The Self-Control Industrial Complex

A Confession

Merchants of self-control do a brisk business. In psychology departments, TED talks, and bestselling books, we're sold the same seductive story: if you can just muster enough willpower in the moment—resisting that cookie, hitting the gym, focusing on work instead of TikTok—you'll unlock the secret to the good life. Better health, better relationships, more money.

I should know. I was one of them, though not a particularly successful one, as all those unanswered emails to book agents will attest. (Any book agents interested in an apostate’s take on self-control? I'm your man!)

As a psychologist studying self-control for over two decades, I helped peddle this narrative. I wrote papers, gave talks, and advised everyone within earshot that the key to success was developing better willpower.

But I was wrong.

In a new paper with the brilliant Brent Roberts, we unpack why almost everything we thought we knew about self-control might be wrong. The problem started with how we spoke about self-control, failing to distinguish between trait self-control and state self-control.

Trait self-control is basically how planful, orderly, and hardworking someone is as a person—think of your friend who always has their taxes done by February. Personality psychologists already had a perfectly good name for this: conscientiousness. But no, we social psychologists had to be clever and reinvent the wheel, calling it “trait self-control” or “grit”. The kicker? They're essentially the same thing.

Then there's state self-control—those moment-to-moment battles between what we want now and what our future self will thank us for. These days, psychologists talk about all sorts of strategies to win these battles, from reframing desires to avoiding temptation altogether. Sounds great in theory, right?

For decades, we had good reason to think these strategies mattered. Why? Because the evidence linking trait self-control to life outcomes is remarkable. I mean, truly remarkable. Children rated high in self-control by parents and teachers become wealthier 40-year-olds. Gritty students are more likely to graduate from challenging programs. Conscientious people tend to live longer, healthier, more fulfilling lives. Study after study confirms that being a generally controlled, conscientious person predicts objectively better outcomes.

Seeing this mountain of evidence, we scientists got excited. Could we help people who weren't naturally blessed with high trait self-control by teaching them better state self-control? Since they shared the same name, we assumed they must work the same way. Just like extraverted people chat more at parties and neurotic people worry more about car noises, surely people high in trait self-control must be constantly flexing their willpower muscles?

Nope. Not even close.

Our review of the evidence shows three surprising things. First, people high in trait self-control actually engage in less moment-to-moment self-control, not more. Second, using self-control in the moment doesn't reliably predict long-term success. And third, while people can sometimes dramatically improve their trait self-control, these improvements tend to disappear faster than a New Year's resolution in February.

Let that sink in. The most self-controlled people engage in fewer acts of state self-control, not more. They don't use more willpower, and they don't deploy more of those newly popular self-control strategies either. While people low in trait self-control constantly battle their impulses—trying various techniques to stay on track—the most self-controlled among us spend surprisingly little time resisting temptations.

Even more deflating: when we do successfully exercise state self-control, these victories don't add up to long-term success. Sure, you might resist the cookie today using some combination of attention control and situation modification, but that act of resistance doesn't predict whether you'll meet your health goals three months, six months, or a year from now.

If applying state self-control is a waste of time, maybe we can use our energies to become more conscientious, more gritty? I just said above that conscientious people win the game called life; so why not work to be more like them? After all, we see dramatic personality changes all the time. People become more organized after starting demanding jobs, more responsible after having kids, more disciplined after joining the military.

Here's where things get deflating again. When personality changes are tracked over multiple years, sure, many people show impressive short-term changes in their conscientiousness over a single year. But over a seven-year period? Most of these changes evaporate as people drift back toward their personality starting points. It's like watching a rubber band stretch impressively before snapping right back to its original shape.

We see this same pattern with behaviour change more broadly. Yes, people can lose weight, exercise more, and drink less in the short term. But as any dieter can tell you, old behaviours have a frustrating way of resurfacing over time. Behavioural scientists call this the “habit relapse triangle”—that cycle of meaningful change from baseline, followed by a slow slide back to where we started. The science of behaviour change tells us this is depressingly common.

Everybody wants trait self-control because of the goodies it is associated with. But using state self-control will neither sustainably increase one’s standing on the trait, nor will it deliver the rewards people so desire.

This revelation forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: the merchants of self-control (and I count my former self among them) have been peddling shoddy wares. Our biggest mistake wasn't just overselling willpower—it was conflating trait self-control for state self-control, like mistaking the destination for the journey.

How did we mess this up so badly? First, we got sloppy with our labels. When we say “trait self-control,” we're actually measuring a whole constellation of behaviours: everything from being reliable to keeping your desk tidy to obediently following rules. It's like calling a Swiss Army knife a bottle opener; technically true but missing most of the picture.

Second, and relatedly, we may have misunderstood how conscientious people achieve success because of our choice to focus too narrowly on self-control. What if we had used different labels, say “reliable” or “planful” or “rule-following,” that capture the essence of this trait more accurately? These alternative labels hint at a crucial insight: success might not come from heroically resisting temptation in the moment, but from something more prosaic like keeping your word, planning for the future, and being responsible. Labels are complicated; a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what-have-yous.

Third, we fell into the trap of thinking traits could be reduced to their momentary states. Understandable, given past research linking traits and states, but a trap, nonetheless. Instead of making this assumption, we should have directly studied what highly self-controlled people actually do in their daily lives. Better yet, we should have just opened a personality psychology journal to learn what conscientious people do. If we had done this, we would not have wasted so much time discovering that our assumptions were wrong.

What is the result of these mistakes? We've created a particularly nasty form of moral meritocracy where the winners of life get to triumph twice. Not only do conscientious people enjoy better health, wealth, and happiness, but they get to feel morally superior about it, too, as if their good fortune had been earned through sheer force of will. Yet conscientiousness, like all personality traits, comes largely from a lottery of genes and environment—it's not something we choose or earn.

Think about it: when we discovered that children who delayed eating marshmallows became more successful adults, we rushed to credit their willpower. But later research revealed these kids succeeded not because they had superhuman self-control, but because they were smarter and came from wealthy backgrounds with better opportunities. Holding these kids up as paragons of self-control is like congratulating rich people for being rich.

Does this mean change is impossible? Not exactly. Short-term victories are absolutely within reach—you can diet your way into that wedding dress, exercise religiously for a few months, or become hyper-organized when starting a new job. And yes, people can show impressive personality changes over a year. To be fair, a small number of people do manage to make changes that stick for the long haul. How they pull this off remains something of a mystery, though I suspect it has less to do with heroic self-control and more to do with a fundamental shift in what they actually desire. But for most of us, these changes will snap back to their starting point. That weight creeps back on, the gym membership gathers dust, and that meticulously organized desk returns to its natural state of creative chaos.

This has been a hard pill for me to swallow. After years preaching the gospel of willpower, I now see how we transformed a personality trait shaped by genetics and environment into a moral imperative—one that helped the privileged feel deserving of their privilege while making others feel morally deficient.

The truth about self-control might be less inspiring than the story we've been telling, but that's precisely why it matters. Perhaps by tossing out our comforting myths about willpower, we might finally confront the uncomfortable realities of human behavior—and build a psychology that deals with people as they actually are. The real path to change might be messier and less heroic than we thought, but at least it would be honest. And honestly, after decades of peddling self-control snake oil, I think that's the least we owe ourselves.