Willpower

Research

Quotes

Persistence requires the mastery of a series of skills and a fundamental shift in thinking; lasting change is a marathon, not a 100-yard dash. Changeology p. 197. The therapist instructs the client that the process, of changing one's skill acquisition procedure instead of a “battle of the will” with willpower as the only weapon. By emphasizing the learning of new activity the image of the addictive habit as an “immoral” activity is neutralized as an as an attitude of anticipated mastery begins to emerge in its place. The client begins to see the process of change as not unlike other skill acquisition experiences he or she has experienced, such as learning to ride a bicycle, ice skate. or play a musical instrument. Again, the end result is one of enhanced self-efficacy and the acceptance of personal responsibility in the habit changing process. Marlatt & Gordon p. 226.

Our understanding of self-control fatigue is not yet complete. Here’s an interesting finding: when people do not believe that brute self-control is limited, that it gives in to fatigue, they are much less likely to show the effect (Job, Dweck, & Walton, 2010). People who believe their capacity for self-control is not limited did not show fatigue after exercising self-control for a period. Reduced willpower during a demanding period of life occurs more in people who believe in it than in people who do not. If you don’t believe in self-control fatigue, you don’t get it. How you think about a problem in self-control affects how you cope with it (Fujita & Han, 2009). Student’s theories about willpower predicted how they dealt with temptations to eat unhealthy food and to procrastinate during stressful exam periods (Job et al., 2010). Those who believed their self-control was limited showed self-control fatigue and those who did not believe did not show the same effect. As the old children’s story suggests: If you think you can, you can. Watson David L., T. R. G. (2013). Self-Directed Behavior: Self-Modification for Personal Adjustment. Cengage Learning. p. 320.

Ego Depletion

• HO Module 3. Quotes Job, Dweck & Walton 2010
  • Reference: Job, V., Dweck, C. S., & Walton, G. M. (2010). Ego depletion-is it all in your head? implicit theories about willpower affect self-regulation. Psychological Science, 21(11), 1686–1693. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610384745
  • Everything Is Crumbling - An influential psychological theory, borne out in hundreds of experiments, may have just been debunked. How can so many scientists have been so wrong? Slate.
  • @Florin: Some of Baumeister's counter-critics are valid and have been acknowledged elsewhere ( "[...] most studies adopted very brief depletion manipulations that were generally less than 10 min.. Participants’ responses to these weak manipulations could vary to a great extent." source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550619887702 )
  • @Florin: Recent replications support the effect: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550619887702  and https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797620904990, reporting either small (first replication) or stronger results (second replication), in favor of the ego depletion effect.

• See https://www.apa.org/topics/willpower
  • "Willpower may also be made less vulnerable to being depleted in the first place. Researchers who study self-control often describe it as being like a muscle that gets fatigued with heavy use. But there is another aspect to the muscle analogy, they say. While muscles become exhausted by exercise in the short term, they are strengthened by regular exercise in the long term. Similarly, regularly exerting self-control may improve willpower strength... Others have also found that flexing your willpower muscles can strengthen self-control over time. Australian scientists Megan Oaten, PhD, and Ken Cheng, PhD, of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, assigned volunteers to a two-month program of physical exercise—a routine that required willpower. At the end of two months, participants who had stuck with the program did better on a lab measure of self-control than did participants who were not assigned to the exercise regimen. That’s not all. The subjects also reported smoking less and drinking less alcohol, eating healthier food, monitoring their spending more carefully, and improving their study habits. Regularly exercising their willpower with physical exercise, it seemed, led to better willpower in nearly all areas of their lives."
• Battle of the Generation Ch. 28 - Why we need willpower.