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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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Self-control is one of our most cherished values. We applaud those who have the discipline to regulate their appetites and actions, and we try hard to instill this virtue in our children. Think of the marketing slogans that key off the desire for restraint: “Just say no.” “Just do it.” We celebrate the power of the mind to make hard choices, despite our emotions or other temptations, and keep us on course.
But what if we can’t just do it? What if “it” is too difficult or if our strategy for success is misguided? Is it possible that willpower actually might be an obstacle rather than a means to happiness and harmony? Can we have too much of a good thing?
Two Tufts University psychologists believe there may be some truth to this possibility. Evan P. Apfelbaum and Samuel R. Sommers were intrigued by the notion that too much self-control may indeed have a downside—and that relinquishing some personal power might be paradoxically tonic, both for individuals and for society. They decided to test this idea in the laboratory.
Your Inner Bigot
They explored the virtue of powerlessness in the arena of race relations. They figured that well-intentioned people are careful—sometimes hypercareful—not to say the wrong thing about race in a mixed-race group. Furthermore, they thought that such effortful self-control might actually cause both unease and dishonesty, which could in turn be misconstrued as racial prejudice.
To test this theory, they first deliberately sapped the mental powers of a number of volunteers. This practice is not as diabolical as it sounds. Researchers ran the participants through a series of computer-based mental exercises that are so challenging that the subjects temporarily deplete their cognitive reserves needed for discipline. Once they had the volunteers in this compromised state of mind, they put the group (and others who were not so depleted) into a social situation with the potential for racial tension. Here it is:
Each white subject is left alone in a room. A black man enters and asks if the volunteer will consent to a brief interview on the issue of how universities should guarantee racial diversity. This question is ostensibly unrelated to the self-control experiment, but in fact that is a ruse. The interviewer asks the participant to share any thoughts he or she might have on this “hot topic,” and the conversation is recorded.
It was that simple, although sometimes the interviewers were white, to serve as controls. Afterward, the volunteers rated the interaction for comfort, awkwardness and enjoyment. In addition, independent judges—both black and white—analyzed the five-minute interactions, commenting on how cautious the volunteers were, how direct in their answers, and how racially prejudiced.
Failure of Control
The results were provocative. As reported in the February issue of the journal Psychological Science, those who were mentally depleted—that is, those who did not have the energy to exert personal discipline and self-control—found talking about race with a black man much more enjoyable than did those whose self-control was intact. That outcome is presumably because they were not working so hard at monitoring and curbing what they said. It may seem counterintuitive, but being cognitively drained made them less inhibited and more candid, which felt good.
And it wasn’t just the volunteers’ perceptions of the experience: the independent black observers found that the powerless volunteers were much more direct and authentic in conversation. And perhaps most striking, blacks saw the less inhibited whites as less prejudiced against blacks. In other words, relinquishing power over oneself appears to thwart overthinking and “liberate” people for more authentic relationships.
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17 Comments
Add Commentwow thats really interesting!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother quick and easy way to "turn self-control off" is with alcohola lot of people already know this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile I was reading this fascinating article (I love all self-control-related topics), I remembered a personal experience which was very similar to the experiment here described. I was chatting with a gay man and I was really drunk. The conversation flowed with ease as Iwith the "aid" of ethanolput all my prejudices apart and started talking with honesty.
Perhaps too much self-control can be harmful, as it was suggested by the experiment's evidence. Let it be clear, nevertheless, that this article only explores the nature of self-control and powerlessness in social interactions. It would be interesting to see what's the other side of the cointightening or loosening self-control in self interactions.
First, where this article goes astray in my opinion. It starts from the wrong place. Perhaps through sloppiness in exposition, it seems to applaud lapses of self-control in general, which is a bad thing. Most problems we run into in daily life are *because* of our failures to apply self-control and self-regulation skills appropriately and effectively, not because we are too self-controlled.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is already a body of research on self-control, we are not starting from scratch here with no understanding of whether self-control is "really" important or not and debating that question. A more realistic perspective is that self-control is a well-established virtue, a developed capacity, rather than a "value." The ability to exercise it has been clearly shown to distinguish more succesful from less successful people time and time again, both individually and statistically. That's apparently because self-control skills are resources which allow us to focus on something other than immediately compelling stimuli, and so overcomes the otherwise overwhelming bias to act on impulse.
Where the ideas here are interesting and add value in my opinion is that it makes the legitimate underlying point that even a virtue can be taken too far if you treat it as a formal rule or an obsession rather than a guiding principle. It is possible to be too honest with your friends about their faults, too courageous in situations that don't really merit action, and too self-controlled to live a good life.
That doesn't mean self-control is less valued in the least, it just means that prudence and balance are more important virtues. The point is that we suffer if we de-emphasize self-control unless we already have other virtues to balance it with. Giving up strict control is very good sometimes, if you still have looser constraints as a safety net. Falling from self-control to relaxed ease is very different from falling from self-control to licentiousness.
In reading some spiritual literature, an emphasis is on allowing and accepting things as are helps me feel relaxed and promotes my meditative state of mind. This is the opposite of trying self control, which wrecks my peace of mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think it also has to do with trust. We tend to not allow others to help us, and allow them to do what they have experience in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe don't give enough credit to interviewers who have a job to interview..., that is their job, and usually they have lots of experience from doing it with several different types of people.
The same is true in the social assistance network. They try and help those in need, and sometimes find their client testrust their motives, and even their experience of being helpers to help elevate their burdens. We tend to wonder of what kind of experience they have, and in back of our minds, we think (it will be my luck if I get someone with no experience). We do not give enough credit to those who have the experience of helping.
It’s never a bad idea to challenge a preconception. And to some degree, our culture’s predilection for self control can be challenged. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water for those that may ignore the critical qualifier “little” in the aphorism, “Try a Little Powerlessness." ToddStark’s point about balance needs emphasis.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSure, when I have a hangover, I can sometimes focus better on a complex task that might otherwise be thwarted by too much attention to detail. But that same complex task while drunk is hopeless. And religious and social institutions that promote putting a community before yourself serve the stable vitality of culture. There is a “giving in” to that community. Yet, paradoxically back the other way, one is also moderating their individualism to fit in; either habitually or consciously. Where’s the distinction between “giving in” and “stepping into line?” This is an interesting question worth investigation and I think this study offers something. Never the less, this article is in dire need of a follow-up that explores how millions of years of neo-cortical evolution have served to control our reptilian impulses in favor of higher group goals. These goals have thus served the evolution of our human cooperative culture that made such studies possible.
nancyn has the right idea. If we can stay focused on the present moment, and take everything just as it is, there is no need for self-control, which is a "virtue" only in that it is perceived to be necessary in order to give the appropriate *meaning* to what happens. If we understand that there is NO meaning, other than what we attach, there is no need for self-control.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSeems to me that, by using race as the subject, the researchers are assuming that everybody is bigoted and talking about it will test their self-control.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnless your self-control is being used in some important situation such as driving, there is nothing at all wrong with letting go of control, such as during sex.
I want to reiterate that I don't think there is really a conflict between self-control and relaxed ease. They are compatible ideas. That was my problem with the slant I perceived in the article, which seemed to me to offer them as conflicting alternatives.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Living in the present moment" is wonderful, I understand that concept from two things: past experience with Zen and the scientific work on "flow." I appreciate the value of both and I don't think they conflict with the virtue of self-control as some people seem to be claiming here. In fact, my experience with Zen was that it was an extreme discipline of self-control. The END RESULT was being able to live in the present moment effectively, and that was the result of much practice to learn to differentiate ongoing uptime experience from impulses. I think there is a reasonable argument in favor of abandoning the experience of willful self-control, but my point is that this does not mean abandoning the virtue of self-control. Living in the present IS bounded by a form of self-control, it is just a less explicitly effortful form of control. In my opinion.
For those folks who have voiced the opinion that "living in the present moment" negates the need for self-control, I think you need to check into the research into delayed gratification and the effect of different levels of self-control on the quality of people's lives.
If someone is actually able to "live in the present moment" while making good decisions, they
I notice an interesting confusion here. People are using "self-control" to mean both the experience of effort and actually regulating your own thought and action. I would agree fully that it is useful and valuable to give up the *experience* of effort at self-control, and that is what Zen/mindfulness meditators do when they focus on the present moment. They don't stop regulating themselves at all levels, they just submit to a more automatic kind of control that is not effortful. Also, we aren't acting randomly during sex, we rarely injure our partner,and so on, we are still under a kind of control, but it is a very different focus of attention and different experience of control.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThink also of the kind of shift in self-control we experience during hypnosis. We no longer feel that we are controlling our own actions, yet we are. I won't go in to the argument here for those unfamiliar with hypnosis research, but this is an outcome of decades of research resulting in the view that hypnotic suggestion is essentially the "experience of effortlessness" rather than giving up control entirely.
So to the extent that the claim is that it is useful to give up the experience of self-control, I think that's a true but already very well known principle (see "Flow" books by Csikszentmihalyi for example, as well as the hypnosis research).
However, my point was that the article seems to confuse the effort at self-control with the virtue of self-control, as if we have to give up the latter completely in some sense in order to experience flow or relaxed ease.
I was once involved in a serious program of Zen mindfulness meditation and I can assure you that it is a very disciplined, self-controlled practice, even though the end result is to be able to let go and live in the present moment. The two are not alternatives, they are interlinked.
I simply claim that the article should have been more careful to distinguish the effortful experience of self-control as the object of interest here rather than the more generic concept of self-control, which we surely should not de-emphasize as a virtue, even while we strive to live in the moment.
I think the error some people may be making is that they are assuming the same mistake in the article, that self-control is incompatible with relaxed ease. As if we have to completely give it up in order to enjoy the flow experience or living in the moment. What we need to give up more is the experience of effortful trying to control, not the virtue of self-control.
Sorry for the multiple posts. The first multiple was a mistake. Here I just want to summarize more succinctly:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSaying that we need to exercise less self-control in general is a BAD thing.
Saying that we need to learn how to better relax our deliberate tiresome efforts at self-control and learn more relaxed ease and flow and living in the moment is a GOOD thing. And that means doing self-control better, not giving it up.
Plenty of people ARE still bigoted. All of this political correctness / walking on eggshells mentality just creates tension between peer groups because it is so bloody obvious and everyone knows it's just a front anyway.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen people can start loosening up to the point where they can speak honestly to each other without the fear of a lawsuit or some kind of gang beating, we will have overcome racism. The very fact that so many people have to make an effort NOT to make racist comments or decisions should be an indicator of how far we have to go.
It'll stop being an issue when we can stop dwelling on it.
Another experiment that comes to conclusions about how one should act in the world of consequences based on a situation where their actions were seen to have no such consequences.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA different conclusion one could come to is that we should often challenge ourselves maximally (as in the cognitive test that drained the subjects). Doing so will lead to both growth and powerlessness--the best of both worlds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think this is a very interesting discussion but nearly impossible to really see what this study might suggest for people to actually do differently in their lives. The subject is too broad and so embedded in cultural assumptions that those need to be addressed first before any productive conclusions can be made. For example, the whole notion of "self-control." On the one hand, learning to inhibit and shape the expression of impulses is one of the basic tasks of human development. Failing to do that, whether because of faulty parenting or neurological flaws, leaves a person unable to be a productive member of society. What I think is being referred to in the article is more along the lines of enculturation, that we learn to abide by the norms of the community we live in, whether a family or a social class, etc. Succeeding at conforming to those norms is key to belonging, which is also essential to human survival. But the world we live in today is one where we move between various "communities," from the one at work or school, our family, our neighborhood, social circle, etc. Each situation may require a different standard of what sort of behavior is acceptable or even required. The same person may find it easy to behave in certain ways when hanging out with friends at a club, or when traveling in a foreign culture, but be completely inhibited from those behaviors when visiting their parents. I think the people who conducted the study as well as the author of the article need to examine their own cultural norms a bit more deeply before making generalizations about human nature. White and Black culture, not to mention classes within those in this country, have very different behavioral norms and it may just be that the subjects were more or less able to shift their behavior to fit into an unfamiliar norm and thus be perceived as more "friendly" "tolerant" less "prejudiced" etc. by someone in that group. Ultimately, this topic is much too complicated to discuss in depth online... but thanks for bringing it up!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDid the study consider that when people of colour allow themselves to relax self-control and say what they really feel in non-controlled 'racially-charged situations' they often risk not only quite severe social consequences but in many instances their continued physical and/or mental well-being? No - because the default viewpoint to explore is the 'white' viewpoint, and clearly the most important factor in discourse about race is whites' comfort levels.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's all a bit like learning a language or any other acquired skill (touch-typing, shorthand, swimming, whatever). While you're learning, you are slow, clumsy, awkward, self-conscious and make lots and lots of errors that embarrass and choke you. Once you learn to fly, so to speak, you you can ride the wind, go with the flow, purge your mind, live in the moment - whatever.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOvercome your inhibitions and that crippling feeling of guilt and shame, and you perform better than before. You feel you're doing fine, even if others think you're crap.
Frinstance, take Reagan and Bush. Boneheads, but with no crippling sense of shame. Kings of kevlar. Though Bush froze, occasionally, while Reagan never did.
Or Mohammed Ali, such a master of his art that he appeared effortless.
If you have mastered the art of social interaction (diplomacy), then you can be natural with others, putting them at their ease and making the nose-rubbing enjoyable. But if you haven't, there are bad vibes and suspicion all round. Avoidance and exorcism.
Trouble with society today is that we're so alienated from each other (cf The Lonely Crowd - Riesman's 1950 book) that we are rarely at ease, and get little practice to help us improve.
Anyhow, this is a great experiment whose practical use will be zero - changing ourselves won't change society, but changing society will change us. Our main preoccupation should be to change society for the better.