Background
Have you given up your New Year?s resolutions already? Good!
Your exam results are announced one by one and one thing is clear: you need to dedicate more time to your course work – but how? And why aren’t you taking more exercise? A new popular science book Willpower reveals why “I will” is not always the same as “I can”.
Thomas Blondeau
Wednesday 18 January 2012

Of course you were unhappy last Monday – all that blather about “Blue Monday”, the “most depressing day of the year” because the Nicorettes and low-fat crisps are not working as well as they should and the next holiday is still only a speck on the horizon. I would like to point out - perhaps unnecessarily - that while a psychologist may have been associated with this theory, it does not have any scientific foundations: it was thought up for a British advertising campaign to seduce people into booking a sunny holiday in the otherwise grey month of January.

   Even so, chances are that your New Year’s resolutions have gone pear-shaped – you still drank that one beer too many, smoked that one ciggie-to-be-sociable but then smoked the whole packet and the stacks of reading lists, research proposals and overdue papers are piling up. Which is odd, because nobody questions the benefits of regular study or cutting down on smoking. On the first of January, we all made a list of everything we were going to do better this year. By the first of February, we want to burn any evidence of it and nurse the large dent in our self-esteem.

But maybe we should be blaming the list rather than ourselves – at least, according to Willpower, a book recently published recently and the result of a collaboration between Professor of Psychology Roy F. Baumeister from Florida State University and John Tierney, a science journalist for The New York Times. Its subtitle, Rediscovering the greatest human strength, seems to be yet another variation of Dream, Dare, Do.

However, Baumeister is one of the most cited psychologists in the world, and has published some 500 articles and (co-)authored around thirty books. The core idea of the book is that willpower is like a muscle: you can strengthen it but that takes some effort. And there is a risk of overexertion. And yes, while some people are better equipped, genetically speaking, to be a bodybuilder, even those people have to exercise their muscles. The book offers a few tips, but mainly presents nuggets of wisdom drawn from scientific studies.      

At the end of one of the first chapters, the authors do away with the terror of good intentions: don’t make a list. Nobody can lose weight, drink less, give up smoking and get top marks all at once. In other words: you only have so much willpower and at some point you will exhaust it.

The authors call it the radish effect. Baumeister used an experiment to demonstrate it by asking hungry students to take an intelligence test. Before the students were allowed to start, they waited in a room where they were offered fresh biscuits, chocolate and radishes. One group was allowed to take whatever they wanted while the other was only allowed to eat the vegetable snack. Then they set to work on the assignments, without knowing that these assignments could not be solved - the test had demonstrated that perseverance manifested in this area would also be revealed in other areas. The sweet-tooths worked for twenty minutes before giving up, and so did the hungry control group who had not been given anything to eat.

But those who had been limited to eating the radishes gave up after just eight minutes. Test after test revealed that whoever had been forced to exercise his or her self-control to some extent simply did not feel up to it. If you are told not to laugh during a comedy or nor to think of a polar bear, you will not be able to keep your hand in a bowl of ice-cold water, or squeeze hand exercisers, for as long as you normally would after having this rule imposed on you.

In another test, students were questioned about a number of habits, including studying, cleaning their teeth, wearing clean socks, partying, etc. at various points during the academic year. The researchers had expected that the exam period would make the students rather lazy in other areas of their lives but the impact of the radish effect surprised them. During the exam period, students dropped out of sports, drank twice as much coffee, smoked more cigarettes and drank more, although there were fewer parties. They flossed less frequently, wore dirty underpants for longer and did not return phone calls as often.

“Yeah, sure!” I hear you say!” – they didn’t have the time for all that. They were supposed to be cramming. Oh really, they didn’t even have time to brush their teeth? And besides, they saw their friends more often in the exam period, had lie-ins more often and spent more money while they shopped – which is not a very efficient use of their time anyway. Why? Stress. You have to cram and that demands so much stress control that the other desires that you usually imperceptibly have under control get the better of you.

You can live like a Spartan for a few weeks in January but afterwards, when lectures start again, you’ll have a row with your housemate and the landlord will start to nag. Don’t feel bad about it, the authors say: even Obama, ultra-self-disciplined as he is, can’t resist a cigarette once in a while.

Another crack in the image of humans as creatures of iron will was revealed in a study in which parole officers had to decide on criminals’ release. Any crook whose case was heard before noon had a 65-percent chance of parole. By the end of the day, those chances had dropped to less than ten percent. There were two reasons for that: hunger and decision-making fatigue. If you have made plenty of decisions, your willpower will slacken. And as our brains need glucose, they need a shot of it every now and then. Those who were lucky enough to be in court after the officers had stopped for a snack had a greater chance of parole. When people are “tired”, they are inclined to preserve the status quo.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean we have to keep a box of mini-Bounties on our desk. To avoid peaks in our sugar supply, it’s better to eat a healthy diet, i.e. whole-wheat bread, fruit and vegetables, unprocessed nuts … but it’s not a bad idea to have a shot of sugar just before an exam, according to the authors.

A brain runs on glucose in the same way a computer needs electricity, and that is one of the reasons why it’s so hard for us to diet. And it’s a fallacy that overweight people have too little self-discipline, according to Baumeister. There are “traditionally built” people who graduate from difficult courses, are gifted musicians, make millions or do other things that demand much of them, proving that they do not lack willpower.

If you want to lose weight, set yourself a realistic goal and record everything you eat. It helps to write down what you weigh every day, exactly what you eat and how many calories that is – and make the connection. And if you can’t resist a portion of chips, don’t think: “well, today’s a mess. I’ll eat that tub of Ben&Jerry’s tonight as well.”

Keeping  a record also helps you to improve how you deal with your course work. Write down an achievable goal and record how many hours you spent working. If you say: “I’m going to work eight hours a day starting in February!” after a week, you might have a six-hour day, or even a five-day hour day. It’s easier than you think to fool yourself.

And tell your housemates of your intentions, because while you may regard yourself as a liberated, discerning academic, the fear of failing in front of friends still keeps many people on the straight and narrow.

Roy F. Baumeister & John Tierney, Willpower, Rediscovering the greatest human strength, 291 pgs., € 24.99