Bruce Hood - The Self Illusion

Much of this sounds so obvious that one has to question whether you need to argue for some form of special mental muscle. Is it just another metaphor? Actually, Baumeister thinks not. He has shown that the brain needs to work out, to exert willpower, and this requires energy. Glucose is one of the brain’s vital fuels, and Baumeister and his colleagues have shown that glucose levels are lowered during ego-depleting tasks. 46In one experiment, adults had to have a discussion with a Hispanic interviewer about equal opportunities in which they had to avoid displaying any prejudice. Those who scored highly on questionnaire-based measures of racism had lower blood sugar than those who had no problem with interracial interactions. The good news is that you can reduce your ego-depletion. After drinking one of those sugary energy drinks, the glucose is absorbed into the bloodstream at a rate of thirty calories per minute and, after about ten minutes, can be metabolized to feed the brain. Compared to those who had been given an artificially sweetened drink, those who had a sugary drink were much more able to deal with stress. In one of their experiments, adults were asked read words about death. This is usually ego-depleting as it has a negative effect on adults’ subsequent ability to solve a later word puzzle task. However, not for those hyped up on a sugary drink. Reading about death did not affect their performance at all. Maybe that’s why we should order the extra large sugary Coke at the cinema if we are going to see horror movies like Audition .

All of this means that much of our efforts of self-control may be misguided. Most of us want to diet but what do we do? We resist the temptation of that first chocolate only to find that the craving is even greater. Reducing our caloric intake with the initial chocolate reduces our blood sugar and makes us more susceptible to ego-depletion later. It’s a vicious circle. Even if you manage to skip a meal, you may find your self gorging on alcohol or cigarettes or some other vice. Even moderation must be done in moderation.

Bladder Control

In an extension of his muscle metaphor, Baumeister believes you can exercise your willpower to improve your self-control. For example, he found that by getting students to monitor and control their posture over two weeks, they were much better on experiments that measured self-control compared to those allowed to lounge around. Or you might consider the power stance. Simply puffing out your shoulders and clenching your fists gives you more willpower 47and increases testosterone levels in both men and women. 48Like the effects of forcing a smile, merely simulating body postures and actions can elicit the corresponding biological changes and mental states that usually trigger them in the first place. 49

Another important key to success appears to depend on changing routines. Much of the problem of temptation stems from the habitual behaviours that we develop. It is much easier to give in to a set of behaviours than to create a new set. We are literally creatures of habit and so we easily fall into cycles of behaviour that seem difficult to break. If you really want to change your behaviour, then don’t try to make your self stop. This strategy will only rebound and make you more vulnerable. Instead, find an alternative to replace the activity. Not only does this provide a different scenario to occupy your activity, but it avoids the curse of ego-depletion.

Otherwise, you could simply practice holding your bladder and not going to the toilet. Mirjam Tuk found that after she drank several cups of coffee to stay awake during a long lecture, toward the end she was bursting to go but had to wait. She wondered if all the mental effort she recruited to avoid an embarrassing accident could be used to suppress other urges. In one of her studies, 50participants drank five cups of water (about 750 millilitres) and then, after about forty minutes, the time it takes the water to reach the bladder, gave them an adult delay-of-gratification task. They could choose a cash reward of $16, which would be given to them on the following day, or $30 in thirty-five days. In comparison to those who had not drunk the water, more of the participants who were bursting to go held out for the larger reward. Tuk even suggests that any type of financial decision-making might benefit from increased bladder control. While these findings seem to go against the ego-depletion account, Tuk thinks the difference might be explained by the fact that bladder control is largely under automatic unconscious processes, whereas ego-depletion is more cognitive. It remains to be seen how this story plays out in children, but I think it is very unlikely that we will be attempting such studies with children in our laboratory – I mean can you imagine the mess to clean up?

A Kid in the Candy Store

Remarkable though the ego-depletion research is, one does not need to evoke a core self at the helm of our decision processes and behaviours. Each of the experiments and findings can equally be described not so much as the ego under pressure but rather the shift in balance between all the external things that compete for activity. It certainly helps to evoke the self illusion in these situations because it provides us with a protagonist who fails to live up to expectations and ideals. Like a kid in a candy store, we see temptation all around us but maintain that the self is the one being tempted into making the decisions and choices. What if it is the other way around? What if there is a kid who likes different types of candy but each different candy competes for his attention? Each candy that pulls the kid closer is offset by yet another more delicious one that looms into view. Now the decisions and choices are not within the kid but reflect the relative strengths of everything out there that jostle for attention. Certainly, there is a kid being tempted in this candy store metaphor, but we are mistaken in locating decisions within the child. The same goes for free will.

Ego-depletion sounds like it involves some form of self, does it not? So does the self-control when avoiding eating the marshmallow. Who is making decisions and avoiding temptation if not the self? In his book, The Ego Trick , philosopher Julian Baggini points out that it is impossible to talk about the mental processes and behaviours of a person without invoking the ego approach. 51We find it difficult to imagine how decisions and behaviours could equally arise without a self. For example, we often hear that addicts cannot control themselves, but is that really true? Are they totally at the mercy of the drugs and behaviours that ruin their lives? No one is denying that addiction is a really difficult problem to overcome but even the addict can avoid drugs if some immediate consequence looms larger. Few addicts would take that next drink or inject that drug if a gun was placed to their forehead. Clearly, in these situations the imminent threat of death trumps so-called uncontrollable urges. They are only uncontrollable in some contexts in which the competing influences do not match up to the allure of intoxication. The problem for addicts then is that the negative consequences of their behaviours do not match up to the immediate gratification that their addictions provide. 52They would prefer to not be addicted but that requires prolonged abstention, which is more difficult. When we talk about choices made by individuals, there are multiple influences and drives that compete for those decisions. Many of these arise from external circumstances.

Even if the self and our ability to exercise free will is an illusion, not all is lost. In fact, beliefs seem to produce consequences in our behaviour. The ego-depletion we have just described appears to only work in those individuals who believe that willpower is a limited resource. 53In other words, if we think that our self-control is limited, then we show ego-depletion. If we don’t believe in limited self-control, we don’t show ego-depletion.