Flex your willpower muscle

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A group of researchers testing will power had participants perform three different tests of will power. The first was pain tolerance, participants were asked to put their hand in a bucket of ice water. Next, participants were asked to drink a poor tasting vinegar beverage. The last task was to be in a food line and choose healthy foods over the unhealthy options. Participants were then divided into two conditions. In one condition participants were asked to flex a muscle while performing these tasks and in the control condition participants did not flex. Researchers found that those who flexed during these tasks performed better than their non-flexing counterparts especially if the goal of the specific willpower task aligned with their personal goal. For instance, participants who valued health were aided by flexing their muscle when the gross vinegar drink was said to be a health drink.

One might explain these findings by simply pointing to the fact that flexing might have divided focus from the willpower task, but I suggest that there is something more at play here than simple distraction. Embodied cognition asserts that there may be a bidirectional relationship between the mind and the body and that changes in the body can influence an individual’s cognition. Look no further than the experiment conducted by Strack, Martin and Stepper (1988) in which participants were asked to either bite down on a pencil to simulate a smile or purse their lips over the pencil to simulate a frown. The participants who bit down on the pencil rated comic as being funnier than those who were asked to purse their lips.

When participants were asked to flex while performing self-control tasks, this may have resulted in stronger willpower due to the effects from embodied cognition. Individuals usually flex when they are engaging in a strenuous task and must dig down deep to use additional effort. The flexing during the will-power tasks in this study may activate the same sources of will-power used during squat thrusts. The changes in the body from flexing may have carried an effect on the mind to supply extra willpower for the three tasks.