If only we had more willpower and self control to see things through. We would eat the right foods, exercise regularly, say no to alcohol, smoking and – god forbid – to drugs. Procrastination would never happen, and we would save money rather than spending it. We would be achieving all sorts of virtuous goals in life. We would be admirable. Right? Time to review an old perspective?
When we ‘confess’ to someone about that cream pie we had the other day or that extra glass of wine, or how we had the audacity to sleep in on a weekday, it goes to show how deep-rooted our beliefs about willpower really are. We kind of laugh it off, call it a guilty pleasure, and we feel guilty. Willpower has status and without it we are weak.
In the 1970 there was something called the Marshmallow Experiment. In it, children’s level of self-constraint was tested when given a treat. It had managed to draw links between willpower and success in life, and they say that, although it has since been questioned since, it had helped put on the map the view of willpower as a virtue.
Or, as experts such as Liad Uziel put it: “Increasing self-control among children and adults has been advocated as a remedy to many of society’s illnesses.” Uziel is from the psychology department of Bar Ilan University in Israel and he has found that self-control as a positive trait is so common, it has “taken root in the general public.” He has even called self control a “central human capacity associated with a wide range of personal and societal advantages.”
“Increasing self-control among children and adults has been advocated as a remedy to many of society’s illnesses.”
Not the key to the good life after all
But, even though we consider willpower a beneficial trait in society, something that helps us achieve our personal goals in life, not everyone is so positive. Uziel for example himself has also written that “wanting to have more self-control contributes to additional stress,” and that in the short run, it can “demotivate us.” He has even said it can “reduce our belief that we can actually demonstrate good self-control.” It can work against us.
A research paper called ‘What’s So Great About Self-Control?’ also presents a different perspective on things. In it, the researchers describe how when it comes to willpower, “actively resisting or controlling temptations” did NOT play a role in people achieving the goals they had set themselves.
There are media who devote editorial space to saying that psychologists are “increasingly thinking that effortful restraint is not the key to a good life after all.” They say that willpower might be overrated. Plus, that it may not provide a long-term solution for those seeking to find success in certain areas of life. Others yet simply call it a lie: A notion that is sold to us, but that is keeping us stuck.
Tripping ourselves up?
The fact that willpower will not necessarily be the solution to our problems, is also something that many of us experience ourselves in our daily lives. The more we try to control something (overeating, unhealthy food, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, less time off for greater work achievements) the more likely we will end up doing the opposite. The more it will work against us. Or, as some would say: The more we resist, the more it persists.
And then, to top it all off, the more likely we will consider ourselves weak and a failure when that happens. And so it keeps going round. Some experts even call willpower in relation to losing weight a “diet myth that is fuelling the diet industry.”
“Wanting to have more self-control can contribute to additional stress”
Dark sides
Some experts as Uziel, have found that in some circumstances there can be a selfish side to having self control. Or, that in some other circumstances, it can unleash an even darker side in us. We saw the latter in the 1960s Stanley Milgram Shock Experiment. In the test, an authority asked subjects to (perceivably) inflict pain on another person. In their dutifulness to follow that instruction, these subjects needed willpower. Turns out, they were quite willing to go far!
Later, early 2000, a fake French television game show called La Zone Xtrême demonstrated similar links between obedience and willpower. But it was the Milgram experiment in particular that has provided one of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology. In fact, the media have reflected since how those people that had the highest levels of self control were more willing to hurt another.
Muddling through
Some experts point out that it doesn’t help that the world we live in today just makes things much more difficult. That there is so much to tempt us, with all that instant gratification. Take the author of Willpower Doesn’t Work. He argues that our world is too full of temptation to “be overcome by white knuckling.” That when we merely try to survive and muddle our way through with willpower, we are doomed to fail. Instead, we should “proactively shape our environment” and alter our surroundings to support our goals.
Time for change?
Others say the time has come to realise that there’s more to it. That it helps to put things in perspective. For instance, some people just have more willpower in certain aspects of their life than others. They might actually enjoy studying or exercising. Or they are good at setting themselves up for success. Maybe by not going food shopping when they are hungry or to have less temptations in the house. Or perhaps they know that willpower doesn’t always work for them and they are OK with it.
Other people might say that our willpower or lack thereof has to do with other, often not directly unconscious beliefs we have about ourselves and the world. Beliefs formed when we were young and will persist until we become aware of them. For example, if our mother was an overeater, we may have followed suit without even knowing it.
Meanwhile, more and more people are discovering their own systems that work instead of willpower. Ways that work better than relying on something that we accept as truth, simply because we keep saying it over and over again. They know that sometimes willpower works and sometimes it doesn’t. And that there is no point in judging our own worth against it.
Main image Pexels, Valeriya, Kobzar
“Our world is way too full of fast temptation to be overcome by white knuckling.”
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