How Willpower Works

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Yeah.

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Hey, and welcome to the pod cast.  I’m Josh Clark and sitting across from me putting on his Love Your Mama lip balm – what flavor is that?

That is almond actually.  It’s yummy.  Look at that, a plug right out of the gate.

This is Charles W. “Chuck” Bryant.

Hello.

Those are nice lips you got there, man.  Wow.

They’re now moistified.

Like moist bologna.

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Five years in the making.

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Boy, you’re front-loading this one.

Yeah.  All right.  All that’s out of the way, right?

Yes.

So Chuck, you doing good?  You feeling well?

I’m not feeling great, but you know.

Yeah.  You ready to be done?

No.  I’m ready to talk about willpower though because it is a topic that I struggle with, as do most people I think.

So you struggle with the topic or you struggle with willpower?

I think everybody struggles with willpower.

Oh, yeah.  Well as a matter of fact I think you’re absolutely right.  There is a very famous guy named Plato, famous Greek philosopher.

Play-Doh.

Plato – oh, Plato.

Yes.  Not Play-Doh.

Right.  And Plato decided – well suggested that the entire human experience, the sum of human existence could be basically nailed down with just this.  You have a higher self and a lower self.

Yeah.

And your purpose for living is to overcome the usually more powerful urges of the lower self in order to fulfill the goals of the higher self.

I am down with that 100%.

It makes utter and complete sense, you know.

I don’t know about the reason for living, but the struggle – man’s struggle, or at least –

Okay.  Yeah.

Yeah.

Like that’s – if you were born, you’re going to face that.

Yeah.

But you’re going to face it varying degrees because as we found, willpower, which is what you use to get over your lower urges and pursue your higher goals, it comes in differing amounts for differing people – different people.

Yeah.  And Robert Lamb wrote the original article, From House to Forks –

Yeah.

– from Stuff to Blow Your Mind.  And he points out that we’re at odds with our own nature as we have evolved here on the planet because, you know we craved sugary sweet things because sugar gave us lots of energy back in the day.  And back in the day they didn’t have Little Debbie cakes within hands reach at all times.

Right.  Yeah.

So we’re sort of at odds with ourselves.  And he points out sexually as well, we evolved to spread the seed and procreate as much as possible to ensure the survival of the species.

Right.

And nowadays you can’t really do that stuff, or if you do you’re a philanderer or a jerk or you’re spreading disease, and –

Right.  You’re a public health nuisance.

Yeah.  So we’re at odds with ourselves with our very existence.

Yeah.  And not only internally, but you make the point as a society as well.  I mean society and evolution tussle.  So you can make the case that society represents our higher self and, you know our basic instincts that we’ve evolved to –

Yeah.

– our lower selves.

Yeah.

So that’s what’s going on.  And it’s willpower – willpower that will get us over the bumps that come along in life inevitably.

Yeah.  And I think most people relate willpower to things like eating or going to the gym or indulging in sexual proclivities and things like that, but I think it’s broader than that in general.  I think it’s the will to – like Plato said, to strive to I guess do the right thing –

Yeah.

– by yourself, by others, by society at large.

Right.  And I guess also how often you come up against that – how often you have to exercise willpower because you just hit it on the head.  Willpower is the act of making a decision.

Yeah.

You’re deciding to do something or not to do something.  How often you do that does depend on how you define the world around you.

Yeah.

Like are these things – you know are you surrounded by temptations that you have to ward off all the time and you’re paying attention to it and they’re always closing in?  If you’re like that, then you’re going to exercise your willpower a lot.  If you don’t see the world as a temptation, you give in to them all the time you’re not going to.  If you look at the world as something that you can handle, you’re probably not going to have to exercise your willpower too much then either.

Yeah.

But it’s all – they’re all – those are three different ways of living and they all are I guess described by willpower and how you use it.

Yeah.  It’s a good point.  Robert makes a point that is backed up somewhat by science – or actually completely by science.

Yeah.

And he puts it in terms of a video game, which makes sense.  That if you were a video game and you have a willpower meter, that that willpower meter is replenished and depleted on a daily – probably hourly basis.  And the more you use your willpower and say you know what I’m not gonna have that Little Debbie cake, your little willpower meter goes down and it depletes itself.  So you’re not gonna have as much willpower maybe for the next decision.

Right.

It’s really interesting.

Yeah.  That’s pretty new – our understanding of willpower like that is very new.  The first guy to really kind of put it out like that was Freud and he basically said we have this thing called willpower, we have an ego.

Yeah.

That’s what the Freudians associate with willpower is the ego.

Sure.

And your ego is this finite thing, it has a finite energy reserve.  It uses energy –

Yeah.

– and therefore it can be sapped.  And then Freud fell out of fashion and everybody just kind of stopped looking at willpower that way.

Yeah.

And it wasn’t until 1996 when a Florida State University psychologist named Roy Baumeister.

The Baumer.

He figured out through this test using chocolate and radishes I believe –

Yeah.

– that if you are staving off temptation using willpower you actually do terribly on like another test of willpower.

Yeah.  They used persistence tests.  Basically puzzles that you have to just keep at and keep at.  It’s not something you could complete immediately.  And offered some people chocolate chip cookies and other chocolate treats of their liking and offered other people radishes instead, which is not a fair fight.

No.  I mean he really stacked the deck.

Like maybe a radish – a shaved radish in a salad or something –

Right.

– but if all you’re looking at is a plate of radish, then – you know, I would take the cookie.  So what he found out though is the people who ate the radishes had more trouble completing the test I guess because – I guess the idea is they’re using up all their willpower to not eat the cookie, so they don’t have time for the test –

Yeah.

– the persistence.

And there was also another kind of follow up study a few years after that by the University of Iowa professor with the greatest name of all of the faculty there, Baba Shiv.

Yeah.

And Dr. Shiv had basically tested willpower by saying this group’s going to remember a two-digit number –

Yeah.

– and this group’s gonna remember a seven-digit number, and then we’re gonna test their willpower by tempting them with chocolate cake.

Right.

And Dr. Shiv found that the people who were using their working memory, their cognitive capacity to remember the seven-digit number had a harder time resisting.  So it basically proves that we use our working memory to resist temptation.  And I guess it’s something like reminding yourself –

Yeah.

– you know at the forefront of your mind not to do something, you know until the temptation passes.  Who knows.

Yeah.  Maybe I had that cookie yesterday, so, man, I can’t eat it today.

Or we use our working memory to remind ourselves of our long-term goals in the face of a short-term reward.

Well that’s one of the big keys I think.

Yeah.

And that’s something Robert hits on, which is I want that cookie now and I know bikini season’s coming up and you’ve seen me in a bikini, Josh, it’s not pretty.

I will never get that out of my memory – working memory or otherwise.

Yellow polka-dot bikini.  But that’s sort of what we’re at odds with is the short-term – I think humans as a group tend to enjoy the short-term pleasures, and if you truly learn to conquer that in lieu of long-term gain, that’s when you’re like – you’re winning as Charlie Sheen would say.

Right.  Exactly.

You know?

Although Charlie Sheen’s not exactly one who’s known to exercise the willpower.

No.

You know?  That was a really odd person to tap for that, but –

Well I think that’s the opposite.  He thought winning was the short-term gain.

Yeah.  I guess.

Yeah.  And that is so dated.

Yeah, it really is.

People like when did you guys record this.

But it’s been – I think today might be the very day where you could get away with it.

Okay.

So it was perfect.

All right.  Good.

So from all these tests, like when Baumeister put his 1996 study, Ego Depletion, colon, Is the Active Self a Limited Resource? –

Yeah.

– it just basically kicked off this slew of follow up studies from Dr. Shiv and others.  And one of the things that they found was that you can kind of watch people exercise willpower on the old Wonder machine.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah.  Using MRIs, they put people in and had them think about I guess a sweet or a health food –

Oh, right.

– and decide between them.

Is it Cal Tech?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they found that the ventral medial prefrontal cortex lights up when you’re making that decision – when you’re considering it, which made sense.  I think they kind of expected that.

Yeah.

But they were also surprised to find that the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, which is located a little further back –

Sure.

– that lit up as well.  And they think that that has to do with –

Well that lit up for the people who made the good decision only.

Thank you.

Right.

And they think that that’s maybe part of your – that’s part of the working memory where you’re like no, I can’t eat that because this –

Yeah.

– that’s tapping into that higher self-goal pursuit.  That’s the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex.

Right.  You did a nice job there by the way.

Thanks.

So the Baumer also went on to say that he compares the willpower, your own willpower to a muscle or something like a muscle.  And you can deplete it like he said, if you overwork your muscles you’re just gonna deplete your muscles and be worn out at the end of the day.  Or you can exercise that muscle in a healthy way and make it stronger in the long term.

Right.  Do you do this?  After reading this I started to realize that I actually kind of exercise willpower all the time.

Well, you – I think you especially do.

So like for example, I have a mail key that I use to go get the mail, right?

Yeah.  Gotcha.

And we keep it in our car.  And I had to go to the car and get the mail key and then go get the mail and it was cold out yesterday.

Yeah.

And then on the way back I could have just taken the mail key inside with me and taken it back to the car the next time I went to the car.

Yeah.

Again, it was very cold.  But instead I walked up a flight of stairs, put the mail key into the car and then went back home.

So you’re – you’ve made that decision and you’ve struggled with it even in a minor way?

Yes.  I did it specifically because there was no reason whatsoever for me to do that.

Yeah.

Rationally and as far as commonsense went, there was no – there was no purpose to it.

Yeah.

But by doing it I basically just exercised my willpower.  It was something I didn’t really want to do –

Yeah.

– but it wasn’t a big deal, but it was – I could – like doing that accumulates.

Yeah, I think – I think you and I are really different in that way.  I see you as someone who actively works that muscle a lot on a daily basis and I don’t enough.  And not that I just have no willpower, but I don’t give decisions like that enough consideration.  Does that make sense?

Completely.  Yeah.

I’ll just be like, yeah, I’ll just go upstairs and throw the key on the coffee table.

Which a sane person kind of has that thought.  I think that puts you in the same camp.

Yeah, but that that doesn’t ensure that I’m making good decisions for my life, you know.

Well, you know – no..  But I mean I don’t think you’re making bad ones.  But it’s good to self-reflect, you know.

Yeah.

I do kind of – it’s kind of fun, you know.

It’s like a game?

Yeah.  It’s like how ramrod straight can I stand, you know?

Right.

That’s what I’m building toward.

So another thing Robert points out from the science side of things is – as far as giving in to the short-term in favor of the long-term is glucose plays a big part in that.  And I think they found a quick shot of sugar – I don’t think a whole lot – can sometimes stave off or build up that willpower reserve for the short-term.

Yeah.  It’s like a – you were talking about how we have like a willpower bar –

Yeah.

– and every time we resist temptation it’s depleted a little more and more.  They found that a shot of glucose replenishes that willpower bar.

So is that in lieu of like hey, boy, I really want that cupcake, but let me have the juice box instead.

That’s the irony of it is giving into that cupcake may help you exercise your willpower with other stuff further on.

Interesting.

Isn’t that weird?

Okay.

But, yeah, I mean if you had something healthier that would be the better choice, but the point is is like any kind of shot of glucose has been shown to re-up your willpower.

Gotcha.

And this was very much pooh-poohed at first, this idea.  I think Baumeister – there’s this really great article by John Tierney in the New York Times Magazine.  It’s from the August before last, it’s called Do You Suffer from Decision Fatigue?  Our buddy, Chad, loves this.

Oh, yeah.

He like proselytized this article, remember?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Okay.  This is the one.

Okay.

So I strongly recommend everybody go read it, it’s a good one.  But in it it talks about Baumeister like thinking that, you know glucose has something to do with this.  And it was pooh-poohed at first because everybody knows the brain uses the same amount of energy pretty much all day long.

Yeah.

So it didn’t make any sense.  Like if you’re ego depleted and you’re suffering from some sort of willpower fatigue but your brain’s still using the same amount of energy – those two don’t jive.

Right.

Again with the MRI, what they found was somebody suffering from ego depletion – from willpower fatigue who took a shot of glucose or whatever –

Yeah.

– their brains lit up in areas that had to do with exercise and willpower.  So while your brain was using the same amount of energy, it was using it in different places when your willpower was fatigued, and that glucose basically was like spinach to Popeye for that part of your brain that’s charged with exercising willpower.

Interesting.

Isn’t it?

Yeah.  So what?  Do you carry around a pack of sugar with you at all times?

I’m on so much sugar right now.

Yeah?

Also in that same article they talk about this kind of landmark study of an Israeli parole board.  And they found that if you were a parolee and you came to them after it had been a while since a break or lunch or breakfast, your chances of being paroled dropped by like 50 or 60%.

Oh, if the parole board had not had breakfast?

Yes.  Or, no, if you came to them like right after things got started after breakfast or after lunch –

Gotcha.

– your chances of being paroled were like 50 to 60% greater than people who came to them for identical crimes –

Yeah.

– like a couple hours later.

I’m sure that makes the criminals of the world feel pretty great.

Yeah.  Exactly.

It’s so arbitrary.

And what they found is it’s not laziness, it’s not like physical fatigue –

Yeah.

– where like you can tell you’re tired.  What our brains do is they employ this strategy where you become risk adverse.  Like you don’t want to make a decision.  So you say you know what, I’m just gonna put this off.  You’re gonna go back to jail.  I’m not gonna grant your parole because that’s risky behavior to let you back out in the world and I’m just – I’ve made too many decisions today.  But you’re not thinking this, so you just say parole denied, and you have no idea why.

Yeah.

It just makes sense to you at the time.  But if you had had some glucose that same instance you may be like well, yeah, I think you’re ready to come back out in society.

That reminds of the band RUSH –

Yes.

– that we’ve talked about before.

Of course.

I remember this from when I was a teenager.  You know the lyric – oh man, what song is it?  If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.

Free Will.

Oh, yeah.  That’s from that song, of course.

Yeah.

I think on the original album jacket it says, if you choose not to decide you cannot have made a choice.

Is that right?

Yeah.  My brother and I used to laugh that – I think Neil Peart actually wrote a lot of the lyrics back then –

Yeah.

– that Geddy Lee just like, you know etched it out with a pencil.

Right.

But it’s the complete opposite meaning so it’s interesting that at some point RUSH I guess had maybe a band argument or something.

I’m glad Geddy Lee won.

Yeah.  You have made a choice.  No, you cannot have made a choice.

Right.

Just shut up and play drums.  Your voice is weird.

I remember hearing that the first time, I was like oh, man.

Oh, yeah.  It blew me away.

Yeah.

Yeah.  Free Will, I can’t believe I didn’t remember the name.

Yeah, and you’re like I can’t think of the name of this song, but it’s about free will.

Yeah.  Was it Red Barchetta?.

All right.  Let’s see, Chuck.

What else we got?  Oh, I didn’t really fully get the Stanford psychologist, Walton and Dweck – and that is Dweck, it sounds like I’m saying direct wrong.  I didn’t fully get that, that they said that people who have willpower fatigue tend to slack off when they felt their resolve wavering, but then people who felt their resolve was limitless pressed on.  Like that just – I don’t get the point there.  It seems like a no-brainer.

Yeah.  I think it is.  You may just be looking too deeply into it.

Oh, maybe so.

It’s like what I was talking about earlier at the beginning where like depending on how you see the world is like, like you have willpower so you can overcome any temptation.

Oh, okay.

You’re going to last longer on tests of willpower than somebody who is like oh, I’m feeling kind of weak today, you know –

Gotcha.

– and then you’re just gonna give in.

Okay.  So it is pretty simple.

Yeah.

All right.  I thought I was a dummy.

Not only is it simple, I managed to make it more complex and talk about it at length.

They do know that people – generally there is some genetic component involved, like if your parents are super self-disciplined then you are more likely to turn out that way.

Right.

I found that to be true from friends of mine whose parents were like super self-disciplined and their kids kind of turned out that way too.

Yeah, but I wonder – and Robert makes the point in the article like is it genetic or epigenetic.

Yeah.  I don't know.  Probably both.

Yeah, I would think so.

That would be my guess.

We just chose not to decide.

We could not have made a choice.  And then the old marshmallow experience, the Stanford – not the prison experiment, but the marshmallow experiment –

Yeah.

– from the 1960s.  A very famous one where they placed these – tortured these kids basically by placing a marshmallow in front of them and saying if you hold off on eating that marshmallow, in 15 minutes you will have two.  And of course not many of the kids could hold out.

Sure.

But they found that the ones who did hold out for the second marshmallow went on in life to greater successes, at least if you count SAT scores as a measure of success.  210 points higher than the ones who chowed down on the marshmallow.  And the ones who ate the marshmallow, later on had struggles with relationships and stress and attention.

Yeah.

So I wonder if that has anything to do with like, you know OCD.

I wonder as well.  I wonder how much of our modern problems are really just crises of willpower.

Yeah.

I wonder.  There was a follow up to that 60’s experiment – there’s been a bunch, but there was one at the University of Rochester that was carried out last year that found we are more willing to exercise willpower if we think that what we’re holding out for is actually going to happen.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

And they did that by – this is hilarious – it’s funny, studies with kids are always – they’re so cruel and funny.  I mean not the really truly cruel ones –

No.  We’re not talking [inaudible] –

[Crosstalk]

– but like any psychological study that has to do with kids –

Yeah.

– almost invariably has some cruel aspect to it, and this one was no exception.  Basically they said here’s the control group; here’s the experimental group.  And the control group, we want to give you some extra art supplies, let us go get them.  And they came back with some extra art supplies.

Yeah.

The experimental group, they said hey, we’re gonna get you some more art supplies, we’ll be right back.  And they came back, they’re like we don’t have any more art supplies.  We know you were really excited, but sorry.  You’re gonna have to make do with that old red pen.

Yeah.

And then they tested them with the marshmallow experiment and found that the ones who had gotten the art supplies, the promise hadn’t been broken –

Sure.

– they held out longer than the ones who had been lied to.

Yeah.  They’re like screw that, you’re not bringing me two marshmallows.  I’m eating this marshmallow right now.

Exactly.

I’m gonna kick you in the shin afterwards too.

I’ll show you.  Yeah.

Yeah, that’s not cruel on the level – what was that one, the one kid – remember that we talked about that was tested on?  Like kept in a closet?  No.

No.  They tested fear conditioning and [inaudible] in the kid.  It was Little Albert.

Oh, Little Albert.

Where they like –

That’s right.

– they would put a bunny in his lap and then bang on –

My God.

– a bar of metal with a hammer and scare the bejesus out of him.

That’s right, and then there was this –

And he came to like fear rabbits – like bunnies.

And there was a search for him, right?  And they eventually found him they thought – as an adult.

I think so.  I don’t remember.  I wrote a blog post that –

Yeah.

– I’ll have to republish it or whatever because it’s been a while and I don’t remember.

Yeah.

But yeah, they figured out who it was pretty much.

So this isn’t on that level?

No, no, no.

This is just marshmallows.

Yes it is.  So – oh, there was one other point I wanted to bring up that I thought was pretty interesting and horrible from that John Tierney article with decision fatigue with exercising willpower.

Yeah.

It disproportionately affects the poor.  And they think that possibly now that poverty exists in a cycle because if you’re a poor person you have to exercise willpower.  You have to make more decisions than somebody who has more resources – more money.

Yeah.

Like say you’re walking through the grocery store.  You know I want this soap and this food.

Yeah.

If you’re poor you might have to say I want both, but I have to just buy one.  I don’t have enough for both so how much is it gonna be.

Yeah.

And their willpower, their resources of willpower, of decision-making become fatigued a lot faster because they have to exercise it lot more.  And they don’t have the resources to get themselves out of poverty.

To indulge?

Or to –

Oh, well, yeah.

– like study or do more.  That they already have the deck stacked against them –

Yeah.

– resource wise, but then you throw in this idea of willpower possibly that makes it even more difficult.

Yeah.  Boy, I never really thought about that.  That’s interesting.

Yeah.  It’s pretty interesting stuff.  It makes you – it makes – you know you feel for them even more.

Yeah.  And it makes me feel bad when I say do I want the peanut butter ganache cupcake or the chocolate.  You know what, just go ahead and give me both, right.

Exactly.  Well you can buy both and then just take one to somebody who’s struggling in the grocery store trying to figure out if they’re gonna buy soap or food.

That’s a good idea.

Yeah.

You got anything else, man?

No.  This is a good one.

Yeah.  I like willpower, it’s fun.  Go out and exercise it in little ways, it’s fun.

Or don’t.

Either that or strap a car battery to your inner thighs just for fun.  Okay, well if you want to learn more about willpower and read this good article by Robert Lamb, you can type in willpower in the search bar at howstuffworks.com and it will bring it up.  And I said search bar so it’s time for listener mail.

Yeah, Josh.  Quickly before we do that we need to say a special thank you to a fan of ours who helped us out with our Wikipedia page.

Oh, nice.  Thank you.

And he was very cool and his name – and he’s been mentioned on [inaudible] evidently too.

Oh, wow.  This guy’s a star.

We’re not gonna hold that against him.  And this is how his name is spelled, A-n-t-r-i-k-s-h, Yadav, Y-a-d-a-v.  And he says you pronounce In-triksh, the t is soft though as in math.  So Antriksh – Antriksh?

Yeah.  There you go.

He phonetically spelled it out, he told me what it sounded like and I still can’t quite do it.  So we just wanna say thanks a lot for helping us with the Wikipedia page.

Nice.

And now a listener mail that I’m gonna call SYSK can help you get ladies.  This is from Todd in Oklahoma City.

Okay.

Guys and Jerry, I’ve come to the conclusion that I may owe you a big thank you.  Your podcast has created the impression, whether fiction or reality, that I am somehow a guy who knows about stuff with the ladies.  My new girlfriend in fact mentions as one of my winning traits that I am often saying interesting things.  And this really interested me so I asked her for some examples of things that I say.  And it was notable that every example that she cited was something that I learned listening to your podcast at work.

So it is quite possible, sirs, that you and your podcast made my baby fall in love with me.

Nice.

I’d like to shake your hands.  Every single guy should listen to your podcast because it may at least get you a second date.  And that is Todd from Oklahoma City who is banking on our knowledge to woo women and I guess he got a girlfriend out of it.

Good going, Todd.

Good for you.

We’re glad we could help, man.

We’re married dude, so we live vicariously through these emails.

That’s not true.

Well, no, I think it’s great.

I’m happy for Todd.

Yeah, I don’t mean I live vicariously, it’s that I wish it was –

You like to tell me all the details of your love life, Todd.

No.  No.  I just mean like that’s great.  I’m glad someone out there’s getting a date because of this.

Yeah.  I love helping people find love connections.

Yeah.

As a matter of fact we should do a speed-dating episode.  I wrote an article on it once and it’s pretty neat.

Yeah, my friend PJ – you met PJ, he just texted me yesterday and said hey, this girl – he does a lot of online dating – he said part of her profile’s that she’s like a huge fan of you guys.  And I said date her.

Yeah.

Go out on a date with her.

Yeah.  There you go.  We doing it all over the place, man.

That’s right.

Let’s see, if we have affected your life positively we want to hear about it.  Not negatively, just positively.  You can tweet to us at SYSK podcast, you can join us on Facebook.com/stuffyoushouldknow, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com and you can always find us hanging out at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

Brought to you by Toyota.  Let’s go places.

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32 Minutes