Willpower, Diet Coke, and Buddha

Sixteen years ago I quit smoking. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. For weeks and months during this time I had to exert constant self-control over the urge to resume the habit. A lot of this effort involved being vigilant to events and situations that used to automatically trigger smoking and then willfully blocking the urge to light up a cigarette. It was also necessary to exert control over an emotional response that was evoked by not having access to cigarettes -- a feeling of panic that non-smokers probably can't relate to at all. During this period I was irritable, of course, but also often forgetful, distracted, and downright muddled (even more than usual).

Social Psychologists have focused a great deal of research on the mechanisms of self-control and the consequences of exerting this kind of cognitive effort. Examples of behaviors that have been studied in this context include managing the impression we think we are making on others, suppressing our prejudices and stereotypes, coping with fear of dying, controlling our spending, holding back aggression, and limiting the amount of food or alcohol we ingest (see Galliot et. al, 2007 for references).

A consistent finding in these studies is that self control is a depletable resource. The prominent social psychologist Roy Baumeister summarized this research as follows: "...self-control appear[s] vulnerable to deterioration over time from repeated exertions, resembling a muscle that gets tired. The implication [is] that effortful self-regulation depends on a limited resource that becomes depleted by any acts of self-control, causing subsequent performance even on other self-control tasks to become worse" (Baumeister et. al, 2007). For example, in one study people who exerted self control by eating healthy vegetables instead of more temping chocolate candy and cookies gave up faster on a subsequent frustrating task as compared to people who had not exerted self-control. This depletion phenomenon would certainly account for my irritability and befuddlement during my struggle to quit smoking -- my mind muscle was pooped.

It isn't necessary to invoke a new-agey concept of "psychic energy" to account for these data. The cognitive activity involved in self-control is firmly tied to physiological processes in the brain -- an organ that uses 20% of the body's calories and yet has just 2% of its mass. A major source of energy for the brain is glucose, or blood sugar, which is converted to neurotransmitter chemicals that fuel the brain. A series of recent experiments by Gailliot et. al. (2007) have demonstrated that exerting self control depletes glucose, whereas other kinds of cognitive activity that are more automatic do not, and that lowered levels of glucose result in impaired self control on subsequent tasks. Increasing glucose levels, either by allowing them to rebound naturally or by ingesting glucose rich drinks, was found to restore performance on self-control tasks. An ironic implication of this (untested, as far as I know) is that dieters who drink artificially sweetened soda may lower their blood sugar level and thus may make it harder for themselves to stick to their weight-loss diets.

What I have outlined here is called the Strength Model of Self-Control, and it clearly has a great deal of empirical support. For me the most important thing in the model is not just that self-control or willpower is a depletable resource, but rather that there are ways of developing greater self-control such that depletion is lessened -- an extension of the "muscle" analogy suggested by Baumeister. Research has indicated that...

"...just as exercise can make muscles stronger, there are signs that regular exertions of self-control can improve willpower strength... These improvements typically take the form of resistance to depletion, in the sense that performance at self-control tasks deteriorates at a slower rate. Targeted efforts to control behavior in one area, such as spending money or exercise, lead to improvements in unrelated areas, such as studying or household chores. And daily exercises in self-control, such as improving posture, altering verbal behavior, and using one’s nondominant hand for simple tasks, gradually produce improvements in self-control as measured by laboratory tasks. The finding that these improvements carry over into tasks vastly different from the daily exercises shows that the improvements are
not due to simply increasing skill or acquiring self-efficacy from practice." (Baumeister et. al., 2007)

There are other ways of improving self-control not mentioned by Baumeister, including techniques offered by some religious traditions, such as Buddhism, which stresses the development of self control over one's thoughts, perceptions, and emotions through meditation. Whatever the technique, the positive implication is clear: self-control "...appears to facilitate success in life in many spheres, and, crucially, it appears amenable to improvement. Indeed, self-control can be grouped with intelligence among the (rather few) traits that are known to contribute to success in human life across a broad variety of spheres; yet unlike intelligence,
self-control appears amenable to improvement from psychological interventions, even in adulthood" (Baumeister et. al., 2007)


References

Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Vohs, Kathleen D., & Tice, D. M. (2007). The Strength Model of Self-Control. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16 (6): 351-355.

Gailliot, M.T., Baumeister, R.F., DeWall, C.N., Maner, J.K., Plant, E.A., & Tice, D.M., et al. (2007). Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: Willpower is more than a metaphor. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 325–336.

The REAL Lesson From This Election

**We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog with this special election year commentary. In case you miss it this time, the message will be repeated two years from now, though the names of the political parties will likely be reversed.**

This campaign season has seen a lot of chest-thumping and mud-slinging. The Republicans by all accounts are poised to win back most of the congressional seats they lost two years ago, and most likely will take over the House of Representatives.

If this occurs it will not be a mandate to return to the policies and practices of the past, nor will it represent a massive endorsement of the ill-informed, simplistic, extreme views of the Tea Party.

It will be a cry from the electorate to make our government work. I'm writing this just before Election Day, and the most recent polls are very clear -- though the Republicans are going to gain seats in congress, the Republican Party is at historic lows in popularity. Rather than endorsing Republican policies and philosophy, people are desperate for a change that will lead to a sense of stability and progress rather than gridlock and confusion. As Jim Lehrer recently commented, "... polling shows that people also want both sides to work together. They don't want any more gridlock. They don't want any more stalemates. So, if the Republicans take control, they're going to have to work with the Democrats, the Democrats who are already there are going to have to work with the Republicans, or this whole thing isn't going to work."

Polls also indicate a very sobering disconnect between opinion and fact that may make the Republican victory short-lived. According to a recent article in Bloomberg News, "...by a two-to-one margin, likely voters in the Nov. 2 midterm elections think taxes have gone up, the economy has shrunk, and the billions lent to banks as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program won’t be recovered." But these beliefs are demonstrably wrong:

"The Obama administration has cut taxes — largely for the middle class — by $240 billion since taking office Jan. 20, 2009. A program aimed at families earning less than $150,000 that was contained in the stimulus package lowered the tax burden for 95 percent of working Americans by $116 billion, or about $400 per year for individuals and $800 for married couples. Other measures include breaks for college education, moderate-income families and the unemployed and incentives to promote renewable energy...Still, the poll shows the message hasn’t gotten through to Americans, especially middle-income voters. By 52 percent to 19 percent, likely voters say federal income taxes have gone up for the middle class in the past two years.

In an October report to Congress, released as the Troubled Asset Relief Program turned 2 years old, the Treasury said it had recovered most of the $245 billion spent on the Wall Street bank part of the plan and expects to turn a $16 billion profit. But in the poll, 60 percent of respondents say they believe most of the money to the banks is lost, and only 33 percent say most of the funds will be recovered.

Separate from the aid for the Wall Street banks, the Treasury says the payouts for insurers such as New York-based American International Group will end with a small loss on the investment, as will the bailout for automakers. Only assistance to mortgage lenders, projected to reach about $45 billion, won't be repaid, the Treasury says.

The perceptions of voters about the performance of the economy are also at odds with official data.

The recession that began in December 2007 officially ended in June 2009. In the past year, the economy has grown 3 percent, and it is expected to show improvement in the second quarter of this year. A year and a half after stocks hit their post-financial crisis low on March 9, 2009, the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 Index has risen 75 percent, and it's up 15 percent this year.

But voters aren't seeing the better climate: 61 percent of the 1,000 respondents in the poll — which has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points — say the economy is shrinking this year, compared with 33 percent who say it is growing."

Both parties are responsible for this confusion -- the Republicans for their successful obfuscation of the facts, and the Democrats for failing to clearly and forcefully communicate the true record.

The real lesson from this election, then, is that in two years the fortunes of a party can change completely. And changes based on mistaken beliefs may be particularly vulnerable to reversal.