Self-control is catching: The implications for public policy
By TigerHawk at 1/16/2010 11:26:00 AM
This seems like an argument for choosing one's friends and associates wisely:
In a just-published series of studies involving hundreds of volunteers, researchers have found that watching or even thinking about someone with good self-control makes others more likely exert self-control. The researchers found that the opposite holds, too, so that people with bad self-control influence others negatively. The effect is so powerful, in fact, that seeing the name of someone with good or bad self-control flashing on a screen for just 10 milliseconds changed the behavior of volunteers.
uga.edu
“The take home message of this study is that picking social influences that are positive can improve your self-control,” said lead author Michelle vanDellen, a visiting assistant professor in the UGA department of psychology. “And by exhibiting self-control, you’re helping others around you do the same.”
Commentary
Assuming for the sake of argument that the linked studies were designed well and conducted properly, there are several implications that might flow therefrom.
People who do not generally conduct themselves with self-discipline are not only hurting themselves, but they are hurting others. Europeans would call this "social dumping," the shifting of a negative "externality" on others.
If undisciplined people are causing other people to be undisciplined (whether in eating, manners, work ethic, spending habits, or other relevant context), then perhaps we are entitled to judge them. The old school admonitions to get a hair cut, get a clue, get a job, and save money are more than just the imposition of bourgeois values. They are good for society, which is every non-judgmental liberal's justification for state action. Ironic, dat.
The linked studies undermine the case for hard-core libertarianism, or at least require libertarians to justify the social damage that would be caused by undisciplined people under less regulation. Libertarians might counter that we only have so many undisciplined people because the state has effectively substituted regulation and the welfare state for self-discipline and thereby atrophied the habits of good discipline.
Social influences toward immediate rather than deferred gratification -- including both commercial advertising and government programs that protect people from their own stupidity -- may do a lot more harm than their defenders argue.
The linked studies may explain why orderly societies stay orderly and disintegrated ones stay disintegrated -- the firewood is stacked perfectly in Switzerland for a reason.
If personal indiscipline is at the root of a lot of social pathology -- illegitimacy, drug abuse, crime, vice, unemployment, and chronic indebtedness -- then how do we break the cycle without exposing indisciplined people to disciplined people? Is there any way to do that in a free society? Could universal military service break the cycle of indiscipline for the nation's poor, and would that be a price worth paying?
Release the hounds.
tigerhawk.blogspot.com
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By Purple Avenger, at Sat Jan 16, 05:05:00 PM:
Illegitimacy is our biggest social problem.
Hardly unexpected since its subsidized by the government via WIC, AFDC, etc.
When you want more of something, you subsidize it. When you want less of something, you tax it. Econ 101
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By feeblemind, at Sat Jan 16, 02:55:00 PM:
No answers TH, just an observation.
Not surprising self-control can be catching. Attitudes good and bad, enthusiasm, pessimism, rudeness or showing consideration can all be catching. I don't know why money had to be spent on a scientific study to figure this out.
My question would be, why do people emulate behavior? I am sure many readers have seen a worker with a bad attitude sour the work environment or can think of a time when a spouse comes home from work in a bad mood, and before long the entire family is ticked off.
Why does behavior rub off, for good or bad?
By Wen, at Sat Jan 16, 03:05:00 PM:
This insight requires scientific study? Just read your Fielding:
"It is a trite but true observation that examples work more forcibly on the minds than precepts, and if this be just in what is odious and blameable, it is more strongly so in what is amiable and praiseworthy. Here emulation most effectually operates upon us, and inspires our imitation in an irresistable manner. A good man, therefore, is a standing lesson to all his aquaintance, and of far greater use in that narrow circle than a good book."
And Fielding found this wisdom "trite" long, long ago!
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