Whether you eat the marshmallow at age 5 isn’t your destiny. Self-control can be taught.
The secret of self-control, he says, is to train the prefrontal cortex to kick in first.
To do this, use specific if-then plans, like “If it’s before noon, I won’t check email” or “If I feel angry, I will count backward from 10.” Done repeatedly, this buys a few seconds to at least consider your options.
Self-control alone doesn’t guarantee success. People also need a “burning goal” that gives them a reason to activate these skills, he says.
That's just a part of self control, and the easier if you ask me. I have no problem doing nothing, no problem to freeze and avoid undesirable reactions.
Getting myself to start something difficult, form a habit, this kind of thing is hard.
The children who succeed turn their backs on the cookie, push it away, pretend it’s something nonedible like a piece of wood, or invent a song. Instead of staring down the cookie, they transform it into something with less of a throbbing pull on them. Adults can use similar methods of distraction and distancing ... When a waiter offers chocolate mousse, imagine that a cockroach has just crawled across it.
It sounds a lot like something we often call "cognitive dissonance" in other contexts. It's easy to imagine that this sort of self-deception is an important foundational part of a lot of belief systems and zealotry of all stripes. The more you try to change a believer's mind with facts, the harder they concentrate on the imaginary cockroach that just crawled across the mousse. It could help explain why people who are very effective at changing the world around them are often also profoundly irrational believers in something, completely resistant to facts; the same basic disciplinary mechanism underlies both zeal and self-discipline.
You're only partly right. It's what happened with sex and quite a number of religions. It's also why many Americans (especially in the military) refer to Muslims as "hajis". In that context it's easier to kill something that doesn't appear human.
I wonder when we will see technologies that help engage the prefrontal cortex while reduxing the influence of the limbic system. Focusatwill.com might be one of them (seems essentially to be about playing 'hardcore' dance music to increase beta waves).
Another thing mentioned is stress. That is a big problem contributing to self-control.
Honestly during times when I am not being constructive it seems that my prefrontal cortex is not even really active.. The types of thinking that I do when I am working just aren't happening.
Actually it seems to me a bit like resting a muscle or letting a car cool down that is overheated. Sometimes I just need to actually start the engine of that part of my brain that handles goals and higher level thinking. Other aspects of health like general energy levels affect it.
Read about factory farming, read about mammalian biology, and have an anti-interest interest in the suffering of sentient beings, and ice cream is impulsively repulsive.
That's not a bad answer (even of non-vegetarians....I'm paleo, but avoid factory farming in my meat. So this would help me if I staill ate ice cream)
But, you've missed the larger question, which was: how do you make triggers for acts similar to eating ice cream, which don't occur on screen or have any location based trigger?
Have we all agreed that higher SAT scores, advanced degrees, less coke, and more money are all things that we want? Am I missing something? Other than coping with stress, I'm not sure I want any of the other qualities.
Those things (maybe with the exception of the coke) are measured because they are easy to measure. It's harder to quantify diverse goals like making sure that you have enough time for your hobbies, staying in touch with your friend or making sure that you give your loved ones what they need. But I'm sure that self control will help with those goals too.
To get those things you need willpower and the research was about measuring willpower.
If you want different things that's your choice but for most good things in life you need willpower. You can't do what the guy from "Into the wild" did without willpower.
I think that is a dishonest refutation. Sure you can construct a situation where trust is the driving mechanic, by lying to them shortly before making promises.
But that doesn't mean it was the deciding factor in the original experiment.
A better way to demonstrate that would be to measure trust and see to what extent it explains delaying gratification.
If you're interested the book "The Truth About Trust" goes into that in great detail and even includes the trust relationship with your future self which is very relevant to the original article. I thoroughly enjoyed it...
Back in college, one of my girlfriends broke up with me...the most heart breaking of all my breakups. It took a mental toll on me for weeks. At one point, my roommate gave me an advice.
Every time I think of her, picture her taking a crap on the toilet...yeah it worked and eventually I stopped thinking of her in a positive manner. I continue to pass on this advice!
Haha, I had a similar experience when I lived in Central America. I came in crying to dinner with my host family because my girlfriend Alejandra had broken up with me. The mom of the family said, no problem, just memorize this poem: "Alejandra era una rosa, y Alejandra era un clavel, pero ahora es un cerrote envuelto en un papel!" (Alejandra was a rose, and Alejandra was a carnation, but now she's a piece of shit wrapped up in toilet paper!). Definitely made me feel better.
While Walter Mischel is enormously accomplished, the ideas described in the article re: self-control appear to be simpler than observation of people struggling with behavioral control reveals.
I'm not familiar with Mischel's work, though he's admirably produced a lot of it, no doubt reading some of it would teach me things worth knowing. I'm not assuming the article is truly representative of the breadth of such a prolific mind. My ideas on the subject reflect what I've seen and learned so far.
To say we are driven by limbic system emotion in one way and goal-driven prefrontal cortex (PFC) opposing it would be minimizing the magnificent complexity of our construction. Thing is, control of our own behavior is limited and the nature of such control hardly understood by neuroscience, leaving us in no position to confidently prescribe methods of self-control in general.
It should not be surprising that kids performing better on a test that measures exactly what is successful in school and the corporate world will be more successful than kids scoring poorly. Academic achievement requires a talent for anti-hedonism, and those not as gifted in this trait will likely not do as well.
OTOH the persistent stubbornness ("grit") required for some kinds of success isn't synonymous with pleasure denial as seems to be implied. Determined persistence has a strong emotional component, individuals with such traits take pleasure in their accomplishments even if others don't understand it at all. They also react strongly to attempts to deflect them from their path.
Emotional salience is intrinsic to strongly bound goals, one must have the desire, the drive in order to sustain the effort to achieve. The emotion is not suppressed but harnessed in service of the mission. To the goal-seeker, foregoing other pleasures "normal" people covet is not a sacrifice, it is simply unimportant and not missed.
In this paradigm, imagine the kid who's more eager to finish building the tower of blocks than interested in the taste of candy.
History shows us many people built like that: Paul Erlich (chemotherapy), Thomas Edison, Harold Edgerton, among so many others.
The saying "knowledge is power" applies, fully knowing what we feel and having the "grit" to feel it, connected to logical problem-solving is a very potent tool.
Maybe that's what the article about Mr. Mischel was really trying to say.
If you are in creative flow, the urge to splurge literally goes away. Whatever it is - coding, writing, sport, painting - doing something obsessively takes attention away from one's boring ego driven needs.
This is talked about near the end of the article. Having self-control is an important component but the other portion is having a "burning goal" as Dr. Mischel puts it. This matches exactly with what you are saying.
The secret of self-control, he says, is to train the prefrontal cortex to kick in first.
To do this, use specific if-then plans, like “If it’s before noon, I won’t check email” or “If I feel angry, I will count backward from 10.” Done repeatedly, this buys a few seconds to at least consider your options.
Self-control alone doesn’t guarantee success. People also need a “burning goal” that gives them a reason to activate these skills, he says.