No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Socializing willpower: Resolve from the outside in
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 April 2021
Abstract
Ainslie's account of willpower is conspicuously individualistic. Because other people, social influence, and culture appear only peripherally, it risks overlooking what may be resolve's deeply social roots. We identify a general “outside-in” explanatory strategy suggested by a range of recent research into human cognitive evolution, and suggest how it might illuminate the origins and more social aspects of resolve.
- Type
- Open Peer Commentary
- Information
- Creative Commons
- The target article and response article are works of the U.S. Government and are not subject to copyright protection in the United States.
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
Carr, D.T. (2021). Personal identity is social identity. Phenomenology and The Cognitive Sciences, 20, 341–351. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-020-09702-1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carruthers, P. (2009). How we know our own minds: The relationship between mindreading and metacognition. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32(2), 121–138, discussion 138-82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carruthers, P. (2011). The opacity of the mind: An integrative theory of self-knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chudek, M., & Henrich, J. (2011). Culture–gene coevolution, norm-psychology and the emergence of human prosociality. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15, 218–226.Google ScholarPubMed
Clark, A. (2007). Soft selves and ecological control. In Spurrett, D., Ross, D., Kincaid, H. & Stephens, L. (Eds.), Distributed cognition and the will. (pp. 101–121), Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the modern mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Donald, M. (2007). The slow process: A hypothetical cognitive adaptation for distributed cognitive networks. Journal of Physiology – Paris, 101, 214–222.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Doris, J. (2015). Talking to our selves: Reflection, ignorance, and agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Frith, C., & Frith, U. (2006). How we predict what other people are going to do. Brain Research, 1079, 36–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haslanger, S. (2000). Gender and race: (what) are they? (what) do we want them to be? Noûs, 34, 31–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henrich, J. (2015). The secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heyes, C. (2018). Cognitive gadgets: The cultural evolution of thinking. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoehl, S., Keupp, S., Schleihauf, H., McGuigan, N., Buttelmann, D., & Whiten, A. (2019). “Over-imitation”: A review and appraisal of a decade of research. Developmental Review, 51, 90–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holroyd, J., & Kelly, D. (2016). Implicit bias, character, and control. In Masala, A. & Webber, J. (Eds.), From personality to virtue: Essays in the philosophy of character (pp. 106–133). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198746812.003.0006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, D. (forthcoming). Two ways to adopt a norm: The (moral?) psychology of avowal and internalization. In Vargas, M. & Doris, J. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of moral Psychology.Google Scholar
Kelly, D., & Hoburg, P. (2017). A tale of two processes: On Joseph Henrich's the secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. Philosophical Psychology, 30(6), 832–848.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, D., & Setman, S. (2020). The psychology of normative cognition. In Zalta, E. N. (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition). URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/psychology-normative-cognition/.Google Scholar
Laland, K. (2017). Darwin's unfinished symphony: How culture made the human mind. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindemann, H. (2014). Holding and letting go: The social practice of personal identities. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mathew, S., & Perreault, C. (2015). Behavioural variation in 172 small-scale societies indicates that social learning is the main mode of human adaptation. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 282, 20150061.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McAdams, D. (2018). “First we invented stories, then they changed us”: The evolution of narrative identity. Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 3(1), 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdams, D., & McLean, K. (2013). Narrative identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 233–238. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413475622.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGeer, V., & Pettit, P. (2002). The self-regulating mind. Language & Communication, 22, 281–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLean, K. C., Pasupathi, M., & Pals, J. (2007). Selves creating stories creating selves: A process model of self-development. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(3), 262–278. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868307301034.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2011). Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34, 57–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2017). The enigma of reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Peters, U. (2020). What is the function of confirmation bias? Erkenntnis, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00252-1.Google Scholar
Richerson, P., & Boyd, R. (2005). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Santos, M. D., Rankin, D., & Wedekind, C. (2011). The evolution of punishment through reputation. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 278, 371–377.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shea, N., Boldt, A., Bang, D., Yeung, N., Heyes, C., & Frith, C. (2014). Supra-personal cognitive control and metacognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18, 186–193.Google ScholarPubMed
Sterelny, K. (2012). The evolved apprentice: How evolution made humans unique. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterelny, K. (2018). Why reason? Hugo Mercier's and Dan Sperber's The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding. Mind & Language, 33(5), 502–512. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoljar, N. (2015). Feminist perspectives on autonomy. In Zalta, E. N. (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2015 Edition). URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/feminism-autonomy/.Google Scholar
Suddendorf, T., & Corballis, M. (2007). The evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel, and is it unique to humans? The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 30(3), 299–313; discussion 313–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Witt, C. (2011). The metaphysics of gender. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wu, J., Balliet, D., Peperkoorn, L. S., Romano, A., & Lange, P. A. (2019). Cooperation in groups of different sizes: The effects of punishment and reputation-based partner choice. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2956.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Target article
Willpower with and without effort
Related commentaries (26)
Aspiration fuels willpower: Evidence from the addiction literature
Beyond willpower
Evolving resolve
Increasing resolution in the mechanisms of resolve
Is resolve mainly about resisting hyperbolic discounting?
Is “willpower” a scientific concept? Suppressing temptation contra resolution in the face of adversity
It's not a bug, it's boredom: Effortful willpower balances exploitation and exploration
More dynamical and more symbiotic: Cortico-striatal models of resolve, suppression, and routine habit
Pleas for patience from the cumulative future self
Present-state dependency in valuation of the future
Putting the pieces together: Self-control as a complex interaction of psychological processes
Resolve is always effortful
Self-control (or willpower) seeks to bias the resolution of motivational conflicts toward an individual's long-term interests
Self-control from a multiple goal perspective of mixed reward options
Self-organization of power at will
Socializing willpower: Resolve from the outside in
Stress and imagining future selves: resolve in the hot/cool framework
Suppression, resolve, and habit in everyday financial behaviour
The complex nature of willpower and conceptual mapping of its normative significance in research on stress, addiction, and dementia
Weighting on waiting: Willpower and attribute weighting models of decision making
When will's wont wants wanting
Willpower is a form of, but not synonymous with, self-control
Willpower is overrated
Willpower needs tactical skill
Willpower through cultural tools: An example from alcoholics anonymous
Willpower without risk?
Author response
Reply to commentaries to willpower with and without effort