SYSK Selects: How Willpower Works

You use it every day to overcome your lower self (which wants you to eat cake until your vision blurs) in pursuit of the goals of your higher self (which wants you to not develop Type-II diabetes). Yet it was only in the 1990s that researchers began to understand what makes our willpower and how it behaves.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey, everybody. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know Selects.
This is Chuck here this week. It's my pick and
I'm gonna go with how Willpower Works from February seven,
And frankly, I'm picking this one because I need to
listen to this one again because I have no willpower.
That's something I need to work on, so I'm gonna
check it out again. I encourage you to do the same.

(00:21):
It's uh, it's pretty neat episode. So here we go
with how Willpower Works. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to

(00:47):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clarkin sitting across from me putting
on his Love your Mama. Um, lip ball? What what
Philip Flavors? That is almond? Actually is yummy? Look at
that plug right out of the gate. Uh, this is
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Hello, those are nice lips you
got there, man. Wow, they're now moistified like moist blowning. Well,

(01:11):
the two of us get together as we are right now,
and you have yourself stuff you should know the podcast. Nope,
this is the podcast. It ain't going nowhere. It ain't
gonna change. Don't worry folks. Yeah, same as it ever was.
If you love the TV show, we thank you. If
you don't like it, hang out with us here online.
Yeah uh. Not to be confused with our online presence,

(01:31):
our website, our new website, the home of Josh stuff.
You should know dot com. This is pretty cool. I
don't mind saying words about this because we got a
new website and it's like, it's awesome. It's got video
and and blogs and photos and it's like all sorts
of cool stuff. It's us. It's our house on the
on the web. It's really cool. I mean stuff you

(01:51):
should know dot com. It's our website, mind blowing five
years in the making. Yeah. So uh. And then not
to be confused with our Twitter handle s y s
K podcast. Not to be confused with our Facebook page,
Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know boy your
front load this one. Yeah alright, All that's out of
the way, right. Um, So, Chuck, you're doing good, you're
feeling well. I'm not feeling great, but you know, yeah,

(02:15):
you're ready to be done. No. I'm ready to talk
about willpower though, because it is a topic that I
struggle with, as do most people. I think, like you
struggle with the topic, or you struggle with willpower. I
think everybody struggles with willpower. Oh yeah, well, as a
matter of fact, Um, I think you're absolutely right. There
is a very famous guy named Plato, famous Greek philosopher Plato. Plato. Plato, yes,

(02:38):
not Plato, right, um. And Plato decided well suggested that
the entire human experience, that the sum of human existence
could be basically nailed down with just this. You have
a higher self and a lower self. Yeah, and your

(03:01):
purpose for living is to overcome the usually more powerful
urges of the lower self in order to fulfill the
goals of the higher self. I am down without it
makes uttering complete sense. I don't know about the reason
for living, but the struggle man struggle or at least okay, yeah, yeah,

(03:22):
like that's if you're born. You're going to face that. Yeah,
but you're going to face it in varying degrees because,
as we found, willpower, which is what you use to
get over your lower urges and pursue your higher goals. Um,
it comes in differing amounts for differing people, different people. Yeah,
and it and Robert Lamb wrote the original article from

(03:44):
House Touff works from stuff to blow your mind. And
he points out that we're at odds with our own
uh nature, as we have evolved here on the planet
because you know, we craved sugary sweet things because sugar
gave us lots of energy back in the day, and
back in the day they didn't have little debby cakes

(04:04):
within hands reach at all times. So we're sort of
at odds with ourselves. And he points out sexually as well, Um,
we evolved to spread the seed and procreate as much
as possible to ensure the survival of the species. And um,
nowadays you can't really do that stuff, or if you do,
you're a flander or a jerk or your spreading disease

(04:27):
and your public health nuisance. Yeah. So um, we're at
odds with ourselves, with our very existence. Yeah, and not
only internally, but you make the point um as a
society as well, I mean, society and evolution tussle. So
you can make the case that society represents our higher
self and you know, are what we are, basic instincts
that we've evolved to are our lower selves. So that's

(04:50):
what's going on, and it's will power, will power that
will get us over the bumps that come along in
life inevitably. Yeah, and it's I think most people relate
will power to things like eating or going to the gym,
or indulging in uh uh, sexual proclivities and things like that.
But I think it's broader than that. In general. I

(05:13):
think it's the will to, like Plato said, to strive to,
I guess, do the right thing. Yeah, by yourself, by others,
by society at large. Right. And I guess also, um,
how often you come up against that? How often you
have to exercise willpower because you you just hit it
on the head. Will power is the act of making

(05:33):
a decision. You're deciding to do something or not to
do something. Um, how often you do that? It does
depend on how you define the world around you. Yeah, Like,
are these things you know? Are you surrounded by temptations
that you have to ward off all the time and
you're paying attention to it and they're always closing in? Uh?
If you like that, then you're going to exercise your

(05:55):
willpower a lot. If you don't see the world as temptations,
you give into them all the time, you're not going
to If you look at the world is something that
you can handle, You're probably not gonna have to exercise
your willpower too much then either. But it's all they're all.
Those are three different ways of of living and they
all are I guess described by willpower and how you

(06:16):
use it. Yeah, that's a good point. Um. Robert h
makes a point that has backed up somewhat by science,
actually completely by science. The and he he puts in
terms of a video game, which makes sense that if
you were a video game and you have a willpower meter,
that that willpower meter is replenished and depleted on a daily,

(06:40):
probably hourly basis. And the more you uh use your
willpower and say, you know what, I'm not going to
have that little debby cake, your little willpower meter goes
down and it depletes itself, so you're not going to
have as much willpower maybe for the next decision. Right.
It's really interesting. Yeah, that's um pretty new. Our understanding

(07:01):
of willpower like that is very new. The first guy
to really kind of put it out like that was
freud Um, and he basically said, uh, you we have
this thing called willpower. We have an ego. That's that's
what the Freudians associate with willpowers, the ego and your
ego is this finite thing. It has a finite energy reserve.

(07:24):
It uses energy, and therefore it can be sapped. And
then Freud fell out of fashion, and um, everybody just
kind of stopped looking at willpower that way. And uh,
it wasn't until when a Florida State University psychologist named
Roy uh Baumeister. He uh, he figured out through this

(07:44):
test using chocolate and randishes, I believe that, um, you,
if you are staving off temptation using willpower, you actually
do terribly on like another test of willpower. Yeah, they
used persistence tests, um, basically puzzles that you have to

(08:05):
just keep at it and keep at It's not something
you could complete immediately, and offered some people chocolate chip
cookies and other chocolate treats of their liking, and offered
other people radishes instead, which is not a fair fight, right.
I mean, he really stacked the deck like maybe a radish,
a shaved radish in a salad or something. But if
all you're looking at is a plate of radish, then yeah,

(08:27):
I would take the cookie. So what he found out though,
was the people who ate the radishes had more trouble
completing the test. I guess because I guess the ideas
they're using up all their willpower to not eat the cookie,
so they don't have time for the test the persistence.
And there was also a another kind of follow up
study a few years after that by UM the the

(08:49):
University of Iowa professor with the greatest name of all
of the faculty there, Baba shiv Um and uh Dr
shiv Um had a basically tested willpower by saying, this
group is going to remember a two digit number, and
this group is going to remember a seven digit number,
and then we're gonna test their willpower UM by tempting

(09:12):
them with chocolate cake and uh Dr Ship found that
there was the people who were using their working memory
their cognitive capacity to remember the seven digit number had
a harder time resisting. So it basically proves that we
use our working memory to resist temptation. And I guess
it's something like reminding yourself, you know, at the at

(09:34):
the forefront of your mind not to do something, you
know until the temptation past. Who knows, Yeah, maybe I
had that cookie yesterday, so man, I can't eat it today.
Or we use our working memory to remind ourselves of
our long term goals in the face of a short
term reward. Well, that's one of the big keys I think. Yeah,
and uh, that's something Robert hits on, which is I

(09:55):
want that cookie now, and I know bikini seasons coming up,
and you see you mean a bikini. Josh, it's not pretty.
I will never get that out of my memory, working memory,
or other one, that bikini. And but that's sort of
what we're at odds with is the short term. I
think humans as a group tend to enjoy the short,

(10:19):
short term pleasures and if you truly learn to conquer
that in in uh lieu of long term gain, that's
when you're like, you're winning, is Charlie Sheen would say,
right exactly, although Charlie Sheen is not exactly one who's
known to exercise the willpower. No, you know, that was
a really odd person to tap for that. But well
I think that's the opposite he was. He thought winning

(10:41):
was the short term game. Yeah, I guess yeah. Um,
and that is so dated. Yeah, people like when you
guys record this, but it's been I think today might
be the very day where you could get away with it.
So it was perfect right the way. Um, so from
all these tests like when Baumeister Um put his study

(11:03):
ego depletion colon is the act of self a limited resource.
It just basically kicked off the slew of follow up
studies from Dr Shiv and others and UM. One of
the things that they found was that you can kind
of watch people exercise worldpower on the old Wonder machine yeah, UM.
Using m r S. They put people in and had

(11:26):
them think about, I guess a suite or a health
food and decide between them. Yeah, And they found that
the ventromedial prefrontal cortex lights up when you're making that decision,
when you're considering it, which made sense they I think
they kind of expected that, but they were also surprised
to find that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex UM, which is

(11:50):
located a little further back UM, that lit up as well.
And they think that that has lit up for the
people who made a good decision only thank you. And
they think that that's maybe part of your that's part
of the working memory where you're like, no, I can't
eat that, because yes, that's tapping into that higher self
goal pursuit. That's the dorso lateral prefrontal cortex, right, you

(12:17):
did a nice job there by the ways. Uh So.

(12:46):
The bomber also went on to say that, um, he could.
He compares the willpower, your own willpower to a muscle
or something like a muscle, and you can deplete it,
Like you said, if you overwork your muscles, you're just
going to deplete your muscles and be worn out at
the end of the day. Or you can exercise that
muscle in a in a healthy way and make it

(13:08):
stronger in the long term. Um do you do this?
After reading this is sord to realize that I actually
kind of exercised willpower all the time. What you I
think you especially do so, like, for example, I have
a mail key that I used to go get the mail,
right and we keep it in our car, And I

(13:29):
had to go to the car and get the mail
key and then go get the mail. And it was
cold out yesterday, and then on the way back, I
could have just taken the mail key inside with me
and taking it back to the car, and the next
time I went to the car again it was very cold.
But instead I walked up a flight of stairs, put
the mail key into the car, and then went back home.

(13:49):
So you're you're you made that decision and you struggled
with it, even in a minor way. Yes, I did
it specifically because there was no reason whatsoever for me
to do that rationally and as far as common sense,
when there was no there's no purpose to it. But
by doing it, I basically just exercise my willpower. It
was something I didn't really want to do, but it

(14:10):
wasn't a big deal, but it was I could like.
Doing that accumulates. Yeah, I think I think you and
I are really different in that way. I see you
as someone who actively works that muscle a lot on
a daily basis, and I don't enough. And not that
I just have no willpower, but I don't give it,

(14:31):
give decisions like that enough consideration. Does that make sense completely?
I was like, yeah, I'll just go upstairs and throw
the key on the coffee table, which a sane person
she kind of has that that thought. I think that
puts you in the same camp. But that doesn't ensure
that I'm making good decisions for my life, you know.
But I mean, I don't think you're making bad ones.

(14:51):
But it's good to self reflect, you know, Yeah, I
do kind of. It's kind of fun, you know, it's
like a game. Yeah, I want to you know, it's
it's like how Ramrod Street can I stayd you know,
That's what I'm building towards. Uh So. Another thing Robert
points out from the science side of things is as
far as giving into the short term in favor of

(15:12):
the long term, is glucose plays a big part in that.
And I think they found that a quick um shot
of sugar I don't think a whole lot can sometimes
stave off or build up that willpower reserve in the
short term. Yeah, it's like, ah, you you were talking
about how we have like a um willpower bar and
every time we were this temptation is depleted a little

(15:33):
more and more. They found that a shot of glucose
replenishes that willpower bar. So is that in lieu of like,
hey boy, I really want that cupcake, but let me
have the juice box instead. That's the irony of it,
is giving into that cupcake may help you exercise you
wild power with other stuff later further on. Didn't that weird?
But yeah, I mean if you had something healthier, that

(15:56):
would be the better choice. But the point is is
like any kind of shot of gluco this has been
shown to UM to to re up your your willpower.
And this was very much poop pooed at first, this idea, UM,
I think Baumeister. This is really great article by John
Tierney in New York Times magazine. It's from UM the
August before last. It's called do You Suffer from Decision Fatigue?

(16:17):
Our buddy Chad loves this proselytized this article. Remember, okay,
this is the one, so I strongly recommend everybody to read.
It's a good one. But UM and and it it
talks about Baumeister like thinking that you know glucose has
something to do with this UM and it was poop
pooed at first, because everybody knows the brain uses the
same amount of energy pretty much all day long. So

(16:40):
that didn't make any sense. Like if you're if you're
ego depleted and you're you're suffering from some sort of
willpower fatigue, but your brain still using the same amount
of energy, those two don't jibe. Again with the m
r I. What they found was somebody suffering from ego
depletion from willpower fatigue who took a shot of gluco
or whatever UM their brains lit up in areas that

(17:06):
had to do with exercising will power. So while your
brain was using the same amount of energy, it was
using them in different places when your willpower was fatigued.
And that glutecast basically was like spinach to popeye for
that part of your brain that's charged with exercising willpower.
Isn't that? Yeah? So what do you carry on a
packet sugar with you at all times? Come on still

(17:27):
with sugar right now? Um? Also, uh, the in that
same article they talk about this, uh, this kind of
landmark study of an Israeli parole board, and um, they
found that you if you were a parole e and
you came to them after it had been a while
since a break or lunch or breakfast, your chances of

(17:49):
being paroled dropped by like fifty or sixt oh if
the parole board had not had breakfast, yes or no.
If they if you came to them like right after
things got started after breakfast or after lunch, your chances
of being paroled were like fifty to fifty greater than
people who came to them for identical crimes like a

(18:10):
couple of hours later. I'm sure that makes the criminals
of the world feel pretty great. Yeah, exactly, so arbitrary.
And they what they found is it's not laziness. It's
not like physical fatigue, where like you can tell you're tired.
What our brains do is they employ the strategy where
you you are, you become risk averse, like you don't
want to make a decision, so you say, you know what,

(18:32):
I'm just gonna put this off. You're gonna go back
to jail. I'm not going to grant your parole because
that's risky behavior to let you back out in the world.
And I'm just I've made too many decisions today. But
you're not thinking this. They just say parole to nine
and you have no idea why. It just makes sense
to you at the time. But if you had had
some glucoset that same instance, you may you may be like, well, yeah,

(18:53):
I think you're you're ready to come back out in society.
That reminds me of the band Rush, Yes, that we
talked about before. I remember this from when I was
a teenager. You know the lyric um Man, what song
is it? If you choose not to decide, you still
have made a choice free will. Oh yeah, that's from
that song of course. I think on the original album

(19:15):
jacket it says if you choose not to decide, you
cannot have made a choice. Is there. Yeah, my brother
and I used to laugh that. I think Neil Perd
actually wrote a lot of the lyrics back then that
Getty Lee justlike you know, edged it out with events.
But it's the complete opposite meanings. So it's interesting that
at some point Rush I guess that maybe a band
argument or something. I'm glad Getty Lee one, Yeah, you

(19:37):
have made a choice. No, you cannot have made a choice.
Just shut up, play drums. Your voice is weird. I
remember hearing that the first time. I was like, oh man,
oh yeah, blew me away? Yeah yeah, free will I
can't believe I didn't remember the name. And you're like,
I can't think of the name of this song, but
it's about free will? Yeah? Was it Red bar Chetta?
All right? Oh? I didn't really fully get the um

(20:00):
the Stanford UH psychologist Walton and Dweck and then is Dweck.
It sounds like saying direct wrong. Um. I didn't fully
get that that they they said that people UH who
have will fund willpower fatigue tend to slack off when
they felt their resolve wavering, but then people who felt

(20:23):
their resolve was limitless pressed on. I like that, just
I don't get the point there. It seems like a
no brainer. So yeah, I think I think it is.
You may just be looking too deeply. It was like
what I was talking about earlier at the beginning, where like,
depending on how you see the world, like do you
see the world is like, like you have willpower, so
you can overcome any temptation. You're going to last longer

(20:46):
on tests of will power than somebody who is like, um,
I'm feeling kind of weak today, you know, and then
you're just gonna give in. Okay, So it is pretty simple. Yeah,
all right, I thought it was a dummy. Not only
is it simple, I managed to make it more complex
and talk about it at length. Uh. They do know
that people, generally there is some genetic component involved, Like

(21:08):
if your parents are super self disciplined, then you were
more likely to turn out that way. I found that
to be true from friends of mine whose parents were
like super self discipline and their kids kind of turned
out that way too. Yeah, but I wonder, and Robert
makes a point in the article like is it genetic
or epigenetic. Yeah, I don't know, probably both would be

(21:28):
my guests. We just chose not to decide. We cannot
have made a choice. Uh. And then the old marshmallow
experiment this uh Stanford, not the prison experiment, but the
marshmallow experiment from the nineteen sixties, very famous one where
they placed these uh tortured these kids basically by placing
a marshmallow in front of them and saying, if you

(21:51):
hold off on eating that marshmallow in fifteen minutes, you
will have too. And of course not many of the
kids could hold out, but they found that the ones
who did hold out of the second marshmallow went on
in life to greater successes, at least if you count
s a T scores as a measure of success, two
points higher than the ones who chowed down on the marshmallow.

(22:12):
And the ones who ate the marshmallow later on had
struggles with relationships and stress and uh attention. Yeah, so
I wonder if that has even do with like you know,
O c D. I wonder as well, I wonder how
much um of our modern problems are really just crises
of willpower? I wonder, um. There was a follow up

(22:33):
to that sixties experiment. There's been a bunch, but there
was one in at the University of Rochester that was
carried out last year that um found we are more
willing to exercise willpower if we think that what we're
holding out for is actually going to happen, you know. Uh,
And they did that by this is hilarious. It's funny.
Studies with kids are always they're so cruel and funny,

(22:56):
I mean not the really truly cruel ones that any
psychic logical study that has new kids almost invariably has
some cruel aspect to it, and this one was no, uh,
was no exception. Basically, Uh, they said, here's the control group,
here's here's the experimental group, and the control group. We
want to give you some extra art supplies. Let us

(23:18):
go get them. And they came back with some extra
art supplies. The experimental group. They said, hey, we're gonna
get you some more art supplies. We'll be right back.
And they came back. They're like, we don't have any
more art supplies. We know you were really excited, but sorry,
you're gonna have to make do with that old red pen.
And then they tested them with the marshmallow experiment and
found that the ones who had gotten the art supplies

(23:40):
the promise hadn't been broken. Sure, uh, they held out
longer than the ones who have been lied to. Yeah,
they're like, screw that, you're not bringing me to marshmallows.
I don't in this marshmallow right now. Exactly, I'm gonna
kick you in the ship afterwards too, I'll show you. Yeah,
that's not cruel on the level. What was that one?
The one kid, remember the that we talked about that

(24:01):
was tested on like oh, kept in a closet. No,
they tested fear conditioning and extinction and the kid it
was a little Albert where they like they would put
a bunny in his lap and then bang the bar
of metal with a hammer and scare the Jesus out
of him. And it came to like fear rabbits, Like

(24:21):
there was a search for him, right, and they eventually
found him, they thought, I think, so, I don't remember
I wrote a blog post that I'll have to republish
or whatever because it's been a while. I don't remember.
But yeah, they figured out who it was pretty much.
So this isn't on that level. No, no, no, this
is just marshmallows. Yes. Um. So oh, there was one
other point I wanted to bring up that I thought

(24:42):
was pretty interesting and horrible from that John Tierney article.
Um where with with decision fatigue, with exercising willpower disproportionately
affects the poor and they think that possibly now, uh,
that poverty exists in a cycle because is if you're
a poor person, you have to exercise willpower. You have

(25:04):
to make more decisions than somebody who has more resources,
more money. Like say you're walking through the grocery store. Um,
you know, I want the soap and this food. If
you're poor, you might have to say I want both,
but I have to just buy one. I don't have
enough for both. So how much is it going to be?
And their willpower there there there, their resources of of

(25:25):
willpower of decision making become fatigued a lot faster because
they have to exercise it a lot more and they
don't have the uh, the resources to get themselves out
of poverty, to indulge or to like study or do
you know, do more. That they already have the deck

(25:45):
stecked against them resource wise, But then you throw in
this this idea of willpower, possibly that's that makes it
even more difficult. I never really thought about that. It's
pretty interesting stuff. It makes you, It makes me, you know,
you feel for him even more. Yeah, and it makes
me feel bad when say, do I want the peanut
butter ganosh cupcake or chocolate? You know what? Just go

(26:08):
ahead and give me both, right, exactly, Well, you can
buy both and then just take one to somebody who's
struggling in the grocery store trying to figure out they're
gonna buy soap for food. It's a good idea. Yeah, uh,

(26:50):
you got anything else? Man? No, this is this is
a good one. Yeah. I like wildpower. It's fun. Go
out and exercise it in little ways. It's fun. Or
don't either that or um strap of car battery to
your inner thighs. It's just fun. Uh okay. Well, if
you want to learn more about willpower and made this
good article by Robert Lamb, you can type in willpower

(27:11):
in the search bar at how stuff works dot com
and it will bring it up. And I said search bar.
So it's time for a listener mail, yeah, Josh. Quickly,
before we do that, we need to say a special
thank you to a fan of ours who helped us
out with our Wikipedia page. Oh nice, thank you, And
he was very cool and and his name and he's

(27:32):
been mentioned on tech stuff evidently too. Oh wow, this
guy's a star and we're not gonna hold that against him.
And this is how he His name is spelled A
N T R I K s h yadaf y A
d A B. And he says, you pronounce it won trick.
The t is soft though, as in math Son tri trip.

(27:56):
Yeah there you go, he he phonetically spelled out. He
told you what it sounded like. And I still can't
quite do it. So we just want to say thanks
a lot for helping us with the Wikipedia page. And
now a listener mail that I'm gonna call That's why
sk can help you get ladies. This from Todd in
Oklahoma City. Guys and Jerry. I've come to the conclusion

(28:18):
that I may owe you a big thank you. Your
podcast has created the impression, whether fiction or reality, that
I am somehow a guy who knows about stuff with
the ladies. My new girlfriend, in fact, mentions as one
of my winning traits that I'm often saying interesting things.
And this really interested me, so I asked her for
some examples of things that I say, and it was

(28:41):
notable that every example that she cided was something that
I learned listening to your podcast at work. So it
is quite possible, Sirs, that you and your podcast made
my baby fall in love with me. I'd like to
shake your hands. Every single guy should listen to your
podcast because it may at least get you a second date.
And that is Todd from Oklahoma City, who is banking

(29:04):
on our knowledge to woo women, and I guess he
got a girlfriend of it. Good going, Todd. Good for you.
We're glad we could help. Man. We're married, dude, so
we we live vicariously through these emails. That's not true. Well, no,
I think it's great. I'm happy for Todd. I don't
mean I live vicariously and said I wish. No. No,

(29:27):
I just mean like, that's great. I'm glad someone out
there is getting a date because of this. Yeah. I
love helping people find love connections. Yeah, as a matter
of fact, we should do a speed dating episode. I
wrote an article on it once and it's pretty neat. Yeah,
my friend p J. You met p J. He uh,
he just texted me yesterday and said, Hey, this girl
he does a lot of online dating. He said part
of her profiles that she's like a huge fan of

(29:49):
you guys, And I said data. Yeah, well I don't
know data. There you go. You're doing it all over
the place. Man's right. Um, let's see if we have
affected your life positive lee. Um, we want to hear
about it, not negatively, just positively. You can tweet to
us at s y ESK podcast. You can join us
on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You

(30:11):
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery
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