Ainslie (2021) on Willpower

George Ainslie, “Willpower With and Without Effort.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44, e30: 1–16, 2021, pdf here. [This "target" article attracted 26 commentaries, which can be found here. Ainslie's response to the commentaries is here.]

• The basic framework: a Smaller, Sooner (SS) option versus a Larger, Later (LL) option. 

• The SS option is tempting in the moment, even if the LL option is valued more highly at other points of time. 

• Why is SS tempting? Perhaps visceral factors take over, or hyperbolic discounting does its thing. “Preference for the [SS] option is often temporary…[p. 2].” 

• Two different mechanisms, suppression and resolve, are commonly associated with willpower. Habit is a third willpower-adjacent mechanism that can be distinguished from resolve (or from a lack of resolve). 

• Suppression involves avoiding (or blocking or ignoring) the re-evaluation of the two alternatives while waiting for the LL. (Cue the marshmallow test!) Suppression “is necessarily unstable [p. 1],” a “game of keep away [p. 5].” Suppression requires attention, and thus precludes other uses of mental resources that might themselves be rewarding. 

• Resolve refers to sticking with the original valuations by cognitively changing the stakes. “Recursive self-prediction” seems to be a leading approach to resolve, and underlies personal rules. Resolve “is intent that is maintained by an enforcement mechanism [p. 5].” One resolve mechanism is to raise the stakes by viewing giving into temptation not as a one-time deviation, but as the start or continuation of a long series of lapses. (Suppression can be one device for building resolve.) 

• Hyperbolic discounting can be a basis for why people choose the LL alternatives when making category-wide choices, and why they try to bundle individual choices into those larger categories. 

• Scale mismatch makes it hard to overcome current temptations – what would be the harm of eating this tempting dessert? (p.5) The harm lies in undermining the credibility of your weight-control plan. So, there is value in viewing your current choice as a test case. 

• Three can be significant value in (legalistic?) distinctions to permit occasional deviations, so that you can give in to temptation to a degree without destroying the credibility of your long-term plan. (What happens in Vegas...)

• "Resolve becomes effortless to the extent that you are confident of maintaining it [p. 8]."

• Habit is a “routine simplification of action [p. 2]” which is not the same as resolve. With habit, the issue is moved out of the choice domain, behavior becomes arational. Ainslie distinguishes routine habits (like showering in the morning) from good habits ("preserved by resolve" and put at risk by unexcused lapses) and bad habits (repeated impulsive behaviors).