self control would result in a larger reward, and a physical/visual representation of your progress so far would help reinforce your motivation to remain on track. Maybe if using candy, you get to eat half of what you'd put in immediately, and take advantage of the gradually escalating amount of sugar to help reinforce your willpower reserves? Mostly just brainstorming here. :P

wpietri 15y ago

Ooh, that's appealing. One of the authors, Roy Baumeister, gave this very interesting address on how cultures use genders differently: http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm

schiptsov 15y ago

Nonetheless, the very idea of self-control has acquired a musty Victorian odor. - Rly? How about Eastern cultures who rely on self-control as a foundation for ages and ages? How about Art of War and other classic Chinese texts? How about The Book of Five Rings and other classics about mortal fights? What about Tibetan tradition which emphasizes self-control as a recruitment for self-transformation? Zen and other traditions based on Buddha's teachings? And, at last, what about Greek's 'Conquer yourself' maxim, which is the second most important one after 'Catch The Moment'? ^_^ It seems like modern journalist, same as modern hackers, are completely unaware, that all those self-help books, starting from Dale Carnegie's and Napoleon Hill's ones are mere compilations and oversimplifications of general western and some times eastern philosophy? But why, not everyone has a degree in Philosophy like the founder of this site. ^_^ The level of submissions and discussions on HN is somewhere below zero, after it became a huge mainstream site. Now being hacker is an ability to praise and admire some celebrities to silently down-vote people whom they can't appreciate or even understand. Is there any new small community, with at least a little bit above mediocre level? ^_^

gruseom 15y ago
"[H]as acquired a musty Victorian odor" says nothing about origins; that's the opposite of what "acquired" means. All you have to do is read the next sentence to see that Pinker is obviously talking about the arc of the idea in English-speaking modernity. Is he right about that? Maybe not, but your comment is irrelevant to his claim.

zach 15y ago

The application of this research on sports performance don't seem to have been explored much as far as I've found. Which seems surprising to me seeing that Dr. Baumeister is a professor at Florida State. You'd think at least the ability of offensive linemen to stay completely still would have the football program interested in this research.

tkahn6 15y ago

Forgive me for my ignorance, but shouldn't "Ulysses had himself tied to the mast" be "Odysseus had himself tied to the mast"? I haven't read Ulysses but I have read The Odyssey.

_delirium 15y ago
"Ulysses" is the Latin rendering of "Odysseus", so is sometimes used interchangeably.
- tkahn6 15y ago
  Excellent! Thanks.

vishaldpatel 15y ago

I can't comment on willpower over everything, but if it is about working out / doing chores / getting to work, I have a hack for you: Well.. it isn't really a hack, but something to remind yourself every fucking time that you're stalling. All you need is enough motivation to do it for 5 minutes. FIVE MINUTES! Thats enough motivation to basically start an activity and forget about everything else in the process, and getting on with it. Just start doing it... FIVE MINUTES!!!

blahedo 15y ago

> (though not an indistinguishable beverage containing diet sweetener) Really? Indistinguishable? This presumably doesn't invalidate their results, but a lot of people can distinguish the taste very well. This just seems like sloppiness on their part.

sjwright 15y ago
Sloppy perhaps, but the point is still conveyed adequately. A diet beverage might not taste identical (Coca Cola Company acknowledges this, and in fact their diet products have a different flavour profile designed to better match the artificial sweeteners) but they certainly can be an adequate substitute when it comes to satisfying your brain's sugar cravings.

CMartucci 15y ago

Willpower is not a resource, and glucose is not willpower fuel. See the following links: http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2011/08/willpower-is-not-a-resource/ http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2011/08/willpower-is-not-a-res... http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2011/08/glucose-is-not-willpower-fuel/ http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2011/08/glucose-is-not-willpow... http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2011/09/willpower-meets-the-computational-theory-of-mind/ http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2011/09/willpower-meets-the-co... http://whatblag.com/2011/08/04/poverty-and-willpower-as-resource/ http://whatblag.com/2011/08/04/poverty-and-willpower-as-reso...

csomar 15y ago
This is interesting. Offer someone -untrained- $1million to not to connect for 30 days and they'll (most of them) do it. A trained person may fail to do that without the incentive. Now offer an untrained person to lift 100 Kg with the same incentive. They'll fail whatever the cash is. A trained person with the right physic power will do it. No incentives required. Conclusion: will power is not a muscle. Will Power is already strong, at its max. It's not about improving it, it's about creating incentives for it to perform. It's putting yourself in the right environment and making a strong plan.

stmartin 15y ago

There is no free will. Here is what exists - you're born, and you surrender -freely- until you get your first 'NO' or encounter your first "failure" or your first "embarrassing" incident or some "trauma." Then you surrender at 98% instead of at 100%. That is called "life". What you think of as "free will" is the choices imposed on you by the "clever" surrendering on your part, where you begin to see payoffs from surrendering - e.g. education, money, job, sex, marriage, etc. Everything else, you discard, e.g. do not surrender, thinking only a certain set of things matters enough to surrender to. Then you find out, those things didn't make you happy either, and then you've had your share of sex, drugs, failures, successes, money, fun, vacations, meditations, jerking off, etc - and then you are "satiated" with all that shit... except you are still 'unhappy', and robbed of real free will. So you NEVER have free will. The best approximation of FREE WILL is you are a passenger on an airplane flying at 600 mph, and you throw up this act for the audience on the plane of whom you've become by the time you're 35 and then complain, and make meaning of everything with your useless Ph.D..... and then you arrive at death, or the final test. Real choice, self-control and free will come from surrendering 100% to everything there is. Since only one person in the last 2000 years has accomplished this fully, you are mostly grasping at straws when you think you have free will or self-control. Get it through your head - you HAVE no free will to speak of. All you have is what's GIVEN to you. You can ASK for something to be given to you by the Source, and you get to choose that - whether it is given or not, you choose the outcome of what the Source delegates to your realm. Having said this - one can REGAIN free will, much as you had when you were 4 and surrendered fully (to the Source), but it takes an act of the Source to give you that. But before you can ask for the free will/self control to be given back to you, you have to give up the illusion that you have any semblance of free will/self-control to begin with. It's a bit of a conundrum, yes, but you have to CAPITULATE that you have ANY free will/self-control to speak of before you can regain it. If you don't believe me, keep thinking you have free will/self-control and see how you feel the moment before you croak - still as unhappy as you were since the first "NO" you got.

karaengindy 15y ago

aku setuju dengan persyaratan

radu_floricica 15y ago

Baumeister actually wrote a book about this?! It's definitely a must read. If you haven't picked up anything of his before - he's a very good writer, and one of the most "correct thinkers" I know. Not a shred of idea that's not justified by research.

mechnik 15y ago

A short opinion piece that touches on the Baumeister's study: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/opinion/02aamodt.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/opinion/02aamodt.html