The Good Habit Which Boosts Self-Control

This good habit can boost attention, decision-making and the ability to resist impulses.

This good habit can boost attention, decision-making and the ability to resist impulses.

Good sleep habits can boost attention, decision-making and the ability to resist impulses, a new review of the evidence finds.

Good sleep habits include going to bed at the same time every night, avoiding caffeine late in the day and allowing time to mentally wind-down before bedtime.

Professor June Pilcher, who led the study, said:

“Self-control is part of daily decision-making.

When presented with conflicting desires and opportunities, self-control allows one to maintain control.

Our study explored how sleep habits and self-control are interwoven and how sleep habits and self-control may work together to affect a person’s daily functioning.”

Professor Pilcher explained the review’s conclusions:

“Poor sleep habits, which include inconsistent sleep times and not enough hours of sleep, can also lead to health problems, including weight gain, hypertension and illness, according to prior research.

Studies have also found that sleep deprivation decreases self-control but increases hostility in people, which can create problems in the workplace and at home.”

Since sleep and self-control are so intimately connected, improving sleep can help in many ways, Professor Pilcher said:

“Many aspects of our daily lives can be affected by better-managed sleep and self-control capacity.

Improved health and worker performance are two potential benefits, but societal issues such as addictions, excessive gambling and over spending could also be more controllable when sleep deficiencies aren’t interfering with one’s decision making.”

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Pilcher et al., 2015).

Self-control image from Shutterstock

Why Conscious Self-Control May Be A Complete Illusion

New theory of consciousness could have major implications for mental disorders and addictions.

New theory of consciousness could have major implications for mental disorders and addictions.

Our conscious minds may have much less control than previously thought, according to a new theory.

Instead, consciousness is more like an interpreter of messages sent from the unconscious.

Dr Ezequiel Morsella, the study’s lead author, explained:

“The interpreter presents the information but is not the one making any arguments or acting upon the knowledge that is shared.

Similarly, the information we perceive in our consciousness is not created by conscious processes, nor is it reacted to by conscious processes.

Consciousness is the middle-man, and it doesn’t do as much work as you think.”

The theory — ten years in the making — directly contradicts how it feels to be a conscious, thinking, feeling, human being.

But this doesn’t mean the theory is wrong.

To us it feels like we’re sifting through feelings, thoughts and urges to decide on our actions.

Dr Morsella said:

“We have long thought consciousness solved problems and had many moving parts, but it’s much more basic and static.

This theory is very counterintuitive.

It goes against our everyday way of thinking.”

In fact, the theory states, consciousness is performing the same simple tasks over and over again.

What we think of as free-will is mostly just the control of our skeletal muscle system.

In other words, decisions are made by the unconscious and are relayed up to our conscious minds to put into action.

Dr Morsella said:

“For the vast majority of human history, we were hunting and gathering and had more pressing concerns that required rapidly executed voluntary actions.

Consciousness seems to have evolved for these types of actions rather than to understand itself.”

Dr Morsella continued:

“One thought doesn’t know about the other, they just often have access to and are acting upon the same, unconscious information.

You have one thought and then another, and you think that one thought leads to the next, but this doesn’t seem to be the way the process actually works.”

The theory is somewhat controversial and, Dr Morsella concedes, difficult to accept:

“The number one reason it’s taken so long to reach this conclusion is because people confuse what consciousness is for with what they think they use it for.

Also, most approaches to consciousness focus on perception rather than action.”

Dr Morsella points out that, if correct, the theory could have major implications for mental disorders and addictions:

“Why do you have an urge or thought that you shouldn’t be having?

Because, in a sense, the consciousness system doesn’t know that you shouldn’t be thinking about something.

An urge generator doesn’t know that an urge is irrelevant to other thoughts or ongoing action.”

The research is published in the journal Behaviour and Brain Sciences (Morsella et al., 2015).

Brain illustration image from Shutterstock

The Emotion That Boosts Self-Control and Saves You Money

We have a new ally in the struggle to resist temptation.

We have a new ally in the struggle to resist temptation.

The feeling of gratitude can help people resist temptation, according to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science.

While practising gratitude is now well-established as a powerful way to enhance happiness, its links to decision-making are much less clear.

Many people feel that emotions tend to get in the way of decision-making: that we should be ‘cold’ and ‘calculating’ to make the right choices.

For example, when we’re faced with a tempting choice to spend (or waste) a whole load of money, we usually call on our powers of self-control to resist temptation.

The new research, though, finds that the emotions can also be harnessed to rein in desire.

In the study, conducted by Northeastern University’s David DeSteno and colleagues, 75 participants were given a classic test of their financial self-control (DeSteno et al., 2014).

They were told they could have $54 right now or $80 in 30 days.

Before they made their decision, though, they were put into one of three emotional states:

  1. Grateful.
  2. Happy.
  3. Neutral.

The results demonstrated that people who were either happy or neutral showed a strong preference for having less money but getting it now.

This is the usual situation: most people don’t want to wait.

The people in the gratitude condition, though, showed much more restraint and were willing to wait for a larger gain.

And, the more gratitude they felt, the greater their patience for the larger reward.

One of the study’s authors, Professor Ye Li, said:

“Showing that emotion can foster self-control and discovering a way to reduce impatience with a simple gratitude exercise opens up tremendous possibilities for reducing a wide range of societal ills from impulse buying and insufficient saving to obesity and smoking.”

We don’t know exactly why gratitude has this effect, but it may be because it makes us feel more social, co-operative and altruistic.

In other words: gratitude may make us feel less selfish, which gives us more patience.

Here’s a 2 minute gratitude exercise, if you’d like to try it.

Image credit: Loving Earth