You Think You Have Limited Willpower or You Actually Do?
Do you know about Baumeister and his willpower theory? One of the most well-known facts of his theory is that willpower is limited and it will be depleted when people exert too much self- control. However, I found an interesting paper on the implicit theories about willpower when I was preparing for my proposal of the final project for this class. Veronika Job and her colleagues now suggest that “self-regulatory failure following the brief exertion of self-control results from people’s beliefs about their available resources rather than from a true lack of resources” (Job et el, 2015). So they are saying if you believe willpower is not easily depleted by acts of self-control, you will procrastinate less and handle stress better and have a better GPA. To be noticed, Carol Dweck, one of the most influential motivational psychologists, was the supervisor of the study. Once again, she is challenging the most popular views towards willpower.
For the study, they recruited 176 students from a selective university in the Western United States. Students were asked to fill out an online questionnaire at five time points. At Time 1 participants completed 6-item measure assessing theories about will power with respect to strenuous mental exertion such as “Your mental stamina fuels itself; even after strenuous mental exertion you can continue doing more of it” and then the follow-up questionnaires measured everyday self-regulation based on self-reports of the frequency of procrastination, consumption of unhealthy food, poor time management, excess spending and failure to control emotions. The third part measured students’ anticipated self-regulatory demands and lastly, students reported their course load and current GPA.
Analysis of this study shows an interesting result, even though students with a limited and a nonlimited theory anticipated similar self-regulatory demands, only students with a limited theory responded to high demands with more self-regulation failures. When students hold the belief that their willpower is limited, they tend to procrastinate more in completing their work. In contrary, the nonlimited theory led people to maximize their resources and deploy them more effectively in high demand situation.
One thing that needs to keep in mind is nonlimited theory only works better when demands are high for self-regulations. The research shows that when demands are low, people who are with nonlimited theory do worse than the ones with limited theory. Researchers speculate that maybe because a nonlimited theory “wasted” their self-regulatory resources relatively since the task is so easy (eg., non-academic activities).
To wrap up, let’s see how non-limited theory can benefit us as students who often face high demands for self-regulations.
1. Students who believe their willpower is nonlimited get better grades than those ones who do not.
2. Students who believe their willpower is nonlimited procrastinate less than those ones who do not.
3. Thinking of willpower as a nonlimited resource helps us stay focused on our goals when a heavy workload.
Not only the nonlimited theory motivates us to regulate ourselves better, it also removes a process that undermines self-regulation. What do you think about this? Finals are around the corner, do you think it’s the time to change your mindset towards willpower?
Reference:
Job, V., Walton, G. M., Bernecker, K., & Dweck, C. S. (2015). Implicit theories about willpower predict self-regulation and grades in everyday life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(4), 637–647.
