George Loewenstein, “Self-Control and Its Discontents: A Commentary on Duckworth, Milkman, and Laibson.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 19(3): 95-100, 2019.
• Much to admire in Duckworth, Milkman, and Laibson (2019), especially the categorization of strategies to bolster self-control into situational v. cognitive and self-deployed v. other-deployed.
• Two (sort of) implicit assumptions seem to hover around the analysis, however, and I [Loewenstein] want to challenge those assumptions (assumptions which the authors themselves do not accept).
• One assumption that readers might come away with is that worsening problems such as lack of savings or obesity are brought about by self-control shortcomings, and that the strategies presented in Duckworth, Milkman, and Laibson (2019) are appropriate means to solve those problems. But inadequate self-control is not the source of (relatively recent) problems like rises in obesity and declines in savings. Rather, these problems have other, large causes, and thus, other solutions.
• A second assumption that readers might adopt is that self-control is about trying to get people to take a longer-term perspective. But many people suffer from being excessively future-minded (they are "hyperopic") -- these people need enhanced self-control to limit their future focus, to increase their current indulgence.
• The US has only become an outlier among nations with respect to undersaving and obesity in the past 40 years or so -- these problems do not reflect a new wave of a lack of self-control that swept across the land. What has changed is, for instance, a growth in income inequality and in the availability of snack foods and credit cards.
• Self-control is not about the present versus the future; it is about affect (System 1) versus more considered thinking (System 2) – this is why some people indulge insufficiently (“tightwaddism” and workaholism). (Look at the substantial investments people make in education -- do these evince present bias?) Mental accounting (like establishing an entertainment account) can help with future bias, too!
• Behavioral economics research might have a puritanical (or "Calvinist") bias.
• Much to admire in Duckworth, Milkman, and Laibson (2019), especially the categorization of strategies to bolster self-control into situational v. cognitive and self-deployed v. other-deployed.
• Two (sort of) implicit assumptions seem to hover around the analysis, however, and I [Loewenstein] want to challenge those assumptions (assumptions which the authors themselves do not accept).
• One assumption that readers might come away with is that worsening problems such as lack of savings or obesity are brought about by self-control shortcomings, and that the strategies presented in Duckworth, Milkman, and Laibson (2019) are appropriate means to solve those problems. But inadequate self-control is not the source of (relatively recent) problems like rises in obesity and declines in savings. Rather, these problems have other, large causes, and thus, other solutions.
• A second assumption that readers might adopt is that self-control is about trying to get people to take a longer-term perspective. But many people suffer from being excessively future-minded (they are "hyperopic") -- these people need enhanced self-control to limit their future focus, to increase their current indulgence.
• The US has only become an outlier among nations with respect to undersaving and obesity in the past 40 years or so -- these problems do not reflect a new wave of a lack of self-control that swept across the land. What has changed is, for instance, a growth in income inequality and in the availability of snack foods and credit cards.
• Self-control is not about the present versus the future; it is about affect (System 1) versus more considered thinking (System 2) – this is why some people indulge insufficiently (“tightwaddism” and workaholism). (Look at the substantial investments people make in education -- do these evince present bias?) Mental accounting (like establishing an entertainment account) can help with future bias, too!
• Behavioral economics research might have a puritanical (or "Calvinist") bias.
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