A Mind of Its Own

by Cordelia Fine

  In fact, it looks as if resisting temptation is only one of the many mentally taxing jobs done by the conscious self that drains the power of the moral muscle. Making decisions, getting things going, developing plans, fixing your attention on the task in hand – in short, anything that requires concentrated thought – all deplete the same pool of mental resources. This might explain why it’s so hard to get anything done – even something as seemingly simple as switching off the television – after a hard day at work. With your inner battery dangerously low after a series of intellectually challenging situations throughout the workday, the will may be reluctant to do anything except put its feet up once you get home. In a simulation of the daily grind, some volunteers were given a highly mentally demanding task to do – the psychology lab equivalent of controlling air traffic.3 The other volunteers were used more like factory workers: their job was so repetitive and easy that it quickly became automatic. Then the volunteers watched a video, which they could stop at any time by pressing down on a button. The film challenged even the very worst of television broadcasting. It was an unchanging shot of a blank white wall with a table and computer equipment in the foreground. Drained by their Herculean task in the first part of the experiment, the air traffic controllers found themselves slumped inertly in front of the TV screen for much longer than the factory workers, too sluggish to summon up the will to press a buzzer to end the show.

  Nor is it just running the more business-like aspects of the self that saps resources. Keeping the more touchy-feely part of ourselves restrained is also tiring and, again, leaves us with less mental energy for other sorts of self-regulation. Some volunteers were asked to exercise self-restraint by keeping their faces as an inscrutable mask that concealed a turmoil of emotions. Afterwards, the researchers found, they had less strength of will left over with which to grapple with intellectually challenging tasks, compared with volunteers whose wills were fresh and unused.4

  Indeed, putting on any sort of unfamiliar public face is an act that leaves your next performance, whatever it might be, a little lacking in oomph.5 Volunteers recruited for an experiment were asked to bring along a friend who, they were told, would give them a mock interview. Some volunteers were told to respond to the questions in the modestly self-effacing manner that we normally assume with our friends (who know us well enough to be able to discern the light shining from under our bushels). Other volunteers, by contrast, were given the embarrassing job of shamelessly promoting themselves to their friend who, they knew, would have absolutely no idea why they had suddenly become such an obnoxious braggart.

  Next, the interviewees were given a dauntingly long list of three-digit by three-digit multiplication problems to solve without the help of a calculator. The researchers instructed them to keep going until they’d completed all the problems, or decided to stop working. The self-lauding volunteers, who’d had to override the humility we normally portray while in the company of friends, had little nervous energy left to devote to computing the product of ‘234 x 889’, and the like. Dropping their pencils in defeat a mere ten minutes into the exercise on average, they worked for about half as much time as did the other volunteers.

  It’s not just that talking the talk drains the resources available for you to walk the walk. As you might begin to fear, the unhappy consequences of a resource run dry also work the other way round: dipping into our limited mental means in order to complete a difficult job blights our chances of making a good impression. Cognitively drained, the uglier side of our nature begins to show through the cracks in the façade we usually present to others. In a series of experiments, researchers enfeebled volunteers with a variety of mentally demanding tasks, then sat back to observe the unfortunate effect this had on the volunteers’ ability to present themselves in a good light.6 Lacking the mental vigour necessary to keep their more objectionable tendencies in check, the mentally tired volunteers became either inappropriately loose-tongued, or coldly tight-lipped with strangers. And, sorry to say, they also made rather less effort than is customary to disguise the very good opinion they had of themselves.

  The rapid burn-out suffered by the will is certainly a regrettable feature of our mental make-up. However, presumably we can be confident that the moral muscle, if well-rested, can be relied upon?

  Unfortunately, it can’t. The will is not only quickly tuckered out – it is also easily set off-kilter by a bad mood, and insists on cajoling itself back into good humour before it will return to its job of keeping you on the straight and narrow. Emotional distress shifts our priorities. We stop fixing our thoughts on how we want to look in our bathing suit this summer, the pink and healthy lungs we want to recover, or the down payment for the dream home we’re saving for. Instead, we petulantly demand to be made to feel good again – right now – and impulsively reach for the comforting cookie, cigarette or luxury consumable.

  To observe this change in focus from the long- to the short-term, researchers distressed some volunteers by asking them to imagine, as vividly as they could, how they would feel if they ran a red light, thereby causing an accident that killed a child.7 Other volunteers had the happier task of imagining themselves saving a child’s life. Then each person was ushered into a different room to take part in an ‘unrelated taste test’. Bowls heaped temptingly high with goldfish crackers, chocolate-chip cookies and pretzels were placed before them. (The bowls were carefully weighed both before and after the unknowing volunteers were let loose on them.) In comparison to the more cheerful volunteers, people who, just before, had been deflated by the depressing exercise of the imagination gorged themselves – but only when they thought it would jolly them up. For in a twist on the familiar offering of food as comfort, some were informed before the taste test that, ‘contrary to popular belief, scientific evidence shows that eating doesn’t actually make you feel better’. The distressed volunteers who had been told this managed to stop themselves from overindulging in the snack foods.

  Likewise, in a similar sort of experiment, people who had been made miserable were advised to practise for an imminent maths test. They were then left to their own devices for quarter of an hour in a supposedly private room. Spied on through a slit in a curtained two-way mirror, these volunteers were observed reading trashy magazines, playing games and rifling nosily through desk drawers.8 They spent barely more than a minute working on practice sums. But equally sad people told that their current low mood had been fixed to stay that way by an aromatherapy candle showed much more resistance to the urge to procrastinate. Thinking that they were stuck with their gloomy feelings, they didn’t attempt to cheer themselves up, but persisted with the sums. We can exert self-control when we’re feeling blue – we just usually choose not to because it’s more important to us to feel good than to be good.

  Rested and content, then, the moral muscle is surely able and willing to perform its duties?

  Well, no. Exquisitely sensitive to its audience, the will can also be put off its stride by rejection. Those of us who, as children, lacked sufficient physical or social coordination, will vividly remember from schooldays the tortuous process of ‘picking teams’ – the mounting dread that it will be you who, conspicuous in your rejection, will stand alone at the end, unwanted by either team. In a laboratory simulation of this childhood horror, researchers put people together into groups of half a dozen or so, and asked them to get to know one other.9 Then each person was led to a private room, and asked to say which two of the other participants they would most like to work with for the next task. Some volunteers were randomly picked to be the popular kids: everyone wanted to work with them, they were told by the researchers. But because that wasn’t possible (so the cover story continued) they would have to work alone. The other group of volunteers were made the rejects of the classroom. ‘I hate to tell you this’, fibbed the experimenter smoothly, ‘but no one chose you as someone they wanted to work with. So I’ll have you do the next task alone.’ Each person was then left in private wit
h a bowl of 35 chocolate-chip cookies to taste. He or she was told to eat as many as they needed to judge the taste, smell and texture. After a careful debriefing (which we will hope was adequate to combat the belief perseverance phenomenon we met in ‘The Pigheaded Brain’) the volunteer was thanked and dismissed.

  The experimenter then counted up how many cookies were left in the bowl. Supposedly popular volunteers sampled about four cookies, on average. This, they clearly felt, was quite enough to offer a thoroughly researched opinion on their gastronomic qualities. By contrast (and in keeping with the stereotype of the social outcast consoling himself with calories), the rejected volunteers felt the need to eat twice as many cookies to do the same job.

  Perhaps, you may think, they were simply buoying up their spirits after the unpleasantness of the first part of the experiment. But it seemed not. Further studies showed it was something else entirely that put self-control on strike. Using a new technique for making people feel bad, the researchers gave a fresh set of students bogus feedback on a personality questionnaire. Some were told that their scores revealed that they were the sort of person who would end up rejected, miserable and lonely later in life. ‘You may have friends and relationships now’, they were warned, ‘but by your mid-twenties most of these will have drifted away. You may even marry or have several marriages, but these are likely to be short-lived and not continue into your thirties.’ (Indeed, the experimenter all but guaranteed that their corpse would lie rotting in a bedsit for weeks after their death until finally discovered by the gas man.) Other volunteers were led to expect a different type of misfortune: that they would be highly accident-prone later in life. Their limbs would crack like twigs underfoot, cars would accidentally mow them down. Later life, in short, would be nothing short of a gruesome slapstick.

  Having sealed each volunteer’s fate in this way, the experimenter ushered them to the next phase of the experiment. Fitting a pair of headphones snugly about their ears, the experimenter explained that each ear would hear something different. Rather than enjoy the interesting speech on a policy issue that flowed into their right ear, they must attend only to the dull stream of random words trickling into their left. So that the experimenter could see how well the volunteers were able to control their attention, they were asked to write down every word spoken into their left ear that contained the letter ‘m’ or ‘p’. People who had been forecast a life of wretched aloneness achieved only a very desultory score on this task. Their attention disobediently straying, they missed nearly a quarter of the words that they should have jotted down. The other volunteers, by contrast, managed a much more enthusiastic performance, with a 90 per cent success rate.

  The researchers, wondering why the prospect of social exclusion (but not a different type of misfortune) should make people less able or willing to control the direction of their attention, checked whether it was a particularly sad mood in the ‘future loneliness’ volunteers that was disrupting their strength of will. However, the results of mood-rating questionnaires (which all the volunteers filled out before putting on their headphones) showed that people threatened with a future of loneliness were no lower in spirits than were the other volunteers. Poor mood, then, could not have been the reason why telling people that they would live unloved made them so careless at the listening task.10

  Perhaps, the researchers wondered, being told that you are essentially unlikable makes you loath to direct your attention inwards, for fear of the personal deficiencies and flaws – the very reasons for your rejection by others – that you may unearth. Remaining steadfastly determined not to think about yourself certainly helps to keep you safe from disturbing self-revelations. But at the same time, ignoring the inner self leaves you unable to make the usual sorts of comparisons between ‘what I am doing’ and ‘what I should be doing’ that are so essential for keeping the self in line. If this was the problem with people made to feel unlikable, the researchers reasoned, then forcing the rejected volunteers’ attention back upon themselves should bring their self-regulation back into action. They achieved this by using a surprisingly commonplace piece of equipment – a mirror. Lo and behold, this humble household item was all that was needed to reverse completely the damaging effects of social exclusion. Some ‘future loneliness’ volunteers were casually placed in front of a mirror for the listening task and, confronted with their reflections, were compelled to self-reflect. As a result, they listened every bit as proficiently to the string of random words as did the other volunteers whose egos had been left intact.

  The will, we are learning, has a list of dressing-room demands as long as that of the most egotistical celebrity. It must not be over-worked. It must have only happiness and light around it. And, as we have just discovered, it must feel beloved and cherished at all times. What is more, although under trying and difficult circumstances it may valiantly cry that ‘the show must go on!’, the will’s attempts to rise above adversity are often rather unsuccessful. Stress and distraction both have very untoward effects on the conscious mind’s ability to stay focused and in control of itself. It’s strange but true that, the harder we try to relax and forget our anxieties, the more determined we are to cheer up and forget our troubles, or the more urgently we try to wind down and sleep, the more persistently thoughts of stress, sadness or sleeplessness can drum at consciousness.

  Why is it that our thoughts can be so unruly? It is not often that I have cause to note deficiencies common to both the observations offered up by my husband and the writings of the great philosopher René Descartes. But had the famous thinker been with us that night I lay tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep, he might well have added to my husband’s advice an admonition from his own philosophy that, if there is anything in this world that we can and should conquer, it is our own thoughts.11 But, as all but the most accomplished at meditation would agree, a nagging thought is an extremely tough adversary.

  The problem arises from the way that the brain goes about mental control. According to ironic process theory, both you (the conscious you, that is) and your unconscious mental processes work together to keep unwanted thoughts out of mind.12 When this collaboration is rolling along the way it should, you successfully manage to direct your attention away from the sorts of thoughts you are trying to avoid. Rather than becoming lost in the worrying thoughts that sometimes like to crowd in at bedtime, instead you peacefully concentrate on counting a stupefying number of sheep, or on the pleasant cushioning of your face by your pillow. Meanwhile, down below, the mental butler is busy scanning any mental packages that could be on their way up the stairs to consciousness. It knows that you’re easily sidetracked so it is on the lookout for any traces of alertness that might undo your attempts to stay sleepy. When it finds a suspect looking package, it immediately alerts the authorities. ‘Watch out’, it hisses up the stairway. ‘You’re starting to think about your tax return.’ You quickly renew efforts to distract yourself from unwelcome thoughts, and peace reigns once again.

  Unfortunately, as the mental butler rummages through your mental baggage searching for illegal stowaways, it actually primes the very sorts of thoughts it is looking for. It disturbs them, bringing them to the verge of wakefulness. This, as you know from the previous chapter, ironically makes those thoughts more likely to reach consciousness. When the conscious self is on top form, with no other business to deal with, this is easily dealt with. You respond so quickly to the mental butler’s warnings that your attention barely wavers from its desired target.

  But, as we know, the conscious is not very good at multitasking. If, at the same time, you are also trying to deal with the sorts of irritations that so often plague us – the blare of next door’s television, the stresses of work or family, the needling awareness of the countdown of the clock – then you are in trouble. Unable to do two things properly, you fail to respond to the mental butler’s cautions that unwanted thoughts are about to burst forth into consciousness. Suddenly, you find that you are thinking
about your tax return, and here comes the ironic part of ironic process theory. Because the mental butler has been thumping about, priming those very sorts of thoughts you want to avoid, when your conscious defences are down these unwelcome intrusions are actually more likely to rush in than if you had never set yourself the goal of keeping them at bay. By trying to control our thoughts, we actually plant the very seeds of our own undoing, as the author of the theory, Daniel Wegner, puts it. When the burden on the conscious self is too great, it is our very attempts to keep certain sorts of thoughts out of mind that make them hurtle in – and in far greater numbers than if we had not attempted to follow Descartes’ stricture to conquer our thoughts.

  For example, in an experiment close to my heart, Wegner and his colleagues showed how our minds can unwittingly act against us as we struggle to get to sleep.13 Volunteers were given a Walkman to wear to bed, told to press ‘play’ once they had tucked themselves in for the night, and asked to follow whatever instructions they heard. The voice on the tape told some of them simply to go to sleep whenever they felt like it. Other volunteers, by contrast, were told that the job of falling asleep was an urgent and pressing one. They should fall asleep as quickly as they possibly could. They all then drifted off to the soothing sounds of bubbling streams and gentle bird-song that followed the instructions on the tape. People told to fall asleep quickly did, indeed, reach the land of Nod sooner than those left to fall asleep in their own time. Feeling calm and untrammelled thanks to the relaxing sounds of nature, the conscious self was able to put its full strength to the task. With perfect teamwork, mental downstairs and upstairs together ensured that only restful thoughts reached consciousness, and slumber soon followed.