Viewing entries tagged
self-control

Time for half-year resolutions?

May 17, 2024

It’s probably all too familiar. Against your best intentions, you find yourself reaching for a late-night snack again. You snap at a colleague who didn’t really say anything wrong. You find excuses so that your daily run becomes a biweekly one. You’re convinced you don’t want to behave that way anymore, but here you are, doing it again. Psychologist Michael Inzlicht of the University of Toronto has long been fascinated by how we keep ourselves in check — or don’t — whether you call that willpower, self-control or something else.

Tags: self-control, effort, motivation

Comment

You Can’t Simply Decide to Be a Different Person

January 10, 2022

Forming new habits isn’t impossible, but it’s much easier for some people than others.

The key distinction here, Inzlicht told me, is that a person who appears highly self-controlled to others—who is displaying a high level of trait self-control—probably isn’t exercising their behavioral self-control as much as you do. “People who have high trait self-control, they don’t actually engage in more restraint of their behavior and thoughts and emotions in the moment,” he said. Instead, they just aren’t tempted or distracted or diverted from their purpose as often or as effectively as the rest of us.

Read more

Tags: self-control, habits, conscientiousness

Comment

You Can’t Deplete Your Willpower

January 18, 2021

Ego-depletion theory quickly became one of the hottest concepts in psychology. “The idea really took social psychology by storm. It’s not an exaggeration to say that for a while it was at the center of the field,” says Michael Inzlicht, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. Inzlicht himself was swept up in the ego-depletion furor and published work that supported its existence and significance.

“But then some cracks started to appear,” he says.

Tags: self-control, ego depletion, replication crisis

Comment

The myth of self-control

November 4, 2016

Vox covers the psychology of self-control, suggesting that effortful forms of control are over-hyped. Part of the article covers work from the lab indicating that self-control does not predict goal progress.

Tags: self-control, goals, motivation

Comment

Collaborators

Joshua Aronson, New York University
Avi Ben-Zeev, San Francisco State University
Elliot Berkman, University of Oregon
Kirk Brown, Virginia Commonwealth University
Daryl Cameron, Penn State University
Belle Derks, Utrecht University
Jennifer Gutsell, Brandeis University
Greg Hajcak, Florida State University
Eddie Harmon-Jones, University of New South Wales
Jacob Hirsh, University of Toronto
Cendri Hutcherson, University of Toronto
Sonia Kang, University of Toronto
Michael Larson, Brigham Young University
Lisa Legault, Clarkson University
Ian McGregor, University of Waterloo
Marina Milyavskaya, Carleton University
Sukhvinder Obhi, McMaster University
Liz Page-Gould, University of Toronto
Travis Proulx, Cardiff University
Blair Saunders, University of Dundee
Brandon Schmeichel, Texas A&M University
Zindel Segal, University of Toronto
Alexa Tullett, University of Alabama

Staying focused in a world full of distractions

Can I Have Your Attention, Please? A U of T Scarborough psychology professor explores why we’re more distracted than ever – and proposes a path to deeper engagement and lasting satisfaction.

The Paradox of Hard Work

Why do people enjoy doing difficult things?

“You can imagine that some people are willing to work hard, but go about it from a sense of duty and responsibility,” Inzlicht told me for my New York Times story. “But other people—call them ‘joyful workers’—this is what they live for. This is what gives them purpose. This is what makes them feel important. This is what helps them make the world make sense.” The existence of “joyful workers” suggests that, even if the Effort Paradox applies to everyone, it doesn’t apply equally. Where you sit on the Meaningfulness-of-Effort scale probably reflects a changeable mix of nature and nurture.

University of Toronto professor Michael Inzlicht wanted to find out who's better at empathic responses: people, or ChatGPT. He explains to CBC Metro Morning how AI won the empathy contest.

Listen Here

News for Front

Time for half-year resolutions?

You Can’t Simply Decide to Be a Different Person

You Can’t Deplete Your Willpower

The myth of self-control

Filter By Keyword

Latest Tweets

News

Collaborators

University of Toronto

Organizations

Research Applications

Image Credits

Twitter