Is Willpower a Scarce Resource?

When I was a member of soccer club in high school, I was always scolded by a coach, saying "you lack willpower!!! You always indulge yourself!!!"

Yes,,,,,,I agree,,,,,,,I was a slacker... haha and still I am.....

It seems like in Japan (maybe not only in Japan), there is a tendency to attribute your failure to the lack of willpower.

You failed in the test because you didnt study enough!! You lack willpower!!! Stop watching TV and study!!!

Yes, maybe thats true..... but how about the next statement?

You are poor because you do not work hard!!! You lack willpower!!!

Is that true?

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Recently, there has been a number of psychological studies argueing that willpower is a scarce resource.

For example, this book: Willpower - http://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human-Strength/dp/0143122231

It means that the more you use willpower, the more it gets depleted. It is not that you have it infinitely and whether you can make an effort depends on your willpower. You run out of it when you use it too much.

The World Development Report (2015) argues that this applies to cognitive ability too.

World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior

The crucial point of this report is that poverty and financial constraint affect their cognitive ability in a negative way.

For example, a study in India about the cognitive ability of sugar cane farmers shows an interesting results.

Sugar cane farmers in India, for example, typically receive their income once a year, at the time of harvest. The large income difference between just before the harvest and just after affects financial decision making. Right before the harvest, these farmers are much more likely to have taken on loans and to have pawned some of their belongings. This financial distress takes a toll on the cognitive resources that the farmers have available before harvest time (Mani and others 2013). Farmers perform worse on the same series of cognitive tests before receiving their harvest income than after receiving their earnings—a difference in scores that is equivalent to roughly 10 IQ points. In this sense, poverty imposes a cognitive tax.

(World Bank, 2015. p. 14)

In this case, we can infer that the cause of poverty is NOT the lack of willpower.

It's the other way around.

The cause of the lack of willpower is poverty.

(In this article, I do not delve into the difference between willpower and cognitive ability. The point is that poverty affects our mental states.)

If this is the case, you can easily imagine that this causes a vicious cycle: poverty→lack of will power→poverty→lack of will power→............

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If this is the case, maybe "Poverty Trap" exists, as Jeffrey Sachs argued in his book "The End of Poverty." (thought he did not argue anything about the relation between poverty and cognitive ability.)

The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (English Edition)

Another side of school of thought, argueing that there is no such thing as a "poverty trap" might be wrong.

(Representative of this school of thought is this

The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

)

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I basically agree with this view. Poverty is a problem of structure, not the problem of individual effort.

However, when I was in Nicaragua, I met a guy who was born in a poor family but studied so hard, obtained degree from the top university in the country and was working for one of the leading research institutions there. (He is one of the people I respect most.)

What would he say if he hears somebody saying "willpower is a scarce resource. Im poor and my poverty used up all my cognitive ability. I cant make an effort more because there is no more willpower left?"

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In marathon, there is an aphorism saying "marathon starts when you started feeling like giving up."

There is also a Japanese saying "dont set your limit. go over it."

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The problem of thinking that willpower is a scarce resource is that it may be abused as an excuse of not making effort.

Actually, humans have huge potential capacities that are not appearing in the current moment. Making tremendous effort even when you think that you used up all your willpower could help you awaken that potential.

However, it is wrong to attribute all the mistakes and failures to the lack of effort and willpower.

Balancing "make an effort!!" view and "the amount of effort we can make is limited" view is important.