I have a theory about why it's so hard to quit bad habits.
My theory is this:
For a habit to be a "bad" habit, there has to be something that makes it bad -- there's something about the consequences of engaging the habit that are undesirable.
Often, the reason the consequences are undesirable is because of some defect, weakness, or imperfection in one's self.
Quitting the bad habit is only necessary because of this imperfection. But to enforce a decision to quit often requires continued mental focus on the reason it's a bad habit. That is, on a defect or imperfection.
But reflecting on defects and imperfections is not only unpleasant, it's also just the kind of thing that makes you want to engage in bad habits. Indeed, engaging in the bad habits is a kind of way of pretending that you don't have the imperfection at all.
When I was a teenager, I often didn't wear a seat belt. (Don't worry, I always wear one now.) Part of the reason, psychologically, was that choosing to put on the seat belt required me to consciously acknowledge that I was mortal, and indeed, was about to put myself in danger of death and grave injury. I didn't want to think about that. Not wearing the seat belt you can pretend you are immortal.
Now, I'd like to lose weight. But choosing not to indulge my hi-carb tastes means reflecting on the fact that I am not happy the way I am. I have to keep in mind that I am not the weight I want to be. It's not a nice fact to reflect on. I'd rather ignore it. If I ignore it, I can pretend I am just perfect - - indeed, I can pretend I am the kind of being for whom eating doesn't even lead to bad consequences at all.
Even dealing with my teeth makes me conscious of death in a way I find hard to handle. I am decaying. Eventually I will die. Who can deal with any of it? But don't you have to face up to it to be motivated to floss?
Honestly, it's exhausting. It's no wonder given half a chance we're the overindulgers we are, driving around talking on our cell phones with the music playing.
Just trying to drown out death! No big deal! Carry on!
Showing posts with label vice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vice. Show all posts
Monday, May 19, 2008
Thursday, August 23, 2007
More of Me, Please!
OK Kids! Today on Mister Science, we'll be discussing a highly entertaining bit of psychology research. The paper in question is "Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource?" (by R. Baumeister, E. Bratslsavky, M. Muraven, and D. Tice, Journal of Social Psychology 74 (1998)). See also "Ego Depletion" Wikipedia entry here.
The conclusion of the paper is that the active self -- the ego, or whatever it is, that controls the self -- is, well, "a limited resource." Or, as the authors put it, "very limited." "Surprisingly limited." (p. 1263).
Actually, it's so limited, you have almost no self-control. What self-control you do have will be quickly spent up (about five minutes), even on undemanding tasks (like not eating chocolate).
People forcing themselves to eat radishes instead of chocolates were way less able to keep doing frustrating puzzles. Choosing to make a speech about personal beliefs, suppressing laughter and emotion, forcing activity over passivity -- all of these rendered experiment subjects less likely to persist in making themselves do stuff.
This casts serious doubt on any life strategy that involves "just getting your act together." You're not going to wake up one morning and become one of those people who eats egg whites and all-bran for breakfast, drinks only water, saves for retirement, and goes to bed early.
Maybe you'll do a few of those things, but you won't do them all. Indeed, it seems the more you do some the less you do the others. Even if you do decide that two marshmallows in twenty minutes are better than one now, you'll only be able to hold out so many times (see previous post here).
When I first read this paper I thought, "holy shit." You mean it's not just me? I was kind of excited to think that everyone had the problem of only being able to get about half of life together at any given time.
Then I thought, "Those afternoon advice shows had better get with the program." Oprah and Dr. Phil usually advise people to improve their self-control by valuing themselves more. I could never get this: I have a pretty high sense of self-worth, but it doesn't stop me from eating muffins and junk food and running up my credit card balance. Why would it?
If these guys are right, it would make more sense to advise people to move their self-control around.
One of the authors (R. Baumeister) has a new paper, which I found by googling the obvious "ego replenishment." There he says the self replenishes through rest and "positive affect," which I think is just psychology-speak for "happiness." This seems plausible enough, though it does give you a chicken-and-egg feeling: if you're miserable over your lack of self-control, you've got yourself in a real difficulty.
He also says some people can learn increased self-control through daily exercises. Which brings to mind a lot of wise-ass questions. If you have no self-control, how are supposed to practice daily exercises?
Maybe someone should set up a service: "Ego Replenishment: More Active Self for Less!" You could pay them to kidnap you and just force you to practice your self-control, to increase your daily ego supply. "More please! More of Me!"
The conclusion of the paper is that the active self -- the ego, or whatever it is, that controls the self -- is, well, "a limited resource." Or, as the authors put it, "very limited." "Surprisingly limited." (p. 1263).
Actually, it's so limited, you have almost no self-control. What self-control you do have will be quickly spent up (about five minutes), even on undemanding tasks (like not eating chocolate).
People forcing themselves to eat radishes instead of chocolates were way less able to keep doing frustrating puzzles. Choosing to make a speech about personal beliefs, suppressing laughter and emotion, forcing activity over passivity -- all of these rendered experiment subjects less likely to persist in making themselves do stuff.
This casts serious doubt on any life strategy that involves "just getting your act together." You're not going to wake up one morning and become one of those people who eats egg whites and all-bran for breakfast, drinks only water, saves for retirement, and goes to bed early.
Maybe you'll do a few of those things, but you won't do them all. Indeed, it seems the more you do some the less you do the others. Even if you do decide that two marshmallows in twenty minutes are better than one now, you'll only be able to hold out so many times (see previous post here).
When I first read this paper I thought, "holy shit." You mean it's not just me? I was kind of excited to think that everyone had the problem of only being able to get about half of life together at any given time.
Then I thought, "Those afternoon advice shows had better get with the program." Oprah and Dr. Phil usually advise people to improve their self-control by valuing themselves more. I could never get this: I have a pretty high sense of self-worth, but it doesn't stop me from eating muffins and junk food and running up my credit card balance. Why would it?
If these guys are right, it would make more sense to advise people to move their self-control around.
One of the authors (R. Baumeister) has a new paper, which I found by googling the obvious "ego replenishment." There he says the self replenishes through rest and "positive affect," which I think is just psychology-speak for "happiness." This seems plausible enough, though it does give you a chicken-and-egg feeling: if you're miserable over your lack of self-control, you've got yourself in a real difficulty.
He also says some people can learn increased self-control through daily exercises. Which brings to mind a lot of wise-ass questions. If you have no self-control, how are supposed to practice daily exercises?
Maybe someone should set up a service: "Ego Replenishment: More Active Self for Less!" You could pay them to kidnap you and just force you to practice your self-control, to increase your daily ego supply. "More please! More of Me!"
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Dear Whoever
I'm obsessed with advice columnists.
It's a little strange that I'm obsessed with advice columnists because I hate advice. I never give advice. Nor do I take advice. In fact, advice makes me angry. If you give me advice, particularly good advice, I will call to mind all the (even debatably) stupid things you have ever done, and I will say nasty things about you behind your back. I may do this if I even think that you are diagnosing and solving my problems silently to yourself.
Nevertheless, I regularly read Miss Manners, who is a genius, but makes me feel bad about my failings, Carolyn Hax, who falls in the "basically right-minded but a little traditional category," Dan Savage, who falls into the Miss Manners category as far as I'm concerned, Slate's Dear Prudence, who drives me absolutely insane (the linked column suggests that a couple might want to reconsider their decision not to have children), and Slate's old Dear Prudence, Margo Howard, who's Ann Landers's daughter and pretty good, although too prone, like many advice columnists to suggest therapy. While many letter-writers should contemplate therapy, I think the advice columnist has an obligation to offer some substance beyond "go get advice from somebody else." I also read Sars on Tomato Nation, who's great, but can strike me as smug (that seems to be an occupational hazard, and in this case probably has more to do with my own anxieties than her actual tone) and Cary Tennis on Salon, who suffers (apparently uniquely in the annals of advice-giving) from what may be the opposite problem.
Also one summer a couple of years ago I went through the entire back archives of Breakup Girl.
This list, frankly, is both incomplete and embarrassing.
Why do I read advice columns? It's not to figure out what I should do in a particular situation. I don't take advice. There's just something about the range of human situations that people write in with, mostly. It's nice to know that we're all out there swinging, in our strange and elaborate ways, for the fences. Also I like to find out how well my instincts match up with the advice-giver -- do I think the way other people think?
Sadly, though, I think underlying my compulsion is my hope that these people will find solutions, that a switch can be flipped and the lunatic sister will fall into line, the racist uncle will not spoil the wedding, and the money-grubbing party thrower will be sternly rebuked.
And clinging to that hope, I now return to my program of trying to fall asleep and scratching morbidly at my poison oak pustules.
It's a little strange that I'm obsessed with advice columnists because I hate advice. I never give advice. Nor do I take advice. In fact, advice makes me angry. If you give me advice, particularly good advice, I will call to mind all the (even debatably) stupid things you have ever done, and I will say nasty things about you behind your back. I may do this if I even think that you are diagnosing and solving my problems silently to yourself.
Nevertheless, I regularly read Miss Manners, who is a genius, but makes me feel bad about my failings, Carolyn Hax, who falls in the "basically right-minded but a little traditional category," Dan Savage, who falls into the Miss Manners category as far as I'm concerned, Slate's Dear Prudence, who drives me absolutely insane (the linked column suggests that a couple might want to reconsider their decision not to have children), and Slate's old Dear Prudence, Margo Howard, who's Ann Landers's daughter and pretty good, although too prone, like many advice columnists to suggest therapy. While many letter-writers should contemplate therapy, I think the advice columnist has an obligation to offer some substance beyond "go get advice from somebody else." I also read Sars on Tomato Nation, who's great, but can strike me as smug (that seems to be an occupational hazard, and in this case probably has more to do with my own anxieties than her actual tone) and Cary Tennis on Salon, who suffers (apparently uniquely in the annals of advice-giving) from what may be the opposite problem.
Also one summer a couple of years ago I went through the entire back archives of Breakup Girl.
This list, frankly, is both incomplete and embarrassing.
Why do I read advice columns? It's not to figure out what I should do in a particular situation. I don't take advice. There's just something about the range of human situations that people write in with, mostly. It's nice to know that we're all out there swinging, in our strange and elaborate ways, for the fences. Also I like to find out how well my instincts match up with the advice-giver -- do I think the way other people think?
Sadly, though, I think underlying my compulsion is my hope that these people will find solutions, that a switch can be flipped and the lunatic sister will fall into line, the racist uncle will not spoil the wedding, and the money-grubbing party thrower will be sternly rebuked.
And clinging to that hope, I now return to my program of trying to fall asleep and scratching morbidly at my poison oak pustules.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
"Let's see what happens when we take away the puppy."
There's been some talk in these pages about vices. Non-moral vices, I guess, are habits that are fun in the short term and bad for you in the long term.
There are two elements to vice-resistance. First, you have to judge that, all things considered, it is in your best interest not to indulge. Second, you have to exercise your powers of "delayed gratification," or "the ability to wait in order to obtain something one wants."
With respect to this second element, the classic experiment is the so-called "marshmallow test." Give a bunch of four-year-olds one marshmallow each. Tell them they can eat it, or wait 20 minutes and have two marshmallows. Watch what they do. Wait 14 years, and check on their progress in life. In a result I find depressing for some reason, the kids who waited for the second marshmallow will be better off all around, and even score higher on the SAT.
But what about the first element, the judgment part? The marshmallow test assumes that two marshmallows in 20 minutes is clearly better than one marshmallow now, but that doesn't seem quite obvious to me. Even if it is obvious in this particular example, it is certainly not better to have 3,944,616 marshmallows in 150 years than one marshmallow now. So the principle can't be "more later is always better."
Are two marshmallow peeps in twenty minutes better than one now? Photo by Deanna Nichols. (All rights reserved; used with permission.)
The problem isn't just death. Ask me about 657,436 marshmallows in 25 years versus 13,1487 in five and I have no idea what my preference is.
Of course, all of these problems arise even after you assure yourself that the marshmallows are really forthcoming, that the lab assistant won't get crushed by a falling piano on her way back, that the study isn't really intended to test "incidence of rage and depression among the marshmallow-deprived."
It seems like we ought to prefer more pleasure later to less pleasure now. And presumably this why we're supposed to give up our vices: so we'll be better off in the future.
But, as economists tell us, we're also supposed to have transitive preferences: if you want A more than B, and B more than C, you ought to want A more than C.
Put these together and you get the four million marshmallows problem: you want two at 12:20 more than one at noon, four at 12:40 more than two at 12:20, . . . and so on. By transitivity, you must want 4 million marshmallows in 150 years more than one now. But even if you weren't going to die, it would be crazy to save up *all* your marshmallows.
Maybe all this means is that there is something wrong with transitivity. As Larry Temkin argues, it seems one ought to prefer to suffer at a certain intensity for a certain amount time than to suffer just a little bit less for twice as long. But apply transitivity to this preference over and over, and it seems one ought to prefer two years of torture to a life-long hangnail. Which would be madness.
Maybe transitivity is the difficulty here. But I think there's a harder problem in the vice case. There seems to be no right answer as to how to compare the pains and pleasures of our future selves to those of our present selves. Especially when the nature of the future experience -- health vs. sickness -- is so different from the nature of the present one -- indulgence vs. abstinence.
The further I go into the future, and the greater the qualitative difference, the more I feel at sea trying to weigh future pleasures against current sacrifices.
So I don't think judgments about what is in my long-term self-interest can be justified by appeal to a principle about more pleasure later being better than less pleasure now. At least for me. I seem to need more immediate benefits. Like Captain C., I quit smoking when I could no longer "make it up a goddamn hill." As she says, sad, all very sad.
There are two elements to vice-resistance. First, you have to judge that, all things considered, it is in your best interest not to indulge. Second, you have to exercise your powers of "delayed gratification," or "the ability to wait in order to obtain something one wants."
With respect to this second element, the classic experiment is the so-called "marshmallow test." Give a bunch of four-year-olds one marshmallow each. Tell them they can eat it, or wait 20 minutes and have two marshmallows. Watch what they do. Wait 14 years, and check on their progress in life. In a result I find depressing for some reason, the kids who waited for the second marshmallow will be better off all around, and even score higher on the SAT.
But what about the first element, the judgment part? The marshmallow test assumes that two marshmallows in 20 minutes is clearly better than one marshmallow now, but that doesn't seem quite obvious to me. Even if it is obvious in this particular example, it is certainly not better to have 3,944,616 marshmallows in 150 years than one marshmallow now. So the principle can't be "more later is always better."
Are two marshmallow peeps in twenty minutes better than one now? Photo by Deanna Nichols. (All rights reserved; used with permission.)
The problem isn't just death. Ask me about 657,436 marshmallows in 25 years versus 13,1487 in five and I have no idea what my preference is.
Of course, all of these problems arise even after you assure yourself that the marshmallows are really forthcoming, that the lab assistant won't get crushed by a falling piano on her way back, that the study isn't really intended to test "incidence of rage and depression among the marshmallow-deprived."
It seems like we ought to prefer more pleasure later to less pleasure now. And presumably this why we're supposed to give up our vices: so we'll be better off in the future.
But, as economists tell us, we're also supposed to have transitive preferences: if you want A more than B, and B more than C, you ought to want A more than C.
Put these together and you get the four million marshmallows problem: you want two at 12:20 more than one at noon, four at 12:40 more than two at 12:20, . . . and so on. By transitivity, you must want 4 million marshmallows in 150 years more than one now. But even if you weren't going to die, it would be crazy to save up *all* your marshmallows.
Maybe all this means is that there is something wrong with transitivity. As Larry Temkin argues, it seems one ought to prefer to suffer at a certain intensity for a certain amount time than to suffer just a little bit less for twice as long. But apply transitivity to this preference over and over, and it seems one ought to prefer two years of torture to a life-long hangnail. Which would be madness.
Maybe transitivity is the difficulty here. But I think there's a harder problem in the vice case. There seems to be no right answer as to how to compare the pains and pleasures of our future selves to those of our present selves. Especially when the nature of the future experience -- health vs. sickness -- is so different from the nature of the present one -- indulgence vs. abstinence.
The further I go into the future, and the greater the qualitative difference, the more I feel at sea trying to weigh future pleasures against current sacrifices.
So I don't think judgments about what is in my long-term self-interest can be justified by appeal to a principle about more pleasure later being better than less pleasure now. At least for me. I seem to need more immediate benefits. Like Captain C., I quit smoking when I could no longer "make it up a goddamn hill." As she says, sad, all very sad.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Vices
So I'm trying to quit smoking, right. And I'm trying to quit smoking because my lungs finally were showing signs of unhappiness and damage and I couldn't make it up a goddamn hill.
It was all very sad.
It's sad because I love smoking. I love everything about smoking, from the smell to the social disapproval. I love the five minute breaks that take you outside the normal flood of life. I may love that most of all. I love the feeling of doing something self-destructive in a small, self-contained way. Cigarette packaging is a work of art; playing with your lighter is always fun; smoking is great. My life was miserable before I started smoking at 17 -- you can't convince me that's only because being younger than 17 is miserable, although it is.
It's also sad because I hate giving up bad habits. I hate it when other people explain their victories over vice to me; I hate when people describe the internal struggles of giving something up. People who try to give up bad habits and fail sadden me; people who try to give up bad habits and succeed irritate me. We have a model of the "healthy life"; I hate watching people try to achieve it, whether they make it or not.
I hate even more trying to do it.
(For better writing about smoking and giving it up I refer you to Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo. And thanks to n. marie, for initially directing me there.)
It was all very sad.
It's sad because I love smoking. I love everything about smoking, from the smell to the social disapproval. I love the five minute breaks that take you outside the normal flood of life. I may love that most of all. I love the feeling of doing something self-destructive in a small, self-contained way. Cigarette packaging is a work of art; playing with your lighter is always fun; smoking is great. My life was miserable before I started smoking at 17 -- you can't convince me that's only because being younger than 17 is miserable, although it is.
It's also sad because I hate giving up bad habits. I hate it when other people explain their victories over vice to me; I hate when people describe the internal struggles of giving something up. People who try to give up bad habits and fail sadden me; people who try to give up bad habits and succeed irritate me. We have a model of the "healthy life"; I hate watching people try to achieve it, whether they make it or not.
I hate even more trying to do it.
(For better writing about smoking and giving it up I refer you to Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo. And thanks to n. marie, for initially directing me there.)
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