Self Control
Josh Blumenthal emails to point out this article from a dozen years ago at the Reason Foundation. It explains the sorts of things we humans need to behave ourselves. Apparently, we know deep down that we often can’t trust ourselves, and we know it well enough that we pay others to keep us honest. The article is Commit Yourself: Self-control in the age of abundance, by Daniel Akst, who says:
Inhibition often begins with the sense that somebody is watching; experiments have demonstrated that simply installing a mirror makes people behave more honestly when, for example, they pick up a newspaper and are supposed to leave their money on the honor system. Mirrors also seem to diminish stereotyping, promote hard work, and discourage cheating. In one study of children, the mere presence of a mirror reduced the stealing of Halloween candy by more than 70 percent. You can think of other people as human mirrors. “Our friends and relatives,” the psychologist Howard Rachlin writes, “are essential mirrors of the patterns of our behavior over long periods-mirrors of our souls. They are the magic ‘mirrors on the wall’ who can tell us whether this drink, this cigarette, this ice cream sundae, this line of cocaine, is more likely to be part of a new future or an old past. We dispense with these individuals at a terrible risk to our self-control.”
There has been a lot of social psychology research reported in recent years. Cass Sunstein was one who had helped popularize the idea of setting up public policies in ways to nudged individuals toward making preferred choices. For instance, companies would pre-select the choice for new employees to be enrolled in retirement savings plans; they would have to opt out rather than opting in.
There were also popular books about willpower, including one that I read co-authored by researcher Roy Baumeister (Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, 2012). The research has shed a lot of light on the ways we influence each other, and the ways we exert self control. In fact, people who are particularly good at self control put a lot of effort into arranging things to eliminate temptation. I don’t think I’m particularly strong-willed, but I have learned it is helpful not to have sweets anywhere in my home if I’m trying to stop eating them. Setting things up so you don’t have to use willpower at all is one of the easiest means of gaining self control.
Among the problems we face as a society, we keep frequently hear that there’s an epidemic of loneliness. Assuming all the research on willpower and self control is largely accurate, some of our apparent societal displeasure could derive from that loneliness, inducing a certain loss of self control. People isolated from each other are repeatedly making bad choices without peers helping them do the right thing, or at least helping them make better choices. Any lone individual can get lost in the constant sea of media infotainment, social media performances, and emotion-tapping attention-seeking behavior from every direction. But that won’t help us behave ourselves, even when we know what isn’t acceptable behavior.
Excellent topic today!
I'm "up north" today. I thought there would be more snow on the ground but there are just in piles in parking lots and along driveways. I also thought the lake would be more frozen but the ice is almost out. Now to go pick up the thousands of sticks in my yard. The garden shed is being demolished tomorrow, it's falling apart so I can't wait for it to be gone. And there was a loon in the bay last night...yippee!