Personal Blogs

David Robson, journalist and "science author" has written a piece of prime pop psychology for BBC Worklife on the subject of willpower, arguing that 'mindset' can give you access to greater motivation, determination and ultimately, career success. 

This one: "The mindset that brings unlimited willpower."

The main argument is based on Veronika Job's 2010 study, 'Is It All in Your Head? Implicit Theories About Willpower Affect Self-Regulation'. In this study, and in her subsequent research, she found that people's beliefs about willpower affect how well they perform on moderately demanding cognitive tasks. In short, believing that willpower is a depletable resource that you run out of if you try too hard makes you less likely to focus on a tough task. However, believing that willpower is a kind of muscle you can strengthen makes you more likely to focus, even when a task is tough. It also apparently correlates to less procrastination on revision, more avoiding sugary or fatty food, etc. Mindset gives you power. 

Like most of this self-help stuff, Robson's article left me a bit prickly. This is partly because, as a final year psychologist, I'm doing a study on the moralization of work and am well aware that it has a dark side, and partly because his conclusion clashes with my own experience of motivation. Surely there are times when "with all the will in the world," we just can't seem to make the better choice? I can't help but feeling that the mindset thing is just empty marketing talk that simply contributes to good book sales. But how can it even be argued against?

I looked into the Job's original 2010 study, (rather industriously I think you'll agree, at about 5 AM in the morning) to see if it had any glaring weaknesses. However, in general it seems to have been a very well conducted set of studies that provides support for the hypothesis. Taking just the first study, it's possible to argue that the causal arrow is wrong, that it is personality that informs belief, and eventually causes different results on ego-depletion tests. However the next study 'primes' the attitude in a random sample and still finds a result, showing that attitude is likely a causal factor. 

If I had to quibble, we could say that the ego-depletion tests used by Job are themselves unreliable measures (debatable) or maybe that the studied task itself is not spectacularly effortful. But more importantly what is the effect size? Job uses an 'odds ratio' to indicate the effect size of attitude on task performance, and in study 1 the 'OR' is 1.32. According to Chen, Cohen and Chen (2010) this is equivalent to a small effect size. And if we look at the descriptive statistics, we see that the actual difference in mistakes on the ego depletion task is at most a 6% extra probability, so yeah. In ironic capitals, SMALL. 

This might be enough to put grand claims about attitude's ability to increase willpower to one side. Yes, attitude towards willpower might contribute to people's level of effort on tasks, but it is a small constituent of such motivated attention - there are likely to be much more important factors: actual tiredness, calorie intake, level of stress, or of course, ADHD etc. I think that David Robson from the BBC has somewhat overstated our ability to think our way to motivation, but it is not good enough for me. I'm suspicious that something else is going on.

Willpower is a screwy concept. I'm not the first to say this. Brain and behaviour scientists Gross and Duckworth (2021) have also criticised the concept as having no useful meaning. Just the idea of 'will' alone is debatable, and has been debated by philosophers for centuries. Also implicit in the construction of the word is 'power' - a metaphor of a depletable resource that motivates activity just as long as it remains. The connected ideas of replenishing and re-energising follow directly from this. 

But where in the brain can we find the will? Where is willpower stored? What kind of energy is 'willpower' exactly? Is it a chemical? Electricity? Rising gas? G & D are correct that the concept leaves much to be desired. It is a biochemical model with no biochemical signature - like chakras or chi. Willpower is what we call a folk psychological concept; it is a theory about a mysterious substance inhabiting a person that describes their likelihood of getting a job done or not, relapsing into addiction, or washing behind their ears. 

It is likely for this reason that Veronika Job is studying not willpower itself, but beliefs about willpower. And it is also likely the reason that such beliefs do seem to have a causal effect on focus (albeit a small one). In Job's study, people use the folk psychological concept of willpower and apply it to themselves. Those who think it is depletable are also those who procrastinate studying for their finals, those who think it is a strengthening muscle apparently just rep through the pain. And this is the important point. In study 3 of the paper, the research shows that both believers in depletion theory and non-depletion theory got tired from the (admittedly minimal) task they were set by the experimenters and answered so on a survey. 

What I think we are seeing here is that the two groups have different discursive approaches to feelings of exhaustion, and this does show up in their levels of focus. When feeling task exhaustion, discursive resources could be coming into play at what Gross & Duckworth call the 'appraisal' stage. The appraisal of one group seems to be: "I'm tired, so I won't put too much energy into this," while the others is "I'm tired but I can push through." This has worrying implications: perhaps when 'pushing through' we are dealing with a theory of willpower in which people are failing to listen to their body, and further, accepting the governmentality of work schedules, deadlines, examinations and so forth, contributing to burnout and later medical issues, all in the service of capital accumulation.  However, it seems these implications have been missed. 

Perhaps this can be explained by our implicit moralization of effort, as studied by Celniker et al., (2022). According to this research, all effort is viewed in positive moral terms, so the suggestion that effort generates improving results plays to our ingrained cultural biases and is thus eagerly welcomed. Not only that, but given the pervasive discourses of choice and responsibility within liberalism, the idea that there is a secret trove of energy within us we can unlock to scale the ladder of success, taking control of our bodies and minds to advance our social goals, is a cause for the kind of celebration given to it in plaudit-winning popular psychology self-help books such as David Robson's Expectation Effect. 

His BBC article begins:

 "Many people believe willpower is fixed and finite. Yet powerful strategies exist that can help us increase it."

The main problem with this, as we've seen, is that willpower does not exist. According to Gross and Duckworth, on the road to controlling behaviours, there are many steps, and willpower is not one of them. Everything following from this first mistake is bad science. The risk is that people who genuinely struggle with self-control for various reasons are continually being told that their difficulties are a YOU problem, which, if efforts to overcome it through positive thinking don't work, might contribute to a further loss of self-esteem and depression. Gross and Duckworth argue that we should look at broader ways to aid self-control, like social support, medication for conditions like ADHD, and even legal changes. 

Alternatively, we could think of reducing the 'expectation effect' and making the barriers to a good life a little lower and more accessible by simply not demanding so much effort in the first place. In liberalism we are supposed to work hard and play hard, but where is the space for some quiet contemplation far from the madding crowd? We are supposed to supplement our hard work with protective amounts of exercise, avoid but also consume economy-boosting levels of junk food and media, all this while assiduously squirrelling away enough cash for retirement just above the poverty line. Even meditation has become a site for the moralization of effort. Instead of thinking about how we can put in more hours to get the life of our dreams, maybe we should listen to our body and just let a few harmless hours slip. 

In writing this, I expended a lot of effort. I was tired, and pushed through - largely because the idea of finishing it was far more attractive than going to bed. However, this had nothing to do with willpower, it had to do with attention. I simply can't turn my attention away from something as compelling as a nicely written article. The very thing you have read is a failure of self-regulation on a school night. And for this reason alone, I submit, the world of motivational psychobabble must move (as Duckworth and Gross say) beyond willpower. 

Celniker, J.B. et al. (2022) ‘The moralization of effort’, Journal of experimental psychology. General [Preprint]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001259.

Chen, H., Cohen, P. and Chen, S. (2010) ‘How Big is a Big Odds Ratio? Interpreting the Magnitudes of Odds Ratios in Epidemiological Studies’, Communications in statistics. Simulation and computation, 39(4), pp. 860–864. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03610911003650383.

Gross, J.J. and Duckworth, A.L. (2021) ‘Beyond willpower’, The Behavioral and brain sciences, 44, pp. e37–e37. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X20000722.

Job, V., Dweck, C.S. and Walton, G.M. (2010) ‘Ego Depletion—Is It All in Your Head? Implicit Theories About Willpower Affect Self-Regulation’, Psychological science, 21(11), pp. 1686–1693. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610384745.