Job, who is a professor of motivation psychology at the University of Vienna, first designed a questionnaire, which asked participants to rate a series of statements on a scale of 1 (strongly agree) to 6 (strongly disagree). In 2010, however, the psychologist Veronika Job published a study that questioned the foundations of this theory, with some intriguing evidence that ego depletion depended on people’s underlying beliefs. People who had high self-control might have bigger reserves of willpower initially, but even they would be worn down when placed under pressure.
Drawing on the Freudian term for the part of the mind that is responsible for reining in our impulses, this process was known as “ego depletion”. Laboratory tests appeared to provide evidence for this process if participants were asked to resist eating cookies left temptingly on a table, for example, they subsequently showed less persistence when solving a mathematical problem, because their reserves of willpower had been exhausted. Without the chance to rest and recharge, those resources run dangerously low, making it far harder to maintain your patience and concentration, and to resist temptation.
#SELF CONTROL PSYCHOLOGY FULL#
You might start the day with full strength, but each time you have to control your thoughts, feelings or behaviour, you zap that battery’s energy. Until recently, the prevailing psychological theory proposed that willpower resembled a kind of battery. And new studies suggest powerful strategies for anyone to build greater willpower – with huge benefits for your health, productivity and happiness. Our reserves of self-control and mental focus appear to be shaped by mindsets. Indeed, you may know some lucky people who, after a hard day at work, have the resolve to do something productive like a workout – while you give up on your fitness goals and fall for the temptations of junk food and trash TV. And some people seem to have much greater reserves of it than others: they find it easier to control their emotions, avoid procrastination and stick to their goals, without ever seeming to lose their iron grip on their behaviour. In each case, you would have relied on your willpower, which psychologists define as the ability to avoid short-term temptations and override unwanted thoughts, feelings or impulses. If you are on a diet, you might have spent the past few hours resisting the cookie jar while the sweet treats silently whisper “eat me”. Or maybe you are finishing an important project and you have to remain in quiet concentration, without letting your attention slip to other distractions. Perhaps you are a barista, and you have some particularly rude and demanding customers, but you manage to keep your poise throughout. We all face demanding days that seem designed to test our self-control.
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