1. At this point, you’ve likely seen Andrew Sullivan’s Newsweek cover story on the “Crisis in Christianity”. While there’s regrettably little talk of salvation – which I’m not sure is really within the purview of such a piece – and the reference to Jefferson is a bit dubious, the overall diagnosis strikes me as sound. […]
Part of the Machine Itself: Steven Pinker on Willpower
If you find yourself “fatigued” by all our recent talk of ego depletion – the discovery that self-control essentially functions like a muscle – I don’t blame you. The reason for all the hubbub is the release of Roy Baumeister and John Tierney’s book, Willpower, which renowned Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker reviewed in this past […]
Go Boost Yourself!
Or don’t. A little article from Everydayhealth.com, entitled “Boosting Your Willpower,” caught my eye the other day, and, lacking the willpower to resist reading articles about boosting my willpower, I read it. It reminded me of some of the stuff that we’ve been posting about ego depletion recently. The gist of the article is: do […]
Understanding Decision Fatigue: Dieting, Shopping, Poverty and Willpower
A veritable goldmine of relevant material in John Tierney’s “Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?” in The NY Times Magazine this past week. We’ve written about “ego depletion” a number of times before – the verified psychological phenomenon of self-control being a depletable resource – but Tierney does a fine job of drawing out the […]
Another Week Ends: Online Echo Chambers, Deathbed Regrets, Dylan at the Cross, MJ’s Bad, Singing Spiderman, Penmanship Psychology & Seinfeld
1. A couple of articles that follow-up on the filter bubble phenomenon we posted on last week, both from The NY Times. The first is an editorial by Eli Pariser, “When The Internet Thinks It Knows You” and the second a slightly broader look at the issue, “The Trouble With The Echo Chamber Online.” While […]
Controlling Your Self Control: Temptation, Ego-Depletion and the Limits of Willpower
One of the main limits on willpower, though, turns out to be…willpower. Exerting self-control in one domain makes it harder to exert self-control in another, at least right away. Thus reads a line from the article “Resisting Temptation” in The Observer (the magazine put out by the Association of Psychological Science). The piece summarizes some […]
