How to Strengthen Willpower
Success in life depends more on willpower than intelligence. And that's good news because psychologists may not know how to increase intelligence, but they are learning more about how to boost willpower.
How often do we complain about lacking strong will and determination? We abandon actions, break resolutions, fall into addictions. And we attribute it all to our weak will. But what is willpower, and can it really not be changed or strengthened?
Like a muscle.
More and more researchers are tackling this issue, focusing not so much on individual differences in willpower but rather trying to identify the psychological processes behind it. One such approach is represented by Roy F. Baumeister, a renowned researcher of self-regulation. In his concept, willpower is an internal energy resource. We use it in various activities: when making choices, persistently solving problems, or refraining from bursting into laughter. And because this resource is limited and depletes with each act of self-control, we may eventually run out of it. Baumeister explains various failures in self-control – procrastination, impulsive shopping, or overeating – in this way. Therefore, it's necessary to manage this resource wisely. Fortunately, willpower can be exercised and developed, much like muscles at the gym, as Baumeister demonstrates. All that's needed is to regularly engage in any activities focused on self-control: learning new words in a foreign language every day, keeping a food diary, or even maintaining a straight posture. And that's enough to increase our willpower.
Waiting for Two Marshmallows
An example of a kind of demystification of willpower is also found in the research of the recently deceased American psychologist Walter Mischel on delay of gratification, the ability to forego immediate rewards in favor of larger ones deferred in time. In his experiments, Mischel employed the procedure of the famous "marshmallow test." He gave preschoolers participating in the study a choice: they could decide whether they wanted to receive one marshmallow immediately or were willing to wait, in which case they would receive two sweet marshmallows.
Some children were able to resist the temptation and wait. The research showed that this was due to attentional processes: the children could shift their attention away from those features of the marshmallow (such as its tempting taste or smell) that hindered them from achieving their goal, which was to wait. Instead, they directed their attention to something else that didn't intensify the temptation – they observed the shape of the marshmallow and thought about what it resembled, etc. These studies demonstrated that willpower is associated with certain competencies, and these competencies can be acquired. It was enough for the children to receive a brief instruction (e.g., imagine that it's not a real marshmallow, just a picture of one), and they could wait longer.
The Distracting Clown
Competencies related to willpower can indeed be acquired – another study by Walter Mischel and his team demonstrates this. Children were copying symbols from a board, which was a rather boring task. Meanwhile, the researchers constructed what they called the Clown Box, which tried in various ways to distract the children from their work. The children were divided into four groups. The first group was forewarned that the Clown Box would appear and were instructed on how to ignore its prompts for play. The second group was told that when the Clown Box encouraged them to play, they should focus on their work. The instruction for the next group encouraged children to both ignore the Clown Box's prompts and focus on their work. Children in the last group received no instructions on how to deal with the temptation, they weren't even forewarned about the clown's appearance. It turned out that the most effective strategy was inhibiting the temptation by redirecting attention away from the clown. Less effective was focusing attention on the boring task. Children who received no instructions performed the worst.
This result was corroborated by Shelley Taylor, who studied students preparing for exams. They received various instructions regarding so-called mental simulations, which involved mentally elaborating on actions related to exam preparation. Students in the first group were to think about how they would study over the next few days; in the second – what grade they wanted to get on the exam; in the third, they thought about both the learning process and the exam outcome, while the last group served as a control – students were instructed to record how much time they spent studying. The best results were achieved by individuals in the first group, who constructed a plan of action for each day leading up to the exam. In the second group, where students imagined only a positive exam outcome, they initially felt the greatest enthusiasm and motivation to study, but this did not translate into any concrete actions. In the third group, where students thought about both a positive outcome and developed a plan of action for each day, they indeed achieved good exam scores, but at the same time reported the most signs of tension and worries about whether they would be able to achieve a high score. Imagining that we aced the exam can create unnecessary pressure. It's better to focus on what we need to do rather than what we want to achieve.
Furthermore, students who focused solely on developing an action plan expressed a willingness to use such a strategy again when preparing for exams. In contrast, those who were instructed to think about both the action plan and achieving a high score reported that they wouldn't be able to repeat a similar procedure. The group that was tasked with only recording the time spent studying performed the worst in exam preparation. It can be assumed that students in this group were unable to deal with various distractions and temptations, often succumbing to procrastination, which is common among students, meaning they procrastinated exam preparations.
The research thus confirms that willpower comprises certain competencies that we learn, often in early childhood. Later on, they largely operate on autopilot. However, this doesn't mean that as adults, we cannot acquire them. As Mischel argued, willpower relies on our ability to control attention and thoughts; this control can be instilled by developing a strategic plan on how to deal with various obstacles that hinder us from reaching our goals. Typically, we can anticipate possible temptations and competing goals that lead us to either not act or give up in the face of temporary setbacks. If we devise a plan to overcome them, the chances increase that we won't succumb to the current situation. And we'll be able to forgo what we want here and now in favor of a long-term goal.
Regret for Missed Opportunities
It's worth having such competencies. Research confirms that individuals with greater willpower achieve higher academic success and have better relationships with others, are healthier, successfully build their careers, and avoid falling into addictions. However, does foregoing immediate pleasures for distant goals lower well-being? Do people with greater willpower not only have greater life successes but are also happier?
This question was addressed by studies conducted by psychologists Wilhelm Hofmann from Wesleyan University and Maike Luhmann from Ruhr-Universität in Bochum. They analyzed participants' experiences in real-life situations. They formulated three hypotheses. The first, labeled puritanical, assumed that strong willpower negatively affects emotional well-being but positively influences life satisfaction.
One might assume that individuals with strong willpower and self-control often give up immediate pleasures, thereby achieving long-term goals but not deriving joy from life. They lead a life full of obligations, but they have satisfaction in fulfilling moral obligations and achieving success. According to the second hypothesis, willpower increases emotional well-being, which in turn positively affects life satisfaction. The last hypothesis assumed that while strong willpower contributes to positive emotions, it does not necessarily have a positive effect on life satisfaction. Due to high standards, individuals with strong willpower may be disappointed with their achievements.
Which of these predictions was confirmed in the studies? The second one: willpower was associated with a high rating of life satisfaction, as well as stronger positive emotions and weaker negative emotions. Interestingly, it was shown that individuals with weak willpower more frequently experience negative emotions because they experience numerous internal conflicts. It seems that the weaker the will, the greater the sense of self-restraint and regret for missed opportunities for fun, as well as a sense of giving up immediate pleasures. People with strong willpower less frequently experience dilemmas related to various temptations. They less frequently feel them. They probably often strategically avoid them and also better manage their goals, favoring those that bring greater benefits in the longer term.
Passion and Grit
Willpower is also linked to the way we approach our own goals. It's easier to achieve goals that we perceive as personally important due to our needs and values than those we don't accept or understand the significance of, or those we perceive as imposed by others. Confirmation of this can be found in the results obtained by Kaitlyn M. Werner, Marina Milyavskaya, Emily Foxen-Craft, and Richard Koestner. At the beginning of their study, participants described three personally important projects they intended to accomplish in the near future, along with the reasons driving them. After two months, they estimated how easy it was for them to achieve each project and how much effort they put into it, and at the end of the semester, they assessed how much progress they had made on their projects. It turned out that it was easier for them to achieve goals aligned with their "self," pursued for autonomous reasons. Furthermore, it was the ease rather than the effort put into their accomplishment that mostly determined whether these goals were achieved.
Some people pursue even long-term goals with passion. Psychologists Angela Duckworth from the University of Pennsylvania, author of the book "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance," and James J. Gross from Stanford University call this attitude grit and explain where it comes from. Francis Galton pondered what besides talent leads to great achievements and contrasted self-denial with zeal for hard work. Today, what Galton called self-denial relates to self-control; it involves both restraining strong undesirable impulses and activating weaker but desired tendencies to behave. Zeal for hard work corresponds to Duckworth's concept of grit – passion and perseverance. Duckworth and Gross note that while both self-control and grit involve defending valuable goals in the face of obstacles, they differ in the type of goals subject to this defense, the nature of opposing tendencies, and the time scale they address. Self-control serves to resolve conflicting tendencies to act arising from short-term goals. We need it, for example, to decide whether to meet friends tonight or stay home and work on an assignment. Grit, on the other hand, manifests in possessing a superior long-term goal and relentlessly working towards it. We remain faithful to it for years, despite disappointments and setbacks, even when encountering obstacles. Duckworth and Gross emphasize that self-control is a skill or competence that we can acquire, train, and improve; whereas grit is more closely linked to our motivation.
Therefore, it seems that by exercising willpower and honing skills in this area, we cannot overlook reflection on the reasons why we intend to achieve a certain goal. While strategic planning is an effective solution for one-time actions or short-term goals, it may not suffice for long-term goals. Yet, it's precisely consistently pursued long-term goals that translate into life successes, which we typically associate with willpower.