Willpower is NOT Limited and believing it is can hold you back.

[Fassina]

Most people have heard or read that self control or willpower is limited, that it decreases throughout the day as you use it resist temptations and get things done.
This topic is here to tell you that it doesn't, that information is outdated and damaging to you and other people that believe it. Essentially what happened was a publication bias, but we don't need to get into that here.

Basically this effect, technically called Ego Depletion, only tends to happen on people that expect it to happen. i.e If you think willpower is limited, it will be limited for you, even then it's only because you will behave as if it did and not because it's subjective or anything.

If you are interested in knowing how it was basically disproven here's the link: Ego depletion - Wikipedia
It is a bit technical though, the effect is in that scientific void where we are 99% sure it doesn't exist but because science is humble and can't really say anything with 100% certainty it states that it could exist, maybe, in some very specific lab experiment circumstances but even then it would be difficult to replicate. Basically, it's as close to disproven as things can get..

What we know about willpower and self control is, if you're hungry, sleep deprived or sick it decreases. But the idea that It's limited and decreases with use, as if it was a battery or fuel tank, is as close to disproven as it can get.

I recommend the book book Indistractable by Nir Eyal, heard about this there.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[AceVentures]

A while ago I read a great book called the Willpower Instinct. Taught me a lot on the topic. The author in that book refers to what calls the "Muscle Model" in relation to willpower. Suggesting that willpower, although it can be exhausted, can also be trained.

The more frequently we exercise willpower, the easier it becomes. Willpower can become drained, and it ebbs and flows throughout the day. Sometimes we think our willpower is exhausted but this is just our brain trying to trick us into conserving energy-- this explains how long-distance runners are able to push on. The author suggests eating a better diet and engaging in certain activities intended to increase willpower. Simple exercises like eating with the non-dominant hand, vowing to not use a cuss word, sitting without crossing the legs, doing 20 pushups before taking a shower, are examples of how willpower can be trained.

I like the ego depletion concept - but there are criticisms of it. The link you provide actually makes mention of this:

"Although self-control has traditionally been thought of as a limited resource that can be depleted, some researchers disagree with this model.[1] While multiple studies provided support for the ego depletion effect, there is currently no direct measure of ego depletion, and studies mainly observe it by measuring how long people persist at a second task after performing a self-control task (the depleting task). "​

I would simply avoid calling other models "outdated" or "damaging", and instead recommend people interested in the topic to delve deeper and explore other models to explain willpower effects.

 

[Rawseed]

I would simply avoid calling other models "outdated" or "damaging", and instead recommend people interested in the topic to delve deeper and explore other models to explain willpower effects.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, Indistractable. And in it, Nir Eyal pretty much says that the ego depletion model is outdated junk science.

 

[ChrisV]

Nir Eyal pretty much says that the ego depletion model is outdated junk science.

Yea I dunno.. the Ego Depletion studies were done by Roy Baumeister, who's the most respected willpower researcher in the world. I'd really have to see some convincing evidence to disprove Baumeister's studies.

All that the Wiki page says is:

Although self-control has traditionally been thought of as a limited resource that can be depleted, some researchers disagree with this model. While multiple studies provided support for the ego depletion effect, there is currently no direct measure of ego depletion, and studies mainly observe it by measuring how long people persist at a second task after performing a self-control task (the depleting task).​

From the same page:

A 2010 meta analysis of 198 independent tests found the effect significant with a moderate to large average effect size (d = .6). Even after accounting for possible unpublished failed studies, the analysis concluded that it is extremely unlikely that the effect doesn't exist.​

So there's a controversy. It's not settled. So I'm not sure what the claim is... that you have as much willpower as you think you have? Because if that's the claim, that's utter poppycock.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Fassina]

A while ago I read a great book called the Willpower Instinct. Taught me a lot on the topic. The author in that book refers to what calls the "Muscle Model" in relation to willpower. Suggesting that willpower, although it can be exhausted, can also be trained.

The more frequently we exercise willpower, the easier it becomes. Willpower can become drained, and it ebbs and flows throughout the day. Sometimes we think our willpower is exhausted but this is just our brain trying to trick us into conserving energy-- this explains how long-distance runners are able to push on. The author suggests eating a better diet and engaging in certain activities intended to increase willpower. Simple exercises like eating with the non-dominant hand, vowing to not use a cuss word, sitting without crossing the legs, doing 20 pushups before taking a shower, are examples of how willpower can be trained.

I like the ego depletion concept - but there are criticisms of it. The link you provide actually makes mention of this:

"Although self-control has traditionally been thought of as a limited resource that can be depleted, some researchers disagree with this model.[1] While multiple studies provided support for the ego depletion effect, there is currently no direct measure of ego depletion, and studies mainly observe it by measuring how long people persist at a second task after performing a self-control task (the depleting task). "​

I would simply avoid calling other models "outdated" or "damaging", and instead recommend people interested in the topic to delve deeper and explore other models to explain willpower effects.

It is the case though. Read the entire criticism part of the wikipedia if you're interested. That's why I didn't quote pieces of it, because you need the entire picture, even then you'd have to read their sources and interpret them properly.

Books get outdated that's how things are, whether we like it or not is not relevant.

Several meta analyses have disproven the effect, it was due to a publication bias. i.e scientific journals published more of the studies that showed the effect than the ones that didn't.

What we had was incorrect evidence, theories were built around flawed evidence both to explain it and to try to apply it. Alas the evidence was an error which makes all the theories and applications of it baseless and unscientific.

I know it sucks but it's how science works. We update our beliefs based on new evidence.

 

[Rawseed]

It is the case though. Read the entire criticism part of the wikipedia if you're interested. That's why I didn't quote pieces of it, because you need the entire picture, even then you'd have to read their sources and interpret them properly.

Lol.

@Fassina I'm not sure you want to go down this road with @ChrisV.

He's a data expert and I'm pretty sure that he also read Indistractable.

 

[ChrisV]

Willpower exists in the prefrontal cortex, and there are various chemicals that it uses as 'fuel.' Glucose, Dopamine, Serotonin and some more. All of those are finite resources, and different people have different amounts, and break it down faster.

For example judges give out harsher sentences when they're hungry.

Can skipping breakfast lead to murder? - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Everything you need to know about Can skipping breakfast lead to murder?

www.bakadesuyo.com

An alarming 25% of the inmates on Death Row have Prefrontal Cortex damage. And that's not even considering chemical imbalances in the PFC, which I'd estimate to be another 45% on top of the ones with damage.

Lol.

@Fassina I'm not sure you want to go down this road with @ChrisV.

He's a data expert and I'm pretty sure that he also read Indistractable.

.. I don't mind a good debate lol

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Fassina]

Yea I dunno.. the Ego Depletion studies were done by Roy Baumeister, who's the most respected willpower researcher in the world. I'd really have to see some convincing evidence to disprove Baumeister's studies.

All that the Wiki page says is:

Although self-control has traditionally been thought of as a limited resource that can be depleted, some researchers disagree with this model. While multiple studies provided support for the ego depletion effect, there is currently no direct measure of ego depletion, and studies mainly observe it by measuring how long people persist at a second task after performing a self-control task (the depleting task).​

From the same page:

A 2010 meta analysis of 198 independent tests found the effect significant with a moderate to large average effect size (d = .6). Even after accounting for possible unpublished failed studies, the analysis concluded that it is extremely unlikely that the effect doesn't exist.​

So there's a controversy. It's not settled. So I'm not sure what the claim is... that you have as much willpower as you think you have? Because if that's the claim, that's utter poppycock.

Cherry picking parts of the page don't really mean much.

Several meta analyses showed it was a publication bias. Scientific consensus is that it was a publication bias. There's literally no other evidence science can give.

Baumeister's studies couldn't be replicated. You can check the sources on the wikipedia page if you want or do some more research.

I'm not really going to bother arguing in favor of scientific consensus. No there's no controversy, 3 meta analyses, 2 found a publication bias, 1 didn't but was heavily criticized and when properly weighted also showed it was publication bias. I'm sorry but there's really very little doubt here.

 

[ChrisV]

Cherry picking parts of the page don't really mean much.

Yea but just posting the Criticism section is cherry-picking in and of itself. A good 80% of the Article, aside from that section was in support of the idea. Wikipedia always has a criticism section.

 

[Fassina]

Willpower exists in the prefrontal cortex, and there are various chemicals that it uses as 'fuel.' Glucose, Dopamine, Serotonin and some more. All of those are finite resources, and different people have different amounts, and break it down faster.

For example judges give out harsher sentences when they're hungry.

Can skipping breakfast lead to murder? - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Everything you need to know about Can skipping breakfast lead to murder?

www.bakadesuyo.com

An alarming 25% of the inmates on Death Row have Prefrontal Cortex damage. And that's not even considering chemical imbalances in the PFC, which I'd estimate to be another 45% on top of the ones with damage.




.. I don't mind a good debate lol

That is not what I'm arguing Chris. We've done this before..

I'm not saying willpower doesn't exist, I'm saying it doesn't work like a battery or fuel tank, i.e ego depletion..

Look at what I said in the initial comment:

What we know about willpower and self control is, if you're hungry, sleep deprived or sick it decreases. But the idea that It's limited and decreases with use, as if it was a battery or fuel tank, is as close to disproven as it can get.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[ChrisV]

This is a graph of parole decisions based on how long it's been since a judge ate lunch:

Extraneous factors in judicial decisions

Are judicial rulings based solely on laws and facts? Legal formalism holds that judges apply legal reasons to the facts of a case in a rational, mechanical, and deliberative manner. In contrast, legal realists argue that the rational application of legal reasons does not sufficiently explain the...

www.pnas.org

 

[Fassina]

Yea but just posting the Criticism section is cherry-picking in and of itself. A good 80% of the Article, aside from that section was in support of the idea. Wikipedia always has a criticism section.

That's the part that matters for disproven theories. It's how wikipedia treats them, look at these examples..

Phlogiston theory - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Vitalism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Luminiferous aether - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Superseded theories in science - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Fassina]

This is a graph of parole decisions based on how long it's been since a judge ate lunch:

View attachment 27746

Extraneous factors in judicial decisions

Are judicial rulings based solely on laws and facts? Legal formalism holds that judges apply legal reasons to the facts of a case in a rational, mechanical, and deliberative manner. In contrast, legal realists argue that the rational application of legal reasons does not sufficiently explain the...

www.pnas.org

Again, that's not what I'm arguing against.. Read my last comment..

That is not what I'm arguing Chris. We've done this before..

I'm not saying willpower doesn't exist, I'm saying it doesn't work like a battery or fuel tank, i.e ego depletion..

Look at what I said in the initial comment:

What we know about willpower and self control is, if you're hungry, sleep deprived or sick it decreases. But the idea that It's limited and decreases with use, as if it was a battery or fuel tank, is as close to disproven as it can get.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[ChrisV]

That is not what I'm arguing Chris. We've done this before..

I'm not saying willpower doesn't exist, I'm saying it doesn't work like a battery or fuel tank, i.e ego depletion..

Look at what I said in the initial comment:

What we know about willpower and self control is, if you're hungry, sleep deprived or sick it decreases. But the idea that It's limited and decreases with use, as if it was a battery or fuel tank, is as close to disproven as it can get.

It's possible... but also sometimes the answers to these debates lie somewhere in the middle. I'm not taking a position either way.. I'm just saying it doesn't appear to be a settled issue.

But there's also a lot of research with this in regard to executive function, which is similar to slef-control.

Executive function depletion in children and its impact on theory of mind - PubMed

The current studies provide an experimental, rather than correlational, method for testing hypotheses about the role of executive function (EF) in conceptual development. Previous research has established that adults' tendency to deploy EF can be temporarily diminished by use. Exercising...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

For example ADHD children... it's recommended that while doing homework they do 20 minutes, take a 10 minute break, eat/drink something with a lot of glucose then go back to their homework.

Our blood sugar dips as we've gotten further from eating, and our brains use a LOT of glucose. It could be that glucose itself isresponsible for ego depletion.

Sugar and the Brain

Glucose, a form of sugar, is the primary source of energy for every cell in the body. Because the brain is so rich in nerve cells, or neurons, it is the most energy-demanding organ, using one-half of all the sugar energy in the body.

neuro.hms.harvard.edu

 

[ChrisV]

That's the part that matters for disproven theories. It's how wikipedia treats them, look at these examples..

Phlogiston theory - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Vitalism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Luminiferous aether - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Superseded theories in science - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Yea but look at the difference

​

From the lede on Vitalism:

​

Biologists now consider vitalism in this sense to have been refuted by empirical evidence, and hence regard it as a superseded scientific theory.​

From the lede on Phlogiston Theory

​

The phlogiston theory is a superseded scientific theory that postulated that a fire-like element called phlogiston is contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion.​

From the lede on Ego Depletion:

There have both been studies to support and to question the validity of ego-depletion as a theory.​

All I'm saying is that it's not a settled matter. The meta-analyses are conflicting. A more accurate claim is that the theory is up in the air, rather than it's been totally debunked.

 

[Fassina]

It's possible... but also sometimes the answers to these debates lie somewhere in the middle. I'm not taking a position either way.. I'm just saying it doesn't appear to be a settled issue.

But there's also a lot of research with this in regard to executive function, which is similar to slef-control.

Executive function depletion in children and its impact on theory of mind - PubMed

The current studies provide an experimental, rather than correlational, method for testing hypotheses about the role of executive function (EF) in conceptual development. Previous research has established that adults' tendency to deploy EF can be temporarily diminished by use. Exercising...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

For example ADHD children... it's recommended that while doing homework they do 20 minutes, take a 10 minute break, eat/drink something with a lot of glucose then go back to their homework.

Our blood sugar dips as we've gotten further from eating, and our brains use a LOT of glucose. It could be that glucose itself isresponsible for ego depletion.

Sugar and the Brain

Glucose, a form of sugar, is the primary source of energy for every cell in the body. Because the brain is so rich in nerve cells, or neurons, it is the most energy-demanding organ, using one-half of all the sugar energy in the body.

neuro.hms.harvard.edu

It's pretty much debunked, specially if you look at the sources and for the criticism. You may find some out of date theories based on it, or scientists that aren't following the scientific journals on this subject as closely that still believe it, but other than that it's basically done.

As I said, science is humble, it won't come out and say "this is wrong I'm 100% sure".

It will say something like:

"Ulrich Schimmack conducted a meta-analysis of published studies and found that most studies could produce significant results only with the help of random sampling error. Based on the low power of studies, one would expect a large number of non-significant results, but these results are missing from published articles. This finding confirms Carter and McCullough's meta-analysis that showed publication bias with a different statistical method. Schimmack's replicability report also identified a small set of studies with adequate power that provided evidence for ego-depletion. These studies are the most promising studies for a replication project to examine whether ego-depletion effects can be replicated consistently across several independent laboratories. "

i.e There was a publication bias, most of the studies were flawed, a few showed barely significant evidence, but they can't be trusted until replicated properly by several labs..

Ultimately what you believe is up to you, I'm going to be humble and go with the scientific consensus, but I could be wrong. Cognitive dissonance - Wikipedia sucks though I felt it too when I read about this on Indistractable.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Rawseed]

After reading Indistractable, I no longer believe in Ego Depletion.

I've chosen to not believe because it's more beneficial to me to not believe in it.

Now, instead of looking at my willpower as a muscle. I look at it like a car.

All I have to do is keep my car fueled, keep up the maintenance, keep people from stealing it, and don't get into accidents.

So, if I fuel my brain, get enough sleep, get a little exercise, and avoid distractions, I'll have more than enough willpower to accomplish my goals.

The Ego Depletion thing is also a reason I think Keto is so beneficial. If you become Keto-adapted, you won't get the energy drops that carb-burners get.

 

[ChrisV]

2 found a publication bias

yea but a publication bias doesn't disprove the theory.. it just proves there was a publication bias

all i'm saying is that the consensus appears to be up in the air and more research is needed

I mean the bottom line goes back to dopamine.. if you maintain good dopamine levels, you have basically unlimited willpower.

also eat complex carbs and fruits so blood sugar doesn't dip

 

[Fassina]

yea but a publication bias doesn't disprove the theory.. it just proves there was a publication bias

all i'm saying is that the consensus appears to be up in the air and more research is needed

I mean the bottom line goes back to dopamine.. if you maintain good dopamine levels, you have basically unlimited willpower.

also eat complex carbs and fruits so blood sugar doesn't dip

Publication bias means the effect didn't exist.. It means out of all random averaged out results only ones that supported this view were published. It means all the evidence is null.

And that all the theories based on said evidence are now baseless and unfounded. i.e unscientific, hearsay, opinion.

Science doesn't tend to disprove theories, it get's data and evidence. Theories are created and based on said evidence, if there's no evidence to back up a theory it's meaningless, worth as much as an opinion.

It's like me saying I have a dragon in my garage, but only I can see it, touch it, smell it, or detect any evidence of it at all. You technically can't prove my dragon in the garage theory wrong. My theory can't be disproven, but that doesn't mean it's true, or has value.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Fassina]

After reading Indistractable, I no longer believe in Ego Depletion.

I've chosen to not believe because it's more beneficial to me to not believe in it.

Now, instead of looking at my willpower as a muscle. I look at it like a car.

All I have to do is keep my car fueled, keep up the maintenance, keep people from stealing it, and don't get into accidents.

So, if I fuel my brain, get enough sleep, get a little exercise, and avoid distractions, I'll have more than enough willpower to accomplish my goals.

The Ego Depletion thing is also a reason I think Keto is so beneficial. If you become Keto-adapted, you won't get the energy drops that carb-burners get.

Exactly, I couldn't have said it better.

 

[AceVentures]

I hear what you're saying.

Thanks for the informative and interesting debate fellas! Would love to adopt this perspective, just biased and uneducated on the topic at the moment. I ought to read this book as well before submitting any more of my opinions.