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Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

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Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#161

Post by pi-e-sigma »

rizzom5000 wrote: post #152
pi-e-sigma wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it does correlate with some type of critical thinking, but not the one related to social/cultural/philosophical issues. What I say might seem strange at first, because critical thinking is presented as some kind of super-universal skill that you can freely apply to anything but in fact it's not. Kinda like one would think that a good singer would automatically make a good dancer because of being able to f…

The idea that someone who is a good singer would also be a good dancer is a non-starter for someone applying critical thinking, in my opinion. Do you have any other examples where you think critical thinking abilities cannot be universally applied?

:) can I please get an explanation why it's obvious to you that there is not correlation between singing and dancing ability? I'm genuinely curious EDIT: I can't dance nor sing for shit so I guess I'm a living example of falling victim of some sort of logical fallacy.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#162

Post by [deleted] »

ceejayoz wrote: post #83

These threads always bring out a whole bunch of people who confuse confirmation bias with population-level statistics. If you kicked a heroin habit, good for you! Societally we still can’t use “suck it up you pansies” as a drug rehab strategy just on your say-so.

[deleted]

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#163

Post by jacquesm »

HKH2 wrote: post #134
jacquesm wrote: post #124

That may well be true. But will power is extremely important in resisting peer pressure and the start of the creation of (some) bad habits.

So is disgust.

Yes, good point: disgust can really help. I never figured that one out so thank you for mentioning it, it explains some of my revulsion against particular kinds of behavior.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#164

Post by miggol »

I enjoyed the article. Even though I've heard most of it before, I'm the kind of person that really needs reminding of the core message. Somehow it's so easy to fall back into the "willpower is the trick" mindset. Perhaps because it's reinforced so heavily in popular culture, as the article mentions.

The article does however, in my opinion, commit a crime in bringing up the often misrepresented marshmellow experiment as some kind of fundament of psychology. The one where a child is promised a second marshmellow if they can resist eating the first one placed in front of them for a 15 minutes.

Children make do with the mental faculties and model of the world available to them. They live in a world shrouded in mystery in which adults regularly break promises to them for reasons they can't comprehend. Once the adult telling them what to do has left the room, I don't blame the kids for feeling an urge to take a bird in the hand over two in the bush. That's a perfectly good default instinct to have before you've acquired absolute trust towards friendly strangers in university buildings.

Imagine a real-world analogy to this kind of experiment. Adults choosing to go for the double reward would likely be labeled naive, bad with money, or gamblers. Extrapolating to the general population is ridiculous. Mischel's research wasn't about that at all.

From the article: In Mischel’s marshmallow experiment, only a quarter of the subjects were able to resist eating the marshmallow for fifteen minutes. This implies that a large majority of us lack the self-control required to succeed in life.

(disgruntled noises)

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#165

Post by em-bee »

nozzlegear wrote: post #117
hinkley wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I didn’t keep a bowl of fresh fruit and fancy teas in the house I’d be having some very uncomfortable conversations about diabetes with my doctor right about now.

What kinds of teas do you like? I dropped my soda habit a long time ago, but I seem to have replaced it with a habit for those dragonfruit juice drinks from Starbucks. I’m trying to get away from that and just make tea at home.

try natural fruit juice (or sugar syrup) mixed with carbonated water or even plain water. dilute it to reduce the amount of sugar as much as possible (fruit juice naturally also contains sugar).

while i was never a big soda drinker, one summer i was drinking a lot of it because it was hot and the soda was refreshing, until i realized that the refreshment came from the carbonation, and i could have plain carbonated water to the same effect.

i still liked a sugar soda once in a while, but i avoided developing a habit.

later while i was in austria, i discovered that they had fruit-sodas with half the sugar content compared to regular soda (only 4% instead of the usual 8%)

after getting used to that the regular sodas suddenly tasted way to sweet and now i can't even look at that stuff anymore.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#166

Post by anon84873628 »

zogrodea wrote: post #40

My first thought after reading the title was about ego depletion (a controversial theory that willpower is a limited resource), but the claim here seems unrelated to that since it instead states that willpower is just not effective at eliminating bad habits, not touching whether willpower is a limited resource or not. Common advice for at least a millenium has been that a consistent good habit, even if small, is bett…

Aspects of executive function like attention/focus, impulse control, etc do seem to be consumable resources. Most of the "tricks" are about changing the problem so it depends on different resources instead. But there is often a startup cost of that reframing which can be easier said than done.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#167

Post by em-bee »

jawns wrote: post #28

I am not a smoker, but I recently read through Allan Carr's "Easy Way to Quit Smoking Without Willpower" book. (There is a similar book out there called the Easy Peasy Way to Quit Porn, for those who are struggling with that.) The tl;dr is that it's much harder to quit an addiction with the mindset, "This thing is great, but I'm going to deprive myself of it." Instead, you need to realize that you've been deceived an…

when i was young i avoided watching to much tv or spending to much time on the computer when i realized that i was just wasting my time without getting much benefit out of it. that led to focusing on doing more useful things on the computer, and structuring my tv habits to only watch stuff i really wanted to see.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#168

Post by MarkSweep »

SilasX wrote: post #45
Boogie_Man wrote: post #32

Quitting things for me personally requires tricking my base lizard brain. I recall an Onion News video with a parody PSA: "Smoking is Gay". You have to use the smart guy you to outsmart the dumb guy you. Set traps for him. Anticipate his moves and crush him.

Haha I remember seeing that and thinking … hm, that … would probably be more successful than most of their PSAs. https://www.theonion.com/new-anti-smoking-ads-warn-teens-its...

I could not get the video to load; I assume this video on YouTube is the same one:

https://youtu.be/82x9pzHkHK4

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#169

Post by sumeruchat »

Will power is just like a muscle like any other and needs flexing to become stronger. If you dont have a strong muscle then indeed you couldnt do much with it and need crutches. But try to flex this muscle on unrelated things and soon it will be good enough to say no to anything even smoking.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#170

Post by [deleted] »

tpmoney wrote: post #71
akira2501 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will power is not some magic force that we are born with. To me "will power" comes from precisely the process you are describing, the self interrogation into the source of these negative behaviors, examination of how they hold you back, and anticipation of what you might be able to achieve if you master them. What I've observed in people is the disconnect on the last part of that pathway. They understand their defici…

>To me "will power" comes from precisely the process you are describing, the self interrogation into the source of these negative behaviors, examination of how they hold you back, and anticipation of what you might be able to achieve if you master them. That may be how you describe it, but just hop into any discussion on Wegovy here on HN (or anywhere else) and observe the number of people who "don't get why it's so…

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