Willpower a Finite Resource in Brain; Can be Exercised like a Muscle

[zera]

Thought this would be a great article to repost here. Its from the New York Times and details the latest neurological and psychological research into how willpower works in the human mind. There is some really fascinating advice, and we all know that kicking a habit is probably the deepest willpower sink there is.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tighten Your Belt, Strengthen Your Mind
COMMENTS
SIGN IN TO E-MAIL OR SAVE THIS
PRINT

By SANDRA AAMODT and SAM WANG
Published: April 2, 2008
DECLINING house prices, rising job layoffs, skyrocketing oil costs and a major credit crunch have brought consumer confidence to its lowest point in five years. With a relatively long recession looking increasingly likely, many American families may be planning to tighten their belts.

Enlarge This Image

Michael Klein
Interestingly, restraining our consumer spending, in the short term, may cause us to actually loosen the belts around our waists. What’s the connection? The brain has a limited capacity for self-regulation, so exerting willpower in one area often leads to backsliding in others. The good news, however, is that practice increases willpower capacity, so that in the long run, buying less now may improve our ability to achieve future goals — like losing those 10 pounds we gained when we weren’t out shopping.

The brain’s store of willpower is depleted when people control their thoughts, feelings or impulses, or when they modify their behavior in pursuit of goals. Psychologist Roy Baumeister and others have found that people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task.

In one pioneering study, some people were asked to eat radishes while others received freshly baked chocolate chip cookies before trying to solve an impossible puzzle. The radish-eaters abandoned the puzzle in eight minutes on average, working less than half as long as people who got cookies or those who were excused from eating radishes. Similarly, people who were asked to circle every “e” on a page of text then showed less persistence in watching a video of an unchanging table and wall.

Other activities that deplete willpower include resisting food or drink, suppressing emotional responses, restraining aggressive or sexual impulses, taking exams and trying to impress someone. Task persistence is also reduced when people are stressed or tired from exertion or lack of sleep.

What limits willpower? Some have suggested that it is blood sugar, which brain cells use as their main energy source and cannot do without for even a few minutes. Most cognitive functions are unaffected by minor blood sugar fluctuations over the course of a day, but planning and self-control are sensitive to such small changes. Exerting self-control lowers blood sugar, which reduces the capacity for further self-control. People who drink a glass of lemonade between completing one task requiring self-control and beginning a second one perform equally well on both tasks, while people who drink sugarless diet lemonade make more errors on the second task than on the first. Foods that persistently elevate blood sugar, like those containing protein or complex carbohydrates, might enhance willpower for longer periods.

In the short term, you should spend your limited willpower budget wisely. For example, if you do not want to drink too much at a party, then on the way to the festivities, you should not deplete your willpower by window shopping for items you cannot afford. Taking an alternative route to avoid passing the store would be a better strategy.

On the other hand, if you need to study for a big exam, it might be smart to let the housecleaning slide to conserve your willpower for the more important job. Similarly, it can be counterproductive to work toward multiple goals at the same time if your willpower cannot cover all the efforts that are required. Concentrating your effort on one or at most a few goals at a time increases the odds of success.

Focusing on success is important because willpower can grow in the long term. Like a muscle, willpower seems to become stronger with use. The idea of exercising willpower is seen in military boot camp, where recruits are trained to overcome one challenge after another.

In psychological studies, even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity. People who stick to an exercise program for two months report reducing their impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework. Other forms of willpower training, like money-management classes, work as well.

No one knows why willpower can grow with practice but it must reflect some biological change in the brain. Perhaps neurons in the frontal cortex, which is responsible for planning behavior, or in the anterior cingulate cortex, which is associated with cognitive control, use blood sugar more efficiently after repeated challenges. Or maybe one of the chemical messengers that neurons use to communicate with one another is produced in larger quantities after it has been used up repeatedly, thereby improving the brain’s willpower capacity.

Whatever the explanation, consistently doing any activity that requires self-control seems to increase willpower — and the ability to resist impulses and delay gratification is highly associated with success in life.

Sandra Aamodt, the editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, and Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton, are the authors of “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/op...=1&oref=slogin

Reputation Comments on this post:

	excellent! great read thank you for reposting here
	Very cool article! Thanks for finding it.
	Very interesting article.

[Dickon]

I think this is one of the most interesting things I've read in a long time. I wonder if it can be applied practically to the problem of going from addiction to recovery. Any thoughts on this?

Dickon

[Gradient]

Originally Posted by zera

The brain’s store of willpower is depleted when people control their thoughts, feelings or impulses, or when they modify their behavior in pursuit of goals. Psychologist Roy Baumeister and others have found that people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task.

Thanks - I really like this! This is definitely an interesting article, and it certainly has wide implications. I could easily see this cognitive 'balance-of-willpower' principle applied to poly-drug addiction therapy, depression/anxiety counseling, general behavioral/cognitive therapies, etc - and it might contribute to current therapies. Good thinking, Dickon!

However, the article (or passage from a book?) seems to take a pretty holistic approach to discussing willpower - which is potentially problematic when diagnosing such nuanced conditions. It seems to me that this behavioral dynamic - willpower - is really an umbrella term used to describe aggregate abilities of primarily focused attention, delayed gratification, and planning for future events - each of which has a pretty consistently associated neural substrate (global pallidus, ventral tegmentum & nucleus accumbens & medial forebrain bundle, and the prefrontal cortex/hippocampus - respectively). Of course, behavior is very rarely correlated to one specific region of the brain in a 1 to 1 manner; most behaviors recruit many disparate regions of the brain during activity - it's the areas with the highest levels of activity that are typically identified as the 'most responsible'. It would therefore surprise me if there was one identifiable function or circuit in the human brain that would consistently be identified as 'willpower' in multiple individuals; it seems more likely that it's the proportion of contribution of many related functions to generate a certain level of perceived willpower - the quality of which will be determined by the relative contributions. For example, I imagine an individual with a comparatively underdeveloped sense of delayed gratification, but highly active attentional & planning facilities, to be a very headstrong and intelligent individual, that may be perceived as impetuous to some, but knows what their established 'goal' is - and is actually quite methodical, determined, and sharp. Of course these are generalizations, but that's a fun part of cognitive neuroscience . Perhaps it would be better to assess willpower as a function of the relative contributions of experimentally identified principle components?

Similarly, people who were asked to circle every “e” on a page of text then showed less persistence in watching a video of an unchanging table and wall.

What limits willpower? Some have suggested that it is blood sugar, which brain cells use as their main energy source and cannot do without for even a few minutes. Most cognitive functions are unaffected by minor blood sugar fluctuations over the course of a day, but planning and self-control are sensitive to such small changes. Exerting self-control lowers blood sugar, which reduces the capacity for further self-control.

Here is some innovation! I like this approach to the 'stores' or 'limits' of willpower, because it's finally one of the first times I haven't seen Dopamine mentioned. Clearly, if willpower might be characterized as a function multiplex in nature - there can't be one physiological limit of an individual's capability at willpower. Rather, it's likely be a combination of a handful of contributing factors - including catecholamine activity, level of perceived energy, and this intriguing blood sugar theory - that will act to limit the expression of willpower. I can imagine newer ADHD/ADD therapies integrating diet modifications into pharmacological treatments, with the hopes of more effectively grappling with behavioral transitions on a more personal basis. This is a great direction for pharmacology to take; I think nutrition has alot to lend to pharmacological treatments.

Thanks again!