Self-control signals and affords power

https://today.ucsd.edu/story/having-self-control-leads-to-power

by namanyayg • 2 years ago

199 133 2 years ago

today.ucsd.edu

danjoredd• 2 years ago

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires, seek discipline and find your liberty. - Frank Herbert

Wonder if companies setting "Stretch" goals, and having people fail, is actually a form of control. Get results, but also keeps employees down. People may be less inclined to ask for raise if they miss goals, even if the results were 'good'.

throwaway74432• 2 years ago

That becomes clear when management says that hitting all of your goals actually means you weren't ambitious enough.

annoyingnoob2• 2 years ago

My mother was a Manager at an insurance company for a very long time. She still firmly believes that one cannot get a 5 out 5 on a review because no one is perfect. Business likes to set unobtainable goals like that. In my experience, that kind of corporate behavior drives high performers away. High performers know what they have done and if you refuse to acknowledge it over time they leave.

quickthrower2• 2 years ago

The folly is the same as the rock star amplifier that “goes to 11” or how gig economy reviews are 5 star = acceptable or better, anything else means dreadful.’It is just a linear transform people have to do in their heads.

throwway120385• 2 years ago

It's also a tool for HR to say they have a process that they follow but then still allow all of the decisions about pay increases and performance to be entirely subjective. You miss your stretch goals, and so depending on how your manager feels at the time that's either totally acceptable and you're doing a great job, or if they need justification to shaft you then it's totally unacceptable and you didn't do the work well enough to deserve that. Same situation but totally different outcome.

petsfed• 2 years ago

There's a coaching philosophy that says to never praise unconditionally; rather every piece of praise should be followed with a criticism.

I suppose this is theoretically a good practice, but only if you're already operating in a high-trust environment. If you're not, it starts to feel like you're never good enough, because absolutely every victory, no matter how big or small, is followed up with "but it could be better...". Which is, again technically accurate, but part of the finesse of being a good people-manager is understanding that humans are not robots who can simply process and accept criticism without any emotional hangups.

disqard• 2 years ago

"Across all experiments, individuals with high self-control were seen as more powerful, and as better suited for powerful roles, than individuals with low self-control."

Part of me sees this research as "doing everything by the book" and consequently failing to capture important insights. For instance, every economic model of humans assumes that we're "rational agents", yet we know that people with poor impulse control (like ElMo, Trump, etc.) are perceived as powerful by a wide swath of the public.

Maybe their "turns down dessert" thought experiments are just that -- thought experiments -- and do not reflect what humans actually do, IRL.

KuriousCat2• 2 years ago

I think people like ElMo and Trump do have a lot of self control. In addition to getting what they want they are also masters of influence. It is also not poor impulse control if they are good enough to muster enough resources to afford their impulses in the first place.

katmannthree• 2 years ago

How is this different from “it’s not poor impulse control if you’re a _functional_ alcoholic who can muster enough resources to afford a handle every morning”?

annoyingnoob2• 2 years ago

Ambition, persistence, and confidence play a role too. Some people do not take No for an answer and keep trying.

glitchc2• 2 years ago

Not to mention luck.

me_me_me• 2 years ago

I think you are missing the point. Self control is a source of persistence to get to goal. If you are impulsive buyer of random crap, you will not save money for a house.

If you give up easily or get distracted accomplishing difficult tasks will be impossible.

We all know those people and at least to me they always feel like bit of looser who openly jeopardise their own future.

Trumps of this world only impress naive people of this world, people who buy how to make $1m in a year books.

Trump openly employs wrestling narrative building to win popularity. It doesn't get any basic than that (i am generalising avg trump voter of course, but a man who never worked a day of hard work in his life - is a hero of blue collar, cheated on every single of his 5 wives - christian hero and maybe eveb second coming, all his businesses went bust - a true successful businessmen)

Would you trust trump to run your company? or oversee anything of value?

sandspar• 2 years ago

Trump and Elon Musk have incredible self control. They have selective outlets, yes. But they also both drive themselves constantly, invariably in the face of resistance. They're both self control addicts whose entire lives are built around the question "How much resistance can I overcome?"

gexla• 2 years ago

"Some set an ambitious goal of reading 200 pages each week, while others set a more moderate goal of reading 50 pages per week. All of these individuals read the same amount – 100 pages – but those who didn’t meet their goal were seen as less powerful by study participants."

Under-promise, over-deliver.

largbae• 2 years ago

Elon Musk appears to be a counter-example...

notnaut• 2 years ago

Over promising is better when you’re interested in money/power and have plenty of your own to start with, rather than any underlying pointless nonsense like working toward an achievable goal or trying to be a decent human.

DinaCoder992• 2 years ago

Musk has lost a massive amount of credibility because of failing to deliver on most of the self-proclaimed potential of his businesses—basically, all of them outside of the potential of SpaceX, and even there he should be grateful the perceived value of the company isn't tied to going to mars.

yoyohello13• 2 years ago

That's what I do at work, it works quite well.

tithe• 2 years ago

A key part of that statement (from the article) is "in comparison to your peers."

By whom do you want to be considered powerful?

And how can I maximize the real/perceived performance delta between myself and other participants in that target group?

And how do I do so in a way that doesn't appear threatening to the decision-makers (group "leaders") in that target group?

c4wrd5• 2 years ago

This is something I've noticed in myself and I'm glad there's research to back this, although this is an open secret to those who do master self-control. I've spent the last three to four years working on self-control and discipline after I hit rock bottom in my life and realized I had no self-agency. For me, having greater self-control led me to ensure I can focus on providing value where it matters in my life, and not getting caught up by the shiny object syndrome I was distracted by a lot when I was younger. Not every thought needs to be acted on, especially if the thoughts come from external sources. In regards to why it leads to power, as you make your way up the managerial chain, when you have greater self-control you are less prone to get "bullied" by other managers into doing work for them and you can stand up more for your team and you will be able to provide more value. For perspective, I would personally trust others who have self-control more than those who don't for time-sensitive and critical tasks because I can rely on them to regulate their emotions and give honest answers, as well as hold themselves accountable.

For someone, like me a few years ago, who is undisciplined and has not spent time cultivating self-control this is hard to hear. If you find yourself making excuses when you read this article for why the power hierarchy is against you, or that there is bias in the results of this study (as some of the comments here allude to), then you should consider reevaluating why you are making excuses. It's a sign that this post triggered you and your response was to make an excuse rather than accept a correlation that speaks to an underlying hard truth. Once you start digging into "why did I make an excuse" and chase that feeling over and over whenever you find yourself making excuses, you will start to realize that you can't think of a reason why you made an excuse, it's just what you've done and reinforced in the past. If you've read this comment this far and you have a spark of curiosity and relate to not knowing why you are making excuses, I suggest you take this moment to chase it down and gain agency over your own life. Some would say this is your red pill moment. 'The Daily Stoic' woke me up, I highly recommend it. Discipline equals freedom, my friend, and we sorely need you.

coop_solution• 2 years ago

Is there any way to disagree with this comment without being disregarded as resentful?

Good work is the key to good fortune / Winners take that praise / Losers seldom take that blame

154573452342• 2 years ago

Disagree? It's ad copy promoting a self-help book.

Rediscover• 2 years ago

Good quote from Neil Peart. Roll the bones

smallmancontrov• 2 years ago

less prone to get "bullied" by other managers into doing work for them and you can stand up more for your team

This is the real key. Management is about controlling others and not letting others control you without compensation.

I would personally trust others who have self-control more than those who don't for time-sensitive and critical tasks because I can rely on them to regulate their emotions and give honest answers, as well as hold themselves accountable.

Of course you would, and if they wanted to be in your shoes they would do well to learn mastery over others as well as you have.

Learning the language of self-control may be a path to that, especially if you have not heard it before. However, it can also be a path to being controlled, as in your example. I grew up in a conservative environment, so that was my problem: I was heavily indoctrinated in the language of self-control, responsibility, and accountability, and these made me easy to exploit. My own "red pill" moment involved understanding these as tools of power rather than facts of the world, thereby freeing myself to better represent my own interests.

nebula88043• 2 years ago

I was heavily indoctrinated in the language of self-control, responsibility, and accountability, and these made me easy to exploit. My own "red pill" moment involved understanding these as tools of power rather than facts of the world, thereby freeing myself to better represent my own interests.

Can you give some clearer examples? I am curious how this is done in those circles.

atoav• 2 years ago

I read somewhere: "The first thought you have in reaction to something is a mirror of how you were brought up, the second thought is a mirror of who you are".

So the defining thing isn't reacting to a shiny thing, it is what you do after that initial thought and whether you can see yourself falling in the ever-same traps and do something against it.

richardgreeko27• 2 years ago

...making excuses when you read this article for why the power hierarchy is against you, or that there is bias in the results
...this post triggered you

Definitely the language choices of an unbiased perspective from someone who doesn't have an axe to grind

nebula88043• 2 years ago

Are these words really that verboten now?

mjburgess• 2 years ago

These are the excuses culture makes available. I take the commenter just to be reporting them.

c4wrd5• 2 years ago

You're right. I never said it was an unbiased perspective, so let me make it clear. The post was intended to help those who were like me. When I wrote the post, I wrote it as if I was speaking to my past self in a style that would have motivated my younger self; nothing more, nothing less.

_z7iw• 2 years ago

you will start to realize that you can't think of a reason why you made an excuse

this may not always be true by the way. such constant observation of yourself, constantly asking yourself what such and such a thing means or came from - may eventually lead you to notice the cognitive jump you take - the experience you had all those years ago plus the new thought pattern you started to let yourself believe - which became compressed and hidden by the familiarity and comfort of having no problems due to the resulting dissociation. Before you let yourself believe there was no reason, consider deferring belief permanently until you remember what impression you had which caused 'what is'. Far along that path lies deep self-knowledge and therefore deep knowledge of the world. Most people aren't as interested in seeing the truth as they believe so they give up when they feel more comfortable. It's explained, then, that as a result of not being awakened to what is, their karma inside themselves can still conquer their destiny [1]. Whereas someone who actually respects the truth is going to think more seriously about controlling their karma, at the very least so as not to damage the truth more.

1. What is Destiny?- [link redacted]

astura• 2 years ago

when you have greater self-control you are less prone to get "bullied" by other managers into doing work for them and you can stand up more for your team

Umm... You are confusing self control with confidence and self esteem. They aren't the same thing. Though I can see how becoming more disciplined can lead to more confidence and self esteem.

andai2• 2 years ago

Not every thought needs to be acted on, especially if the thoughts come from external sources.

I've heard it said (I believe by Hormozi on Williamson's podcast) that at a certain level, success becomes mostly about saying no to increasingly great opportunities.

I can confirm this is relevant near the bottom too, at least if you have a high level of openness (personality dimension) and are presented with inspiration on a regular basis.

The 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration quote comes to mind.

The principle of sacrifice comes to mind. It seems to be a choice between sacrificing many small things, or a few great things.

c4wrd5• 2 years ago

Here's an analogy that I think about from time to time. Imagine your life as a garden. You have a finite amount of days, with a finite amount of resources per day to plant new things or caretake existing things. Your soul represents the breadth and depth of your reach on any given day, but it is a fixed size and you must choose how much breadth and depth it has through your choices. Consider each day as an opportunity for change in this ratio of breadth vs depth, and over time this will play out as a spectrum between the two following situations:

(1) You can spend each day traveling to a new area, planting a new seed wherever you go, but never watering the same area twice. You get to learn about many different seeds, but you never get to stick around somewhere long enough to watch them grow into fruit-bearing plants. Your soul will be full of different experiences, but you will not be able to relish in the details of any particular area (i.e. pluck the fruit from your garden when you are ready to relax and are thinking back on your life)

(2) You can choose to focus on one or a few areas to add depth, learn the fundamentals of how things grow in those areas, and learn to care for and nourish them over time. In the end, you will be left with a beautiful garden that you have perfected and know every detail about that is full of fruit-bearing plants. You can wander this garden and eat the fruit from any of your plants.

Your soul has a finite reach. By focusing on one thing, you are neglecting to focus on another, and there is nothing you can do to change that. It's up to you to choose how you want to live, and not making a choice is also a choice. If you don't make a choice (i.e. a sacrifice of not visiting some areas or not nourishing the area around you), you will be left with the worst of both worlds: a decaying garden and no knowledge of how to grow anything.

hnthrowaway03282• 2 years ago

I wonder what do you think about the usage of such training. I have had such trainings for diet control and distraction control but I felt unless one manages to gain a long term control the whole time is kinda worthless.

For example I can lose 10 pounds in 2 months with diet control and a bit of discipline. But it comes back quickly once the self control goes away. What is the point? Practicing such self control does not give me better self control next time but only brings down self confidence a bit every time.

I guess the ultimate reason is that I do not really enjoy the targets I set. How can I enjoy something I do not but inherently good for me?

wholinator22• 2 years ago

Part if it is that enjoying it is not the goal, losing the weight or passing the test or whatever is the goal. You're not trying to enjoy yourself, so if the pursuit of the goal is very painful for you, you're not going to enjoy it. But you had a reason to start. Sometimes we encounter very difficult obstacles in our lives and relationships, we get so far out into trouble and unhappiness that it seems impossible to get back. General advice in this case is to try to connect back to why you started. What does passing the test do for you, why did you want to lose weight, why did you originally fall in love with that person.

If you never had a grounding to start with then it's time to find one.

robocat• 2 years ago

I suggest you read this: https://radicalcontributions.substack.com/p/escalation-theor...

It is really insightful about how we train ourselves for compliance, but how that training struggles to cope when we interact with violence escalaters (who are common in some parts of society).

I live near a port town and face and threat of violence is easily visible in men and many women.

jnac• 2 years ago

What steps did you take to "cultivate self-control"?

faeriechangling2• 2 years ago

I have lots of strong and compelling evidence that my self-control is unusually low. Doctors have said that since I was very young, so if anybody was making an excuse, it was the adults around me more than myself and I simply internalised those excuses later.

It's extremely humiliating, and I've gone a lot further than listening to the daily stoic, there's an entire body of scientific literature on how to improve self-control in general and for people like me who seem to have literal neurological abnormalities. I've spent the last few weeks miserable from medication side-effects for instance.

abeppu• 2 years ago

All of this is in a context where it's assumed that participants _know_ the goals of the person under consideration, can straight-forwardly evaluate whether actions are in line with those, and where the _participant's_ goals are framed to not be a part of the discussion.

In real life, how often are these true for power that matters?

- as an IC, I generally don't have the information an exec has, and cannot easily judge which choices are aligned with stated goals

- as a voter, I'm regularly unsure which goals that a politician says publicly are their real goals

- and for any situation where I'm close enough to judge the actual suitability of actions, and the intents of the participants, I probably have enough of a stake that my view of who should be in control is swayed by what outcome I want

seydor• 2 years ago

This doesn't pass my sniff test. The results are based on what people say about who "looks powerful" but didn't put people in a position where they actually give power to them . "Look what people do rather than what they say" is very relevant here. Reject and resubmit

082349872349872• 2 years ago

...you gotta have the self-control first. Then when you get the self-control, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women. — not AM

zubairq• 2 years ago

Interesting. Maybe I should try to get more done by having more self control

xeckr• 2 years ago

In one experiment, working adults imagined a scenario where a colleague with the goal of being fit either ate a large dessert or abstained from dessert altogether. Researchers found that the colleague was seen as being better suited for high-power roles when they abstained from indulging, an indication of self-control.

The result of the study seems obvious even if the design is a bit primitive.

pilgrim0• 2 years ago

IMO simply striving to gain power or money is easier than to achieve greatness and mastery, in general. Mainly because one can lie their way into power and money, countless examples of that both at a local level and global level. Now, mastery requires the opposite of lying and pursuing easy to achieve goals. It’s the hardest path because frustration is constant, and it requires one to keep stretching the limits of their own capabilities, and it never gets easier. Self control in that scenario is not necessarily about getting things “done”, but rather to not give up, and keep trying restlessly. The lack of nuance in the summary of that paper makes me think it’s not worth reading it. For me, I have greater admiration and respect for someone who has failed majestically at being great, than for someone who deals purely with median or below median expectations. The former will have amazing stories to tell, the latter usually don’t. The summary given by this blog, and likely the paper, too, is heavily tainted with the idea of “being for others”, rather than the idea of “being for self”. Again, being for others is super easy because it’s simply a matter of controlling the information you give, people do that all the time in social media. This doesn’t work for “being for self” because one can’t fool oneself indefinitely. Like the summary hints at, striving for greatness indeed involves fulfilling many achievements in the process of pursuing the greater achievement. This usually doesn’t count for observers, though, because the crowd has no taste or time for the story, but only for conclusions. Again illustrating how “being for self” is harder, as you’re set to be perceived as less than what you’re really trying to become. A functional remedy for that is simply to not be so public about your desires, which has the upside of protecting you from all sorts of exploitation.

kingkawn• 2 years ago

The thing obstructing all progress is the wanton deployment of generalizations that hold no obligation other than to reflect the reality of their distributor

jack_pp2• 2 years ago

IMO simply striving to gain power or money is easier than to achieve greatness and mastery

While my ego would want to agree the truth is staying in power and making money exponentially isn't easy either, and you can't lie your way to lifelong power and fuck you money because eventually people figure you out, your reputation plummets and then you have less power and less opportunity to make money.

That said you choose what game you want to play, if you care more about your craft focus on perfecting it even though that's not gonna make you as much money as pursuing money for its own sake.

aiisjustanif• 2 years ago

you can't lie your way to lifelong power and fuck you money because eventually people figure you out, your reputation plummets and then you have less power and less opportunity to make money.

Surely we do have very notable exceptions to this.

idiotsecant2• 2 years ago

I think luck and lying is essentially the method to real wealth. Find me someone who got there without those two elements. Wealth is an expression of your ability to manipulate other people into devoting their labor to your enrichment. You don't get there without some deception.

dasil003• 2 years ago

Both great points. One way to think about it is that pursuit of wealth simply has more competition—the opportunities for the upper tiers are very few relative to the population that aspires to them. It is objectively hard to get there regardless of whether you lie or not. One thing is certainly true though, you can't get there without incredible social leverage of some sort, otherwise why would tens or hundreds of thousands multiples of per capita GDP be routed to you?

The answer is: you kind of have to bring something uniquely valuable to the table. Exceptional skill with people and general intelligence are certainly valuable ingredients, but to really crack the upper tier some kind of domain mastery is what really pushes you over the top. Bonus points if it's a new domain, fast to monetize and scale, hence the rapid rise of tech in the Fortune 500 over the past couple decades through the web and smart phone revolutions.

zelphirkalt• 2 years ago

We just need to look at politicians and voters, to know, that it is not necessarily true, that ones power and opportunities vane, when people discover the truth about ones lies.

GMoromisato• 2 years ago

Also lying is not that easy. Humans have evolved various tools to spot liars. I would bet that the average person is better at detecting lies and liars than they are at lying.

The exceptions people talk about, of people gaining power by lying, are all exceptionally good at lying.

lchen_hn• 2 years ago

Well said

verisimi• 2 years ago

Fantastic comment, thanks

jyunwai2• 2 years ago

"For me, I have greater admiration and respect for someone who has failed majestically at being great, than for someone who deals purely with median or below median expectations. The former will have amazing stories to tell, the latter usually don’t."

This helps give me words to understand my mixed feelings about an old post I found on a language learning forum recently, about a person who shared an ambitious goal that appeared unrealistic to achieve on their proposed timeline of six months. The person aimed to start studying as a complete beginner with a language and achieve a 'C1 level' certification by that time (this is an advanced exam that evaluates for fluency in a spoken debate on a scholarly topic, thorough comprehension of spoken debates on the radio, and the ability to write a timed persuasive essay with a limited number of flaws on a nuanced topic).

The responses to the post at the time were largely discouraging. On the one hand, I quietly agreed from personal experience with the other users that the goal simply wasn't feasible for most people: it would have been ambitious (but doable) to employ the same stretch of time to go from the B2 level (the level just below, which is sufficient for immigration to major countries that used the language officially) to the C1 level. But on the other hand, I did feel sympathetic toward the idea of the person setting an ambitious personal goal. The person even tried to make this concrete by including a plan of intense hours of tutoring and television watching per week. The post was a year old when I read it, so I checked the person's user profile to see if they reported the outcome. But the person never gave a written update (neither a post, nor a comment, nor an edit), though the account was active with recent unrelated comments.

My conclusion is that it's best to be supportive of people with ambitious goals to better themselves, but it's most practical to draw a distinction between goals in the short, medium, and long-term. Ambitious goals for self-betterment on any of these timelines ought to be celebrated. But there are risks with short-term goal that skirt too far outside of realism: this can cause someone to push themselves too much to the point of burnout and quitting (it's unclear, but possible, that this might have happened to that person). In my week-to-week life, I've personally seen beginner's burnout happen with overly-eager novices in martial arts.

A set of attainable short-term goals in service of ambitious goals over a longer timeline would be more sustainable. But if one wishes to pursue an ambitious goal in the short-term, that ought to be okay too—as long as the individual understands the burnout risks upfront, to lower the odds of abandoning their goal if they fall short.

boringuser24• 2 years ago

A controversial take from this is that, aside from the health benefits, you will also accrue personal and professional benefits from not being fat.

I remember interviewing when I was chubbier post-COVID thinking that the only evidence the interviewer has of my self-control and drive is that I have none. Best case scenario, you are interviewing a temporarily embarrassed skinny person.

Noble prize winner James Watson, famous bluntly tell it like it is-er, said he didn't hire fat people for this reason.

(This has since been rectified by reinstating strength training and dietary controls, which I recommend.)

CharlesW3• 2 years ago

…you will also accrue personal and professional benefits from not being fat.

As an overweight person, I don't think it's controversial. You'll also accrue personal and professional benefits from being a tall man and/or good-looking.

However, "fat people have no self-control" is still fatphobia and ignores the interplay of genetic, metabolic, physiological, cultural, socio-economic, and environmental factors that contribute to obesity. There are countless fat people who are incredibly smart and hard-working, and have exquisite discipline in most areas of their life.

boringuser24• 2 years ago

fatphobia

First of all, I really find this term to be gross. You should be afraid of being unhealthy.

Second of all, are you posting that you have individual metabolic differences that substantially alter your caloric expenditure?

FYI most studies show very little innate caloric expenditure differences between human beings outside of what can be predicted based on their body mass. Ironically, heavier people burn more calories, not less, innately.

This makes sense because metabolic machinery is complex and so fundamental to life that it would obviously be very tightly tuned genetically.

tekla• 2 years ago

As a former obese person, the culture of America is excusing people for being fat is disgusting. I'm not saying you have to be supermodel thin, but being fat is literally bad in every single possible metric (Except for possibly surviving longer in a survival situation, which I presume most fat people will never be in)

Being fat is bad. Being a normal weight is better in every metric

tasuki• 2 years ago

I have never met a fat person with "exquisite discipline". They had other positive qualities, but discipline was not over of them.

Also, I prefer to associate with people who are not fat. Is that a bad thing?

silent_cal• 2 years ago

“Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.”

- St Augustine

rgbrgb• 2 years ago

Correlates with the relatively high number of executives I know who do not drink alcohol.

runamuck• 2 years ago

Unexpected comment! Can you provide details? I have not noticed a correlation, and about a half of the successful executives I see drink heavily and frequently, and nearly all drink a little (except me).

__turbobrew__2• 2 years ago

You will also see it correlates with people who exercise.

pphysch• 2 years ago

This conclusion is a bit tautological: another way to frame "self-control" is "power over yourself" or "ability to influence your own actions". Of course people who have power over N=1 people are more likely to be perceived as "powerful" than people who have no self-control i.e. N=0, because they are.

In other words, self-control doesn't just "lead to" power, it is power.

ranprieur• 2 years ago

This article mentions a study that found almost no correlation between people who self-report having high self-control, and people who actually do well on tests measuring self-control:

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/1/15/16863374/wi...

The most likely explanation is that people who report high self-control are really experiencing less temptation.

CharlesW3• 2 years ago

It's the same "illusory superiority" cognitive bias as the Dunning-Kruger effect. The least competent will overestimate their self-control, and the most competent will underestimate it.

fsckboy2• 2 years ago

while it could be, that doesn't ring true to me.

I'd go for more of a Freudian "people who are somewhat obsessed with self control (therefore mindful of it) are people who struggle with it," coupled with salience bias. People who don't struggle with self control never think about it.

anon2912• 2 years ago

How in the world does a test of 'does this colored text match its name' test 'self-control'. 'Self-control' as used in the article means things like 'can you stick to a diet', or 'can you keep your word', not can you control your thought processes enough to quickly name a color. You can be highly self disciplined and bad at this task, or highly undisciplined and good at it. In fact, I'd imagine undisciplined people might be inspired by the entertainment value of this 'game', and spend useless time practicing it rather than doing what actually matters.

This study is complete garbage.

pas2• 2 years ago

It's classic 'executive function' measurement.

You have to stay on task (say the color not the word) and this requires a bit of working memory (what was the task?) and requires inhibition of the 'fast system' (system 1, which would just blurt out something), all associated with the PFC (prefrontal cortex).

Obviously it's not perfect, but at least very simple, quantitative, cheap, etc.

nostrademons• 2 years ago

Is this a distinction without a difference?

In the original qualitative write-ups for the Marshmallow Test, they described the children using all sorts of distraction strategies to basically make themselves forget that there's a tasty marshmallow sitting right in front of them. Maybe this is all that self-control is - having enough self-awareness (and valuing your future self highly enough) to direct your attention elsewhere so that temptations disappear from your view. It fits with the neuroscience we know about consciousness as well (that it's effectively a brain network which taps into the other brain networks and can observe and direct their firing) and even into how attention mechanisms in GPTs work.

It also is how most mature adults approach the world. If you're an alcoholic, don't go to the bar. If you're married, don't go to the strip club. If you want to lose weight, put less food on your plate. Most of what we know of as self-control is really having the skills to avoid temptation.

noduerme• 2 years ago

There's certainly an experiential difference between consciously stopping yourself from a behavior and not needing to think about avoiding it. If you can walk by the bar/stripclub/second helping of french fries without thinking, "gee, I'd like that, but I'll abstain", then you aren't experiencing what most people would describe as "temptation".

You may be right that if abstaining becomes habitual amd automatic enough, that could be indiscernable from a state in which you have no temptation. But I'd argue it's only "self-control" for the purpose of measuring willpower as long as it requires some degree of conscious decision making.

twoWhlsGud• 2 years ago

And I think that extends out further to a lot of little micro strategies. Like I know for myself that I have a lot more control in the supermarket to avoid something like corn chips than I have at home once said corn chips are in the pantry. So I have a strategy of limiting what I buy at the market rather than trying to struggle with eating carefully at home. There are a lot of little hacks like that, that can make life better.

tpmoney• 2 years ago

If you want to lose weight, put less food on your plate. Most of what we know of as self-control is really having the skills to avoid temptation.

Funny you mention this, because I have the personal experience to answer your question, yes there is a distinction. I've told the story here before, but I'll tell it again. As a teen / young adult, could eat as much food as a wanted and burn it all away. A daily food intake might be a sandwich and chips for lunch, 2-3 full bowls of cereal and milk for an afternoon "snack". Dinner, with seconds. And then depending on the evening, cookies, chips, cracker and cheese or icecream for an evening snack. I left high school on the "needs a few more pounds" side of the weight scale. And that ability to eat that much food (and the appetite to back it up) never left. But the burning of the calories did. As I got older, weight kept climbing. Oh sure, I did the "put less food on the plate" thing. I did calorie counting. Even managed to lose some weight doing it. A whole 30 pounds at my best over an agonizing year. Every day was a constant battle with myself to look at the goals of where I wanted to be and fight every fiber of my being to not eat more food. I was hungry all the time. And it never stuck. No matter what I did I couldn't keep up with it.

And I assumed it was a lack of self control. A lack of will power. I assumed I just needed to try harder. And try harder I did. Time and time and time again. Nothing. Then recently I started a medication, with a side effect of reducing your appetite. Suddenly, I'm losing weight with ease. And I learned something interesting. The first week, I was convinced I was having anxiety attacks. Like clockwork every day, around 6 hours after taking the meds, my stomach would start knotting up. I'd start feeling this weird feeling like something was wrong and I needed to do something about it. And then it hit me, ~6 hours after taking the medications was also lunch time, or dinner time. I was getting hungry. And what was novel was realizing I'd never NOT been hungry my entire life since I was a teenager. I thought I was having anxiety attacks because I had never once felt the feeling of not being hungry turning into hunger. I stopped eating when I physically couldn't eat any more food, or the food ran out, never because I was satiated by the food. "Getting hungry" again was just the feeling of being stuffed going away. But I was always hungry.

Since starting the medication, I've lost close to 50 pounds. And it's SOOO much easier than it's ever been in the past. I can eat a normal meal, and just be satisfied with that. I can think to myself "I'm hungry, I should get a snack", and then follow that thought up with "I'm about to have lunch/dinner in an hour, I can wait" and actually follow through on that. I can stop thinking about that snack. I can count my calories for the day, see that I'm at my limit and just make the decision to stop eating any more food. Heck there are days where I have to make the conscious decision to make and eat more food because I'm too far under my limit for the day, but I've just not been hungry that day.

So yes, I'm putting less food on my plate, just like I could and did before the medication. But let me assure you that doing the things to "avoid temptation" is a hell of a lot easier when your body and mind aren't actively working against you.

Staple_Diet• 2 years ago

You should know that the 'Marshmallow Test' is a poor study. The general conclusions after follow up were that children had an intrinsic self-control mechanism that influenced success rates in later life. However, the original experiment failed to control for several factors, least of which was socio-economic status. Subsequent controlled replications show that these factors have a significant influence on the outcome, suggesting that resisting temptation is less about self-control/will power and more about food security. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050075/

abalaji• 2 years ago

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

dekhn• 2 years ago

"Researchers confirm their own biases using poor quality study"

akomtu• 2 years ago

It's a tautology. Self-control is about controlling your self, which is made of thoughts and desires. Either you control them, or they control you.

RajT88• 2 years ago

I for one can attest to this. I saw great gains in power, and the power people perceived in me once I prioritized and stuck to a strict exercise regime.

Once I started doing 100 pushups, 100 situps, 100 air squats, and a 10-km run every day, I found greater strength and focus in my life. I felt I could easily take on just about any task with ease and immediately conquer it!

Eventually, I got into training which used higher-than-normal gravity to maximize resistance and further build strength.

After a while I measured my power, and it was well over 9000!

fsckboy2• 2 years ago

having self-control could be a result of having higher IQ: being better able to figure out the future results of current behavior.

And "higher IQ leads to power" (on average, population statistic) is not counterintuitive.

faeriechangling2• 2 years ago

You would think so, but IQ and conscientiousness have essentially zero correlation. Smart but lazy is an actual thing.

omgJustTest• 2 years ago

Welcome to 101 in people do not like failure.

begueradj• 2 years ago

Winston Churchill said: “A man is about as big as the things that make him angry”.

But Steve Jobs could also be a tyrant. He was obsessively controlling, and given to fits of rage, throwing tantrums and yelling at employees and board members.

(quoted).

Read the internal Tesla employee survey from 2018, where employees called Elon Musk an 'unapproachable tyrant' who fires people 'because of his ego'

(Quoted)

... The list is long ...

bitwize• 2 years ago

Darth Vader is just so much cooler and more menacing than Kylo Ren, and a lot of it is to do with that the latter loses his shit when he encounters an obstacle.

BenFranklin100• 2 years ago

The second half of the study (setting but not meeting ambitious goalposts) seems to conflate self-control with realism. Setting impossible goals is not a trait one wants in a leader. This result may have little to do with perceptions of self-control.

barrystaes• 2 years ago

Nice article. It is good to bear in mind the perception of selfcontrol by observers does not actually correlate with the actual selfcontrol that a person exercises.

davidhay• 2 years ago

It would be interesting to map how powerful a person is to their perceived power via this study.

tboyd472• 2 years ago

Makes you wonder why the stereotype of the "Playboy"-type billionaire who is slave to his desires has been pushed and accepted for long, when it's plainly false.

48864w6ui• 2 years ago

Is it plainly false in your circles? In mine, only one acquired (economic) power; all the rest inherited, and they do tend more to the playboy stereotypes. (But this dichotomy may largely be due to the fact that only the former is a nerd?)

tboyd472• 2 years ago

Wait 10-20 years and re-evaluate which of them is successful and which isn't.

thecosas• 2 years ago

Enjoyed this tidbit from the bottom of the article:

  “To motivate their employees, organizations often want employees to set stretch goals – goals that are challenging and hard-to-reach. However, we found that setting a stretch goal and not meeting it makes someone look less powerful than setting an easy goal and surpassing it,” said Rady School PhD student Shuang Wu, the first author of the paper.

FredPret• 2 years ago

Let me tell you - I did a five-star job of opening my laptop this morning. Just super - knocked it out of the park.

m463• 2 years ago

don't break the hinge achieving your stretch goal. :)

jyunwai2• 2 years ago

I hadn't considered the aspect of 'looking powerful/competent' before, but I have found setting limited goals useful for thinking strategically.

The practical benefits of a limited versus highly ambitious short-term goal from the outset include an avoidance of 'feature creep' where you're tempted to add more nice-to-have features partway through, more self-confidence that you can achieve the goal with a little effort, and a clearly-identified decision point upon achieving the goal, where you can decide whether to continue on with the project for more ambitious goals, or satisfyingly call the project complete.

In educational psychology, this is known as the "zone of proximal development" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development), which I've also heard as called "i+1 planning."

advael5• 2 years ago

This has a kind of silly sleight of hand I've unfortunately come to expect in psych research. This seems to try to study power while controlling for... power?

It can definitely be interesting to see how the personality one projects can influence the social dynamics of a peer group (with the usual caveats that studying people in laboratory conditions for something iterated and evolving like social relationships is famously fraught in the first place), but this notion of power as something that's given to people by social perception on a moment-to-moment basis seems ill-suited to describe the real world, where in many contexts the relevant power is official and considerably less up for social negotiation

JellyBeanThief2• 2 years ago

The word "official" is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting there.

advael5• 2 years ago

It's here used as shorthand for "not merely a social illusion constructed by the person it is acting upon"

Some power derives from charisma, force of personality, or social fluency. But lots of power, from the perspective of the people it is acting on, derives from or relies on nothing of the sort, and merely requires that consequences can be enacted for failure to cooperate with the power dynamic at play

This narrative is not insignificant. A lot of powerful people love to tell a story where power is just a personal competency, and consequently, that anyone's lack of power in any circumstance is, as the gamers say, a skill issue

janalsncm• 2 years ago

Seems pretty clear to me. Official power means the person has been designated as an authority.

hackerlight• 2 years ago

Ozempic side effects: may cause unwanted power

glp1guide• 2 years ago

Also, possibly curing cancer:

https://glp1.guide/content/glp1-vs-cancer

Self-control signals and affords power

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