Neuroscience
When your willpower levels have been drained by an earlier test, that’s when you’re most vulnerable to temptation. One way to protect yourself is to form so-called ‘if-then’ plans. For example, imagine that you wanted to avoid getting angry the next time your boss is overly critical, you could form the plan ‘if my boss says my work is amateurish I will recall the time that I won an award’ – a thought which will hopefully have a soothing effect. The effects of so-called ‘implementation intentions’ have been researched in-depth by Peter Gollwitzer at the University of Konstanz. In one recent study he tested students’ ability to persevere with anagram tasks after they’d resisted laughing while watching comedy clips, thus leaving their willpower depleted. Those who followed the vague plan ‘I will find as many solutions as possible’ performed poorly on the anagram tasks as expected. However, willpower depletion had no such adverse effect on students who followed the additional, more detailed plan: ‘...And if I have solved one anagram, then I will immediately start work on the next!’. [For further information, visit Prof Gollwitzer's website where you will find links to many of his articles]
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This post is part of the Research Digest's Sin Week. Each day for Seven days we'll be posting a confession, a new sin and a way to be good. The festivities coincide with the publication of a feature-length article on the psychology behind the Seven Deadly Sins in this month's Psychologist magazine.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Seven ways to be good: 6) Form if-then plans
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This post is part of the Research Digest's Sin Week. Each day for Seven days we'll be posting a confession, a new sin and a way to be good. The festivities coincide with the publication of a feature-length article on the psychology behind the Seven Deadly Sins in this month's Psychologist magazine.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- The Digest Guide To ... Willpower
10 years of the Research DigestThis is the sixth and last in a series of self-help posts drawing on the BPS Research Digest archive to mark its tenth anniversary. The previous posts covered studying, human attraction, happiness, influencing...
- Seven New Deadly Sins: 7) Insert Your Sin Here
Our panel of psychologists suggested Truthiness, Iphonophilia, Narcissistic Myopia, Entitlement, Mobile Abuse, and Excessive Debt as new Deadly Sins relevant to the 21st century. What do you think of these and what new sins do you propose? Celebrity worship?...
- Seven New Deadly Sins: 5) Mobile Abuse
Mobile abuse: ‘Shouting into your cell phone on the bus, or as the curtain is going up at the opera – that happened to me,’ says Helen Fisher at Rutgers University. ‘I mean where are these people coming from, where is their brain? It is extreme...
- Seven Ways To Be Good: 5) Clench Your Muscles
We tend to associate acts of willpower with people clenching their jaw or fists. A study published last year showed that this muscular tension isn’t merely a side-effect of willpower, it actually helps bolster our self-control [pdf]. Across five studies,...
- Seven Ways To Be Good: 4) Practise Self-control
Willpower is like a muscle – the more you train it, the more powerful it will become, thus helping you to resist the Seven Deadly Sins. For example, in a study published last year, Mark Muraven at the University of Albany had a subset of participants...