Who’s Responsible For Our Choices?

Jordan Silberman recently posted about self-regulation in the Positive Psychology News Daily. The article is Do Consumers Really Have Free Choice? Fast Food and the Physiology of Self-Regulation.

Jordan has two main points

1. Self-control is a trait or habit that differs from person to person. It may be strong or weak. It can also be developed by the exercising it.
2. Like all pyschological behavior, self-control has physiological corrollaries. In this case, one of the apparent corrollaries is with blood sugar levels. The more depressed our blood sugar, the less likely we are to exercise restraint, while closer blood sugar levels are to their optimal level, the more likely we are to exercise restraint.

Makes sense to me. Self-control is a habit like a thousand other habits. Habits can be strengthened and weakened as they are fed and starved.

Where Jordan loses me is in his implication that many people have little physiological capacity to exercise self-control, so fast food businesses are failing people by making it too hard for them to choose healthy foods and too easy to choose unhealthy foods. As he puts it

…choosing to find healthy foods is-for many people-like choosing to bench press the 500-pound barbell.

Jordan seems to be saying that due to little or no fault of their own, many individuals are unable to exercise the self-discipline necessary to feed themselves properly.

Since this is positive psychology, a more empowering approach would be to encourage individuals to use what self-control they do have. As Jordan points out, self-control is like a muscle that will improve with use. If you make one decision a day on the basis of its long-term effects on your well-being rather than what it will get you right now, eventually you can’t help but being self-disciplined.

There is little food that is unhealthy when eaten in moderation. The occasional hamburger won’t kill you. Nor will the occasional salad heal you. Well-being or its lack isn’t the result of one, or even two choices. It is the result of the decisions you make over a period of time.

Technorati Tags: self-control, self-regulation, positive psychology, blood sugar, Jordan Silberman

Popularity: 8% [?]

This entry is filed under Personal Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.