The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

WE MISTAKE THE PROMISE OF REWARD FOR HAPPINESS
When Olds and Milner watched their rats refuse food and run back and forth across an electrified
grid, they made the same mistake each of us makes when we interpret our own dopamine-driven
behavior. We observe our intense focus, the consistent seeking of what we crave, and the willingness
to work—even suffer—for what we want as evidence that the object of our desire must make us
happy. We watch ourselves buy the one thousandth candy bar, the new kitchen gadget, the next drink;
we wear ourselves out chasing the new partner, the better job, the highest stock return. We mistake the
experience of wanting for a guarantee of happiness. It’s no wonder Olds and Milner looked at those
rats shocking themselves to exhaustion and assumed that they were happy. We humans find it nearly
impossible to distinguish the promise of reward from whatever pleasure or payoff we are seeking.
The promise of reward is so powerful that we continue to pursue things that don’t make us happy,
and consume things that bring us more misery than satisfaction. Because the pursuit of reward is
dopamine’s main goal, it is never going to give you a “stop” signal—even when the experience does
not live up to the promise. Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand
Laboratory, demonstrated this with a trick he played on moviegoers at a Philadelphia theater. The
sight and smell of movie theater popcorn is a reliable way to get most people’s dopamine neurons
dancing—customers stand in line like Pavlov’s dogs, tongues hanging out and drooling in anticipation
of the first mouthful. Wansink arranged to have the theater’s concession stand sell fourteen-day-old
popcorn to the moviegoers. He wanted to find out whether the moviegoers would keep eating,
listening to the brain’s belief that movie theater popcorn is always delicious, or whether they would
notice the actual taste of the treat, and refuse to eat it.
After the film, the moviegoers confirmed that the two-week-old popcorn was indeed nasty stuff:
stale, soggy, verging on disgusting. But did they storm the popcorn stand demanding refunds? No, they
ate it up. They even ate 60 percent as much popcorn as moviegoers who received a fresh batch! They
believed their dopamine neurons, not their taste buds.
We may scratch our heads and wonder how this is possible, but it’s something few of us are
immune to. Just think of your own biggest “I won’t” power challenge. Chances are this is something
you believe makes you happy—or would make you happy, if you could just get enough of it. But a
careful analysis of the experience and its consequences often reveals the opposite. At best, giving in
takes away the anxiety that the promise of reward produces to make you want it more. But ultimately,
you’re left frustrated, unsatisfied, disappointed, ashamed, tired, sick, or simply no happier than when
you started. There is growing evidence that when people pay close attention to the experience of their
false rewards, the magical spell wears off. If you force your brain to reconcile what it expects from a
reward—happiness, bliss, satisfaction, an end to sadness or stress—with what it actually
experiences, your brain will eventually adjust its expectations. For example, when overeaters slow
down and really experience a food that usually triggers cravings and bingeing, they typically notice
that the food looks and smells better than it tastes; even with the mouth and stomach full, the brain
begs for more; their feelings of anxiety only increase as they eat more; sometimes they don’t even
taste
the food when they’re bingeing, because they’re eating so fast; and they feel worse physically
and emotionally afterward than they did before. At first, this can be disturbing—after all, they had
really believed that food was a source of happiness. However, the research shows that people who
practice this mindful-eating exercise develop greater self-control around food and have fewer

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episodes of binge-eating. Over time, they not only lose weight, but they also experience less stress,
anxiety, and depression. When we free ourselves from the false promise of reward, we often find that
the thing we were seeking happiness from was the main source of our misery.