快猫短视频

Today, we want everything now, yet you鈥檝e just written a book about self-control. Why?
It鈥檚 a widespread perception that the world is more and more one in which people are orientated to immediate gratification and don鈥檛 know how to delay it. But when you look closely, I think that鈥檚 probably not the case. If anything, there has been improvement in overall self-control. In fact, we鈥檙e attempting to test that question in a study now.

What is really going on then?
There are a lot of reasons to think that many children growing up in the information technology revolution are developing the skills to delay gratification very well. That ability 鈥� psychologists call it executive control 鈥� shows whether they can keep a goal in mind, suppress impulses that interfere with reaching that goal, and use attention control abilities in the brain鈥檚 prefrontal cortex to keep marching on until they reach that goal.

Whether they use these skills is a different question. My grandchildren have a tremendous capacity to delay gratification, but they very frequently choose not to. I think a deeper look at what goes on in self-control, or willpower, makes it clear that both skill and motivation are required, and there are lots of people who have the skills but don鈥檛 have the motivation.

Is the marshmallow test at the heart of your research into self-control?
Yes. In the 1960s at Stanford University, we set up a study using pre-school children and gave them a choice between one reward, say a marshmallow or a cookie, that they could have immediately, or they could get two if they waited up to 20 minutes. There was a bell to ring to call the researcher back into the room if they wanted to eat the first reward. We observed the behaviour of kids who managed to wait, and the first thing they did was transform the situation from an effortful one to a much easier one.

How do the children manage to wait?
They try to turn around in their chairs so they don鈥檛 face the goodies, they look away, or invent interesting things to do to. For example, they begin to sing little songs, or explore their nasal and ear canals and toy with what they discover. We see a steady progression over the early years, from self-distraction to the use of abstraction, that is, they build pretend brick walls between themselves and the marshmallow or goodies. They use imagination to cool the situation.

Did you explore this?
With one little girl who rang the bell in less than a minute, we ran a test to see if she could change how long she waited by changing how she thought about the cookies. If we suggested, for example, she should make believe that they鈥檙e not real, that they鈥檙e just a picture, she could wait 15 minutes.

We learned that the way the object of desire is appraised makes a huge difference. If I know I can鈥檛 resist chocolate mousse on the dessert tray in the restaurant, I can devise a plan beforehand in which I imagine a cockroach nibbled on it before it was served to me. Then I鈥檝e lost my desire for it instantly.

Does learning to delay gratification as a child have an effect later in life?
Some years after the experiments I began to suspect some connection between behaviour in our experiments and how the people fared as adults. By the age of 25 to 30, we found the 鈥渄elayers鈥� were more able to reach long-term goals, used risky drugs less, achieved higher educational levels and had a significantly lower body mass index. In 2009, we scanned delayers鈥� brains and found more activity in the prefrontal cortex, used for problem-solving, creative thinking and control of impulsive behaviour. So learning to delay gratification early correlates with success as an adult, and the techniques can be applied to everything from coping with heartbreak to weight control, retirement planning and smoking.

鈥淟earning to delay gratification early correlates with success as an adult鈥�

Smoking and retirement sound very different.
The same principles apply to help me defer taking the next cigarette or not use my pay cheque for my immediate pleasure and instead put something away for my future self. The fundamental principle is to take the heat out of what is in front of me and focus on the consequences of a delay.

Good trick, defusing the situation, but how?
This requires thinking about the brain/mind as having two different aspects. One is the hot emotional system, which is immediate and automatic. It is enormously important because it elicits instantaneous responses, like grab the cookie, go for the temptation, duck when you hear a bullet, slam on the brakes when you see an oncoming car, and so on. The hot emotional system is involved in impulsivity and immediate gratification.

The cool system involves the prefrontal cortex, and particularly the attention control areas and imagination areas. It developed later in our evolution and is much slower to respond. Both hot and cool systems are in a reciprocal relationship: to have self-control, we have to slow down the hot system and activate the cool system. At the age of 20 I have to be able to imagine myself as 40 years older if I want to have the motivation to put some of the money into a retirement plan, rather than buy a car that I really can鈥檛 afford now.

That鈥檚 asking a lot of an immature person.
It鈥檚 true that the hot system is there from the start of life and the cool system develops over time. But developmental change in childhood lays down the fundamental skills that are essential for executive functions and for self-control. They are, potentially, available to children by the time they鈥檙e 4, 5 and 6 years old.

If we do develop good self-control as a child, can it still be derailed?
Yes, very easily. We鈥檙e all open to enormous temptations. Advertising is brilliant at creating temptations that are extremely hard to resist. What has been widely ignored in the research about self-control is the importance of the standards we develop fairly early in life for determining when we feel entitled to indulge ourselves.

How does that work?
For example, it鈥檚 possible to have a theory of self-control in which you work like the devil while you are sitting at the desk in, say, the Oval Office, but you are entitled to have whatever pleasures you like when you鈥檙e not. The entitlement theories, the standards and beliefs we develop, are enormously important in making the decisions, including automatic decisions, about whether or not we resist temptations. That鈥檚 why a discussion of what happens in self-control can鈥檛 be cut off from motivational aspects.

Did you grow up in a family with a lot of willpower?
No. In 1938, I was 8 years old, growing up in Vienna in an upper middle class family when the Nazis and Hitler annexed Austria, and we had to flee. We were very lucky to get out alive, with nothing. So my early life story was one of growing up in a family that had been quite fortunate in life going to live, essentially, in extreme poverty in Brooklyn, and then I was trying to figure out what I could do to construct a new life. Schooling became very important because I realised that success in school was the way to get out of the tough situation the family was in.

How is your willpower now, 76 years later?
I鈥檓 everything but a great personal model of willpower. On the one hand, I鈥檝e had enough willpower to persist at the problem of studying willpower for over 50 years. But I hate standing in long lines, and I very often get impatient with students if they haven鈥檛 done the impossible, such as complete a data analysis that should take two weeks in two days.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淩esistance is not futile鈥�