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>> Roy F. Baumeister: We call self control the moral muscle,
I think moral virtues are mostly things
that show good self control, the seven deadly sins or list
of vices are mostly failures in self control.
So I hesitate to moralize self control per se, but it,
it's the foundation for morality and for moral behavior,
it's what enables to do what we think is right instead
of what we want to.
Psychology has found really two traits predict success
in a broad range of spheres, all walks of life,
these are intelligence and self control.
After a century of working at it, we haven't found much
in the way of ways to produce lasting improvements
in intelligence but self control can be improved anywhere.
So it, it's a really key entry point for doing things
to make people better and stronger
and improving their chances to succeed in life.
So having in mind how you run the,
the affairs of the university, how you run your classes
and so on, that in addition to imparting knowledge
to the student, we also want to do what used
to be called building character in the sense
of improving self control I think would,
would be a strong candidate for producing lasting benefits.
The term willpower was, was popular in the 1800s
because then, you know, that was a time when society was --
saw itself as in moral decline
and was trying to remoralize itself.
They were trying to raise the, the tone and they,
they thought effort to make yourself a better person
than to live up high virtues and so on,
that that was what is important.
In early Twentieth Century, that gave way instead to the,
you know, the self help books switched from you need
to have willpower that to just belief it, you can achieve it.
And the idea of just believing in yourself
or thinking something, that that was,
seen there as a, as the goal.
And the idea of willpower went somewhat out of fashion.
And it came on back somewhat by accident from our research
that we found after people exerted self control in,
in one task and then would go
onto a different task then their,
their self control showed some deficit and it looked
like some energy or something had been used up.
And we hesitated to use the term willpower.
There is this traditional idea that willpower is a,
is a aspect of your character, that it's a constant,
whereas the whole point of our research is
that it is, it is fluctuating.
And, yes, there are differences and there is an aspect of,
of personality and there are stable differences
between people.
Some people seem to have more than others
or to use it better than others.
But still, the important thing is that it, it fluctuates
and you don't have the same willpower every day,
every hour of every day at all time.
No way. It goes up and down.
In fact, the -- one of the studies we had
where people wore beepers and reported at different times
of the day what they were doing
and whether they were resisting their desires and so on showed,
you know, the changes within the, the same person.
That, that more as you go through the day and resist this
and resist this and make yourself do this,
you use up your willpower and so you become more
and more likely to, to yield and to give
into whatever desire comes along next.
The history of relationships research looks at should,
should people be similar or in some ways, are --
is complementarity good if they're, if they're different.
We've looked at that with self control, you know,
you measure the self control of both people
and compute the difference by subtracting
and then is it the bigger or the smaller difference
that produces the better relationship outcome.
What we actually found was it, it was neither.
That the difference had no relationship to it.
It was the sum.
The more self control both people have,
the better the relationship is and this is true
for married couples, dating couples and same sex friends.
So in all sorts of relationships,
positive self control is a --
good self control is a really positive trait
that makes both people in the relationship happy.
And one person is happier to the,
to the extent your partner has better self control.
It's, it's ironic for me, I grew up in the '60s and '70s
when we were rebelling against all these arbitrary rules
and we used to have dress codes
in high school and all that stuff.
And it used to be nobody swore in public and certainly not
if there was a female present, you know,
that would have just have been, have been,
have been unthinkable.
And so we rebelled against that and got rid
of all these arbitrary rules and yet now here I am as a,
a much older man, finding in my laboratory research
that conforming to arbitrary rules is actually good for you
because it does build character.
So I, I'm kind of scratching my head and say, well,
all those things we did away with that you'd have to line up
and stand straight, work on your posture, and wear certain kinds
of clothes every day and, you know, watch how you spoke
to the teacher and all those things, that well, those,
those do have some, some use and some benefit.
Discipline in a, in an environment,
including in an academic one, is something that people can,
can gain from and, and respond to and acquire then the ability
to have self discipline, which, as I said, it's a key part
of self control and that will help them to better in their,
their own endeavors wherever they go.
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