Will Power and Its Limits

How to strengthen your self-control. Reason in man obscured, or not obeyed, Immediately inordinate desires, And upstart passions, catch the government From reason; and to servitude reduce Man, till then free. —John Milton, Paradise Lost What is will power? Is it the same as delayed gratification? Why is will power “far from bulletproof,” as researchers put it in a recent article for Neuron? Why is willpower “less successful during ‘hot’ emotional states”? And why do people “ration their access to ‘vices’ like cigarettes and junk foods by purchasing them in smaller quantities,” despite the fact that it’s cheaper to buy in bulk?  Everyone, from children to grandparents, can be lured by the pull of immediate gratification, at the expense of large—but delayed—rewards. By means of a process known as temporal discounting, the subjective value of a reward declines as the delay to its receipt increases. Rational Man, Economic Man, shouldn’t behave in a manner clearly contrary to his or her own best interest. However, as Crockett et. al. point out in a recent paper in Neuron “struggles with self-control pervade daily life and characterize an array of dysfunctional behaviors, including addiction, overeating, overspending, and procrastination.” Previous research has focused primarily on “the effortful inhibition of impulses” known as will power. Crockett and coworkers wanted to investigate another means by which people resist temptation...
Source: Addiction Inbox - Category: Addiction Authors: Source Type: blogs