Top 3 Willpower Myths
#1 — Willpower is like a muscle
When you use willpower, you get drained. If you use it regularly, you’ll get more of it. Isn’t this obvious? For a long time psychologists thought so too, and hundreds of studies seemed to back this idea up. They called it ‘ego depletion’. But now it seems they were wrong. A team of researchers went through all the studies on ego depletion and found … very little.
“ Here, we evaluated the empirical evidence for this effect with a series of focused, meta-analytic tests that address the limitations in prior appraisals of the evidence. We find very little evidence that the depletion effect is a real phenomenon, at least when assessed with the methods most frequently used in the laboratory. Our results strongly challenge the idea that self-control functions as if it relies on a limited psychological or physical resource.”
#2 — Positive thinking boosts willpower
If you’re feeling low on willpower, you should picture how great things will be later, right? It makes sense. Things may be bad right now, but later you will have your reward. It turns out that positive thinking drains you of energy. Why? Because your happy thoughts comfort you, and this makes your brain interpret this as: everything is fine so we can just relax.
“ Induced positive fantasies resulted in less energy than fantasies that questioned the desired future , negative fantasies, or neutral fantasies. Additionally, positive fantasies yielded a larger decrease in energy when they pertained to a more rather than a less pressing need. Results indicate that one reason positive fantasies predict poor achievement is because they do not generate energy to pursue the desired future.”
#3 — Self-affirmation enhances willpower
If you tell yourself you will complete that project, you are more likely to do it than if you doubt whether you will do it. Right? Surprisingly, doubt enhances willpower more than self-affirmation. When you tell yourself you are going to do something, much like when you picture a bright future, you relax. When you ask yourself whether you are going to do something, you have to deal with the possibility that you will not do it. This appears to be much more motivating.
“ Participants were more likely to solve anagrams if they prepared for the task by asking themselves whether they would work on anagrams as opposed to declaring that they would. Merely writing Will I as opposed to I will as part of an ostensibly unrelated handwriting task produced better anagram-solving performance and stronger intentions to exercise.”
