[ranprieur]

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:

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]

Is this a distinction without a difference?

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.

[noduerme]

There's certainly an experiential difference between consciously stopping yourself from a behavior and not needing to think about avoiding it. If you can walk by the bar/stripclub/second helping of french fries without thinking, "gee, I'd like that, but I'll abstain", then you aren't experiencing what most people would describe as "temptation".

You may be right that if abstaining becomes habitual amd automatic enough, that could be indiscernable from a state in which you have no temptation. But I'd argue it's only "self-control" for the purpose of measuring willpower as long as it requires some degree of conscious decision making.

[twoWhlsGud]

And I think that extends out further to a lot of little micro strategies. Like I know for myself that I have a lot more control in the supermarket to avoid something like corn chips than I have at home once said corn chips are in the pantry. So I have a strategy of limiting what I buy at the market rather than trying to struggle with eating carefully at home. There are a lot of little hacks like that, that can make life better.

[Staple_Diet]

You should know that the 'Marshmallow Test' is a poor study. The general conclusions after follow up were that children had an intrinsic self-control mechanism that influenced success rates in later life. However, the original experiment failed to control for several factors, least of which was socio-economic status. Subsequent controlled replications show that these factors have a significant influence on the outcome, suggesting that resisting temptation is less about self-control/will power and more about food security. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050075/

[tpmoney]

>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.

Funny you mention this, because I have the personal experience to answer your question, yes there is a distinction. I've told the story here before, but I'll tell it again. As a teen / young adult, could eat as much food as a wanted and burn it all away. A daily food intake might be a sandwich and chips for lunch, 2-3 full bowls of cereal and milk for an afternoon "snack". Dinner, with seconds. And then depending on the evening, cookies, chips, cracker and cheese or icecream for an evening snack. I left high school on the "needs a few more pounds" side of the weight scale. And that ability to eat that much food (and the appetite to back it up) never left. But the burning of the calories did. As I got older, weight kept climbing. Oh sure, I did the "put less food on the plate" thing. I did calorie counting. Even managed to lose some weight doing it. A whole 30 pounds at my best over an agonizing year. Every day was a constant battle with myself to look at the goals of where I wanted to be and fight every fiber of my being to not eat more food. I was hungry all the time. And it never stuck. No matter what I did I couldn't keep up with it.

And I assumed it was a lack of self control. A lack of will power. I assumed I just needed to try harder. And try harder I did. Time and time and time again. Nothing. Then recently I started a medication, with a side effect of reducing your appetite. Suddenly, I'm losing weight with ease. And I learned something interesting. The first week, I was convinced I was having anxiety attacks. Like clockwork every day, around 6 hours after taking the meds, my stomach would start knotting up. I'd start feeling this weird feeling like something was wrong and I needed to do something about it. And then it hit me, ~6 hours after taking the medications was also lunch time, or dinner time. I was getting hungry. And what was novel was realizing I'd never NOT been hungry my entire life since I was a teenager. I thought I was having anxiety attacks because I had never once felt the feeling of not being hungry turning into hunger. I stopped eating when I physically couldn't eat any more food, or the food ran out, never because I was satiated by the food. "Getting hungry" again was just the feeling of being stuffed going away. But I was always hungry.

Since starting the medication, I've lost close to 50 pounds. And it's SOOO much easier than it's ever been in the past. I can eat a normal meal, and just be satisfied with that. I can think to myself "I'm hungry, I should get a snack", and then follow that thought up with "I'm about to have lunch/dinner in an hour, I can wait" and actually follow through on that. I can stop thinking about that snack. I can count my calories for the day, see that I'm at my limit and just make the decision to stop eating any more food. Heck there are days where I have to make the conscious decision to make and eat more food because I'm too far under my limit for the day, but I've just not been hungry that day.

So yes, I'm putting less food on my plate, just like I could and did before the medication. But let me assure you that doing the things to "avoid temptation" is a hell of a lot easier when your body and mind aren't actively working against you.

[anon291]

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.

This study is complete garbage.

[pas]

It's classic 'executive function' measurement.

You have to stay on task (say the color not the word) and this requires a bit of working memory (what was the task?) and requires inhibition of the 'fast system' (system 1, which would just blurt out something), all associated with the PFC (prefrontal cortex).

Obviously it's not perfect, but at least very simple, quantitative, cheap, etc.

[anon291]

And it has nothing to do with projecting power. There is a clear difference from this and (for example) being able to hold a diet.

[pas]

Staying calm in stressful situations is very powerful.

Power is about managing conflicts, being able to control yourself while going through one is a huge advantage. Being able to evaluate your options, using the right amount of time for decision making, thinking through what you are actually going to say before starting to speak, these are all skills that depend on self-control.

Yes, it's not 1:1 power, but as the submission title states, it signals it. (Hence the movie cliches about extremely cool guys, don't even flinch while an explosion is going on, and the memes about how millenials flinch when the phone rings, etc.)

[CharlesW]

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.

[fsckboy]

while it could be, that doesn't ring true to me.

I'd go for more of a Freudian "people who are somewhat obsessed with self control (therefore mindful of it) are people who struggle with it," coupled with salience bias. People who don't struggle with self control never think about it.