Angela L. Duckworth, Katherine L. Milkman, and David Laibson, “Beyond Willpower: Strategies for Reducing Failures of Self-Control.”
Psychological Science in the Public Interest 19(3): 102-129, 2019.
• Higher self-control is associated with many good things -- but people struggle with self-control.
• Various models (such as dynamically inconsistent preferences) have been proposed to try to capture the workings (and failures) of self-control, and many strategies are deployed to try to bolster self-control. Exhortations to show more willpower, to just say no, are not that effective. That is, relying on willpower alone, as opposed to other strategies, is almost to give the game away.
• Strategies that try to make willpower more effective can usefully be categorized. In particular, some try to alter the situation (Situational strategies), and some try to target how the decision maker thinks about a given situation (Cognitive strategies). Further, some are undertaken by the decision maker herself (Self-Deployed strategies) and others are enacted by various outside actors, choice architects, including employers and regulators (Other-Deployed strategies). Self-Deployed strategies require that the decision maker understand, at least to some extent, her self-control shortcomings -- in the usual terminology, she must be somewhat sophisticated (not naive) about her intertemporal inconsistencies.
• Four categories of self-control strategies emerge within this two-dimensional framework, then: Self-Deployed Situational Interventions; Self-Deployed Cognitive Interventions; Other-Deployed Situational Interventions; and, Other-Deployed Cognitive Interventions. The authors list and discuss various strategies within each of these categories.
• Self-Deployed Situational Interventions attempt to manage the environment to reduce the need for self-control; such strategies include: deleting a game from your phone or employing other commitment devices (or commitment contracts) that reduce temptations or raise their effective prices; temptation bundling; removing temptations from view (which is one way to raise their effective price); and behavior therapy, such as removing "cues" from your environment when fighting an addiction.
• Self-Deployed Cognitive Interventions include: goal setting (which might be undertaken in public or in private); dividing the goal into bite-sized subgoals, and allowing for small wins along the way; explicit planning and implementation intentions (developing a detailed map of how a goal will be achieved); intensive self-monitoring (such as weighing yourself every day); psychological distancing from temptations or from interpersonal problems; mindfulness and cognitive therapy (generally provided in the form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).
• Other-Deployed Cognitive Interventions (which might not be recognized by the targets) include: descriptive social norms (like energy use by others in your neighborhood); social labeling (which might motivate you to live up to your identity, as a green consumer, say); age-processed renderings or other techniques to make one's own future self more relatable; and fresh-start framing, as with new year's resolutions.
• Other-Deployed Situational Interventions include: hard paternalism (e.g., social security, high sin taxes); microenvironments (healthy food placed at eye level); default settings or active choice mandates; requirements for choices to be made in advance; and planned interruptions (such as a mandated break on a slot machine, say).[Incidentally, as Loewenstein points out, hard paternalism does not bolster self-control but eliminates the need for self-control.]
• Higher self-control is associated with many good things -- but people struggle with self-control.
• Various models (such as dynamically inconsistent preferences) have been proposed to try to capture the workings (and failures) of self-control, and many strategies are deployed to try to bolster self-control. Exhortations to show more willpower, to just say no, are not that effective. That is, relying on willpower alone, as opposed to other strategies, is almost to give the game away.
• Strategies that try to make willpower more effective can usefully be categorized. In particular, some try to alter the situation (Situational strategies), and some try to target how the decision maker thinks about a given situation (Cognitive strategies). Further, some are undertaken by the decision maker herself (Self-Deployed strategies) and others are enacted by various outside actors, choice architects, including employers and regulators (Other-Deployed strategies). Self-Deployed strategies require that the decision maker understand, at least to some extent, her self-control shortcomings -- in the usual terminology, she must be somewhat sophisticated (not naive) about her intertemporal inconsistencies.
• Four categories of self-control strategies emerge within this two-dimensional framework, then: Self-Deployed Situational Interventions; Self-Deployed Cognitive Interventions; Other-Deployed Situational Interventions; and, Other-Deployed Cognitive Interventions. The authors list and discuss various strategies within each of these categories.
• Self-Deployed Situational Interventions attempt to manage the environment to reduce the need for self-control; such strategies include: deleting a game from your phone or employing other commitment devices (or commitment contracts) that reduce temptations or raise their effective prices; temptation bundling; removing temptations from view (which is one way to raise their effective price); and behavior therapy, such as removing "cues" from your environment when fighting an addiction.
• Self-Deployed Cognitive Interventions include: goal setting (which might be undertaken in public or in private); dividing the goal into bite-sized subgoals, and allowing for small wins along the way; explicit planning and implementation intentions (developing a detailed map of how a goal will be achieved); intensive self-monitoring (such as weighing yourself every day); psychological distancing from temptations or from interpersonal problems; mindfulness and cognitive therapy (generally provided in the form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).
• Other-Deployed Cognitive Interventions (which might not be recognized by the targets) include: descriptive social norms (like energy use by others in your neighborhood); social labeling (which might motivate you to live up to your identity, as a green consumer, say); age-processed renderings or other techniques to make one's own future self more relatable; and fresh-start framing, as with new year's resolutions.
• Other-Deployed Situational Interventions include: hard paternalism (e.g., social security, high sin taxes); microenvironments (healthy food placed at eye level); default settings or active choice mandates; requirements for choices to be made in advance; and planned interruptions (such as a mandated break on a slot machine, say).[Incidentally, as Loewenstein points out, hard paternalism does not bolster self-control but eliminates the need for self-control.]
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