{"id":13497,"date":"2012-02-10T11:52:54","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T16:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=13497"},"modified":"2013-01-09T10:30:52","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T15:30:52","slug":"willpower-for-good-or-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/02\/10\/willpower-for-good-or-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Willpower, for good or evil"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Guardian<\/em>, Jon Henley<\/a> reviews the new book by Roy F Baumeister and John Tierney:<\/p>\n

\n

Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength<\/em> distills three decades of academic research (Baumeister’s contribution) into self-control and willpower, which the Florida State University social psychologist bluntly identifies as “the key to success and a happy life”.<\/p>\n

The result is also (Tierney’s contribution) readable, accessible and practical. It’s an unusual self-help book, in fact, in that it offers not just advice, tips and insights to help develop, conserve and boost willpower, but grounds them in some science.<\/p>\n

Willpower is, Baumeister argues over lunch, “what separates us from the animals. It’s the capacity to restrain our impulses, resist temptation — do what’s right and good for us in the long run, not what we want to do right now. It’s central, in fact, to civilisation.”<\/p>\n

The disciplined and dutiful Victorians, all stiff upper lip and lashings of moral fibre, had willpower in spades; as, sadly, did the Nazis, who referred to their evil adventure as the “triumph of will”. In the 60s we thought otherwise: let it all hang out; if it feels good, do it; I’m OK, you’re OK.<\/p>\n

But without willpower, it seems, we’re actually rarely OK. In the 60s a sociologist called Walter Mischel was interested in how young children resist instant gratification; he offered them the choice of a marshmallow now, or two if they could wait 15 minutes. Years later, he tracked some of the kids down, and made a startling discovery.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

What they found was that, even taking into account differences of intelligence, race and social class, those with high self-control — those who, in Mischel’s experiment, held out for two marshmallows later — grew into healthier, happier and wealthier adults.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Guardian, Jon Henley reviews the new book by Roy F Baumeister and John Tierney: Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength distills three decades of academic research (Baumeister’s contribution) into self-control and willpower, which the Florida State University social psychologist bluntly identifies as “the key to success and a happy life”. The result is also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,28,16],"tags":[139,513,871],"class_list":["post-13497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-media","category-science","tag-psychology","tag-research","tag-self-help"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3vH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13497"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18488,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13497\/revisions\/18488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}