Why self-discipline is overrated: The (troubling) theory and practice of control from within

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 90, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 168-176

  Kohn, Alfie ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 70450192248     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. Jack Block, Personality as an Affect-Processing System: Toward an Integrative Theory (Mahway, N.J.: Erlbaum, 2002), pp. 195, 8-9.
2. Or, as a different psychologist puts it, "One person's lack of self-control is another person's impetus for a positive life change"
3. Laura A. King, "Who Is Regulating What and Why?" Psychological Inquiry, vol. 7, 1996, p. 58).
4. "Our belief [is] that there is no true disadvantage of having too much self-control," Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman wrote in their book, Character Strengths and Virtues (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 515.
5. June Tangney, Roy Baumeister, and Angie Luzio Boone similarly declared that "self-control is beneficial and adaptive in a linear fashion. We found no evidence that any psychological problems are linked to high self-control" ("High Self-Control Predicts Good Adjustment, Less Pathology, Better Grades, and Interpersonal Success," Journal of Personality, vol. 72, 2004, pp. 271-324).
6. This conclusion - based on questionnaire responses by a group of undergraduates - turns out to be a trifle misleading, if not disingenuous. First, it's supported by the fact that Tangney and her colleagues found an inverse relationship between self-control and negative emotions. Other research, however, has found that there's also an inverse relationship between self-control and positive emotions.
7. Darya L. Zabelina et al., "The Psychological Tradeoffs of Self-Control," Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 43, 2007, pp. 463-73.
8. Even if highly self-controlled people aren't always unhappy, they're also not particularly happy; their emotional life in general tends to be muted. Second, the self-control questionnaire used by Tangney and her colleagues "includes items reflective of an appropriate level of control and [of] undercontrol, but not over-control. It is therefore not surprising that the correlates of the scale do not indicate maladaptive consequences associated with very high levels of control"
9. Tera D. Letzring et al., "Ego-Control and Ego-Resiliency," Journal of Research in Personality, vol. 39, 2005, p. 3
10. In other words, the clean bill of health they award to self-control was virtually predetermined by the design of their study. At the very end of their article, Tangney et al. concede that some people may be rigidly overcontrolled but then immediately try to define the problem out of existence: "Such overcontrolled individuals may be said to lack the ability to control their self-control" (p. 314).
11. Joseph F. Rogus, "Promoting Self-Discipline: A Comprehensive Approach," Theory Into Practice, vol. 24, 1985, p. 271.
12. The second is from http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Self-Discipline, a web page of the Curriculum, Technology, and Education Reform program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Rogus' article appeared in a special issue of the journal Theory Into Practice devoted entirely to the topic of self-discipline. Although it featured contributions by a wide range of education theorists, including some with a distinctly humanistic orientation, none questioned the importance of self-discipline.
13. Letzring et al., p. 3.
14. Scott J. Dickman, "Functional and Dysfunctional Impulsivity," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 58, 1990, p. 95.
15. Zabelina et al.
16. Daniel A. Weinberger and Gary E. Schwartz, "Distress and Restraint as Superordinate Dimensions of Self-Reported Adjustment," Journal of Personality, vol. 58, 1990, pp. 381-417.
17. David C. Funder, "On the Pros and Cons of Delay of Gratification," Psychological Inquiry, vol. 9, 1998, p. 211. The studies to which he alludes are, respectively.
18. Jonathan Shedler and Jack Block, "Adolescent Drug Use and Psychological Health," American Psychologist, vol. 45, 1990, pp. 612-30
19. Jack H. Block, Per E. Gjerde, and Jeanne H. Block, "Personality Antecedents of Depressive Tendencies in 18-Year-Olds," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 60, 1991, pp. 726-38.
20. Christine Halse, Anne Honey, and Desiree Bought-wood, "The Paradox of Virtue: (Re)thinking Deviance, Anorexia, and Schooling," Gender and Education, vol. 19, 2007, pp. 219-35.
21. This may explain why the data generally fail to show any academic benefit to assigning homework - which most students detest - particularly in elementary or middle school.
22. Alfie Kohn, The Homework Myth [Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2006] and an article based on that book in the September 2006 issue of Kappan.
23. Remarkably, most people assume that students will somehow benefit from performing tasks they can't wait to be done with, as though their attitudes and goals were irrelevant to the outcome.
24. David Shapiro, Neurotic Styles (New York: Basic, 1965), p. 34.
25. David Shapiro, Neurotic Styles (New York: Basic, 1965), p. 44
26. Funder, David Shapiro, Neurotic Styles (New York: Basic, 1965), p. 211.
27. Regarding the way that "disinhibition [is] occasionally manifested by some overcontrolled personalities," see Block, p. 187.
28. Janet Polivy, "The Effects of Behavioral Inhibition," Psychological Inquiry, vol. 9, 1998, p. 183.
29. She adds: "This is not to say that one should never inhibit one's natural response, as, for example, when anger makes one want to hurt another, or addiction makes one crave a cigarette"
30. She adds: "This is not to say that one should never inhibit one's natural response, as, for example, when anger makes one want to hurt another, or addiction makes one crave a cigarette"
31. Rather, it means one should weigh the benefits and costs of inhibition in each circumstance - a moderate position that contrasts sharply with our society's tendency to endorse self-discipline across the board.
32. Funder, Janet Polivy p. 211.
33. Walter Mischel, who conducted the so-called "marshmallow" experiments (see sidebar on page 170), put it this way: The inability to delay gratification may be a problem, but "the other extreme - excessive delay of gratification - also has its personal costs and can be disadvantageous.... Whether one should or should not delay gratification or 'exercise the will' in any particular choice is often anything but self-evident"
34. "From Good Intentions to Willpower," in Peter M. Gollwitzer and John A. Bargh. eds., The Psychology of Action: Linking Cognition and Motivation to Behavior [New York: Guilford, 1996], p. 198.
35. King, Janet Polivy.; and Alina Tugend, "Winners Never Quit? Well, Yes, They Do," New York Times, 16 August 2008, p. B5.
36. for data that challenge an unqualified endorsement of perseverance such as is offered by psychologist Angela Duckworth and her colleagues: "As educators and parents we should encourage children to work not only with intensity but also with stamina." That advice follows their report that perseverance contributed to higher grades and better performance at a spelling bee
37. Angela L. Duckworth et al., "Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 92, 2007; quotation on p. 1100.
38. But such statistical associations mostly point up the limitations of these outcome measures as well as of grit itself, a concept that ignores motivational factors (that is, why people persevere), thus conflating genuine passion for a task with a desperate need to prove one's competence, an inability to change course when appropriate, and so on.
39. Block, Janet Polivy p. 130.
40. See, for example, my book, Punished by Rewards, rev. ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999);
41. Edward L. Deci et al., "A Meta-Analytic Review of Experiments Examining the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation," Psychological Bulletin, vol. 125, 1999, pp. 627-68.
42. Richard M. Ryan, Scott Rigby, and Kristi King, "Two Types of Religious Internalization and Their Relations to Religious Orientations and Mental Health," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 65, 1993, p. 587.
43. This basic distinction has been explicated and refined in many other writings by Ryan, Deci, Robert J. Vallerand, James P. Connell, Richard Koestner, Luc Pelletier, and others. Most recently, it has been invoked in response to Roy Baumeister's claim that the capacity for self-control is "like a muscle," requiring energy and subject to being depleted - such that if you resist one sort of temptation, you'll have, at least temporarily, less capacity to resist another. The problem with this theory is its failure to distinguish "between self-regulation (i.e., autonomous regulation) and self-control (i.e., controlled regulation)." Ego depletion may indeed take place with the latter, but the former actually "maintains or enhances energy or vitality".
44. Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, "From Ego Depletion to Vitality," Social and Personality Psychology Compass, vol. 2, 2008, pp. 709, 711.
45. Richard M. Ryan, James P. Connell, and Edward L. Deci, "A Motivational Analysis of Self-Determination and Self-Regulation in Education," in Carole Ames and Russell Ames, eds., Research on Motivation in Education, vol. 2 (Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1985)
46. Richard M. Ryan and Jerome Stiller, "The Social Contexts of Internalization: Parent and Teacher Influences on Autonomy, Motivation, and Learning," Advances in Motivation and Achievement, vol. 7, 1991, pp. 115-49.
47. The quotation is from Ryan and Stiller, p. 143.
48. David Brooks, "The Art of Growing Up," New York Times, 6 June 2008, p. A23.
49. Alfie Kohn, "How Not to Teach Values: A Critical Look at Character Education," Phi Delta Kappan, February 1997, pp. 429-39.
50. One educator based his defense of the need for self-discipline on "our natural egoism [that threatens to] lead us into 'a condition of warre one against another'" - as though Thomas Hobbes's dismal view of our species was universally accepted. This was followed by the astonishing assertion that "social class differences appear to be largely a function of the ability to defer gratification" and the recommendation that we "connect the lower social classes to the middle classes who may provide role models for self-discipline"
51. Louis Goldman, "Mind, Character, and the Deferral of Gratification," Educational Forum, vol. 60, 1996, pp. 136, 137, 139.
52. Notice that this article was published in 1996, not 1896.
53. To whatever extent internalization or self-discipline is desired, this gentler approach - specifically, supporting children's autonomy and minimizing adult control - has consistently been shown to be more effective. (I reviewed some of the evidence in Unconditional Parenting [New York: Atria, 2005], especially chap. 3.) Ironically, many of the same traditionalists who defend the value of self-control also promote a more authoritarian approach to parenting or teaching. In any case, my central point here is that we need to reconsider the goal, not merely the method.
54. George Lakoff, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
55. For a discussion of the relationship between obedience and self-control, see Block, esp. pp. 195-96.
56. I'm thinking specifically of Roy Baumeister and his collaborator June Tangney, as well as Martin Seligman and Angela Duckworth, and, in a different academic neighborhood, criminologists Michael R. Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi, who argued that crime is due simply to a lack of self-control on the part of criminals. For a critique of that theory, see the essay by Gilbert Geis and other chapters in Erich Goode, ed., Out of Control: Assessing the General Theory of Crime (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008).
57. I discussed the Fundamental Attribution Error in an article about academic cheating, which is typically construed as a reflection of moral failure (one often attributed to a lack of self-control), even though researchers have found that it is a predictable response to certain educational environments.
58. "Who's Cheating Whom?" Phi Delta Kappan, October 2007, pp. 89-97.
59. Per-Olof H. Wikström and Kyle Treiber, "The Role of Self-Control in Crime Causation," European Journal of Criminology, vol. 4, 2007, pp. 243, 251. Regarding delay of gratification
60. Walter Mischel et al., "Cognitive and Attentional Mechanisms in Delay of Gratification," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 21, 1972, pp. 204-18. 31.
61. CBS News, "Meet 'Generation Plastic,'" 17 May 2007, available at www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/17/eveningnews/ main2821916.shtml.
62. Heather Rogers, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage (New York: New Press, 2005).
63. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America (New York: Basic, 1976), p. 39.
64. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that the conservative National Review published an essay strongly supporting homework because it teaches "personal responsibility and self-discipline. Homework is practice for life"
65. John D. Gartner, "Training for Life," 22 January 2001.
66. But what aspect of life? The point evidently is not to train children to make meaningful decisions, or become part of a democratic society, or learn to think critically. Rather, what's being prescribed are lessons in doing whatever one is told.