Willpower and Decision Making

I'm reading an article on the NY Times that talks about mental energy and how it relates to willpower and decision making. The gist is that you don't always make the same decision even if the subject in question is the same: it also depends on when you make that decision and what decisions you've made before that. In short: many decisions usually means that the last decisions were made hastily with the least effort because you've depleted your mental energy making decisions on the first few things.

A few pages into this article segued into willpower amongst dieters.

The discoveries about glucose help explain why dieting is a uniquely difficult test of self-control — and why even people with phenomenally strong willpower in the rest of their lives can have such a hard time losing weight. They start out the day with virtuous intentions, resisting croissants at breakfast and dessert at lunch, but each act of resistance further lowers their willpower. As their willpower weakens late in the day, they need to replenish it. But to resupply that energy, they need to give the body glucose. They’re trapped in a nutritional catch-22:
1. In order not to eat, a dieter needs willpower.
2. In order to have willpower, a dieter needs to eat.

As the body uses up glucose, it looks for a quick way to replenish the fuel, leading to a craving for sugar. After performing a lab task requiring self-control, people tend to eat more candy but not other kinds of snacks, like salty, fatty potato chips. The mere expectation of having to exert self-control makes people hunger for sweets. A similar effect helps explain why many women yearn for chocolate and other sugary treats just before menstruation: their bodies are seeking a quick replacement as glucose levels fluctuate. A sugar-filled snack or drink will provide a quick improvement in self-control (that’s why it’s convenient to use in experiments), but it’s just a temporary solution. The problem is that what we identify as sugar doesn’t help as much over the course of the day as the steadier supply of glucose we would get from eating proteins and other more nutritious foods. 

The article then goes into what brought up this essay in the first place which was a study done on the sentences of Jewish Israeli prisoners who were showing up in court. Similar to how we would always showed our parents our low test scores right after they ate in hopes that their full tummies would make them not get as mad at us (er.. at least I did, but I actually *got* low test scores, so you high-achieving Asians reading this blog may have no idea what I'm talking about), the prisoners had a higher chance of receiving parole right after lunch. Towards the end of the day more prisoners got denied parole proportionally for the same or lesser sentences, presumably because it was easier for the judge to avoid making a decision based on evidence and keep the prisoner in jail. So, food makes us happy. And you suck at making decisions when your stomach is empty. No-brainer. Back on topic....

I'm not sure how much exactly I agree with everything this journalist has stated. No doubt you get tired of making decisions and say, "fuck it, just take anything" after a long process of making decisions. But when it comes to self-control and repeat instances of "should I eat the cake or should I not," I feel like it becomes easier. For example: In January I decided to go mostly vegan for a month if any of you can remember. It was tough in the beginning, but once I got used to it, it became easy to avoid foods I told myself not to eat. And then 3 weeks into it I got a mini molten lava chocolate cake and I couldn't even finish it which amazed me so bad -- I didn't have the sweet tooth I was so familiar with. I always say that if you're going to avoid something you eat a lot, it's hard in the beginning, but it gets easier after the first few days. I stop craving those foods. In this example, using my willpower seemed like "practice" and it got easier with way less effort as the days went on. Of course, there is also a factor of addiction here too, as well as seeking out specific foods that didn't have animal products associated with them. Like my sweet tooth. I used to ALWAYS have to have something sweet after lunch but after a few days of forcing myself not to eat it, the urge is really really light after lunch.

“Good decision making is not a trait of the person, in the sense that it’s always there,” Baumeister says. “It’s a state that fluctuates.” His studies show that people with the best self-control are the ones who structure their lives so as to conserve willpower. They don’t schedule endless back-to-back meetings. They avoid temptations like all-you-can-eat buffets, and they establish habits that eliminate the mental effort of making choices. Instead of deciding every morning whether or not to force themselves to exercise, they set up regular appointments to work out with a friend. Instead of counting on willpower to remain robust all day, they conserve it so that it’s available for emergencies and important decisions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?pagewanted=5&ref=general&src=me