Willpower is inexhaustible

Currently it is growing in popularity gaining idea that willpower is like a muscle man: if you use it too often, it can be "tired". Some scientists say that willpower can be supported, for example, a drink high in sugar, because it takes away the energy of the brain, thus depletes glucose, which, in theory, and can make a sweet drink.



Against this concept serves Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford. She believes that the human body has an adequate supply of glucose, does not need emergency replenishments, as many people carry exorbitant exercise without such a "sugar-doping" - such as athletes, marathon runners or working in heavy industries.

Carol and her colleagues set up an experiment, which involved 87 student volunteers. The scientists asked volunteers to express their view on the strength of will, and then asked them to perform tasks that require certain strong-willed effort to focus: first, it was necessary for certain complex rules to delete from the text a few letters, and then resist the momentum by reading the names of colors (when the word " green ", for example, was written in red).

It turned out that those who believe will power a sort of "mental muscles" as a whole performed worse than both tasks, but if after the first test they were given to drink a sweet drink, the second task performance improved. Those who believed that the strength of the will of man can not be consumed, on average, perform better, even if it does not sugar.

"We believe that when a person believes that he will exhaustible, he is inclined to constantly ask yourself:" Do I not exhausted? Is it time to rest or eat? "- And if there is no make-up, it performs slightly worse than the problem," - he said in an interview with «LiveScience» Carol Dweck.

Now a team Carol puts experiments convinced preschool children that will power is inexhaustible and does not require constant feeding or resting.

via factroom.ru