Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength [Hardcover]

There are few concepts in psychology with as much scientific support as the idea that willpower is a limited resource and when its drained, people (and even dogs) have less willpower for whatever task is coming next in their lives. Perhaps the most sexy finding is that if you use a great deal of self-control or willpower in doing something you end up exhausted in whatever you do next that requires self-control even if it is completed unrelated to the first activity. For instance, you try to resist the sexual temptation of looking at beautiful women at work and without even knowing it, you end up physically weaker during your gym workout. This tends to happen when the two activities are back to back. Other people will be fascinated by the unusual ways that people can build up their reservoir of willpower. I won't give away the juice here.

As a scientist, I am impressed with how the authors stay close to the science.
As a reader, I relish the smooth writing style.
As someone who wants to be entertained, I appreciate the great storytelling ability. For this reason, the ideas in this book are sticky.

Honestly, I find it difficult to imagine an audience that would not benefit from reading this book. Educators. Policy makers. Parents. Self-help book fanatics. Therapists and coaches. People interested in why human beings do the things they do (that is, fans of psychology). If you disagree, let me know. Roy Baumeister is one of the most important psychologists alive and he is not afraid of taking risks and delving into what matters- sex, death, love, happiness, suicide, and even UFO abductions. Its about time people outside of science get a taste of his excellent contributions.

I couldn't recommend this more strongly.

cheers,
Todd

Will power is an interesting and important topic. A good authoritative book on the subject written for general audience is long overdue. So I eagerly waited to read this book. Unfortunately, this book is not it. It is a readable book but with no significant payoff to the reader.

In recent years, a new genre of books - academics and scientists writing for lay audience - has become very popular. Many such books (for example, Influence by Cialdini, Freakonomics by Steven Levitt, Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert) are surprisingly well written; others are well-meaning but plodding (for example, The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Positivity by Barbara Frederickson); but almost all of them are clearly focused on their subject.

Not so with this book.

If authors know what this book is about, they don't tell the readers. But, to be fair to the authors, it doesn't appear that they have a clue themselves.

What is Willpower? Well, the authors aren't sure. It could be decision making skill. The authors have the solution. Watch your glycemic index. Or it could be strategies to cope with things when you DON'T have self-control. Authors helpful suggestions include that if you are an alcoholic, don't be around people who drink. I could have never thought of that. Or...

How to increase your willpower? Well you cannot. But wait, if you are organized, then you will increase your willpower in other areas. Well not really. When something becomes a habit, it does not deplete your energy. So you have more willpower, even though you don't. Are you following all this? If not, let's take a detour here. Let's go on some completely irrelevant excursions into the Heart of Darkness, Eric Clapton's transformation and behavioral economics. And if you are still confused, here is another suggestion. Maybe you should become religious. The authors know of a study in which religious people are found to have more will power than those who don't. Good enough for us.

Are the authors bothered by contradictory findings? No, not a bit, not our intrepid authors. They have explanations for things that might baffle more enquiring minds. When you lack the willpower to resist the second temptation, it's because your ego is fatigued. When you do have the willpower to resist the second temptation, it's because your willpower is strengthened by your earlier resistance. If parole officers decide to be less lenient when their glucose level is low, that's because they don't have the willpower at all to decide (to be lenient). Deciding not to grant parole is the same as not deciding. Theoretical consistency and reality checks are no concern of the authors. Must be wonderful to find a fantasy niche in science where one's theories are unfalsifiable, no matter what reality says.

Is the book a summary of what researchers found thus far on willpower? Well maybe. But the authors did not find much worthwhile research done by anyone else except by one of the authors. Anything else that is mentioned just supports Baumeister's research. Bit players all.

Is the research reported solid? Yes of course, most of them are based on single studies on voluntary university students. Why bother replicating when you can stretch the implications of single studies to develop beautiful theories? Why consider the possibility of alternative explanations? Why consider testing anything in a more realistic or broader context?

This book lacks the theoretical rigor of books like Howard Rachlin's The Science of Self Control or the breeziness of books like Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational. This book (Willpower) is like a large meal that lacks taste and flavor. Come to think of it, nutrition as well.

Why two stars? I am a generous guy, that's why.

This book is an embarrassment to the genre created by the likes of Bob Cialdini, Dan Ariely, Steven Levitt and Dan Gilbert.

I have been contemplating on the subject of willpower for a while and was very excited to get this book when it came out. While there is a good amount of interesting material here on the science of self-control, overall, I would say this title didn't quite live up to my expectations.

As one of the reviewers pointed out, there is a multitude of different pop sci books out there. Some are written by the researchers themselves and others by journalists who digest and interpret the information second-hand. In my experience, there is a clear distinction in style between someone who is a primary subject matter expert and someone who is just synthesizing secondary information. The researcher-authors tend to focus more on the actual experiments, strike a decent balance between pop and hard science, do a much better job explaining the meaning of the findings, and are usually pretty cautious about overly extrapolating the results. Journalist-authors tend to err much more on the side of watering down the science (perhaps because they have an incomplete understanding themselves) and generally strike a "let me explain this to an idiot" type of tone.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that this book is co-authored with the primary researcher, it really falls into the "journalist-author" bucket. I get a distinct impression that John Tierny was responsible for most of the writing, where Roy Baumeister is cited as an author only because the book is mostly based on his research. I think Tierny tries way too hard to oversimplify the science and calls on very extensive celebrity examples to illustrate some of the findings. I don't have a problem with "case studies", but I really don't need to read through pages upon pages about Drew Carey's disorganized personal life and how some fellow who claims to be a personal organizer guru helped Carey get his life back on track. Additionally, I didn't need extensive biography of Eric Clapton to explain self-control in case of alcoholism and the lengthy example of Oprah to illustrate the limitations of willpower when it comes to weight loss. I and probably 99% of the educated public understand the applications and implications of the research findings without having it explained in great detail through the lives of celebrities. At best, this tactic is a space filler and at worst, an insult to the reader's intelligence.

Despite these major flaws, the book does contain a lot of interesting research. Probably the most important finding is that willpower behaves similarly to a muscle, in that it can be exhausted with overuse and trained with various exercises. The authors establish a clear case for a link between high self-control and improved life outcomes and discuss in detail the research behind the success of various techniques to boost willpower as well as the types of adverse events that can result from willpower depletion.

Overall, I would still recommend this book to those who are interested in the subject of self-control and its implications. As I mentioned, there is a lot of good research described, I just wish the book didn't contain as much space filler regarding the "case studies" from lives of celebrities and generally adhered to a more intellectual prose rather than reading like a "science column" in a popular newspaper.

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