This explains a lot! Now I don't have to feel bad for having 3 mojitos tonight and texting several of my exes...
Losing It: Why Self-Control Is Not Natural
LiveScience.com
Meredith F. Small
LiveScience's Human Nature Columnist
LiveScience.com meredith F. Small
livescience's Human Nature Columnist
livescience.com – Fri Apr 10, 9:45 am ET
After dinner last night, I lost my usual self-control and ate half a box of cookies. No wonder. My self-control had been under pressure all day. I righteously refused a muffin at breakfast, didn't scream at my kid to get out the door although we were late, made a conscious decision not to run over a pedestrian crossing against the light, kept my fist from pounding on the table during a faculty meeting, and resisted the urge to throw an annoying student out of my office.
But by 7 p.m., my self-control mechanism was worn out, and down those cookies went.
The empty box would have been no surprise to Yale University psychologist Joshua Ackerman and colleagues who have discovered that self-control not only wears us down, even thinking about other people's self-control is too much to handle.
In the latest issue of the journal Psychological Science, the researchers taunted subjects with the story of a waiter who was surrounded by gourmet food but not allowed a taste. Some of the subjects were encouraged to go beyond polite listening and actually imagine this poor waiter, to have real empathy with his situation. And then everybody was shown pictures of expensive stuff. Those who had put themselves in the shoes of the waiter, had suffered all that self-control as he had, wanted that stuff, no matter the price.
In other words, just the thought of someone, anyone, depriving himself eventually makes greedy beasts of all of us.
Apparently, it's human nature to be out of control. Imagine our early ancestors roaming the savannah looking for food. They might bring down a gazelle, but that meat was probably not enough for some of the group. As soon as they wiped their mouths, those lacking self-control were probably off again on the hunt because they could not deny themselves anything.
Such an attitude was probably adaptive. It kept the group on the take, always looking, always wanting, always getting, and those who wanted more surely lived longer and passed on more genes that those who sat around the first gazelle and said, "We'll, I'm satisfied," not imagining they would be hungry again soon.
The need for self-control must have come much later, and in other spheres than food. Group living, for example, takes great self-control; it takes a lot to live with people day after day and not kill them, and so those more reflective humans who could keep their anger in check probably did well once humans settled into communities.
But that kind of self-control has become so painful in the modern world because there is so much to want, so much to tempt our restraint. We live in busy, complex communities surrounded by desirable goods and fun ideas, and so all day, every day, we hold back. And we see that most everyone else is holding back too. We are hit hard by both our own weary self-control as well as the exhausting empathy we apparently have for everyone else's self-control.
It really is too much. It makes perfect sense that we sometimes lose it and eat half, or even a whole, box of cookies in one sitting.
*Meredith F. Small is an anthropologist at Cornell University. She is also the author of "Our Babies, Ourselves; How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent" (link) and "The Culture of Our Discontent; Beyond the Medical Model of Mental Illness" (link). Her Human Nature column appears each Friday on LiveScience.
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3 comments:
Violet,
Our ability to exercise self-control depends greatly on habits and desires. If we strongly desire something, it naturally requires much more fortitude to resist. Simply falling for someone because they attract us or because they are forbidden in some way is an excellent example of this.
My point here is that desire exerts psychic pressure on us and feeds our wants. As we repress our wants, it becomes natural to seek substitutes that can invigorate (caffeine), induce relaxation (alcohol), makes us feel chipper (eat more food for seratonin), or just deaden our senses (too much of something, most commonly the same TV show). Still, this doesn't explain why we lack self-control. What discipline is there in foregoing the company of Russell Crowe if you replace him with Tom Cruise? Both beaus may be leading, but they will lead you astray.
Really the difference must be in habits. We habituate ourselves to many behaviors and these habits govern both our conscious and our unconscious decisions. If you drink something because the eve has slackened, such as a cup of coffee, then on like occasions you will probably resort to that cup of joe even if it is terribly late. By the same token, the "irrational" urges that seize us are likewise a form of habit. Some people theorize that we "fall in love" with the same person repeatedly because our unconscious has already written the script for us. We can't help ourselves because we are caught up in our own story.
Breaking habits is a hard thing to do. In the case of compellingly bad habits, such as substance abuse and binge eating, we can find inspiration in survivor stories and redemption narratives that inspire us to alter our lives. However, when we wrestle with the small things, from killer shoes to a person, it becomes more difficult because we are wrestling with our own history without the powerful support of a strong social narrative ordering us to cease and desist in our action.
We could decide. We could choose not to yield to undesirable urges and choose good things, like Ben Franklin pledged in his youth. Franklin recorded all his sins in a journal for several days and then wisely decided to stop keeping track; it was just too much work. If you live for absolute perfection, then you are sure to disappoint yourself and feel discouraged. Nonetheless, we can decide. It's just the decision is not so much about perfection as about transformation. We work at replacing our worse habits with new ones, forging new synaptic connections in our brain with each choice. And ultimately we hope that that the undesirable habits that plague us come to constitute a more desirable set of behaviors. If you are unproductive, you learn to clean rather than watch TV. If bored, some physical activity replaces unmotivated indifference. If you associate with the wrong people, then you seek a different, but not a boring crowd.
We can't completely transform ourselves like some Tibetan monks who devote their entire lives to compassion, but we can alter our lives to change the stories that have become natural for us. Then the trick is to be happy with what you have and with the possibility before you rather than linger on what has been lost or what cannot be attained. So you might despair in a boring evening, but look back and consider what you avoided. The best things in life are hard work, even if the work is just patience and karma.
Wow, thank you for that immensely insightful comment. I was being a bit flippant with this blog but I really appreciate your sincere response. I am certainly trying to break free of old (and harmful) habit patterns. I'd like to be more compassionate and patient. Thanks again!
You are welcome. It's perfectly natural to adopt different tones in giving your feelings voice. Any writer knows that words can run away in unanticipated places. Sometimes we write more expressively on the blank screen because it won't respond to us or because it assumes the identity of an old confidante. I often resort to haiku to express powerful emotions, but, most days of the week, I wouldn't describe a tree in poetic form. So you know something is behind you when its not worth a diary entry or a poem.
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