IIn the 1960s, Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel devised a way to measure self-control in four-year-olds. He would leave the toddlers alone in a room with a plate of marshmallows and a challenge: they could eat one marshmallow immediately, or wait until the adult came back and eat two. In the decades that followed, he noticed something interesting. The four-year-olds who waited for the two marshmallows did better in school, were less likely to take drugs or end up in jail, were happier and earned more. He came to believe that self-control, the ability to delay gratification, was the key to success.
More recently, however, psychologists challenged his findings. Mischel’s original studies followed fewer than 90 children, who were all enrolled in the same nursery school. Once you start studying larger and more diverse groups, another pattern emerges: it’s wealthier kids who are better able to resist the marshmallow. This is partly because they are more likely to trust that they will really get two marshmallows if they wait. It’s also because our ability to resist temptation is shaped by our environment in complex and under-recognized ways. Basically: we are not fully in control of our self-control.
If pressed, most people will admit that luck has played a large role in their life. You had no say in where you were born, whether your parents were loving or abusive, rich or poor. You did not choose your talents or personal qualities, your musical gifts or physical attractiveness. What you can take responsibility for, however, is how you played the hand you were dealt, whether you squandered your early advantages or thrived against the odds. And yet even your capacity for perseverance, your grit and willpower are shaped by forces far beyond your control. A recent twin study suggested that your genes play a big role in determine your level of self-control. And that’s before you factor in the influence of social status, education and income, because childhood adversity, discrimination, stress, exhaustion and hunger all affect activity in the prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that is activated when we try to doing real, hardest thing. If so, how responsible should we feel for our decline in willpower?
Of course, environmental influence is not just about childhood. Consider weight loss. Around half of UK adults say this they are usually trying to lose weight, and chances are they are fighting a losing battle. But the expansion of waistlines in much of the world does not reflect a collective loss of discipline so much as the effects of the modern Western diet, sedentary lifestyle and the rise of ultra-processed foods designed to hijack your appetite . Companies know the secrets to making junk food “hyperpalatable.” They know we can’t resist food that has a similar carb-to-fat ratio to breast milk, that we don’t even notice we’re overeating when food is so soft it barely requires chewing. It’s asking a lot of yourself to stand up to a multibillion-pound global industry with a vested interest in fueling your hunger.
Much of the modern world is deliberately designed to tap into our reward systems, making temptation ubiquitous and harder to resist. If you can’t seem to focus at work because you keep wasting time on social media or get distracted by WhatsApp notifications, remember that your phone is designed to be addictive: it’s built to keep your attention to pull “There are a thousand people on the other side of your screen whose job it is to break down the self-regulation you have,” observed technology ethicist Tristan Harris. If you can’t stick to your budget and keep buying useless things, think about how many ads you come across daily, how often a new one will appear on your computer screen, specifically targeted to your taste.
None of this suggests that you should give up on giving up bad habits or abandon any attempts at self-discipline. We would be miserable, unhealthy and ethically compromised if we resigned ourselves to having no say in how we behave. Instead, it may help to think differently about willpower. Research suggests that the people we tend to admire for their self-control actually need to practice it less often. They are good at designing their environment so that they do not have to struggle with temptation: for example, they know that it is easier not to buy a packet of cookies than to stop eating after opening the packet, and they are good at building healthy habits and routines.
They are also better at understanding their own motivations. When you find yourself apathetic at work, is it because you can’t resist distractions? Or is it because you don’t want to do your job anymore? One study self-control linked to the pursuit of goals you value and enjoy – “want to” rather than “have to”. In other words, if you really want to excel at self-control, try to avoid ending up in the same situation as Mischel’s poor toddlers, staring down a plate full of marshmallows and wondering why you have to play this stupid game anyway.
Further reading
Determined: Life without free will by Robert Sapolsky (Vintage, £22)
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Ultra-Processed People: Why Are We All Eating Stuff That’s Not Food…and Why Can’t We Stop? by Chris van Tulleken (Cornerstone, £22)
Irresistible: Why You’re Addicted to Technology and How to Free Yourself by Adam Alter (Vintage, £9.99)
