Willpower Vs. Situational Agency: The Generational Difference In Overcoming Temptation
By
Leonard Zwelling
This appeared in The New York Times print edition on January 2, but was posted on the paper’s web site on December 28. It is an op-ed piece by Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. If I understand the piece correctly, Professor Duckworth establishes what willpower is by using a child’s fable in which a Frog says that “willpower is trying hard not to do something that you really want to do.” In this case it was eating too many cookies.
I am going to add that willpower is forcing yourself to DO something that you really DON’T want to do. In my case that would be weightlifting on a regular basis.
Professor Duckworth goes on to cite research and to list demonstrative examples of willpower’s failure to be a means to desired behavior. Instead, she advocates for “situational agency” which appears to mean establishing situations in life to increase the likelihood of success without having to resort to willpower. Among examples she uses is that some famous people don’t own cellphones so that they can avoid the temptations of social media scrolling.
This idea so offended me that I sprung to my keyboard to write this without resorting to willpower to stay away from my laptop. Why would I ever do that?
I don’t care whether it is Gen Zers who cannot stay off their phones nor tolerate anyone saying anything that might offend them or 79-year-old Presidents who cannot control their mouths on Air Force One. Willpower is exactly what this world needs more of. Another word for willpower is discipline. I know it is rare for me to stridently disagree with my old home town newspaper, but I completely disagree with this inane op-ed in The New York Times. If you need to hide your cellphone so you won’t scroll during class, you’re not an adult, nor likely to ever be one. If you cannot develop the habit of regular physical activity, I guess buying a gym membership is an example of situational agency, but I think situational agency is poppycock even if the professor’s research says otherwise.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that in today’s world of undisciplined Presidents, self-indulgent pop stars, pornographic excess, and minions of multi-married adults, an academic would resort to claiming that there’s a substitute for hard work.
Now, I will admit to having used a GLP-1 drug when multiple attempts at dieting did not achieve my weight loss goals. But I look upon the drug as exactly what Dr. Duckworth advocates. It was, for me, situational agency that allowed me to jump start what has since been weight maintenance by willpower. And, in my case, giving up beer took a great deal of willpower.
I also think about all of the occasions that demanded my willpower to get through. I was a Duke intern wading in the blood of a GI bleeder at four in the morning in between runs to the blood bank for many multiples of five units of blood. That patient died at dawn despite my best efforts all night. I repeated experiments forty or fifty times to assuage the doubt of my lab chief at the NCI. And perhaps among the hardest challenges was me against the entire clinical research faculty of MD Anderson when I had to ask the Institutional Review Board to discipline faculty members who simply would not adhere to the Code of Federal Regulations in the performance of human subjects research. There was no situational agency that was going to help me through any of these moments. Only my superb training at Duke and the University of Houston and whatever character was drummed into me by my parents was going to get me through the night.
I’m all for ways to make doing hard things easier to do. I also think that anything that makes something you want to do, but shouldn’t, harder is a good idea, too. But none of this is a substitute for willpower. Willpower is what separates an adult from a child. I just hope today’s children are given the tools to develop their willpower and not simply rely on gimmicks to follow the right path.
