Chocolate Radishes
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You have agreed to participate in a few studies. You were asked to show up to the center a bit hungry. Entering a room your nostrils are delighted by the smell of fresh baked cookies wafting through the air. In a bowl you see moist chocolate chips, slightly melted, nestled in a golden puffy dough. The cookie shapes are slightly irregular, clearly homemade deliciousness in baked form. As if everyone’s grandma’s baked cookies, and then only the best of those cookies got together and had a big orgy and had baby cookies and then only the best of those were placed before you. The bowl of cookies is sending tingly eat-me-now signals directly to the chocolate cortex of your brain. The other bowl contains radishes.
| 50% of participants are asked to eat some cookies but no radishes |
50% of participants are asked to eat some radishes but no cookies |
Quick, roll 1d100! The researcher leaves the room for a few minutes. Of course, because this isn’t your home and you’re part of a study you don’t cheat. You eat the assigned food. Hope you were assigned the cookies. Mmmmm.
Okay, that test is finished. It’s explained to you the next test is to determine who’s better at solving problems, people of your educational background, or people who have completed less education that you have. You are given a series of puzzles requiring you to trace a complicated geometric shape without retracing any lines and without lifting your pencil from the paper. You’re given more paper and pencils than you could ever use and you can keep trying as long as you’d like.
What they don’t tell you is that the puzzles are designed to be unsolvable. There is no way you can possibly ever complete this test. The other thing they neglected to mention is the two tests you’ve been given were related.
| cookie eaters spend an average of 19 minutes and 34 attempts at solving the problems |
radish eaters spend an average of 8 minutes and 19 attempts at solving the problems |
What’s going on? Both complex geometric problems and resisting the chocolate chip cookies require self-control. Radish eaters had to do both while chocolate eaters had more self-control to spare for the geometric problems. Not self-control in the narrowest sense of the word (e.g. resisting cookies, cigarettes or alcohol) but in the broadest: think of assembling a new bookshelf or learning a new dance. Contrast that with mental-autopilot behaviours like brushing your teeth or a daily commute to work. This is a scientific, repeatable experiment that’s actually been conducted. It turns out that self-control is an exhaustible resource.
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