In previous posts I have described Roy Baumeister's glucose theory of self-control, and how glucose depletion might explain the "Mardi Gras effect" in which a little bit of self-indulgence now might make it easier to resist temptation later on. But Baumeister also offer some advice on how to develop willpower so that we become less vulnerable to self-regulatory failures. Essentially, Baumeister views willpower as just one more skill that people can develop through intentional practice. People who have worked to build the skill may become less glucose-depleted in a situation that would challenge their peers, and therefore may be able to resist temptation longer and with reduced consequences for their mental state.
Baumeister talks about the example of David Blaine, a British performance artist who specializes in feats of endurance. For example, Blaine once stood on an 80-foot pillar in New York's Central Park for 35 hours without sleep. On another occasion, Blaine spent 44 days without food, in the dead of winter, suspended in a glass box over the Thames River. In a live performance on Oprah, Blaine held his breath underwater for 17 minutes, an experience he described as "a whole other level of pain." When Baumeister asked Blaine for the secret to his superhuman ability to endure suffering, though, the answer turned out not to be very secret at all: practice. Blaine would work his way up to these feats, for instance by regularly working in the pool to hold his breath for longer and longer periods of time, or spending increasing amounts of time outdoors in the winter without a coat. Blaine also talked about monitoring his performance, setting goals, and tracking streaks -- strategies that help in any kind of behavior change effort.
It turns out that any kind of self-control activity can help to build one's level of willpower, perhaps by creating a habit of enduring discomfort. One of Baumeister's graduate students led a study that found giving students an exercise to improve their posture (regular practice in sitting up straight) actually improved their ability to follow a healthy diet. Not only did these students have better endurance for difficult tasks, their willpower also bounced back quicker after a "try-not-to-think-of-a-white-bear" exercise that was designed to induce glucose depletion and lack of motivation. In another study, researchers had students focus on a demanding mental task while working hard to ignore an entertaining comedy video, and this seemingly trivial task improved their academic performance on their end-of-the-semester exams. Many different types of intentional practice seem to be able to strengthen willpower, as long as they require deliberate effort to succeed.
There are mental tricks we can all learn to build our endurance for situations that challenge our willpower. That was the original theme of Mischel's marshmallow test experiments, even though they are often interpreted differently today. Learning self-regulatory skills is also a theme of training videos produced since 2013 by Sesame Street, which feature that ultimate self-control failure, Cookie Monster ("nom-nom-nom"). In these segments, Cookie Monster deliberately resists eating cookies by using classic distraction techniques (look away, think about something else), by focusing on underlying goals and values (think about how you want to save one of those cookies for a friend), or by using relaxation techniques (deep breathing). All of these are excellent strategies to have in our back pocket when temptations arise; many of them rely on attention, which is one of the few behaviors (if you can call paying attention a behavior) that are actually under conscious control. Like other behaviors, Cookie Monster's self-regulatory strategies can be trained, so that the Intuitive Mind comes to produce them without thinking when it is confronted with a new challenge. Over time, a trained behavior like exercising willpower in response to temptation can come to seem like an innate characteristic of an individual -- what Aristotle would have called a virtue.
What Baumeister adds to the Cookie-Monster bag of tricks is the idea that we should push ourselves to use these techniques even when we aren't feeling tempted. We should create small challenges for ourselves, and then use our self-regulatory skills to meet those challenges. Like David Blaine, we could practice resisting temptation in harder and harder situations, for longer and longer periods of time. This type of practice, Baumeister says, will eventually habituate us to the feeling of glucose depletion that comes with deliberate self-control. That feeling will take longer to come on, it will bother us less, and we will return to our baseline state sooner once the temptation is gone. In this way, Baumeister argues, we can build our "willpower muscle" and increase our resistance to the various pressures that lead to unhealthy choices in our lives.
Comments
Post a Comment