This article mentions a study that found almost no correlation between people who self-report having high self-control, and people who actually do well on tests measuring self-control:
In the original qualitative write-ups for the Marshmallow Test, they described the children using all sorts of distraction strategies to basically make themselves forget that there's a tasty marshmallow sitting right in front of them. Maybe this is all that self-control is - having enough self-awareness (and valuing your future self highly enough) to direct your attention elsewhere so that temptations disappear from your view. It fits with the neuroscience we know about consciousness as well (that it's effectively a brain network which taps into the other brain networks and can observe and direct their firing) and even into how attention mechanisms in GPTs work.
It also is how most mature adults approach the world. If you're an alcoholic, don't go to the bar. If you're married, don't go to the strip club. If you want to lose weight, put less food on your plate. Most of what we know of as self-control is really having the skills to avoid temptation.
How in the world does a test of 'does this colored text match its name' test 'self-control'. 'Self-control' as used in the article means things like 'can you stick to a diet', or 'can you keep your word', not can you control your thought processes enough to quickly name a color. You can be highly self disciplined and bad at this task, or highly undisciplined and good at it. In fact, I'd imagine undisciplined people might be inspired by the entertainment value of this 'game', and spend useless time practicing it rather than doing what actually matters.
It's the same "illusory superiority" cognitive bias as the Dunning-Kruger effect. The least competent will overestimate their self-control, and the most competent will underestimate it.
All of this is in a context where it's assumed that participants _know_ the goals of the person under consideration, can straight-forwardly evaluate whether actions are in line with those, and where the _participant's_ goals are framed to not be a part of the discussion.
In real life, how often are these true for power that matters?
- as an IC, I generally don't have the information an exec has, and cannot easily judge which choices are aligned with stated goals
- as a voter, I'm regularly unsure which goals that a politician says publicly are their real goals
- and for any situation where I'm close enough to judge the actual suitability of actions, and the intents of the participants, I probably have enough of a stake that my view of who should be in control is swayed by what outcome I want
This has a kind of silly sleight of hand I've unfortunately come to expect in psych research. This seems to try to study power while controlling for... power?
It can definitely be interesting to see how the personality one projects can influence the social dynamics of a peer group (with the usual caveats that studying people in laboratory conditions for something iterated and evolving like social relationships is famously fraught in the first place), but this notion of power as something that's given to people by social perception on a moment-to-moment basis seems ill-suited to describe the real world, where in many contexts the relevant power is official and considerably less up for social negotiation
Wonder if companies setting "Stretch" goals, and having people fail, is actually a form of control. Get results, but also keeps employees down. People may be less inclined to ask for raise if they miss goals, even if the results were 'good'.
My mother was a Manager at an insurance company for a very long time. She still firmly believes that one cannot get a 5 out 5 on a review because no one is perfect. Business likes to set unobtainable goals like that. In my experience, that kind of corporate behavior drives high performers away. High performers know what they have done and if you refuse to acknowledge it over time they leave.
It's also a tool for HR to say they have a process that they follow but then still allow all of the decisions about pay increases and performance to be entirely subjective. You miss your stretch goals, and so depending on how your manager feels at the time that's either totally acceptable and you're doing a great job, or if they need justification to shaft you then it's totally unacceptable and you didn't do the work well enough to deserve that. Same situation but totally different outcome.
There's a coaching philosophy that says to never praise unconditionally; rather every piece of praise should be followed with a criticism.
I suppose this is theoretically a good practice, but only if you're already operating in a high-trust environment. If you're not, it starts to feel like you're never good enough, because absolutely every victory, no matter how big or small, is followed up with "but it could be better...". Which is, again technically accurate, but part of the finesse of being a good people-manager is understanding that humans are not robots who can simply process and accept criticism without any emotional hangups.
This is something I've noticed in myself and I'm glad there's research to back this, although this is an open secret to those who do master self-control. I've spent the last three to four years working on self-control and discipline after I hit rock bottom in my life and realized I had no self-agency. For me, having greater self-control led me to ensure I can focus on providing value where it matters in my life, and not getting caught up by the shiny object syndrome I was distracted by a lot when I was younger. Not every thought needs to be acted on, especially if the thoughts come from external sources. In regards to why it leads to power, as you make your way up the managerial chain, when you have greater self-control you are less prone to get "bullied" by other managers into doing work for them and you can stand up more for your team and you will be able to provide more value. For perspective, I would personally trust others who have self-control more than those who don't for time-sensitive and critical tasks because I can rely on them to regulate their emotions and give honest answers, as well as hold themselves accountable.
For someone, like me a few years ago, who is undisciplined and has not spent time cultivating self-control this is hard to hear. If you find yourself making excuses when you read this article for why the power hierarchy is against you, or that there is bias in the results of this study (as some of the comments here allude to), then you should consider reevaluating why you are making excuses. It's a sign that this post triggered you and your response was to make an excuse rather than accept a correlation that speaks to an underlying hard truth. Once you start digging into "why did I make an excuse" and chase that feeling over and over whenever you find yourself making excuses, you will start to realize that you can't think of a reason why you made an excuse, it's just what you've done and reinforced in the past. If you've read this comment this far and you have a spark of curiosity and relate to not knowing why you are making excuses, I suggest you take this moment to chase it down and gain agency over your own life. Some would say this is your red pill moment. 'The Daily Stoic' woke me up, I highly recommend it. Discipline equals freedom, my friend, and we sorely need you.
> less prone to get "bullied" by other managers into doing work for them and you can stand up more for your team
This is the real key. Management is about controlling others and not letting others control you without compensation.
> I would personally trust others who have self-control more than those who don't for time-sensitive and critical tasks because I can rely on them to regulate their emotions and give honest answers, as well as hold themselves accountable.
Of course you would, and if they wanted to be in your shoes they would do well to learn mastery over others as well as you have.
Learning the language of self-control may be a path to that, especially if you have not heard it before. However, it can also be a path to being controlled, as in your example. I grew up in a conservative environment, so that was my problem: I was heavily indoctrinated in the language of self-control, responsibility, and accountability, and these made me easy to exploit. My own "red pill" moment involved understanding these as tools of power rather than facts of the world, thereby freeing myself to better represent my own interests.
I read somewhere: "The first thought you have in reaction to something is a mirror of how you were brought up, the second thought is a mirror of who you are".
So the defining thing isn't reacting to a shiny thing, it is what you do after that initial thought and whether you can see yourself falling in the ever-same traps and do something against it.
> Not every thought needs to be acted on, especially if the thoughts come from external sources.
I've heard it said (I believe by Hormozi on Williamson's podcast) that at a certain level, success becomes mostly about saying no to increasingly great opportunities.
I can confirm this is relevant near the bottom too, at least if you have a high level of openness (personality dimension) and are presented with inspiration on a regular basis.
The 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration quote comes to mind.
The principle of sacrifice comes to mind. It seems to be a choice between sacrificing many small things, or a few great things.
> you will start to realize that you can't think of a reason why you made an excuse
this may not always be true by the way. such constant observation of yourself, constantly asking yourself what such and such a thing means or came from - may eventually lead you to notice the cognitive jump you take - the experience you had all those years ago plus the new thought pattern you started to let yourself believe - which became compressed and hidden by the familiarity and comfort of having no problems due to the resulting dissociation. Before you let yourself believe there was no reason, consider deferring belief permanently until you remember what impression you had which caused 'what is'. Far along that path lies deep self-knowledge and therefore deep knowledge of the world. Most people aren't as interested in seeing the truth as they believe so they give up when they feel more comfortable. It's explained, then, that as a result of not being awakened to what is, their karma inside themselves can still conquer their destiny [1]. Whereas someone who actually respects the truth is going to think more seriously about controlling their karma, at the very least so as not to damage the truth more.
>when you have greater self-control you are less prone to get "bullied" by other managers into doing work for them and you can stand up more for your team
Umm... You are confusing self control with confidence and self esteem. They aren't the same thing. Though I can see how becoming more disciplined can lead to more confidence and self esteem.
It is really insightful about how we train ourselves for compliance, but how that training struggles to cope when we interact with violence escalaters (who are common in some parts of society).
I live near a port town and face and threat of violence is easily visible in men and many women.
I have lots of strong and compelling evidence that my self-control is unusually low. Doctors have said that since I was very young, so if anybody was making an excuse, it was the adults around me more than myself and I simply internalised those excuses later.
It's extremely humiliating, and I've gone a lot further than listening to the daily stoic, there's an entire body of scientific literature on how to improve self-control in general and for people like me who seem to have literal neurological abnormalities. I've spent the last few weeks miserable from medication side-effects for instance.
I wonder what do you think about the usage of such training. I have had such trainings for diet control and distraction control but I felt unless one manages to gain a long term control the whole time is kinda worthless.
For example I can lose 10 pounds in 2 months with diet control and a bit of discipline. But it comes back quickly once the self control goes away. What is the point? Practicing such self control does not give me better self control next time but only brings down self confidence a bit every time.
I guess the ultimate reason is that I do not really enjoy the targets I set. How can I enjoy something I do not but inherently good for me?
Enjoyed this tidbit from the bottom of the article:
“To motivate their employees, organizations often want employees to set stretch goals – goals that are challenging and hard-to-reach. However, we found that setting a stretch goal and not meeting it makes someone look less powerful than setting an easy goal and surpassing it,” said Rady School PhD student Shuang Wu, the first author of the paper.
“Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.”
The second half of the study (setting but not meeting ambitious goalposts) seems to conflate self-control with realism. Setting impossible goals is not a trait one wants in a leader. This result may have little to do with perceptions of self-control.
This conclusion is a bit tautological: another way to frame "self-control" is "power over yourself" or "ability to influence your own actions". Of course people who have power over N=1 people are more likely to be perceived as "powerful" than people who have no self-control i.e. N=0, because they are.
In other words, self-control doesn't just "lead to" power, it is power.
Darth Vader is just so much cooler and more menacing than Kylo Ren, and a lot of it is to do with that the latter loses his shit when he encounters an obstacle.
IMO simply striving to gain power or money is easier than to achieve greatness and mastery, in general. Mainly because one can lie their way into power and money, countless examples of that both at a local level and global level. Now, mastery requires the opposite of lying and pursuing easy to achieve goals. It’s the hardest path because frustration is constant, and it requires one to keep stretching the limits of their own capabilities, and it never gets easier. Self control in that scenario is not necessarily about getting things “done”, but rather to not give up, and keep trying restlessly. The lack of nuance in the summary of that paper makes me think it’s not worth reading it. For me, I have greater admiration and respect for someone who has failed majestically at being great, than for someone who deals purely with median or below median expectations. The former will have amazing stories to tell, the latter usually don’t. The summary given by this blog, and likely the paper, too, is heavily tainted with the idea of “being for others”, rather than the idea of “being for self”. Again, being for others is super easy because it’s simply a matter of controlling the information you give, people do that all the time in social media. This doesn’t work for “being for self” because one can’t fool oneself indefinitely. Like the summary hints at, striving for greatness indeed involves fulfilling many achievements in the process of pursuing the greater achievement. This usually doesn’t count for observers, though, because the crowd has no taste or time for the story, but only for conclusions. Again illustrating how “being for self” is harder, as you’re set to be perceived as less than what you’re really trying to become. A functional remedy for that is simply to not be so public about your desires, which has the upside of protecting you from all sorts of exploitation.
This doesn't pass my sniff test. The results are based on what people say about who "looks powerful" but didn't put people in a position where they actually give power to them . "Look what people do rather than what they say" is very relevant here. Reject and resubmit
> ...you gotta have the self-control first. Then when you get the self-control, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women. — not AM
>In one experiment, working adults imagined a scenario where a colleague with the goal of being fit either ate a large dessert or abstained from dessert altogether. Researchers found that the colleague was seen as being better suited for high-power roles when they abstained from indulging, an indication of self-control.
The result of the study seems obvious even if the design is a bit primitive.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
"Across all experiments, individuals with high self-control were seen as more powerful, and as better suited for powerful roles, than individuals with low self-control."
Part of me sees this research as "doing everything by the book" and consequently failing to capture important insights. For instance, every economic model of humans assumes that we're "rational agents", yet we know that people with poor impulse control (like ElMo, Trump, etc.) are perceived as powerful by a wide swath of the public.
Maybe their "turns down dessert" thought experiments are just that -- thought experiments -- and do not reflect what humans actually do, IRL.
I think people like ElMo and Trump do have a lot of self control. In addition to getting what they want they are also masters of influence. It is also not poor impulse control if they are good enough to muster enough resources to afford their impulses in the first place.
Trump and Elon Musk have incredible self control. They have selective outlets, yes. But they also both drive themselves constantly, invariably in the face of resistance. They're both self control addicts whose entire lives are built around the question "How much resistance can I overcome?"
I think you are missing the point. Self control is a source of persistence to get to goal. If you are impulsive buyer of random crap, you will not save money for a house.
If you give up easily or get distracted accomplishing difficult tasks will be impossible.
We all know those people and at least to me they always feel like bit of looser who openly jeopardise their own future.
Trumps of this world only impress naive people of this world, people who buy how to make $1m in a year books.
Trump openly employs wrestling narrative building to win popularity. It doesn't get any basic than that (i am generalising avg trump voter of course, but a man who never worked a day of hard work in his life - is a hero of blue collar, cheated on every single of his 5 wives - christian hero and maybe eveb second coming, all his businesses went bust - a true successful businessmen)
Would you trust trump to run your company? or oversee anything of value?
Nice article. It is good to bear in mind the perception of selfcontrol by observers does not actually correlate with the actual selfcontrol that a person exercises.
I for one can attest to this. I saw great gains in power, and the power people perceived in me once I prioritized and stuck to a strict exercise regime.
Once I started doing 100 pushups, 100 situps, 100 air squats, and a 10-km run every day, I found greater strength and focus in my life. I felt I could easily take on just about any task with ease and immediately conquer it!
Eventually, I got into training which used higher-than-normal gravity to maximize resistance and further build strength.
After a while I measured my power, and it was well over 9000!
[+] [-] ranprieur|2 years ago|reply
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/1/15/16863374/wi...
The most likely explanation is that people who report high self-control are really experiencing less temptation.
[+] [-] nostrademons|2 years ago|reply
In the original qualitative write-ups for the Marshmallow Test, they described the children using all sorts of distraction strategies to basically make themselves forget that there's a tasty marshmallow sitting right in front of them. Maybe this is all that self-control is - having enough self-awareness (and valuing your future self highly enough) to direct your attention elsewhere so that temptations disappear from your view. It fits with the neuroscience we know about consciousness as well (that it's effectively a brain network which taps into the other brain networks and can observe and direct their firing) and even into how attention mechanisms in GPTs work.
It also is how most mature adults approach the world. If you're an alcoholic, don't go to the bar. If you're married, don't go to the strip club. If you want to lose weight, put less food on your plate. Most of what we know of as self-control is really having the skills to avoid temptation.
[+] [-] anon291|2 years ago|reply
This study is complete garbage.
[+] [-] CharlesW|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abeppu|2 years ago|reply
In real life, how often are these true for power that matters?
- as an IC, I generally don't have the information an exec has, and cannot easily judge which choices are aligned with stated goals
- as a voter, I'm regularly unsure which goals that a politician says publicly are their real goals
- and for any situation where I'm close enough to judge the actual suitability of actions, and the intents of the participants, I probably have enough of a stake that my view of who should be in control is swayed by what outcome I want
[+] [-] advael|2 years ago|reply
It can definitely be interesting to see how the personality one projects can influence the social dynamics of a peer group (with the usual caveats that studying people in laboratory conditions for something iterated and evolving like social relationships is famously fraught in the first place), but this notion of power as something that's given to people by social perception on a moment-to-moment basis seems ill-suited to describe the real world, where in many contexts the relevant power is official and considerably less up for social negotiation
[+] [-] JellyBeanThief|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FrustratedMonky|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] annoyingnoob|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwway120385|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway74432|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petsfed|2 years ago|reply
I suppose this is theoretically a good practice, but only if you're already operating in a high-trust environment. If you're not, it starts to feel like you're never good enough, because absolutely every victory, no matter how big or small, is followed up with "but it could be better...". Which is, again technically accurate, but part of the finesse of being a good people-manager is understanding that humans are not robots who can simply process and accept criticism without any emotional hangups.
[+] [-] c4wrd|2 years ago|reply
For someone, like me a few years ago, who is undisciplined and has not spent time cultivating self-control this is hard to hear. If you find yourself making excuses when you read this article for why the power hierarchy is against you, or that there is bias in the results of this study (as some of the comments here allude to), then you should consider reevaluating why you are making excuses. It's a sign that this post triggered you and your response was to make an excuse rather than accept a correlation that speaks to an underlying hard truth. Once you start digging into "why did I make an excuse" and chase that feeling over and over whenever you find yourself making excuses, you will start to realize that you can't think of a reason why you made an excuse, it's just what you've done and reinforced in the past. If you've read this comment this far and you have a spark of curiosity and relate to not knowing why you are making excuses, I suggest you take this moment to chase it down and gain agency over your own life. Some would say this is your red pill moment. 'The Daily Stoic' woke me up, I highly recommend it. Discipline equals freedom, my friend, and we sorely need you.
[+] [-] smallmancontrov|2 years ago|reply
This is the real key. Management is about controlling others and not letting others control you without compensation.
> I would personally trust others who have self-control more than those who don't for time-sensitive and critical tasks because I can rely on them to regulate their emotions and give honest answers, as well as hold themselves accountable.
Of course you would, and if they wanted to be in your shoes they would do well to learn mastery over others as well as you have.
Learning the language of self-control may be a path to that, especially if you have not heard it before. However, it can also be a path to being controlled, as in your example. I grew up in a conservative environment, so that was my problem: I was heavily indoctrinated in the language of self-control, responsibility, and accountability, and these made me easy to exploit. My own "red pill" moment involved understanding these as tools of power rather than facts of the world, thereby freeing myself to better represent my own interests.
[+] [-] atoav|2 years ago|reply
So the defining thing isn't reacting to a shiny thing, it is what you do after that initial thought and whether you can see yourself falling in the ever-same traps and do something against it.
[+] [-] andai|2 years ago|reply
I've heard it said (I believe by Hormozi on Williamson's podcast) that at a certain level, success becomes mostly about saying no to increasingly great opportunities.
I can confirm this is relevant near the bottom too, at least if you have a high level of openness (personality dimension) and are presented with inspiration on a regular basis.
The 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration quote comes to mind.
The principle of sacrifice comes to mind. It seems to be a choice between sacrificing many small things, or a few great things.
[+] [-] coop_solution|2 years ago|reply
Good work is the key to good fortune / Winners take that praise / Losers seldom take that blame
[+] [-] _z7iw|2 years ago|reply
this may not always be true by the way. such constant observation of yourself, constantly asking yourself what such and such a thing means or came from - may eventually lead you to notice the cognitive jump you take - the experience you had all those years ago plus the new thought pattern you started to let yourself believe - which became compressed and hidden by the familiarity and comfort of having no problems due to the resulting dissociation. Before you let yourself believe there was no reason, consider deferring belief permanently until you remember what impression you had which caused 'what is'. Far along that path lies deep self-knowledge and therefore deep knowledge of the world. Most people aren't as interested in seeing the truth as they believe so they give up when they feel more comfortable. It's explained, then, that as a result of not being awakened to what is, their karma inside themselves can still conquer their destiny [1]. Whereas someone who actually respects the truth is going to think more seriously about controlling their karma, at the very least so as not to damage the truth more.
1. What is Destiny?- [link redacted]
[+] [-] richardgreeko27|2 years ago|reply
> ...this post triggered you
Definitely the language choices of an unbiased perspective from someone who doesn't have an axe to grind
[+] [-] astura|2 years ago|reply
Umm... You are confusing self control with confidence and self esteem. They aren't the same thing. Though I can see how becoming more disciplined can lead to more confidence and self esteem.
[+] [-] robocat|2 years ago|reply
It is really insightful about how we train ourselves for compliance, but how that training struggles to cope when we interact with violence escalaters (who are common in some parts of society).
I live near a port town and face and threat of violence is easily visible in men and many women.
[+] [-] faeriechangling|2 years ago|reply
It's extremely humiliating, and I've gone a lot further than listening to the daily stoic, there's an entire body of scientific literature on how to improve self-control in general and for people like me who seem to have literal neurological abnormalities. I've spent the last few weeks miserable from medication side-effects for instance.
[+] [-] jnac|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnthrowaway0328|2 years ago|reply
For example I can lose 10 pounds in 2 months with diet control and a bit of discipline. But it comes back quickly once the self control goes away. What is the point? Practicing such self control does not give me better self control next time but only brings down self confidence a bit every time.
I guess the ultimate reason is that I do not really enjoy the targets I set. How can I enjoy something I do not but inherently good for me?
[+] [-] danjoredd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thecosas|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] silent_cal|2 years ago|reply
- St Augustine
[+] [-] BenFranklin100|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pphysch|2 years ago|reply
In other words, self-control doesn't just "lead to" power, it is power.
[+] [-] bitwize|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pilgrim0|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seydor|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 082349872349872|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xeckr|2 years ago|reply
The result of the study seems obvious even if the design is a bit primitive.
[+] [-] abalaji|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] disqard|2 years ago|reply
Part of me sees this research as "doing everything by the book" and consequently failing to capture important insights. For instance, every economic model of humans assumes that we're "rational agents", yet we know that people with poor impulse control (like ElMo, Trump, etc.) are perceived as powerful by a wide swath of the public.
Maybe their "turns down dessert" thought experiments are just that -- thought experiments -- and do not reflect what humans actually do, IRL.
[+] [-] annoyingnoob|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KuriousCat|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandspar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] me_me_me|2 years ago|reply
If you give up easily or get distracted accomplishing difficult tasks will be impossible.
We all know those people and at least to me they always feel like bit of looser who openly jeopardise their own future.
Trumps of this world only impress naive people of this world, people who buy how to make $1m in a year books.
Trump openly employs wrestling narrative building to win popularity. It doesn't get any basic than that (i am generalising avg trump voter of course, but a man who never worked a day of hard work in his life - is a hero of blue collar, cheated on every single of his 5 wives - christian hero and maybe eveb second coming, all his businesses went bust - a true successful businessmen)
Would you trust trump to run your company? or oversee anything of value?
[+] [-] barrystaes|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rgbrgb|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RajT88|2 years ago|reply
Once I started doing 100 pushups, 100 situps, 100 air squats, and a 10-km run every day, I found greater strength and focus in my life. I felt I could easily take on just about any task with ease and immediately conquer it!
Eventually, I got into training which used higher-than-normal gravity to maximize resistance and further build strength.
After a while I measured my power, and it was well over 9000!