Posted on 08/09/2006 8:47:38 PM PDT by SamAdams76
A DECADE ago when I was an undergraduate psychologist, a departmental librarian called Anne was doing something any psychologist would say was impossible. Every year, with near-perfect accuracy, she would predict which third-year undergraduates would be awarded first-class degrees.
Anne didn't know how their essays were rated, what A-level grades they had under their belts, or how they scored on IQ tests. (All information many would say was essential to forecasting final results.)
All she knew was how often she had seen students in the department library: reading course notes, photocopying journals, borrowing books. And the handful of students who Anne saw a lot - conspicuously more often than the other students in the same year - were going to get a first.
Anne was working on the principle that in academic achievement it is self-discipline, not talent, that counts. Ten years on, a study published recently in Psychological Science has come to exactly the same conclusion.
Psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman descended on the eighth grade of a large public school in the northeast of the US. As the autumn leaves fell, each of the 160-odd children took an IQ test, then they (and their parents and teachers) answered questionnaires that probed self-control. Are you good at resisting temptation, they were asked. Can you work effectively towards long-term goals? Or do pleasure and fun sometimes keep you from getting work done?
The children were also given a real-life test of their ability to delay gratification. Each was handed a dollar bill in an envelope. They could choose either to keep it or hand it back and get $2 a week later. Their decision was carefully recorded.
The researchers returned in spring. They took note of each child's grades and then looked back to see both how clever, and how self-controlled, that student had been in autumn. What, they wanted to know, was the most important factor in school grades?
The psychologists discovered it was self-control, by a long shot. A child's capacity for self-discipline was about twice as important as his or her IQ when it came to predicting academic success.
At first glance, research of this sort is a comfort to those of us not exploding with raw talent. The science seems to back up the writer Kingsley Amis's well-known advice that "the art of writing is the art of applying the seat of one's trousers to the seat of one's chair". Why, in that case anyone can write a book. Yet a small problem remains; namely, the problem of keeping the seat of one's trousers applied to the seat of one's chair.
Amis kept to an "unflinching schedule" of 500 words a day, according to The Guardian. (No doubt the young Amis would have returned the seductive single dollar bill to the researcher with barely a hesitation.) But just as we all have different levels of physical endurance so, too, do we differ in the strength of our will.
Some people are simply more susceptible to temptations and distractions, and we all sometimes reach the limits of our willpower sooner than we would like. "Programs that build self-discipline may be the royal road to building academic achievement," psychologists Duckworth and Seligman conclude from their findings.
So what can we do to strengthen self-discipline, to transform ourselves from impulsive dollar-snatchers to lofty long-term investors in future success?
Help lies in seeing willpower as a muscle, recent research suggests. The "moral muscle", as it has been called, powers all of the difficult and taxing mental tasks that you set yourself. It is the moral muscle that is flexing and straining as you keep attention focused on a dry academic article, bite back an angry retort to your boss, or decline a helping of your favourite dessert. And herein lies the problem: these acts of restraint all drain the same pool of mental reserves.
Take, for example, a group of hungry volunteers who were left alone in a room containing both a tempting platter of freshly baked chocolate chip biscuits and a plate piled high with radishes. Some of the volunteers were asked to sample only the radishes. These peckish volunteers manfully resisted the temptation of the biscuits and ate the prescribed number of radishes. Other, more fortunate, volunteers were asked to sample the biscuits.
In the next, supposedly unrelated, part of the experiment, the volunteers were asked to try to solve a difficult puzzle. The researchers weren't interested in whether the volunteers solved it. (In fact, it was insoluble.) Rather, they wanted to know how long the volunteers would persist with it. Their self-control already depleted, volunteers forced to snack on radishes persisted for less than half as long as people who had eaten the biscuits or (in case you should think chocolate biscuits offer inner strength) other volunteers who had skipped the eating part of the experiment.
As this and many similar studies show, if you draw on your reserves to achieve one unappealing goal - going for a jog, say - your moral muscle will be ineffective when you then call on it to help you switch off the television and start essay-writing.
What, then, can we do about this unfortunate tendency of the moral muscle to become fatigued with use? One option is to build it up and make it strong. Evidence is starting to accumulate that the moral muscle, like its physical counterpart, can become taut and bulging from regular exercise. People asked by experimenters to be self-disciplined about their posture for two weeks were afterwards stronger willed when it came to a test of physical endurance, compared with other people allowed to slouch about in their usual comfortable way during the fortnight.
By regularly exercising self-restraint and virtue in all areas of life (moral muscle cross-training, we may call it), we will come to resist temptations with the same casual ease with which a world-class athlete sprints to catch a train. That, at least, is the idea.
Unfortunately, like any sensible, long-term strategy for self-improvement, this approach has limited appeal. For just as we want to fit into those trousers next Monday - not after eight tedious weeks of healthy eating and regular exercise - it is often the same for our more cerebral ambitions. Exam dates are set in stone, deadlines loom on the horizon, or may even mock us from the past. In other words, there simply may not be enough time to become a master of temperance and virtue before tackling our goal.
Fortunately, there is also an attractive quick-fix approach to the problem of limited willpower. This is to use your moral muscle only very sparingly. My father, a professional philosopher, has a job that involves thinking very hard about very difficult things. This, of course, is an activity that consumes mental resources at a terrific rate.
The secret of his success as an academic, I am now convinced, is to ensure that none of his precious brainpower is wasted on other, less important matters. He feels the urge to sample a delicious luxury chocolate? He pops one in his mouth. Pulling on yesterday's shirt less trouble than finding a clean one? Over his head the stale garment goes. Rather fancies sitting in a comfy armchair instead of taking a brisk jog around the park? Comfy armchair it is. Thanks to its five-star treatment, my father's willpower - rested and restored whenever possible - can take on the search for wisdom with the strength of 10 men.
Although we may not all be able to live the charmed life of the well-paid scholar, the general principle - not to spread our inner resolve too thin - is an important one. If you are about to embark on a big project you court disaster if at the same time your life is cluttered and demanding, or you also commit to draining attempts at self-enhancement. The would-be novelist whose taxing day job exhausts her moral muscle will find it harder to apply the seat of her trousers to the seat of her chair. The dieting philosopher will struggle to keep his attention on a tricky passage of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Where are the students whose self-discipline is constantly worn away by other concerns? Not in the library reading course-notes, photocopying articles or borrowing books. And if they are relying on their smarts to get them to the top of the class then there will be disappointment ahead.
But don't just take my word for it. Ask a librarian.
Thanks for the post - Copied and sent off to granddaughter....
When I saw this article, I just had to post it. Because I have lived it. I'm not the smartest or most talented guy in the world but I have been able to rise to the top in my workplace on account of discipline. Setting goals for myself and getting things done, one small task at a time.
There is a lot of wisdom in this article.
ping
Interesting take on willpower.......
Cool.
But now I am confused...
Am I supposed to 'work out' my willpower or am I supposed to keep it in reserve?
Good article. Thanks for posting.
This suggests that only the two are major factors: intelligence and self-discipline. Self-discipline it not at all the same as the ability to concentrate, prioritize or focus. Perhaps those abilities were in fact what was being measured.
The one or two dollar test - to me that would be much more a test of intelligence, not self-control. I'm not very self-disciplined but that would be a no-brainer - wait for the two bucks!
btt
That said, I've done pretty well on aptitude and interpersonal skills despite being a pretty poor student with low self-control. It's all a matter of finding work that values fast thinking, improvisation, and flexibility than slow and steady performance and, to be honest, decent interpersonal skills probably trumps both aptitude and self-control in the business world.
I don't know how many "A" people I knew back in school who eventually pooped out. But I've seen "D" students miraculously transform when they develop a passion. (Myself included!)
This may be the major part of the correlation between studying music and academic success.
It's VERY hard to be a Gauss, but it is possible [after all, he did exist]. The adage about the relationship between inspiration and perspiration applies to the broad middle part of IQ bell curve. It most emphatically fails at either far shoulder. Therefore for most people persistence trumps a relatively weak ability. In the case of conspicuous disability [retardation] persistence does not pay, or pays very little. In the case of conspicuous ability [genius] persistence plays much less certain role, for such people could, and sometimes do, think in qualitatively different ways, by leaps and bounds. Sometimes they need not be persistent.
X = (1+100)*(100/2) = 101*50 = 5050 was obvious enough to me when my teacher gave it to us in 5th grade to stump us. If it took Gauss as long as 15 seconds, it was only to visualize it in the first place.
The article makes a good point in a round-about way -- a large part of measuring success is in defining it, focusing on what counts and letting other things slide.
My college GPA was a mediocre 2.5, but 14 years after graduation, I can explain concepts from those classes more clearly than most of my peers. I hated multiple choice tests and loved papers, because I was more interested in the ideas than in the grades. I spent more time working at the campus paper than in class, and that experience was more relevant to my later career than my GPA will ever be.
Ms. Fine (and the study she cites) is dead on in observing that drive counts more than talent in ... well, just about anything. Far more naturally gifted baseball players have failed to approach the records Pete Rose set through sheer determination.
I've known plenty of incredibly intelligent people who, in the vernacular of school counselors, failed to "live up to their potential." I've also known plenty of mediocre intellects who went on to do good work and make tons of money. Which is more "successful" is largely a function of how you define success.
One guy I used to run into every now and then stands out. I'll call him Oscar. He went into the Merchant Marine straight out of high school, and I have a degree straight out of a top-10 university, but we never came across a topic in which he couldn't hold up his end of the conversation, often putting me to shame. Seems the Merchant Marine offers time to read and few distractions, and he's a voracious autodidact.
He'd work in the states for a year or so, saving up enough money to live in Turkey or Tibet for a couple of years. When the money started to run out, he'd come back to the States and work for a while, then repeat the cycle. Not what most people would point to as a model of success, but if it's what makes him happy, can we call him a failure?
One college friend was one we had pegged for Wall Street, or the Senate, or a Law faculty. He got a BA with honors with very little effort -- he was that smart -- and got a full ride to a top-10 law school. He dropped out after one year. The one thing that really got him going was his time on the debate team in high school and college. So now he teaches high school history and coaches the debate team.
I'm not denigrating folks who get stellar grades, get great jobs, and make tons of money. More power to them. I have nothing but respect and admiration for people who set their goals and achieve them. But how many "failures" are so labeled because they did not reach goals that were never theirs?
I'm also not excusing a lack of effort. I have little regard for daydreaming wannabes who say they want to be actors but don't go on auditions because commercials are beneath them, or who say they want to be writers but don't actually sit down and f'n write.
Bottom line, a success is someone who sets goals and does the work necessary to achieve them; whether he's driven to make money, build skyscrapers, write novels, write songs, become a priest or minister or rabbi, raise children, teach children to read, heal the sick, feed the poor, fight the enemy, install cabinets straight and level, grow crops, or be the best damn plumber he can be.
And there's always the threat someone will press a button on his monitor and you'll disappear.
This test doesn't account for enough factors that I think it's a flawed test of instant vs. delayed gratification. First, it assumes that the student trusts the promise of two dollars later. If there's any doubt that someone will renege, a buck in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Another flaw is that it doesn't track what the kids will do with the dollar. I know I can take that one dollar to the corner store, buy ten 10-cent boxes of candy, and sell them at school for a quarter apiece (I knew kids in elementary school who did this). I could have $2.50 in a day instead of $2 in a week. I take that same $2.50 back to the store, and repeat the process until I've saturated the market. That's not a lack of impulse control, but a shrewd and entrepreneurial decision based on a clear and cogent cost-benefit analysis.
Or maybe you're hungry and forgot your lunch money. Take the dollar and eat lunch today, and get another dollar from the folks after school, rather than wait a week. No-brainer.
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