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

WHEN SELF-CONTROL ISN’T NORMAL
If we want people to have more willpower, we need to make them believe that self-control is the
norm. But when was the last time you heard about a positive trend in behavior? The media prefer to
scare us with shocking statistics about how we are all becoming lazier, less ethical, and less healthy.
We hear the statistics all the time: 40 percent of Americans 
never
exercise, and only 11 percent
engage in vigorous exercise five times a week (the standard recommendation for health and weight
loss). Only 14 percent of adults eat the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables a day.
Instead, the average adult consumes almost 100 pounds of sugar a year.
These statistics are meant to fill us with horror. But let’s be honest: If we find ourselves in that
majority, all our tribal brain hears is, “What a relief, I’m just like everyone else.” The more we hear
these kinds of statistics, the more firmly we start to believe that this is what people do, and it’s OK if
I do it too. When you are like 86 percent of other Americans, why would you need to change?
Learning that we are “normal” can even change our perception of ourselves. For example, as a
nation, the fatter we get, the thinner we feel. A 2010 report in the 
Archives of Internal Medicine
found that 37 percent of people who are clinically obese not only believe that they are 
not
obese, but
also believe that they have a low lifetime risk of becoming obese. Although this looks like a denial of
reality, it simply reflects the new social reality. When everyone gains weight, our internal standards
about what is “obese” shift upward, even if medical standards remain the same.
On the other side of the bell curve, if we’re outside the “willpowerless” majority, we may even
find ourselves boomeranging back to the middle. In one study, homeowners who were told on their
energy bill that they consumed less energy than the average home started to leave on the lights and
turn up the thermostat. The pull to the center can be more powerful than the desire to do the right
thing.
When it comes to social proof, what we 
think
other people do matters even more than what they
actually do. For example, college students overestimate the prevalence of academic cheating among
their peers. The best predictor of whether a student cheats is whether he believes other students cheat,
not the severity of penalties or whether he thinks he will be caught. When students believe that their
classmates cheat, a relatively honest class can become a class full of students who text their friends
for answers during an exam (yes, I have caught a student trying this).
This phenomenon is not limited to the classroom. Most people overestimate the percentage of
taxpayers who cheat on their tax returns. This leads to higher actual rates of cheating, as people
conform to what they believe is the norm. It’s not that we are irredeemable cheaters. When people are
given accurate information about true norms, they correct their own behaviors. For example, when
people are given accurate statistics about other taxpayers’ honesty, they are more likely to file an
honest return themselves.