The Problem with Willpower and Self-Control | A Psychology Experiment 

Good points!

They even had a theory that expending willpower depletes blood sugar levels and.. WHAT DO YOU KNOW? Cookies have lots of sugar. Even their whole theory made no sense.

Hunger and frustration might be part of ego depletion. that is because you are hungry and frustrated then your ego is depleted. The attentiveness is part of what is being tracked. Basically the theory is that it takes energy to have will power. Thus just like physical exercise, willing something would reduce your energy. Thus it would be harder to have will power again and again if you do not replenish your energy. It seems like common sense.

@@carlpeterson8182 But then none of the tests to date really show that. Just for an example in the cookies test, the subjects were supposed to go into the test already hungry so that they'd want the cookies and exhibit self-control by not eating them. The "ego depletion" didn't make them hungry, they already were. If anything that test may have shown the affects of blood glucose levels on cognition. Maybe going against an impulse depletes energy, but there's just too many factors at play to set up a good test of that without large and diverse sample studies and intensive meta-analysis, and looks like what's been shown so far in that respect indicates that ego depletion is not a thing. Sure common sense indicates that using will power is difficult and that its more and more difficult the longer you have to exhibit self-control, but nothing really indicates that there's some kind of independant will power factor in human psychology.

@@taleladar but there is problems even with that. Just after eating your body focuses more circulation around digestion making LESS energy available for a short time. This cookie test seems like something a 5 year old would come up with.

+D0wnshift Pretty much. The experiment is dumb and it wouldn't prove anything. The puzzle should be solvable, not impossible. People stop when they figure it out it is impossible. This study could have proved that radishes make you smarter.

+D0wnshift >No such thing as greentext on youtube >Uses greentext anyway >Also racist against cookies >Should eat more cookies and stop greentexting

FearlessP4P1 >kthnx

+FearlessP4P1 What is with people thinking it's cool for some reason to tell others to kill themselves?

+The Great Mad Hatter >No greentext on RU-vid >uses greentext to say there's no greentext topkek

Another variable is a test subject with gluten sensitivity or coeliac disease. They will not be resisting anything out of the ordinary any more than most people have trouble resisting an urge to shoplift. They may even have experience of feeling unwell when gluten loaded.

Got my G.E.D. (rushed, somehow got a 0 on the written part, still passed) wanted to learn more. Got told I needed a readiness class. Teacher of that class had us take one of those stupid 16 personality quizzes (to be extra clear, this class was just supposed to get us ready for the first year, and it was a small class with nobody looking for a psych degree.) Teacher brought up the marshmellow expiriment. I pointed out that it isn't an "either or" outcome, and that for some kids one marshmellow may be fine but a second would just sit forgotten in the back of the pantry at best *looks at parents of children who take their halloween candy* Not to mention that kids often view the world different. Why pay for apples when my neighbor has >one tree< and gets so many they WANT people to take them for free. How greedy are those orchard farmers? Why doesn't the city just put taps in maple trees for free public syrup? Why would I wait 5 minutes for a second marshmellow when I can neither wait an hour for a bag nor can I plant them? In the end I decided that if there was anything I actually wanted to know I'd probably be better of just going to the library.

You definitely need willpower to not even taste a little bit of cookie in a room that smells like fresh cookies. Assuming you like cookies and aren't allergic.

Willpower is the spirit

Another thing that popped into my mind was eating disorders: How used to are you to control your eating? Do you deplete regularly or follow your urges to binge?

One magic bean or a bag of glucose sure can help a hero back to his feet fast tho

Willpower is found in flashbacks

And just from watching TTGL the willpower from that show is just galactic or universal.....Literally

just yell your opponent's name loud enough and your strength will multiply

@@Eclipsed_Archon *KAKAROT!!!!*

That's what I was thinking when watching that section. A statement like that would make me less likely to consider the study's conclusions if they were, indeed, in favor of ego depletion.

Yea, absolutely.

+William Smith No, it isn't bad science. Al psychologists when they begin an experiment, set out to find a certain result. That is completely different from fabricating data. Baumeister is a hugely influential and respected psychologist so he would not do anything to tarnish his reputation.

+Matthew Farrington He's too influential. If anything, he discredits his fellow "scientists" and does a disservice to the field as a whole.

***** How does he discredit his fellow scientists? in what way? He has performed work across fields in psychology so what exactly are you saying he has done or still does?

Also the people who believed ego depletion was a thing might have had an inkling that the puzzle was impossible, having maybe heard of or read previous studies.

the video specifically said that a control group that didn't go through the cookie/radish event had attempted the puzzle longer than the cookie group. 21 minutes as opposed to 19 minutes. Your argument is invalid.

Allied Atheist Alliance An even simpler hypothesis is that the puzzle test was almost a pure exhaustion test. No willpower measured, just how long it took subjects to tire out after different combinations of waiting and feeding. On the other hand the letter counting task was extremely linguistic and thus dependent on the language of the subjects, the specific way in which they learned to read and if the subject selection method favoured people who would enjoy the task. It's the age old mistake of using word tests to measure psychology across populations. Of cause tests that focus on other singular mental abilities (such as geometric pattern recognition) can be equally skewed, not among cultures, but among talents and professions.

Common sense isn't common when the goal is to have your paper published containing the most outrageous claim possible. That's 21st century science for ya.

TomaCukor that's because common sense isn't always as sensible as we think. If someone told said light is both a particle and a wave and time can go faster or more slowly depending on your speed it would seem ridiculous. Still its exactly the conclusion century of scientific research has come to. Just because something seems crazy doesn't mean it's not true, the important thing is to have enough strong evidence to back it up. So watch out for the "that's just common sense" thing, because it's the same type of argument that people who think the earth is flat use, saying it looks flat so it must be flat

Which is why mixed methods research is important, and perhaps the best way to counter subjectivity in experimental designs. Even if you have an experimentally controlled, randomised, counterbalanced design, experimenter bias will still affect your results in terms of your decision-making. On the other hand, it would indeed be difficult to draw generalised conclusions from a qualitative study, precisely because it places emphasis on subjectivity. By combining the alleged 'objectivity' of true experimental designs and qualitative studies, we're more or less counterbalancing for the subjectivities of both designs.

@@3cheersforidiots My point was /responder/ bias, not experimenter bias, and the failure to extract or identify said bias. Yes, mixed methods are /better/ /than/ any single strategem. Because of course they are. But there's no reason to exclude inquiring if your subjects are using a specific conscious pattern for their decision-making process... except a desire to avoid knowing. Which is stupid.

Sounds like an extraneous variable oversight. If many other students answered in a similar manner, they likely received results that indicated insignificant correlation, and I doubt the study was published. If it was, replication studies would likely reveal issues with the study, and the hypothesis would be rejected. I agree that the researchers should have questioned participants if this turned out to be the case. On the other hand, you could have simply been an outlier, and what occured with you was not statistically significant. Or, better yet, the researchers knew about this issue and chose not to reveal it as it could have damaged results. For instance, they were actually researching if number of bushes could have an effect on the results from a prior study they were replicating. Unfortunately, we don't have the study or researchers on hand, so this is all speculation. The reality is that any of these scenarios are possible. Even if your original thought is correct, and the researchers did miss an extraneous variable, that simply indicates that the researchers made a mistake. It does not state that psychology as a whole is stupid. Psychology, and all sciences, is not about getting the right answers the first time, but moving towards the right answers over years of research. Some sciences can control extraneous variables easier, but that does not discredit psychology.

@@mokeyblackblood8356 ​ My point is that the study design was unnecessarily flawed. Why design something where the flaw is only identified by evaluating the results, when the flaw is so obvious and so easy to avoid? Just add two questions post: 1) Did you have specific conscious criteria for your decisions? Yes/no. "No" would cover anyone who wasn't aware of why they liked certain images better than others, and would encompass their target group (those responding with subconscious impulses), probably 100%. But if they /wanted/ to know who /wasn't/ in their target group and why, just add 2) Can you briefly describe what those criteria were? And if you're going to respond "If people could see their flaws in advance..." Yes, I know that no one sees what they're missing, otherwise they wouldn't miss it. But it seemed to me at the time, and still does decades later, that this was an OBVIOUS miss. So obvious it felt deliberate. Ours was not the only scenario used in these evaluations of photos, and other scenarios would have produced entirely different "criteria", if any. And overall the study would have probably supported the hypothesis that sunny spaces are more attractive to humans - because water makes things wet, after all. BUT if they don't understand the criteria people used, they haven't actually STUDIED anything. They've just reinforced their bias. Even my results could almost certainly be interpreted as "sunny spaces were more positive" simply because the sunny photos had fewer bushes. False results. And not subject to the evaluation you're describing because it /wouldn't/ be an outlier, and even if everyone in my group used the same criteria, the overall results would /appear/ the same as "sunny is good" when the truth is "bushes are bad". Bad design. Stupidly bad design.

Huh, even in high school biology we were told when doing sampling to measure and take account of as many variables that may effect the results as we can

I know. I'd pick the radish over the cookie.

Truth! Maybe the radish eaters' bellies were so pleased, they did not care about a puzzle.

@@kittimcconnell2633 yep, too busy breaking down the carbs to glucose. ;)

“Scientist”

They thought that smell of cookie would make people like cookie more

Exactly my thought. Fuck these guys, making me eat a radish. I don't give a shit about their test.

I don't like sweets. I'd feel sluggish after something like cookies, but radishes with ranch sounds tasty!

+Matt Silverstein if you don't want people giving their opinions don't make public comments. Or did you forget how to internet?

+Lyssa Caruso troll 101: you should just ignore them and yea I guess the cookie test might be quite personal lol

+Daniel Murillo I think they were just really craving cookies, so gave up so they could go home and get some cookies.

slycordinator Name two of them!

@@patrickholland901 Nature, essentially, is one. And they're a huge umbrella journal. The article I've linked to is written by an author of a neuroscience replication study that Nature seemed to bend over backwards to not publish, seemingly because it refuted a study that the journal had published. retractionwatch.com/2018/05/09/an-attempt-to-publish-a-replication-attempt-in-a-nature-journal-part-2/

Well... that's because they're running a business. Replication studies confirming something they already published won't make them money. A study that refutes a previous article is probably of high interest; if not for them then for their competition. What we need to do is give a lot more value to metanalysis and make sure it includes unpublished and replication studies, because no one has time to read 70 40-page articles of science mumbo jumbo while trying to live their life.

@@adde9506 "Replication studies confirming something they already published won't make them money." And they don't want ones that refute them either, because while it might make them money, it could also sully their reputation.

@@slycordinator If I were a rival publisher, I would be very interested in putting out a paper that contradicts my competition. But yeah, neutral publishing will definitely help things.

What's a hypothesis worth then? Like, have you ever guessed something, and even though you really wanted what you were guessing for, you realized in some objective/measurable sense that it wasn't up to your original estimation? What bias-tainted magic allows us to gain such enlightenment? Surely not free will. Surely not conditional leaps of faith. Surely not trying or new ideas any time in the last 3- 10,000 years. Have a good one....

I wonder if you mean the scientific method designed to avoid the numerous biases to which our brains are very much prone.

@@kikiTHEalien please look up Behind the Curve! It is about the flat earth community trying very hard to prove that the earth is flat, and they aren't dumb! They come up with a bunch of experiments to get findings yet all it does is prove them wrong, that the earth is indeed spherical. They do some research, its just so astounding that they refuse to accept the results of the experiments they set up.

But that is how science works. You can't just magically not have an opinion. The reason you do an experiment is because you have a hypothesis or disagree with someone else's hypothesis. So either way you are trying to prove or disprove something. The method itself is perfectly fine. For example back when the aether was a thing people wanted to prove it but oh well they accidently disproved it. Anything you put in a paper will be ruthlessly scrutinized by your opponents so unless the media gets involved early there tend to be less problems than you think. It's more of a problem with soft sciences as it's extremely difficult to get conclusive hard data. Another problem is that interesting papers are more likely to be published which - while perfectly understandable - is absolutely irresponsible.

Sometimes. But you need to prove that your hypothesis for it to be accepted and used, because it may be seen as a fluke. For example, if your hypothesis gets tested for say a range of values from 0 to 1000 and it works, but it doesn't work above that, how is anyone supposed to know that(something like gravitational potential energy=mgh but only for a certain range of values, otherwise you have to use other methods). It's not feasible to test for 1000 values, so you can only test for maybe 200, and there's a chance that it might fail outside those 200 values. It's really important when people use stuff like physics equations to know that they work for the stuff they are doing, like sending people to mars. Otherwise if it fails... For important stuff, you need to prove that it works for everything, because you can't test for everything, or if it doesn't, at least prove that it works for a certain range of values. Of course, testing is also important in case the stuff you used to prove was wrong too.

It's cute how people think science should be done by impartial people who don't exist, without motivation, or interest in end results.

I wonder if it would be ethical to use my kid's science project (and the teacher's/judges reactions to it) to investigate this hypothesis...

@@tomroberts1105 okay, make sure to start tracking data now so when your kid is an adult and running a scientific study you can do a meta-analysis.

Metqa wow at my school, there’s like 3000 students. So everyone has to do the project and the teacher chooses a few of them to actually go to participate in the science fair. Usually only the well organized and pretty boards get to go.

the best way to summarize this.

You're HANGRY

I once had a pupil quote this to me as a reason why I shouldn't give him a break time detention. I asked him if he also believed that Persil makes your laundry whiter, but he didn't get the point, lol. (I only kept him in for half the break anyway)

Sadly, that's the worst thing to eat when you're hungry. A radish is better.

Right??

Scientifically proven that institutional science is broken.

Well, no... this whole video is about how that effect might not be true at all.

😂

Will power can be controlled by an individual...Depending on whether the individual chooses to or not, can depend on why...

@@ThePallidor 00

It depends if you're intellectually honest or not. Having some ego isn't a bad thing, you would be more prone to give up otherwise.

Pierre Stöber I'm not sure what you're talking about. My comment has nothing to do with ego. My point was that unbiased science, by definition, does not seek to prove what is wanted, but only what is.

Yeah, I know. But in order for something to be proven, you need to have someone who wants to prove it. There is nothing wrong with wanting/hoping to prove something as long as you're intellectually honest. It's illusory to think that scientists are somehow special people who desire to be wrong. A good player isn't someone who wants to lose, but someone who can concede a defeat.

Pierre Stöber the assertion that something can only be proven if somebody first wishes to prove it, is illogical. Things are proven to be true, unexpectedly, all the time. Many of the most important discoveries in science where quite accidental.

It's not wrong, though my point still stands: having an interest in something or wanting to prove something doesn't mean it's biased or bad science. Honestly I'm not even sure what you were trying to say in your original statement.

+Higgins_123 QED

+Higgins_123 Funny! I was listening to a Ted Talk the other day and someone mentioned that "Will Power" is a renewable resource, I just laughed, because whereas that it true, you still need a good attitude, sleep, calories and protein. Adversity builds character - and having strong character allows for greater will power - the more you endure the more you can handle. I think weakness is evil.

Yeah you're right 0 is a limit too

Maybe we were just tired

A large reason they were just tired from no carbs in brains.

Not a bad hypothesis at all. Anger increases heart rate which, obviously, consumes more energy.

"They just didn't care as much any more". That's exactly what willpower is all about.

That would actually be confirming ego depletion, so...

Exactly, I feel like it’s more about the mood. When you are happier and comfortable after eating cookies you are in a better mood so wouldn’t mind meddling with that puzzles.

Very true. I got into a tradition called Drukama which aims one towards self realizations, if it interests you check it out. Be well!

Jakob Bauz That doesn’t even make sense here.

+thewanderandhiscomp True, but not as often

Do you even astrophysics?

+thewanderandhiscomp Or rather, there isnt usually the need to backtrack, hard science seems to mostly just go forward

THat's wHy evolution isn't science

+Leo Quintana what do you mean? When do they backtrack on evolution

my differential psych prof is convinced that ego depletion and ego empowerment are associated with different hemispheres, depletion with the left one and empowerment with the right one! it sounds likely that fixed mindset people might be more strongly rooted in their left hemisphere since it's the analytical and stress-sensitive one so it would make sense for them to be more sensitive to this effect. so it would make sense that the availability of willpower depends on factors like personality constellation and situation 🤔

@@nele2820 not a grad just yet, but if we were to equate willpower with a brain area, I would be more prone to believe that frontal lobe functioning has more to do with it, since it controls executive functioning and has been shown to affect impulse control

Will power in general might be too complicated to study reliably as well. I mean even in this cookie scenario what if you don’t care for cookies. They’re just assuming everyone is equally hungry and has a demand for cookies. Then they’re assuming it has an effect on performance on some unrelated task. It also assumes there’s no conscience element to willpower. I don’t think it’s like holding your breath. I mean you can only do that for so long because when you run out of oxygen you’ll die. If you deplete your willpower will you die? If not then how can you know when willpower is completely gone?

I generally believe that mindset are not choices and the beliefs you have are reflections of your brain, people with good genetics have a growth mindset while people with bad genetics have a fixed one or they come from a abusive environment.

@@kittenmastermind660 it's not just genetics, though. Sure, there is likely some hereditary effect of mindset, likely due to changes in brain structure, but it's likely that there is at least some environmental effect on your mindset. My guess would be that mindset is largely a product of gene x environment interactions.

Good observation, I would be the same. "Let me outa here I'm bored."

...and I hate radishes anyway.😝

+geonerd That is one of the steps of any piece of scientific research: You have to think of all of the factors that could possible affect your results and control for them.

+Darc Gibson Ideally yes but you can't really control for everything. Especially with psychology scientific findings come from large volumes of imperfect studies. I won't say the one with the cookies was good research as it was described though. It would have just taken one person with a good understanding of nutrition to tell them it just falls on its face.

That wasn't the only test on it probably

And that's not that difficult to test. I don't get why they didn't include a control group eating sugar free candy or something like that.

DarqueChocoholic Yeah that was just an oversight by the researchers. They most likely didn't even think of the cookies giving a quick burst of psychic energy but just that it was the better tasting food.

interesting idea. i wonder how we could go about testing it... maybe post experiment questionaire to get a feel for participant's mood?

Most likely, when the students signed up for the study, they were probably made well aware that A) They should go into it hungry, and B) There was a chance they would end up in a group of either i) allowed to eat cookies or ii) not allowed to eat cookies. I did an experiment once where I was told ahead of time that would be in a group where I could i) nap or ii) do quiet relaxation but no napping. All I'm saying is, the participants probably weren't "shocked" that they would have to resist cookies. That said, there are a lot of other factors that don't seem to have been accounted for.

True, i find it weird when Freud is the "face" of modern psychology, where it should be person like Skinner, Neissen, even Pavlov Sorry bad English

At my university they teach freud as part of the history of psychology, giving an emphasis on how he was a fraud

He isn't, Wilhelm Wundt is. Specifically, the father of experimental psychology.

Freud is not the father of modern psychology at all. Not even psychology. He is just the father of PSYCHOANALYSIS. He is the face of psychology because he's famous, but it's really not fair to judge psychology as a field by seeing Freud (Someone from 1800s who didn't even use the scientific method, unlike in modern psychology). In fact, psychology researchers don't consider Freud's theories as scientific. They see his theories as useful and relevant somehow, but no one really sees his theories as science, nor did he ever follow the scientific method to support his theories.

What is a father? Shall we get Oedipal? If it makes you all feel better call Freud the Grandpa of Psychology. Just remember that before him mental patients were locked up in asylums with no treatment & abandoned there.

+Gil Wanderley calm your ass

+Gil Wanderley Actually, it replenishes you mana.

+b33lze6u6 I tried to calm my ass and then he kicked me and then ran off.

Livid Imp you gotta use your boyish charm

+b33lze6u6 I can't. I lost my boyish charm in a poker game. I do have a manly bauble though. Think that might work?

You need to invest some of that willpower into maintaining a healthy diet. Don't worry though, when you feel like you can't keep going just eat a cookie.

+RE S Seems like sound advice to me. Now the problem is finding the willpower to go to the store to get more cookies...

put cookies there also

PictureFit You just need to order some cookies online and have them delivered to your house. Eat those and you'll be able to go to the store and get some cookies!

RE S Dude you should be a psychologist or something. Thanks!

Trained in Positive Psych and counseling I haven’t came across any evidence for that specific connection There’s a lot of ethical considerations surrounding “oh you have x condition? Don’t worry now you get this cool perk” A lot of sciences, especially those that deal with humanity like psychology also exist in an ethical sphere, if they publish works like these, what are we to do with it? Tell those who have mood disorders to try creative therapy? What if they don’t have that inclination?

Maybe cookies are more satisfactory for the mind and body than vegetables, so your mood improves etc...

Or coeliac disease in which case the possibility of eating the cookies does not arise.

Yeah, its their credit scores

+EtrielDevyt Ba DUM tsss.

+John Clavis LOL

Money and sleep?

Indeed ignorant sophomore arrogance is more of a problem with college students.

That’s why we don’t. Freud is not considered the father of modern psychology. He’s not even taught in most universities in europe

Freud was a fraud.

@@M0nILP Anyone who attends a university and chooses to study psychology is an idiot. The world is waking up. Your fraud pseudoscience is going down. And don't lie. Freud is and has always been the foundation of psychology.

Brett Toombs there’s a lot of issues with popular psychology but you clearly don’t know much about it because your statement about freud being the foundation of psychology is just wrong. Most psychologists distance themselves from freud massively

@@M0nILP ..and yet Freud is taught in every psychology lecture hall and is mentioned in every psychology textbook. I son't see much "distancing" being practiced. Psychology is not a science. Ask 1 million physicists to define "Force" and you get 1 answer. Force = Mass x Acceleration. Ask 1 million psychologists to define "Mental Illness" and you get 1 million different answers. Perhaps that is why psychology is so popular. Any moron can study it and have an opinion. Oh, and shoving Ritalin down the throats of young boys in the school system is not scientific. It's a crime. against humanity.

+666Tomato666 RIP the people at my school who take AP Psychology

+thewanderandhiscomp that is a pretty far leap from the original statement

+666Tomato666 nobody calls it 'soft science'....

+Thomas Richardson I call it a pseudoscience

+666Tomato666 Of course it is. It is the most complicated type of science because of the complexity of the human mind and society.

yes indeed and ramble on; screw the mentally lazy who complain about large posts... this isn't for them anyway. Part of the problem is that ppl graduate or about to try to create a new study to make their "name" on and they don't go back and check the past studies work at all.... also a large chunk of the field is pseudoscience, (like you were saying). I think this is a failure of our modern economic system affecting the facilitation of knowledge to the point of stagnation.. if it's selling then don't change it. If people want new BS to learn; fabricate it.. it's a product to sell them... the goal is not truth or knowledge anymore... just money. Fucking business. I could go on for hours pointing out problems with everything... which is why I do it on my youtube channel and I invite you to join the thought revolution.

Bryce Nolen yes right I was also thinking the same

LOL!

+matt antunovic Had to drink a gallon of sugarish lemonade after enduring it :/

+matt antunovic Duke Nukem Forever

+matt antunovic Go and eat a chocolate chip cookie ..

It doesn't exist so, enjoy your imaginary phenomenon.

+Dr. Bread That's because so much of it is imaginary.

+Richard Alexander In the sense your entire existence as you know it is imaginary, possibly.

Baigandine L Psychology suffers from the fact that its subject of study cannot be observed, only inferred. We are barely to the place that we can watch chemical reactions taking place in the brain; we still don't know what the mind is.

Richard Alexander Yet in some ways the more intuitive tools of psychology have always been far more developed than our current chemical understanding of the brain.

Baigandine L I find that difficult to believe, but even if true, what of it? Theory in the absence of empirical data is just speculation.

Same. But would radish cookies work as negative or positive reinforcement?

+Chester Sellars more studies = more sample = less chance for result due to randomness

Obviously, but setting out to do an experiment in hopes of proving yourself isn't good science. It's a problem of research bias. If you set out to prove an effect exists (especially one you're famous for discovering), you've come to the table with a desired outcome. That's bad science.

Chester Sellars yes, i agree

+pramitbanerjee I think Chester's point was that him doing it with the express purpose of proving himself right is bad. Good scientists aren't looking to prove themselves right, they're just looking for the truth whatever it may be.

+Cinnamon Toast You seem to have a very unworldly idea about what motivates scientists in general. Just because some fields require scientists to phrase their reports as if they are trying to disprove their own theory doesn't mean their actual motivation is such. Scientists are intelligent enough to do the necessary word gymnastics to satisfy such formal requirements. I doubt physicists would have spent all that effort looking for Higg's boson if they weren't motivated by a desire to actually find it, just as an obvious example.

+mikemorr100 Exactly what I was thinking too. Even if the low ego hypothesis was true, this would have made the cookie experiment worthless from the start.

You didn't watch the whole video explaining how they didn't even have to eat or drink the food just taste it to get the same effects... please watch entire video before posting your thoughts on it.

+blahh blah The body would still respond to the perceived caloric intake. The body has no clue how many calories were consumed, only that there were some and that it can therefore expend a larger amount as it believes they will be replaced.

Kevin Booth​​​​​​​​ There were "NO" calories consumed as they wouldn't have taken "ANY" in. Just like sugar free gum has no calories. There are no calories to recieve in the first place. The body also DOES reconize whether or not calories are being consumed and responds accordingly. Leptin, insulin, lactase presence,etc. The body also DOES reconize calories in surplus and stores the excess accordingly. You are unaware conciously of all endocrinological processes such as these, but your body is fully aware and adjusts accordingly. Your body keeps count of the amount of calories you are consuming daily and adjusts accordingly. For instance, if you start to cut back on calories and certain types of macros your body will go into a self metabolizing state and once you go back to eating your regular diet will store calories much more in excess than had you not changed your calorie intake. You are talking to a biology/psychology dual degree student. Your body is much more than it seems. The point still remains that if you don't consume the calories your body can't use what it never had. Whether or not it is "percieved" to be calories none were actually present so that glucose spike the op said was relevant is irrelevant since there was no surplus glucose to cause a spike.

blahh blah Lemonade has sugar.... The act of tasting introduces a small amount of calories... Those calories are detected by receptors from the mouth down, which induce a response from the body. It doesn't take much to convince the body to give an extra push when it believes it has access to a source of nutrition. The capability to continue in the short term is almost certainly related to a very primitive instinct to access calorie rich resources... (btw, making a point of saying I'm "talking to a biology/psychology dual degree student" is sort of an argument from authority fallacy..... poor form.)

Shabtai1024 ! Science is peer reviewed and is generally reviewed and critiqued. Yes it may take time but the scientific method and peer review takes time , evaluation and improvement

And then people who have 80 study concluding to the same results do not want to belive it is a true fact, because someone else published a fake study and everything is fake and blablabla. Use a critical mind, read the data and make your own conclusion, look both side of the argument, and conclude yourself. But don't reject data because "it could be fake"

The Other Point Of View However one must always be wary of the fallacy of blindly believing a bad computer model, especially in the political and economic sciences where complex macromodels are often filled with assumptions and adjustments based on the designers political beliefs.

Some of those errors may have been deliberate. To get tenure, you must get published. To get published you need positive results. If get sponsored by industry, you have to get results your sponsor wants; else it's "What use are you?".

Not being able to prove a hypothesis often gives a result of "we don't know whether or not". Anything that doesn't take us one step further is easy to deem useless for publication. Sometimes I find studies where researchers have found the opposite of what they tried to prove, and that's easier to publish, as long as nobody else have proven it right first. Like that funny study where some people wanted to prove that angry music makes people angry, and instead found that it calms angry people down. I think that study was done in Finland though, or some other country where metal being good wouldn't be very controversial.

+DonWoschto good point!

I just found The Force. Gonna publish it now! Oh wait it was a burp. Too late!

+DonWoschto I believe that's called Confirmation Bias.

+Abby Couture Modern psychology does try to incorporate more chemistry into the equation, but yes. By and large, I have never trusted psychology as a "real" science.

POTASSIUM

+Abby Couture "Just have a banana and don't worry about your ego." - "because sometimes the banana is just a banana." - Freud =)

+Abby Couture Psychology is not a science , period . It has never been and will never a science . There is way too much flaws on how it works and how it is supposed to works in his field and applied in real life. The only reason this "thing" still exist is because lazy or misguided students enter for psychology degree to become a teacher in this field , it's a vicious circle (or get unemployed because nobody want that degree).

+Zafiro2jol Interesting theory. Let me ask you then that if it is not a science, how it is that psychological instruments are so effective? Taking an aspirin shows a smaller effect on easing headeache than the results on psychological tests show on work performance. If you truly believe psychology (read: PYSCHOLOGY, not psychoanalysis which is what most people think of) is no science. Then can i conclude that you will never take any painkillers considering the facts of them being less effective than tests and interventions developed on, according to you, 'non-scientifical' theories.

@@jakobbauz Yep, just like Buss' evolutionary psychology studies. Doesn't matter how many countries you go to, if you ask men and women different questions, you're gonna find a difference between men and women. Once the questions were pooled into one survey and the test was repeated, the effect disappeared.

Are you insinuating that labeling people though subjective vaguely insulting opinions isn't science? WELL GOOD DAY SIR

Jakob Bauz I mean to me it would seem that they work harder at the puzzle because the cookie may be a reward for completing it, but for those that already are the cookie all they have to look forward to is a radish, so it’s easier to just give up because the reward is not as satisfying

It's amazing how many people notice that more people are generalizing after seeing this video...this video....this video...

They do say cocain inflates ego. In my experience they are day dreamers both sleep awake and tripping. It seems that less and less people like coca. Then know dum ass.

See that's one explanation that was then tested with the lemonade thing... But then there's the follow-up where no recovery of glucose was required for ego depletion to be restored, just the taste.

The more likely answer is that it has nothing to do with willpower and everything to do with the brain needing the resources to continue the task. One of the things the brain does when presented with a caloric deficit is reduce the available glucose supply in the higher functions. So, the parts of the brain that are further from the brain stem get their supply reduced so as to preserve energy for the parts of the brain that are needed to live. I suspect that they would have seen a similar effect even for similarly cognitively intensive activities that the study participants wanted to engage in. I know that when I haven't eaten, even things like reading books that I enjoy or listening to music tends to be hard to maintain.

It's also important to take note that some people are "trained" to persevere more despite their body's condition. It would be interesting to try this experiment in North Korea. So, while it is important to try the experiment on larger groups, it's also important to take note of the subjects' habits and upbringing.

@@SmallSpoonBrigade Did you miss the part about how just tasting something without getting any sugar was enough? It probably has more to do with mood than crude mechanics.

It was a poorly designed test for a vaguely defined hypothesis.

Psychology in a nutshell

welcome to Psychology... its called a "soft science" for a reason.

@@timeshark8727 If you think the "hard sciences" don't do this kind of thing all the time, I invite you to look up "polywater".

@@yunikage or the Z-Ray. ;)

+Sarah Bouachir Correct! You win a cookie.

Well this exactly is the problem, everyone imagines their own solution and the wonky data psychology provides can prove things that aren't there. Meaning our understanding of the human brain can be mostly fictional.

+Old Machines &amp; Such I had to pause the video to laugh when he said this XD

+Angharad Radishes > Cookies

+Angharad This is really irony. But what if the cookies have radishes instead?

+Angharad i was thinking the same thing, i am gonna attack the radishes in my fridge right after the video

google

I think your comment shows why the tests ultimately proved to be inconclusive. Different people have different needs and likes and while some might find it hard to resist cookies others wouldn't at all.

If you mix in stubbornness, then you'll get a whole bunch of intractable results.

Also, how about those with ADHD/ ADD or lower attention span than average?

Or those who grew up without any choices at all and just had to get shit done or they died, compared to the spoilt millennial brats of today who need a safe space with their pumpkin spiced latte just to contemplate something as foreign as willpower...

Wrong! Subjects are chosen randomly, so each group should have had the same amount of intelligent people, unless the number of subjects was very small...

@maxnaz baby boomers grew up with the strongest economy in the nation's history.

Psychologists are like economists. They make up shit and act like they know what they are talking about and the rest of us are none the wiser.

To me the most interesting and scary area of psychology mass persuasion. For example, they learned that people are much easier to convince with careful manipulation of emotion than with facts. Watch an Apple commercial, do they list the specifications of an iphone? No they market as a lifestyle accessory, it will make you more complete, hipper and more interesting for having it. Even though the iPhone is the best selling phone they still make owners feel like they belong to an exclusive club. Ever see someone who lists their car, motorcycle, boat and game console in their signature as if it is part of their persona? They are convinced their possessions are a widow into their soul. Now that is marketing! Even though violent crime has been going down for decades news reporting of it has increased 5 fold. If it bleeds it leads is the news motto. It keeps Americans afraid even though they should feel safer.

***** To me the line between philosophy and psychology is fuzzy as well. I enjoy reading Carl Jung for the most part (except some of his weirder papers) but I read him more like philosophy than psychiatry. Both study the psyche. Philosophy studies it from within while psychology tries to study it from an outside perspective. The most successful "pragmatic" areas of psychology seem to be in marketing and mass communication. It is pretty scary how easily the masses are manipulated.

thats why you have to leave it to us neuroscientists to solve the problem

Well technically every science is a part of physics some how. Physics is chemistry. Biology is a form of many chemical reactions or chemistry. And psychology is a small branch of biology.

This video is at about a 6th grade language level...

Yellow King I think they mean the exam

Not necessarily. But if a thousand researchers design a study to prove it, and only publish the results if they succeed, you're guaranteed to end up with only studies that prove it.

Yup.

+Ryan Barnhart They have already merged, it's called neuropsychology.

+Ryan Barnhart That's because it is, really. Toting Sigmund Freud as its pioneer is a huge red flag for me.

+Ryan Barnhart The situation is changing fast with the advancements of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology.

+HeadlessAnon The field of psychology/psychiatry simply didn't exist before Freud. Yes he was stabbing in the dark and became utterly dogmatic. However, he really did pioneer the field. There was no attempt at a science of the mind before him, and he started it. Founders of every field of study have been wrong. This is just history.

+thijsjong Because they are mad scientists. (give or take the scientist portion)

For science! Or a lack thereof...

+Russell that's not how that saying works

+thijsjong In case they blow someone's mind and get splattered with brains

+thijsjong because they are increasing their egos so they don't suffer as much ego depletion :D jk cause they think they're real scientists

+Reece Robin It's mostly a problem in the 'softer' sciences like sociology and psychology. The 'harder' the science the less wiggle room you have shoving in answers that don't fit, and the easier it is to find through peer review. The harder sciences also make use of equations like T-tests to help determine if results are accurate or significant, you're also pretty much required to find the statistical error in your results. If you lead your conclusion statistical error jumps up A LOT. I'm not trying to disagree, just expand a bit.

+Ragnarok222R I'm fairly certain that the social sciences use T-tests and similar analyses. It's covered in at least one introductory social science research textbook, and probably all of the others. What do you think they do instead? Stare at a graph, shrug, and say "Eh, looks good to me"?

+Ragnarok222R Okay, so I'm being snarky. They used the F-test rather than the T-test as part of an ANOVA in the original 1998 paper. Of course, later experiments used other analytical methods.

+Ragnarok222R It is actually a problem in all sciences. Like that natural science major that uses physics to "prove" God exists, even though his research contradicts other research out there. The design of studies in ALL fields of science determines the worth of the study. Unfortunately a lot of studies just aren't up to par. Also your definition of 'soft' and 'hard' sciences is quite laughable (not to be rude). Modern psychologists (not psycho-analysists but PSYCHOLOGISTS) are overall recognized as some of the best statisticians in marketing firms, banks etc... due to the immensely difficult task of statistical analysation of their research. Which is a lot trickier due to the vast amount of factors that simply cannot be completely or at all controlled. Due to this psychologists need not only the very common T-Test or even F-test for that matter. They need a wide variety of functions depending on the factors they need to keep in mind. Confidence intervals or significance is basically a psychologists bread and butter. Lastly I'll give you a small point to think about when you think about 'hard' and 'soft' sciences. It is overall agreed upon that when you are sick you go to a doctor. The man of medicine with biology, physics and chemistry behind him! All 'hard' sciences by your definition. The so-called 'hard' scientific methods of T-tests etc. have proven that psychological instruments in selection have more effect on future work performance (.50 - 55) than e.g. bypass operation on the chance of surviving (r = .08), smoking on lung cancer under age 25 (r .08), antihistamines on a cold (r .11), Ibuprofen on painreduction (.14), viagra on headeaches (.25), viagra on sexual performance (.38) and even length on weight (.44)[among American adolescents]. To dismiss a scientific field as 'soft' science is reasonable. I, for one, despise psycho-analysis (think of: Freud). However don't dismiss fields based on a definition that actually CONFIRMS those fields to be hard sciences according to your criterium and even perform better in practice than the most commonly accepted practice of medicine.

+Reece Robin aim to prove a null-hypothesis, this might seem either semantics of synonymous but the difference is important in the change of motivation for the researchers.

Yes it is as they have prior knowledge but due to cost and time restraints researches often use them for initial studies

This is psychology, not science.

isodoublet psychology is a science

No, it's a pseudoscience.

@@isodoubIet in what way?

Should do continuous intermittent fasting at the end of an extended fast.

+The Last Grownup in the Woods I'd be grump too!

+Messofanego This happens in all fields of science... You get famous when you publish about how you were right. No one cares if you were wrong!

+Uruz2012 Until someone replicates your experiments decades later and finds out it's wrong. At which point you've more or less helped spend a lot of money for nothing. I mean, this particular hypothesis has been one that advertising companies have tried to use for ages, they probably have more data hidden away that could disprove the theory than any research group at this point, because they've tried to use it empirically.

Worst thing is this is being done with drug trials too. It's not uncommon for pharmaceutical companies to rerun studies several times until it looks like the new drug is effective/safe even though it's not (or at least not as much as the drugs we're currently using). Now that's scary.

***** That's very dangerous.

+Messofanego fortunately things like the "Journal of Negative Results" or "New Negatives in Plant Science" exist. Though we really need more of these types of journals for a broader selection of scientific fields.

+Catnium I prefer B. F. Skinner's behavioral theory. Seems more logical and makes more sense.

+Catnium Actually radishes contain sugar too. So it's possible to correct for this in the analysis by taking into account the specific amount of sugar each individual consumed. Some are certainly bound to eat only one cookie, or ALL the radishes. Of course if your sample size is small, your result will be essentially random though.

What's Freud got to do with it?

+Cuckoo Phendula ...right, there are plenty of negative studies on systemic Fluoride use and this is highly controversial. Even with the high level of concern (from those that are aware of the issue and resolved and unresolved questions), there is no research done (and there is some done that is unpublished or maybe briefly and swept under the rug)...mostly the research is funded by the ADA and corporations that profit from Fluoride products. It would be embarrassing for the Dental Association to admit what they promoted for so long was not quite as safe as they advocated (and possibly law suits could come about). But I do not mean to bring up a controversial issue and be on one side or another...this is just an example and what it comes down to, and the point, is it is all about money. We could discuss how misleading the pharmaceutical companies are with how they try to create psychological problems and sell some pill. We don't want people to know truth...we want to make money...welcome to Capitalism. Propaganda baby, and even in funding research and college grants...it comes from the companies that make the wheels of Wall Street move.

I just got my master's degree in cognitive psychology last March. How this ego depletion theory even became a thing in the first place is just beyond me. 🙄