Comments on: Self-control in childhood predicts health and wealth in adulthood

By: Matt B.

Matt B. — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 21:57:08 +0000

It’s close to the relevance paradox, wherein someone doesn’t seek information because, without having the information, he doesn’t realize it would help.

Like a safe that contains its only key.

By: Matt B.

Matt B. — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 19:47:33 +0000

Okay, #2 Becca has made my brain itch. I have to know what that term is for needing to have something in order to get it.

I’ve thought of “vicious cycle”, “catch-22″, “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”, “self-fulfilling prophecy” and “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. None of those is it.

By: Lynda

Lynda — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 09:53:45 +0000

@21
Having now read the paper I agree that they weren’t measuring social conformity. Also – rather than independent thought – I was referring to a willingness to pursue one’s own desires, interests and values in the face of social disapproval.
Nevertheless, I still found the paper disturbing. They refer to ‘self control’ as an umbrella concept, but it seems little more than a ragbag for socially inconvenient behaviours. The nine traits they used to quantify ‘self control’ (and note that the children weren’t tested experimentally but were rated by an observer, or a teacher, parent and self) were: lability, low frustration tolerance, hostility, roughness, resistance, restlessness, impulsivity, fleeting attention and lack of persistence. I don’t question the validity of research into impulsivity or aggression or attention span or frustration tolerance, but to lump all these very different things together and sanctimoniously label them ‘self control’ seems highly questionable.

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:06:52 +0000

@Lynda – you’re conflating self-control with independent thought. The two are not the same thing. Self-control also includes things like resisting the temptation to overeat, or curbing an aggressive impulse. It’s about basic cognitive skills like holding one task in mind while parsing out irrelevant info. It has little to do with social conformity.

By: nancy brownlee

nancy brownlee — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:46:00 +0000

@19
Oh bravo, Lynda. It’s also a little disturbing that you’re the first to comment on the assumption of values implicit in the study.

By: Lynda

Lynda — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 07:46:33 +0000

I found this study (and the general approbation of its findings) a little disturbing. Isn’t ‘self-control’ merely social conformity – choosing to do what others ask of you? It’s no surprise then that children who chose to conform to the expectations of those around them should subsequently score highly on measures deemed ‘desirable’ by society (e.g. a responsible well-paying job, maintaining marriage due to social expectations, avoiding ‘risky’ behaviours, etc.). I can’t help but wonder whether the group of children with the least ‘self-control’ didn’t also include some of our most valued members of society (e.g. inventors, social reformists, scientists, artists, etc.). Aren’t there two-sides to the conformity coin?

By: No Self Control

No Self Control — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 08:35:25 +0000

First remember reading about the link between self-control and success via Mischel’s marshmallow test:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer

By: Andrea Kuszewski

Andrea Kuszewski — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 01:43:14 +0000

@ Sci: This paper recently came out and addresses the issue/problem of “impulsivity” being used as a specific defining trait in a number of separate disorders:

“Borderline Personality Disorder, Bulimia Nervosa, Antisocial Personality Disorder, ADHD, Substance Use: Common Threads, Common Treatment Needs, and the Nature of Impulsivity”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3022439/

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:26:46 +0000

@Scicurious – “Impulsivity” is one of nine separate components used to calculate the “self-control” score. Also Moffit mentions other existing correlational studies, but I think the value of the long-term, prospective study adds to those.

@yogi-one – You wouldn’t really need another 30-year study. If you can show that interventions improve self-control at an early age, you can use this data set to infer that those interventions would affect adult outcomes. “Backwards” studies – formally, retrospective ones – are plagued with problems of their own, including issues with recruiting two matching groups of people, and relying on their potentially faulty memories. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case-control_study#Comparison_with_randomized_controlled_trials

@Aurora – Thanks! Was making a specific effort to do that.

By: Scicurious

Scicurious — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:20:35 +0000

I think this paper is good, and it certainly the largest set of correlations available, but I actually wonder how much it adds to certain aspects of the literature like drug addiction. They referred to it as “self-control” here, but in the drug addiction literature this is often measured as “impulsivity” using the same tests. Drug addiction studies have been focusing for several years on traits like impulsivity and find the same correlations with criminal records and drug use. This IS the first study to look at actual physical health, though, and I think that particularly interesting.