I would LOVE to write the following blog posts:
- Playing with Puppies Improves Learning!
- A Glass of Expensive Red Wine Each Day Makes You a Better Teacher
- Research shows: Reading a Good Book on your Couch is the Best Way to Plan Lessons
In other words: if I can say that “research supports a REALLY popular idea,” I make everyone happy.
Alas, my job is often to say the opposite. As in:
Here’s a really popular idea — an idea that sounds like common sense. And: this popular idea probably is not true.
So:
- No, Learning Styles are not a thing (athough it’s a popular theory, and seems really plausible)
- No, handwriting probably isn’t better than typing (although it’s a really popular claim, and — again — seems plausible)
- No, as far as I know, “brain foods” don’t exist (although … you know the rest)
Today I want to explore another “probably not true” idea — one that’s important, and a little bit tricky to understand. Here goes…
Self-Control, and Self-Control
Psychology researchers spend lots of time thinking about “self-control.” Sadly, this compound word has at least two different meanings.
- Meaning #1: Let’s say you’re the kind of person who — naturally, without really thinking about it, most of the time — resists the tempting thing and does what you ought to do.
We could say that “self-control” is a consistent personality trait you have.
- Meaning #2: Perhaps you’re standing in front of a plate of donuts. You say to yourself: “I’m SO HUNGRY, and the chocolate-y deliciousness looks amazing. BUT, I’m trying to get in shape, so I’ll take the fruit cup instead…”
We could say that you’re exhibiting “self-control” as a short-term behavior; you’re in a sort of state of self-control.
To distinguish between these two definitions, scholars write about
- Personality TRAIT self-control, and
- Short-term STATE self-control.
Although those two descriptors rhyme, they describe different kinds of self-control. One (“trait”) is a stable, ongoing, often unthinking self-control. The other (“state”) is short-term, contingent, self aware self-control.
We have at least three reasons to care about trait vs. state self-control.
- TRAIT self-control correlates with all sorts of good outcomes. People with high trait self-control live longer, get better grades, and earn more money. They floss more regularly and probably are nicer to dogs. (I think I made up that last one, but it could be true.)
- It just seems obvious: TRAIT self-control is (probably) just lots-n-lots of STATE self-control moments all strung together. As Michael Inzlicht and Brent W. Roberts write:
- Conventional wisdom has it that people high in trait self-control reap all these benefits because they engage in more state self-control.
- For this reason, we have an obvious, common sense path to follow. If we train students to develop moment-by-moment STATE self-control, the result will be stable TRAIT self-control. “Grit,” anyone? All that gritty training means that students will get the benefits listed above: grades and jobs and cavity-free teeth and the love of dogs.
But WAIT JUST A MINUTE…
What if that popular, commonsense hypothesis just isn’t true?
How Can That Be?
No, really: how could that commonsense hypothesis not be true? It’s just OBVIOUS that trait self-control results from moment-by-moment states of self-control. I mean: isn’t it?
In the brief (highly readable) article linked above, Inzlicht and Roberts give us plenty of reasons to doubt that conclusion.
- People who score high on tests of trait self-control don’t spend much of their day exercising self-control. (See, for instance, this study.)
- Over longer periods of time (months and years), training in state self-control doesn’t result in all those predicted positive outcomes. People go back to their initial patterns.
- That is: I might be able to avoid donuts long enough to fit into my wedding suit — but in the months after my wedding, I’m likely to put those pounds back on again.
Inzlicht and Roberts share our puzzlement at this odd set of outcomes. (Their article literally includes the subheading: “What the hell is going on here?”)
They speculate, for instance, that the wording has got us confused. Just because we use the compound word “self-control” for both Trait X and State X, our labels don’t necessarily mean that the same mental process is happening below the label.
They propose this thought experiment: imagine that we had decided to use the word “planfulness” instead of “trait self-control.” Because the words are different, we might not end up so surprised that “planfulness” doesn’t result from “state self-control.”
Whatever the reason for our mistake, we should be prepared to acknowledge that our commonsense belief — “training students in state self-control enhances their trait self-control” — probably isn’t true.
Why The Distinction Matters
If we were confident that state-self-control training leads to trait self-control, then we should (almost certainly) take the time to enact that training. So Many Benefits!
But — at least so far — we shouldn’t be confident that frequent bouts of short-term (state) self-control ultimately train up long-term (trait) self-control.
If we mostly want to create trait self-control…well…we just don’t yet know how to do that. And we shouldn’t fool ourselves that that state self-control gets the job done.
(Research, in fact, offers this substantial benefit: it often gives us helpful correctives precisely to stop us from fooling ourselves.)
Now, we should also admit that we want students to practice short-term state self-control because that too is useful. State self-control:
- gets homework done (when students want to be doing something else), and
- helps students focus in class (ditto), and
- keeps students off Tik Tok (when they really want to be on Tik Tok).
And so forth. So I don’t think we give up on self-control all together.
But when we hear someone claim that “grit” can be trained…I think we should ask for good evidence that this claim is true.
Inzlicht, M., & Roberts, B. W. (2024). The fable of state self-control. Current Opinion in Psychology, 101848.
