Self-Control

A recent research paper on self-control by Dr. Angela Duckworth, professor of psychology, illustrates the importance of second-order thinking in our ability to make good decisions. Although she doesn’t use the term, her work addresses the ancient philosophical problem of akrasia, a Greek word that literally means “lacking command.”^[1] It is sometimes rendered as “weakness of will” and refers to acting against your better judgment or knowingly choosing what you judge to be an inferior option.^[2] It is often couched in terms of succumbing to temptation.

If you know, for instance, that drinking alcohol is bad for you and leads to embarrassment and painful hangovers, why do you do it? Why do you eat way too many donuts or chocolates when you know they make you fat and prone to heart disease? Why, if you know better, do you keep getting into toxic romantic relationships or succumbing to the blandishments of false gurus or buying needless junk?

Historically there have been many answers. Socrates thought it was due to ignorance of what is truly good for you. Saint Augustine thought it was due to lack of will-power. The latter view is more prevalent today. Duckworth says,

Ordinarily, when we think of exercising self-control, we think about how hard it is. Perhaps we smoke and wish we didn’t. Perhaps we spend hours watching TV and wish we went to the gym more often. Perhaps we stay up late and wish we got more sleep. Whatever it is that makes us feel better now but worse in the long-run, struggling—and often failing—to exercise self-control is familiar territory for all of us.^[3]

When you succumb to temptation you are in a state of akrasia; you lack command of yourself, you lack self-control. Duckworth defines self-control as

… the self-initiated regulation of conflicting impulses in the service of enduringly valued goals. … self-control is called for when we are torn between two mutually exclusive options, one expected to bring immediate gratification and the other expected to further more enduring and important goals.^[4]

Implicit in this view of conflicting impulses is the idea that each of us contains more than one level or aspect of selfhood. Duckworth says “An individual can be of two minds about what to do, think, or feel.”^[5] She doesn’t mean that we are schizophrenic, only that in addition to being able to act, often successfully, in the world, we also have the ability to observe and think about ourselves acting. In so doing we can improve how we act in the world. We humans have gained quite a lot of mastery over the physical world by observation, experimentation, thinking and planning. When we turn that same capacity for cognition toward ourselves, we are in a position to exercise self-control.

The two levels of selfhood have been called various things: First-order vs. second-order desires; hot vs. cold cognition; impulsive vs. reflective action; automatic vs. controlled mental functioning.^[6] I call them first-order and second-order thinking. Our second-order thinking gives us the ability to control our first-order desires and impulses. How this plays out can be seen in the phases of the process that typically leads to an occasion of akrasia.

Duckworth identifies four phases, which she calls Situation, Attention, Appraisal and Response. She pictures them like this:^[7]

The cycle starts at the bottom. You find yourself in a situation, for instance entering a room with a plate of donuts in it. Despite knowing that donuts are bad for you, your attention is drawn to the donuts; you implicitly appraise them as tasty and desirable; and finally, you respond by eating them. Your knowledge of their ill effects fades into the background as your attention fixes on the salient characteristic of the situation, the donuts. And the next time a similar situation arises, the cycle starts again.^[8]

This model not only describes the cycle cogently; it also suggests ways to break it. You can intervene at any point. When you see the donuts (Attention), you can look at something else instead. Having looked at the donuts, you can remember that they are bad for you despite their delicious flavor (Appraisal) and turn away. When you are about to put one in your mouth (Response), you can stop yourself by sheer force of will. Each of these is progressively harder to achieve. It’s easier just to look away than to gaze on the donuts and appraise them as no good. It’s easier to appraise them as no good and turn away than to stop yourself in the act of eating, when you are in the throes of restimulation and rational thought is out the window. But easiest of all is addressing the situation in the first place.

Duckworth says,

… enacting self-control isn’t always difficult, particularly when it takes the form of proactively choosing or changing situations in ways that weaken undesirable impulses or potentiate desirable ones. Examples of situational self-control include the partygoer who chooses a seat far from where drinks are being poured, the dieter who asks the waiter not to bring around the dessert cart, and the student who goes to the library without a cell phone.^[9] … As a rule, earlier intervention is best.^[10]

To intervene in the later stages requires enough presence of mind to notice that something needs to change and enough gumption—aka will power—to change it. But to intervene on the situation before it arises requires something else. It requires having enough self-awareness to notice under what circumstances such situations arise and to think about them when you are not in the midst of desire. Then you can devise strategies to deal with them. You don’t do it in the heat of restimulation; you make plans to deal with the situation exactly when you are not in it. That’s when you are more likely to come up with successful strategies to reduce your exposure to the triggering situation, strategies that allow you to avoid exerting a lot of painful effort in the Attention, Appraisal and Response phases. Self-awareness is the key to success.

Philosophical Implications

Beyond providing good advice for dealing with akrasia, the research done by Duckworth and her colleagues sheds light on two important philosophical issues: whether we have free will and how to live well. Her research supports the assertion that we do have free will. It also supports the idea that there is something unique about human beings that, if cultivated, can lead to a more fulfilling life than if not.

Free Will

In his influential essay “Freedom of the will and the concept of a person,” philosopher Harry Frankfurt distinguishes between two levels or orders of desire and will. Along with every other living being, humans have desires for various things: food, shelter, entertainment, companions, sex and many others. Even the smallest single-cell organism has desires for nutritious things, which presumably taste good, and aversions to harmful things, which presumably taste bad. These Frankfurt calls “first-order” desires; the organism just wants something and goes after it.

Humans also have second-order desires, which he describes as follows:

Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to do this or that, [humans] may also want to have (or not to have) certain desires and motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are.^[11]

A drug addict, for instance, wants a drug. But some addicts might also want to avoid that drug because they know its ill effects. Here we have conflicts among first-order desires. If the addict further wants to avoid the drug to the point of wanting to not even have the desire for it in the first place, they have a second-order desire, one that refers to their first-order desire. Then the conflict is between first and second-order desires.

Frankfurt distinguishes between second-order desires and second-order volitions, the latter being desires that the person wants to move him (or her or them) to do something to get what they want. By “will” or “volition” he means a desire that “moves … the person all the way to action.”^[12] Presumably a person might want to experience a desire but not want to actually do the desired action or get the desired object. That’s an unusual edge case, but Frankfurt, being carefully analytic, considers it. His focus, however is on second-order volition.

Now consider two cases, both of which involve an addict that wants to quit being addicted. Addict A wants to quit, but can’t. When the opportunity arises, addict A, in a full-blown episode of akrasia, goes ahead and takes the drug. Addict B wants to quit and does in fact refuse the drug. The refusal could happen at any of the inflection points that Duckworth identifies; what’s salient is that the addict is successful in avoiding the drug. Addict B’s will is free; addict A’s is not. Frankfurt says,

It is in securing the conformity of his will to his second-order volitions … that a person exercises freedom of the will. … The unwilling addict’s will is not free.^[13]

I expect that we are all addicted to something to a greater or lesser degree, be it heroin or sugar or something in between. We’ve probably all had occasions of not wanting the addiction. We know the experience of wanting to not want something, but going after it anyway. In such a case, the second-order will is thwarted. We are constrained, just as surely as if we were imprisoned and forced to ingest the drug. But if we succeed in actuating our second-order will and curbing the first-order one, we feel a sense of freedom, of power and accomplishment. Second-order thinking, aka self-awareness, is what makes freedom of the will possible.

Human Excellence

Inscribed on a wall at the Oracle of Delphi were the words “Know thyself.” According to the ancient Greeks the nature of a thing—what a thing is, essentially—determines or at least gives us very good clues to what it is good for or good at, and what is good for it. When a thing is doing what it is good at and getting what is good for it, then it is functioning well. The internal experience of functioning well is—in human terms—fulfillment, a fulfilling life. And the thing humans are best at is second-order thinking.

Our capacity for second-order thinking—also called self-awareness, self-knowledge and metacognition—is what makes us distinctively human. Most other animals don’t have it. Think of a dog who suddenly notices a squirrel and takes off after it. There’s not much cool self-reflection going on in that case, nor when the squirrel is gone and the dog gets distracted by something else. Perhaps some animals, the so-called higher ones like octopuses, whales, chimpanzees and elephants, have that capacity in rudimentary form, but absent intelligent beings from another planet it’s clear that humans can do it more and better than any other species.

That fact suggests that if we cultivate our capacity for second-order thinking, our ability to consider ourselves as well as all the things we busy ourselves with, we’ll better be able to figure out how to live in a fulfilling way.

We can do this in two ways. The first is that we can think about ourselves and how we typically behave, react and function. Such thinking is retrospective and prospective. We remember how we comported ourselves in the past and think about how we might do better in the future. The original meaning of “know thyself” was “know your limits” in the sense of knowing the extent of your abilities.^[14] That’s the kind of self-knowledge that pervades much of human social and intellectual life. It involves taking an objective stance and considering yourself as if from a public point of view. From there you can figure out what works and what doesn’t. Friends, coaches and mentors help us do this.

The other way is to observe ourselves in action, in the present moment as we experience and do things. To do this you take a personal, private stance and view yourself from your own subjective point of view. How do you feel? What thoughts go through your mind? What does the world look like? These are sorts of questions asked by therapists and spiritual teachers.

Both these forms of self-reflection enable self-transcendence. By this I mean that in “seeing” ourselves as an object, we take a position, as it were, outside of ourselves, and doing so enables us to alter the self that is “seen.” (“See” and its variants are in quotes because the experience is not just visual. We experience ourselves in many modalities.) Of course the self that is “seen” is not different from the self that “sees,” in that both are the interior of the same physical body. But in another sense, the self that “sees” is different. It has a larger vantage point and is not entirely caught up in the life of the self that is “seen.” By taking a position outside yourself, you can change yourself for the better.

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living.^[15] That’s a bit harsh, but the point is clear. The more we examine and understand ourselves, the more we can figure out how live in a good way for us and for others. We can learn how to achieve our goals and even which goals are worth pursuing. Second-order thinking gives us mastery because it enables us to tune the instrument, so to speak, by means of which we exert first-order influence on the world. That’s worth cultivating whether you are an addict or not.

NOTE —

• For a more extensive discussion of free will, see my How To Exert Free Will at https://www.bmeacham.com/FreeWill.htm.
• For more on human excellence see my How To Be An Excellent Human at https://www.bmeacham.com/ExcellentHumanDownload.htm.
• For more detail on function, see my “More About Function” at https://www.bmeacham.com/blog/?p=1835 and an earlier piece, “Soul Function,” at https://www.bmeacham.com/blog/?p=1544.

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References

Duckworth, Angela, et. al. “Situational Strategies for Self-Control.” Online publication https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4736542/pdf/nihms741973.pdf as of 2 January 2026.

Frankfurt, Harry. “Freedom of the will and the concept of a person.” In The Importance of What We Care About. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 11-25.

Plato. Apology. Online publication https://chs.harvard.edu/primary-source/plato-the-apology-of-socrates-sb/ as of 7 January 2026.

Wikipedia (2019). “Akrasia.” Online publication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia as of 30 March 2019.

Wikipedia (2026). “Akrasia.” Online publication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia as of 4 January 2026.

Wikipedia. “Know thyself.” Online publication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself as of 7 January 2026.

Notes

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[1] Wikipedia (2019), “Akrasia.”

[2] Wikipedia (2026), “Akrasia.”

[3] Duckworth et. al., p. 1.

[4] Duckworth et. al., p. 3.

[5] Duckworth et. al., p. 5.

[6] Duckworth et. al., p. 33, Table 1.

[7] Duckworth et. al., p. 30, Figure 1.

[8] Duckworth et. al., p. 30.

[9] Duckworth et. al., p. 1.

[10] Duckworth et. al., p. 7.

[11] Frankfurt, p. 12.

[12] Frankfurt, p. 14.

[13] Frankfurt, pp. 20–21.

[14] Wikipedia, “Know thyself.”

[15] Plato, Apology, 38a5–6.