Do we really lack self-control, or were we simply never taught how to build it?

My friend asked me to summarise why people cheat as I spent years researching this for my dissertation. Whilst I ought to have created a condensed version of this by now as so many people ask for it, I just haven’t got round to it. So I spent the next 20 mins trying to boil the answer down to:

‘The reason people cheat is because a lack of self-control. Though self discipline is taught throughout our lives, in both direct and indirect ways, self-control is a complete different concept that is widely known, rarely taught, and the absence of it is commonly felt’

So then I expanded. Self-discipline is taught through many avenues: if you want to get good exam results - study hard; if you want to get a good job - get the certifications; if you want to get a good body - stay consistent in the gym. However, when it comes to self-control, we’re rarely taught it, and I would even go as far to say we often trivialise lacking it. How many times have you heard someone say “I’ve been having a tough time so retail therapy it is!”, “I’ve had a bad day so I’m going to order myself a takeaway” or even “I just can’t stop myself from eating these chocolates, they’re my guilty pleasure!” And no one challenges it. We’ve all been victim to a lack of self control in some form or the other, its just that if its to do with chocolate, people will be a lot less judgemental than if its to do with cheating. Now, cheating isn’t solely to do with a lack of self control: it’s a complex interaction of many other factors that I can address at another time. But the distinction between self-discipline and self-control had me pondering: how do you define the difference? And why do we, as humans, appear to be better at self-discipline than self-control?

My friend attempted to answer the first question. He explained it as ‘self-discipline enforces good habits whereas self control prevents bad habits’. He was very close. In summary self discipline is heavy on the consistency to achieve long term goals, and the core skill at work is commitment. On the other hand, self-control refers to one’s ability to display emotional regulation in the short term moment.

Therefore, though the two can interact, they’re not the same thing. I then got into another discourse with another friend unpacking whether it’s possible to master self control. She argued that no one can have complete self control. She said “if you offer me sweets today and I know I shouldn’t have them, I’ll say no. But if you offer the same sweets to me on another day when I still know I shouldn’t eat them, but there’s nothing else to eat and I’m hungry, I’d say yes” So then I needed to understand why that is the case. I dug deeper.

Having looked into it, I found that self control involves mentally overriding one’s emotions to reach an overarching goal. It’s essentially a muscle that you can strengthen, and is in turn a muscle that can become fatigued. Your mood and environment can also influence your ability to demonstrate self control. So even the people who are deemed to have mastered self control (think: a monk) can still be susceptible to losing it. So how do you improve your self control? Perhaps, you shift the focus. Rather than solely focussing on improving the muscle (because as we’ve established, the muscle can become fatigued), you focus on avoiding the scenario altogether. You just don’t walk down the chocolate aisle when you go shopping, you remove your credit card from Apple Pay to stop impulse purchases, and you ask yourself how good you really felt after you made a bad decision and the emotion has now passed. Essentially, you build a life that avoids the need to exercise self-control altogether. P.S. its still a good muscle to build, the learning here is just to minimise the need to use it.

If you’ve got this far and you’re still subconsciously wondering ‘why do people cheat?’, an answer to this could be that it’s because we’re inherently emotional beings, and the regulation of this is something we weren’t taught in school ( ;)) or through other mediums for that matter.

Lastly, the question I leave you with is this: do you lack self-control, or were you simply never taught how to build it? And conversely: do you truly have self-control, or does your environment just never test it?