Best Ways to Control Yourself
How to control Yourself?
After many researches psychiatrists suggests that you can
control yourself easily by using abstract reasoning.
Temptation comes in many forms, often so potent, so
animal, that it seems impossible to resist. Eating too much, drinking too much,
spending too much or letting the heart rule the head. We get instant messages
from deep in the gut that resonate through the mind, trying to dictate our
behaviour.
One of humanity's most useful skills, without which
advanced civilisations would not exist, is being able to engage our higher
cognitive functions, our self-control, to resist these temptations.
Psychologists have found that self-control is strongly associated with what we
label success: higher self-esteem, better interpersonal skills, better
emotional responses and, perhaps surprisingly, few drawbacks at even very high
levels of self-control (Tangney et al., 2004).
People, being only human, find the constant battle with
basic urges is frequently too great and their self-control buckles. However,
recent experimental research byDr Kentaro Fujita at Ohio State University and
colleagues has explored ways of improving self-control, where it comes from and
why it sometimes deserts us.
Based on new research, along with studies conducted over
the past few decades, Dr Fujita and colleagues have proposed that abstract
thinking and psychological distance are particularly important in self-control.
A1.
Evidence that abstract thinking improves self-control
It never ceases to amaze just how different two people's
views of exactly the same event can be: one person's freedom fighter is
another's terrorist. But the way in which we view people or events isn't just
constrained by unchangeable patterns of thought that are set in stone. Dr
Fujita and colleagues explored the idea that simple manipulations of how we
construe the world can have a direct effect on self-control. Their hunch was
that thinking from a more abstract, high-level perspective increases
self-control.
In their research, published in the Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology,Fujita et al. (2006) used a number of
experiments to test the idea that self-control is affected by how we construe
or interpret events. The problem for the researchers was manipulating aspects
of people's construal without them realising: this required some deception.
In one of Fujita et al.'s (2006) studies participants
were told they were going to take part in two separate experiments - one on
personality and another billed as a student survey. In fact this was just a
cover story as the two pieces of research were designed to work together.
Experimenters used the 'student survey' as a cover to
manipulate levels of construal. They needed participants to be thinking in
either a high-level way (abstract - seeing the whole forest) or a low-level way
(concrete - seeing individual trees). They did this by getting participants to
think about their level of physical health, but in two different ways:
§ High-level
construal condition: participants were asked to fill in a diagram which
encouraged them to think about why they maintain good physical health.
Participants tended to put answer such as: "To do well in school."
This got them thinking about ends rather than means - the ultimate purpose of
physical health.
§ Low-level
construal condition: in contrast participants in this condition were asked to
think about how they maintained their physical health. Naturally they responded
with things like: "Go exercise". In other words they focused on means
rather than ends, the actual process.
Just before this manipulation of construal level, in a
study they were misinformed was separate, participants were told their
personality was being tested physiologically through holding a handgrip. This
handgrip was designed to be difficult to squeeze together but participants were
told to hold on as long as possible. This provided a baseline measurement of
their grip strength.
Just after the manipulation of construal level
participants had dummy electrodes attached to their arm and were told that
their personality could be measured while they squeezed the stiff handgrip
again. This time, though, they were told that the longer they could squeeze the
handgrip the more accurate the information would be. The question was: how well
could participants forget the temporary discomfort of holding the handgrip once
they had been told about the desired goal of getting information about their
own personalities?
The results confirmed Fujita et al.'s (2006) suspicions.
They showed that participants in the low-construal thinking condition (thinking
about means rather than ends) held on to the handgrip for, on average, 4.9
seconds less than they had during the baseline measurement.
In contrast those in the high-construal condition held on
for 11.1 seconds longer than their baseline measurement. Whether participants
were thinking about means or ends had a really significant effect on how long
they squeezed the handgrip. Those participants who had been encouraged to think
in high-level, abstract terms demonstrated greater self-control in enduring the
discomfort of the handgrip in order to receive more accurate personality
profiles.
Along with this design Fujita et al. (2006) also carried
out other studies using different measures of self-control and different ways
of inducing either high-level or low-level construal. These produced similar
findings. People in the high-level construal condition were consistently:
§ More likely to
avoid the temptation of instant gratification.
§ Prepared to make
a greater investment to learn more about their health status.
§ Less likely to
evaluate temptations like beer and television positively.
A2.
How personality and the situation affect self-control
Self-control is not just affected by how we are thinking
at a specific moment, that would be too easy. We have each developed different
amounts of self-control. Some people seem to find it easy to resist temptation
while others can be relied on to always yield to self-gratification. To a
certain extent we have to accept our starting point on the self-control sliding
scale and do the best we can with it.
Although a few people have very high (or very low) levels
of self-control, two-thirds of us lie somewhere near the middle: sometimes
finding it easy to resist temptation, other times not. Naturally the exact situation
has a huge effect on how much self-control we can exert. One property of
different situations central to self-control that psychologists have examined
is 'psychological distance'.
Research reveals that people find it much easier to make
decisions that demonstrate self-control when they are thinking about events
that are distant in time, for example how much exercise they will do next week
or what they will eat tomorrow (Fujita, 2008). Similarly they make much more
disciplined decisions on behalf of other people than they do for themselves.
People implicitly follow the maxim: do what I say, not what I do.
It's not hard to see the convergence between the idea of
'psychological distance' and high-level construal. Both emphasise the idea that
the more psychological or conceptual distance we can put between ourselves and
the particular decision or event, the more we are able to think about it in an
abstract way, and therefore the more self-control we can exert. It's all about
developing a special type of objectivity.
A3.
How to improve your self-control
Fujita et al.'s (2006) studies, along with other similar
findings reported by Fujita (2008), suggest that self-control can be increased
by these related ways of thinking:
§ Global
processing. This means trying to focus on the wood rather than the trees:
seeing the big picture and our specific actions as just one part of a major
plan or purpose. For example, someone trying to eat healthily should focus on
the ultimate goal and how each individual decision about what to eat
contributes (or detracts) from that goal.
§ Abstract
reasoning. This means trying to avoid considering the specific details of the
situation at hand in favour of thinking about how actions fit into an overall
framework - being philosophical. Someone trying to add more self-control to
their exercise regime might try to think less about the details of the
exercise, and instead focus on an abstract vision of the ideal physical self,
or how exercise provides a time to re-connect mind and body.
§ High-level
categorisation. This means thinking about high-level concepts rather than
specific instances. Any long-term project, whether in business, academia or
elsewhere can easily get bogged down by focusing too much on the minutiae of
everyday processes and forgetting the ultimate goal. Categorising tasks or
project stages conceptually may help an individual or group maintain their
focus and achieve greater self-discipline.
These are just some examples of specific instances, but
with a little creativity the same principles can be applied to many situations
in which self-control is required. Ultimately these three ways of thinking are
different ways of saying much the same thing: avoid thinking locally and
specifically and practice thinking globally, objectively and abstractly, and
increased self-control should follow.
"It's all right letting yourself go, as long as you
can get yourself back." ~Mick Jagger
Image source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1067628
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