Am I Being Too Hard On People With My Willpower Experiment

[Piers]

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Some people have little willpower and it is cruel for me to expect them to confront that fact. If they want to continually talk about their plans for the future, that I know won't happen, I should just let them.

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Seems good to me.

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They also go on to say that the ability to show willpower is an individual thing. I can't judge unless I walk a mile in their shoes. Perhaps they have just as much willpower as I do. They don't push themselves like I do

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Isn’t being able to push yourself harder just what it means to have more willpower. So what if it huts more for them to do it, pain is in the metal domain. Having less or being able to overcome more more easily, it’s all the same. Are you sure you’re not building a strawman.

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When it does, I claim that their arguments about themselves have been shown to be basically hogwash. Am I being too tough on them?

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Eh? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

Not exactly. There argument was dead to start with; I don’t see why bringing money into it makes any difference. Am I missing your point?

[sandycove]

Yes.

Because behavior is conditioned and because willpower appreciates a boost and because sometimes willpower is simply insufficient and because partial results are worthy of praise and because forgiveness is good. Change feeds on repetition and reinforcement. And, like most things, it needs teachers and supervisors.

Sample 1. Bobby Wadkins was a hard-working professional who ground out a long career on the PGA Tour but never won. Never. After yet another unsatisfying session on the practice green, he complained, again, to his brother, Lanny. "Change anything?," Lanny asked. "Nope," Bobby replied, again. Bobby had great willpower for working hard, but he didn't work smart. So he spent a career practicing missing.

Sample 2. The C2 indoor rowing folks are tremendously successful offering a steady menu of the smallest incentives to keep their clients rowing and rowing hard. For example, one gets the most modest, laughably inexpensive litle pin for rowing a prodigious 200,000 meters between Thanksgiving and Christmas. But that's all the motivation it takes for many, including me.

[thedorf]

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I'm not fat.

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sorry, must've read someone else's quote and thought it was yours.

[Jay.]

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They change their behavior because of the promise to someone other than themselves and have a stake in it with that person.

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This isn't motivating enough. The reason they change their behaviour is because it's now much easier to see the benefits of doing so.

Humans have trouble visualising the long run, have a goal of 'I want to lose 20lbs before christmas' and people don't see the long term benefits of weighing 20lbs less. Offer them $xxx and they perfectly see the benefit now, and can remind themselves everyday why they are doing it.

[psy]

I think perhaps you are being a little harsh still. Mainly because that by offering people money to stick to their resolutions it changes what it is they're trying to achieve, so I don't know if you're experiment actually proves anything.

You see, when people make a resolution the outcome they're trying to achieve is normally somewhat vague. The things you mention; eating healthy, reducing alcohol, exercising, studying - the outcome of doing these things is difficult to imagine, and therefore it's difficult to imagine how happy you'll feel once achieved.

On the other hand it's easy to imagine what kind of happiness money will bring because we all know exactly how much happier we will be with a new PS3 in our lives.

Also bringing a monetary equation into the, err... equation, more definitely, err... defines, what it is we are trying to achieve. It does this by putting an end point on the goal. A date.

[StregaChess]

Why would you be hard on these people unless you have expectations, and why should you have expectations?

"Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have of trying to change others" Jacob M. Braude

"It takes only 10 minutes to find in others the faults we often fail to discover in ourselves in a lifetime."

[Peter McDermott]

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Yes.

Because behavior is conditioned and because willpower appreciates a boost and because sometimes willpower is simply insufficient and because partial results are worthy of praise and because forgiveness is good. Change feeds on repetition and reinforcement. And, like most things, it needs teachers and supervisors.



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But our look at the research evidence -- in an area where change is notoriously difficult -- suggests that some of those factors, the teaching, the supervision, the praise and the forgiveness aren't as important as a financial incentive of $5 or $10 a week. (I'll grant that that contributes to the reinforcement and repetition though.)

[skillzilla]

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I'm not fat.

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pics

[WiltOnTilt]

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They don't push themselves like I do ... because the discomfort or pain is greater to them than to me.

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Seems pretty obvious that you offering them money to do what they wouldn't have done based on their own willpower doesn't discount their arguments that some things are harder for them than they are for you.

[discomfort of attaining goal] > [worth of end result]

as a result, they don't attain the goal.

[discomfort of attaining goal] <= [worth of end result] + [your money]

as a result, they attain the goal

So how does that make their arguments hogwash?

Perhaps their arguments would be hogwash if they were willing to attain the goal whether your monetary offer was $.01 or $1mil...but clearly the amount of money offered is compared to the discomfort in attaining the goal and the end result, and if it's "worth" it, they'll perform. That "worth" would directly relate to the amount of discomfort each individual person would feel. Therefore everyone has their own price.

KoW

[chuckbomb]

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Seems pretty obvious that you offering them money to do what they wouldn't have done based on their own willpower doesn't discount their arguments that some things are harder for them than they are for you.

[discomfort of attaining goal] > [worth of end result]

as a result, they don't attain the goal.

[discomfort of attaining goal] <= [worth of end result] + [your money]

as a result, they attain the goal

So how does that make their arguments hogwash?


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I think what Sklansky is saying is that people argue that they "can't" stop a certain compulsive/destructive behavior, when the presence of a monetary incentive clearly shows they can. Sure, everyone has their own price, but the fact that they have their own price means that their behavior really is in their control if the incentive is there.