Ego depletion

Why people (sociopaths and non), despite their best intentions are unable to always do the right thing? From Wikipedia (with accompanying sites to relevant scientific research):

Ego depletion refers to the idea that self-control or willpower draw upon a limited pool of mental resources that can be used up. When the energy for mental activity is low, self-control is typically impaired, which would be considered a state of ego depletion. In particular, experiencing a state of ego depletion impairs the ability to control oneself later on. A depleting task requiring self-control can have a hindering effect on a subsequent self-control task, even if the tasks are seemingly unrelated. Self-control plays a valuable role in the functioning of the self on both individualistic and interpersonal levels. Ego depletion is therefore a critical topic in experimental psychology, specifically social psychology, because it is a mechanism that contributes to the understanding of the processes of human self-control.
***
Conservation hypothesis
The conservation hypothesis is a partial explanation of ego depletion. It suggests that there are two sorts of depletion:

1. When one is completely depleted and unable to self-control.
2. When one is not fully depleted, but partly. Still, one reduces his self-control efforts to avoid complete exhaustion.

According to this view, when people feel depleted, there might still exist a reserve store of energy to be used in extreme, high priority situations that could be encountered in the future. This can be adaptive to the extent that expending any more resources at a given time might render an individual fully depleted of their resources in an unexpected situation requiring self-regulation or other self-monitoring behaviours. The existence of a spare reservoir of mental energy ultimately explains why various motivators can buffer the effects of mild or moderate ego depletion. In a state of low resources, an individual lacks motivation to exert any more energy, but if motivation is presented, there are still extra resources that can be used up. Thus, ego depletion could be conceptualized as a psychological constraint necessary to safeguard precious resources that might be needed in emergency situations in the future. Under mild depletion, people still have a small amount of energy left in their "tank", which they do not have access to under normal circumstances.

Is this why all of my worst examples of losing self-control have happened while traveling and being thrown together in ungodly situations with total strangers?

Sociopath quote: self-control

“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”

--Seneca



UPDATE: I've been thinking why I have bothered to learn self-control. I think the obvious is that I am able to accomplish much more in my life if I don't give into every impulse but instead spend just a moment contemplating the potential ramifications. Another less obvious reason is that if I don't have control over myself, other people will be able to exploit those vulnerabilities in me by intentionally triggering me. I know all about this because I intentionally trigger people's rages myself, to provoke what most people consider "disgusting behavior".

(I love how the "victim" is smiling in this video.)

Why/how delayed gratification?

This NY Times article (You're so Self-Controlling) discusses (and unfortunately confuses?) the difference between failure to delay gratification based on (1) a lack of self-control versus (2) a perception that the future reward is too uncertain to wait.

For instance, recent research recreated the classic marshmallow experiment done with children (the children could eat one marshmallow right away or could wait to get another one). Researchers wondered whether the choice to eat or wait was really the result of a lack of self-control, or whether the children were just unsure whether the second marshmallow would come in a timely manner. Performing a similar experiment, they found that children who believed the experimenter to be unreliable would wait only 3 minutes for the second marshmallow before giving up and giving in, whereas children who believed the experimenter to be reliable would wait as long as 10 minutes before giving up. So is it all about ascertaining the uncertainty of the future rewards? Because in the original marshmallow experiment, the researchers followed the children into young adulthood and found that the children who could wait longer tended to be more successful, which suggests that their ability to delay gratification can't just be the uncertainty of future rewards.

It's an interesting question for sociopathy because sociopaths are notoriously impulsive? Which has led some to believe that sociopaths can never plan ahead or stick to any particular plan. Taken to the extreme, this would suggest that most sociopaths wouldn't even be able to graduate grammar school, and yet some manage to become CEOs of major companies, political leaders, or hit other high levels of skill or achievement. Personally speaking, I have managed to perform very well at certain long term tasks, including excelling in school, at work, and managing to fully fund my retirement. How? Maybe the answer lies in what we mean by "impulsive" and what relationship impulsivity has with how we view will-power. From the NY Times article:

[T]he ability to delay gratification has traditionally been seen in large part as an issue of willpower: Do you have what it takes to wait it out, to choose a later — and, presumably, better — reward over an immediate, though not quite as good one? Can you forgo a brownie in service of the larger reward of losing weight, give up ready cash in favor of a later investment payoff? The immediate option is hot; you can taste it, smell it, feel it. The long-term choice is far cooler; it’s hard to picture it with quite as much color or power.

In psychological terms, the difference is typically seen as a dual-system trade-off: On one hand, you have the deliberative, reflective, cool system; on the other, the intuitive, reflexive, hot system. The less self-control you have, the further off and cooler the future becomes and the hotter the immediate present grows. Brownie? Yum.

But if a sociopath's rage tends to be cold-hearted rather than hot-headed, could it be that sociopaths also respond to different stimuli for impulse control than normal people do? Perhaps that they both manifest an unusual degree of impulsivity in some aspects of their life and amazing self-control in others? Maybe sociopaths feel cooler about things that often seem hot to other people. Or maybe it's because we can take future events and make them seem hotter? I feel like that is at least sometimes true of me, that I can imagine my future self vividly enough that I feel some of the pleasure of the delayed gratification in that moment that I'm delaying it. 

Conscientiousness

I thought this was an interesting sentiment that supported a concept that I have long found helpful in terms of directing your behavior for both sociopaths and non -- imagining the effects of your behavior on your future self.

The tendency to live in the here and now, and the failure to think through the delayed consequences of behavior, is one of the strongest individual-level correlates of delinquency. We tested the hypothesis that this correlation results from a limited ability to imagine one’s self in the future, which leads to opting for immediate gratification. Strengthening the vividness of the future self should therefore reduce involvement in delinquency. We tested and found support for this hypothesis in two studies. In Study 1, compared with participants in a control condition, those who wrote a letter to their future self were less inclined to make delinquent choices. In Study 2, participants who interacted with a realistic digital version of their future, age-progressed self in a virtual environment were less likely than control participants to cheat on a subsequent task.

This supports sociopath researcher Stephanie Mullins-Sweatt's assertion that the main personality trait separating successful sociopaths from the less functioning ones is conscientiousness, or an awareness of and distaste for unpleasant future consequences. In other words, a dynamic version of a cost-benefit analysis. As one sociopathic reader described it:

the only reason i don't act upon my urges is the knowledge of reprisal. i don't necessarily fear consequence; i simply acknowledge it as being more inconvenient than some short-lived gratification. as a matter of fact, the inconvenience of consequences is the only thing that holds me back from my desires. the wants themselves run the gamut of importance... sleeping with a woman who isn't my wife is not ethically or socially objectionable to me. overall, the impact on the world because of 'cheating' is incredibly minimal. the risk-analysis of temporary physical enjoyment Vs long-term stability is more effective in decision making than any kind of ethics. refusing to slow down at an intersection, when i have the right-of-way and someone pulls out in front of me, is not ethically or socially objectionable to me. however, going to jail and being locked in a cage seems especially repugnant- not to mention the hassle of repairing my vehicle.

Pushback (part 1)

I've gotten a lot of interesting pushback and challenge on who I am and things that I've asserted either on the blog or in the book. I appreciate the time people take to write me and give me their opinions. There are a couple questions and issues that I've noticed keep coming up. The following is sort of a typical exchange that happens to touch on a lot of these issues. Maybe it will help to clarify some common misconceptions.

A reader starts out writing:

Regardless of how much you seem to pride yourself on you unfortunate disorder of sociopathy, it is a sad sad thing to be void of conscience and the ability to associate with or care for other people's feelings. I feel bad for you for the fact that you don't feel for others. That's the best part of living and. And I feel bad for your  utter ignorance regarding your Mormon religion. Your motivation for being a member of a religion is...what? Ego? To reach the point of Godliness through manipulative actions that help you to succeed in life? Good luck on that. Your take on what Mormons believe has been twisted to serve yourself and little else. I'm surprised that you haven't grasped the basic tenets of such a religion even though you are an active member, but that seems to be fairly common in the Mormon community. Your spirit is stunted which is the precise reason you feel the need to follow a religion that you've malleabalized to your own liking in your head. Mormon's do believe that everyone has the ability to be as God is since God has been/is what we are now. But getting to that form takes a hell of a lot more than action and Mormons do not believe that actions are all that matters. Being aware of other's states of being in this existence and giving a shit about that matters as well. I was raised in the Mormon church and I was certainly never led to believe that your thoughts and motivations don't matter,rather the opposite.Your thoughts and motivations are at the basis of all of your actions and it's your intentions that matter most. Therefore actions are the lowest on the totem pole.That's what I was taught. Everyone messes up, everyone thinks horrible thoughts sometimes, but what you WANT to do with those actions actions, thoughts and feelings, what you strive for and intend in your heart is the only thing that ultimately really matters. All of the success in life doesn't matter even a little in God's eyes if you don't give a shit about anyone else to begin with. So sorry for your misunderstanding your whole life.  

My first response:

Yes, I know what you mean. As you say, it cannot just be actions that matter, because then my down syndrome relatives would be in trouble every time they did something wrong-ish (e.g., counterfactually, sexually abusing a young child). On the other hand it can't be that thoughts are the only things that matter, otherwise if you are gay you're pretty much toast because you can't really control being sexually attracted to members of the same sex, and actually aren't we all sort of toast because haven't we all looked at someone else to lust after them, or had any other sort of bad thoughts pop into our heads? The truth is that we can't control our thoughts, or at least can't prevent having certain thoughts. Yes, we can choose what to do with those thoughts, and that's why I think one's actions are particularly relevant when one is discussing dealing with a mental disorder that is characterized by having unsavory thoughts. I think we probably agree on this, that the whole point of life is to try to conform one's behavior to a particular standard and in so doing eventually/hopefully change one's brain wiring? But also I don't consider myself an expert on Mormon doctrine, particularly not this particular area which has always sort of been hard to reconcile for me (do sociopaths have a place in Mormonism or mainstream Christianity?, etc.).

Why you can't control your thoughts

Sociopaths can't control what they think. That may be scary, but there's something even scarier -- neither can you. From New Scientist via Gizmodo:

Forget complex math problems, logic puzzles, memorization. The hardest thing you can try to do with your brain is to not think about something. It's virtually impossible. But why? As New Scientist explains, it has to do with what thoughts are actually made out of.

Keeping up the religion theme from last post, some people have told me that it is not enough to do the right thing, you need to also have the right intentions or motivations. Vice versa, it's not enough to avoid doing wrong things -- you cannot even desire the wrong thing. The evidence that Christians give me is Matthew 5:27-28:

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

The thing is that research suggests that the average college man thinks about sex a couple of times an hour and the average college woman only slightly less frequently. That's maybe a million times in a lifetime? A lot of sinning. But let's get away from silly sex sins and get more serious. What about killing? Have non-sociopaths ever thought, "I could kill that guy!" Have most people? Has everyone? Everyone except Gandhi and Mother Theresa? I guess we're all sort of scary that way. But it's probably good that we're like that. It might explain why we are on the top of the food chain instead of extinct.

Free won't

In doing some research on the sociopath's supposed lack of impulse control, I stumbled upon this article from Scientific American (found in full here), which questions the popular conception that we make a conscious choice then act on that choice (i.e. free will). The abstract:

Most of us have a sense that our everyday actions are controlled by an intention that precedes the action: I decide to turn on the light, then flip the switch. But experiments don't consistently support this notion. Some psychologists believe that our sense of intention and purpose is constructed by the brain after the action takes place. Others disagree. The authors discuss ingenious experiments that probe this question, along with bizarre phenomena, such as "alien-hand syndrome," where brain damage leaves patients struggling with actions they cannot control.

The experiments:



Another experiment suggests even more strongly that our sensation of control is largely imaginary:

In one such experiment . . . two participants worked together to move a cursor over objects on a computer screen. One of the participants served as a confederate of the experimenter, but the experimental subject never knew this. The genuine subject heard words over a set of headphones that related to particular objects on the screen. For example, a subject might hear the word "swan" while moving the cursor over a picture of a swan. Unbeknownst to the subject, all of the movement of the cursor came from the confederate. The results showed that, when the relevant word was presented 1 to 5 seconds prior to the action, subjects reported feeling that they had acted intentionally to make the movement. In other words, they had experienced will. When the word was presented 30 seconds prior to the action or 1 second after it, however, there was no false feeling of willing the action. The authors argued that this experiment provided clear evidence that the human brain constructs feelings of causal agency after an action has taken place. It could be that a proper temporal order between intentions, actions and consequences triggers the brain—after the fact—to feel a sense of control.

This type of self deception is perhaps seen best in sufferers of alien hand syndrome, who often rationalize the behavior after the fact, "fool[ing] themselves that the actions they performed were indeed intentional" although "patients are not aware of what they are going to do until after the action has been made." Interestingly, schizophrenics, who frequently "describe an external agent as causing their actions, thoughts, speech or emotions," may largely suffer from an inability to delude themselves into believing that they are acting on their own intentions like "normal" people do.

We are not slaves to impulse, however. The literature suggests that rather than experience free will, we instead experience "free won't," or the ability to avoid acting on the impulse, possibly with the aid of the dorsal fronto-medial cortex, as explained in this article.

The idea of decisions being unconscious impulses that we either reject or make our own raises interesting issues for sociopaths with alleged impulse control problems, but raises even more issues for neurotypicals and the role that a sense of control plays in how they define themselves:

More than a matter of simply turning on a switch, this feeling of control over actions might even contribute to a conscious sense of self. In other words, I am because I control my actions. The question is: How do we go from mundane, everyday actions—like turning on a light—to developing a sense of self as a causal agent?

Gentleman sociopath?

If not morals, why might a sociopath choose to do something "good" or help people? A reader recently wrote about how his sense of aesthetics keeps him from doing anything base, such as brute strength violence.

Similarly, from another sociopathic reader regarding the existence of the "gentleman sociopath":

I have read as many materials about sociopathy. It seems that the clinical model tend towards the violent and lack of self-awareness of the afflicted. I'm confused by that. I have over forty years and have done phenomenally well but there is a certain dichotomy to my nature that challenges what I read. Self-awareness is something I have in spades. It comes in waves but the overall tenets of my meticulous adaptation and mimicry have served me well. I am reasonably successful perhaps even quite successful. I am a charismatic individual that can engender such passionate responses but I don't quite get their ultimate utilitarian value. I am fully capable of expressing emotion though it typically is self-serving. I find people useful and fascinating and in my job I am an outgoing and rather likable chap. I know what to say to make the ends meet. But the act itself is mechanical. You are the first I have read that seems to be broadening the understanding of the bonds that bind us together and yet I wonder, what of the gentleman sociopath. The one who realizes that the flashes of violence and utter revulsion at humanity leaves the efforts to connect empty and like a well played out theatrical piece. One of which I am always the star; even if I sit back and do nothing of great significance I manage to impact other positively. But I fail to see the reward. Is this all there is? A chance encounter, fleeting, where love is extricated for my benefit and validation of my greatness. Psychotherapy and psychology seem only to capture the seen and make formulaic profiles of those who manage to fall into the system. I have absolutely no desire to be anything else. There is an elegance in the primal connection to my stripped bone need to see the tethers that bind us to this false sense of social propriety.

But these tethers that bind us all demand to be plucked so that I can rest assured my genius is not wasted. I am not adverse to violence and my sexual appetites are gruesome at best. But I have control of them despite a few slip ups. I appreciate greatly the time you took to read my letter.  What Answer I receive from you will be welcome.

I have lived long enough to grow tired of the clinical definitions and confines of sociopathy. There are many of us who have formed quite mutually beneficial bonds with one another and find success in a tedious world a far better path than the wanton rebellion. I suppose, while I will be frank in admitting I haven't the foggiest idea of what drew me to your writings, you must have seemed to at least be less rigid in your understanding of this particular detachment. Except with those like me, I have never before felt an interest to express this. You also are likely aware that I would be remiss if I didn't say that any questions you have for me would be welcomed.

Fake it till you make it

From a reader:

recently, with xmas on it's way i've started to ponder a little on this subject. i rarely buy gifts for my family, i never saw the point, even with those who gave to me i'd just claim to be broke and it's not like i care about what my family thinks because i don't really want a relationship with any of them, at least, i don't really care whether they are part of my life in the future when i move out ect... (i'm a teenager). i thought a couple of your recent posts were of some relevance, like when you used to go shoplifting, i'm curious about your thought process behind stopping. do you get narcissistic satisfaction from doing things in a legit, socially acceptable manner? were you afraid of getting caught? and did you see something to be gained from changing (like the incentive to go out and earn more money)? personally i thought incentive, gain and even the fear of getting caught would work best but maybe it's a good form of self-control for sociopaths to indulge in a little narcissism, even if i didn't care about something beforehand i'd actually start to feel for it if i simply just started acting in that way, maybe that's why your past seems to emotionally contradict your current self? but it begs the question, where can you draw the line between self-help and self-delusion?

My response:

This -- "even if i didn't care about something beforehand i'd actually start to feel for it if i simply just started acting in that way" is so true. Biologically we know it is true, for whatever reason when we smile we actually get happier. I sometimes coach friends on how to become better speakers and get them to speak in front of me to the point where they seem relaxed. I then take note of the things that they do or say, how they position their body, etc., while they are relaxed. I tell them -- do these things when you speak in public and the very act of doing them will signal to your brain to relax. It is starting to become apparent that our brain is more plastic than scientists have traditionally believed. Every day, every thing that we do is wiring and re-wiring our brain and (I think) for people like us it is even a bigger deal because we don't have the same sorts of mental rigidities and concrete self-concepts that other people seem to have.

With that said, it is very difficult to fight the tide, so to speak. If your current incentives encourage being a jerk to your family (for whatever reason), you probably don't have the willpower to treat them nicely. If you really want to change a behavior and it is impossible to change your physical incentive structures (whatever would be the equivalent of taking antabuse in your situation), you might still be able to change your perspective. Our brains only process a small fraction of what we encounter. The way we see the world will always be distorted, but it is not a static sort of distortion. We can nudge ourself to see the world in a different sort of distorted way that benefits us. People do it all of the time to become more happy and optimistic with things like gratitude journals, or they become depressed and suicidal by doing the opposite. You can easily learn to love or hate something because, as you say "even if i didn't care about something beforehand i'd actually start to feel for it if i simply just started acting in that way".

Choosing the better part

I have been thinking a lot about the meaning of life. I recently had a conversation with a friend who is going through something of a midlife crisis. He was dissatisfied with his expat job so he quit and moved to an expensive city with a renowned singles scene. He had saved up a ton of money over the years of working long hours and thought that the key to his life's happiness was now to focus on his personal life. Old habits die hard, though, and once he got to the city, he quickly became lonely and depressed. He was even less happy than he was at his old job. Why?

It's an interesting sort of puzzle and I found myself being drawn in to try to figure it out myself. My first thought was that his old job gave him a sense of purpose. The more I talked to him, though, the more I thought it must be that his old job gave him a sense of status and superiority -- he complains about not flying first class anymore, not having preferred "status" with his airline and bank, and he talks all of the time about his degrees from very fancy schools, as if that should be all that is expected of him in life.

The other day he announced to me that he had solved the riddle of his unhappiness with the help of his therapist -- he "needs" to make a lot of money. Not to spend the money, he assured me (he lives a Spartan existence), but for the security. He assured me that his need wasn't any different than these people who feel like they need to spend a lot of money (why the need to legitimize?) and all he wanted was to have enough money so that he could pay people for life's necessities rather than relying on informal social contracts.

"Do you think there's also a sense of validation that you are worth a large sum of money?" I asked. "Or do you think there is some value in social contracts apart from the services or gifts you might receive? Do you think it might be better to just believe that people can be lovely and so it is no great shame that you are just the same as everyone else?"

He's a smart guy and a sceptic (not at all spiritual) so I focused on studies that have shown that one of the factors most correlated with life satisfaction are the number and quality of interpersonal relationships. He replied he is not most people, though, arguing that he is an introvert and that it is "really hard" for him to interact with people and consequently he doesn't like to. Then we talked for a bit about the difference between being true to the person he is day to day versus where he wants to end up in 20 years. Specifically, if he does become rich enough to replace social contracts with monetary ones, there will be less of an incentive to make or maintain relationships. Gradually that will become more and more true until he will (all the while acting completely rationally regarding his day to day preferences) end up 20 years from now with few connections to the human race. And is that where he wants to be?

I was reminded of a scripture that I never understood until recently. Jesus comes over to Martha's house for a meal. Mary, her sister, sits at his feet and is instructed by him until Martha complains, asking him to admonish Mary to help her with the preparations. Jesus rebukes her and says "one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." The implication is that Mary's focus is properly on the eternities while Martha is focused on preparing a meal that will soon be forgotten.

I used to not be able to think of my future except in terms of probabilities. I think this is true of a lot of teenagers, but it took me a long time to outgrow it -- not really until my 30s. Studying music helped -- having to plan ahead and invest in myself for a long term payout. I learned a lot more when I picked up gardening during an extended period of unemployment and self-introspection (basically when I started the blog). I learned that success (at least in my garden) was the product of dozens of small things that I did daily and even if did those things, catastrophe might still strike in the form of a frost or animal interference. Gardening was good for me to internalize both a sense of long term cause and effect and the knowledge that just because I put in the work didn't mean everything would necessarily turn out fine. If things worked out, I was happy. But I also learned to be happy that I had taken the chance, even when I didn't get the results I had hoped for.

I love beets, but I loved that garden more for what it taught me about myself and the world -- that I am like a garden, in a very Candide "we must cultivate our gardens" sort of way. And that I may be tempted to indulge in hundreds of impulses a day, but that I too can choose the better part that will lead to a more lasting life satisfaction. (And still have the immediate satisfaction of feeling like I'm choosing better than most.)

Practicing self-control

More on self-control! A reader sent me this video about self-control that is sort of obvious at the beginning but gets interesting near the end. Obvious points are that self-control correlates with "success" in life and that some people have lower self-control than others.

The project is getting people all hooked up to an EEG machine monitoring their brain activity, particularly the region of the brain associated with self-control. Participants get real-time feedback on whether they are using that part of the brain and are asked to utilize it even more. They figure out through trial and error whatever it is that allows them to engage that part of the brain until they can do it on command. Participants in this project show less self-control fatigue than the control group.

Money quote: "Self-control is not a magical, metaphysical phenomenon. Self-control is a tangible, physiological process that we should be able to intervene on."

This is interesting because my main advice to people when they ask me -- how can I improve my self-control? -- is that I am not sure that you can improve it and for me it is largely just a matter of avoiding situations that might tax my self-control. Of course the participants didn't seem to actually improve their base-line level of self-control, just diminished their self-control fatigue, but still it suggests that there may be hope.