At the problem gambling conference, thinking about self-discipline

By J. Patrick Coolican

Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011 | 2 a.m.

At the National Center for Responsible Gaming Conference on Sunday, I got bored and my mind began to wander. That in turn caused me to think about some recent journalism I’d been reading about willpower. Fitting.

In fact, there’s been a lot written lately: The physiology of willpower; teaching self-discipline to children; and finally, a general indictment of our whole society for its dissolute, undisciplined ways. Basically, it goes like this: Our two-minute iPhone attention spans, slothful lifestyles, gluttonous diets and total lack of patient persistence — all symptoms of the larger fundamental problem of a lack of self-discipline — are set to make America’s one of the shorter superpower reigns in history.

The ramifications for Las Vegas are huge, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

A bit more than two years ago I read a mind altering piece in The New Yorker that explained the marshmallow test. In the late 1960s, Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel conducted an experiment in which he told children they could have one marshmallow now, or if they waited until he returned, they could have two. It was a test of willpower, and most children failed, holding out for less than three minutes.

Mischel moved on after the experiments, but then a few years later he started to see a correlation between academic success and the marshmallow holdouts whom he kept up with. Now he thinks marshmallow delay is the best predictor of success in school and in life. He and other scientists are mapping where the characteristic resides in the brain.

Why can some children wait? Mischel says it’s because they know how to distract themselves, to take their minds off the treat. They know how to think. And although some children are born with this innate ability, children can also be taught how to distract themselves from temptation.

This leads me to a piece I read in The Atlantic this summer called “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy.” The writer, Lori Gottlieb, is a clinical psychologist, and she sees a lot of patients who are, for lack of a better term, spoiled brats. Gottlieb learned in school that her patients would suffer from a lack of parental affection, but that’s not the problem with many of her patients.

Many of Gottlieb’s patients have gone to great schools, had exciting experiences, are in fulfilling jobs and get along great with their parents, but are still depressed and anxious. The problem: Kids are coddled, picked up every time they fall down, which, if you think about it, is really an issue of self-discipline on the part of both parent and child: “(P)arental overinvestment is contributing to a burgeoning generational narcissism that’s hurting our children,” Gottlieb writes. In other words: You’re special: Have the second marshmallow. (Why do I get the feeling that The Atlantic Magazine probably once published an article about a crisis of affection in American families that helped lead to the current crisis of narcissism?)

Let’s get this out of the way: I don’t have children, and, yes, I’ll cede the point that it’s ridiculously presumptuous to be making any kind of judgment about parenting from reading some snooty coastal magazines.

On to the next snooty magazine (I read them so you don’t have to): The New York Times Magazine last month noted David Levin, co-founder of the high achieving KIPP network of charter schools for underprivileged children, has added character education to his curriculum.

Levin realized recently that his first cohort of students enjoyed great success through high school and went on to college, only to drop out. Moreover, the one-third who finished were not necessarily the best students. Rather, they were blessed with — or had worked at — optimism, social intelligence, and, wait for it ... self control and self discipline. Given their backgrounds, many of the KIPP students didn’t learn those traits at home, so now Levin will teach them in school.

Just a few weeks before the KIPP piece, Times writer John Tierney discussed “decision fatigue.” Why do we fall to temptation and make poor decisions? Decision fatigue. Because we’re tired and have low glucose (blood sugar.) Willpower is like a muscle that needs to be rested and fed. (Now you see why dieting is so difficult.)

Tierney notes that we probably undergo more decision fatigue in modern life because there are just so many darned temptations. Everywhere you go, a sugary snack, a slot machine, a credit card application. To avoid the decision fatigue that leads to bad decisions, just avoid places that will bring on the fatigue, like all-you-can-eat buffets.

Finally, Michael Lewis, author of “Moneyball” and “The Big Short” and a bunch of other great books, writes about California’s bankruptcy, though he sees it as a symptom of something far worse.

He makes an interesting turn at the end and points to the work of neuroscientist Peter Whybrow, who argues that our problems are the result of our inability to deal with abundance. The human brain evolved to deal with scarcity — grab all you can now!

Here’s Lewis: “The succession of financial bubbles, and the amassing of personal and public debt … the fantastic rise in rates of obesity across the United States since 1985 … the boom in trading activity in individual stock portfolios; the spread of legalized gambling; the rise of drug and alcohol addiction — it is all of a piece. Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for short-term rewards.”

Ouch. Reading all this stuff shouldn’t be an epiphany for me. It was drilled into me growing up. But only now — and in fits and starts — do I see it so clearly.

And what about Las Vegas? The latest understanding of neuroscience and child psychology, combined with the psychic reordering caused by this recession, have us appreciating the older virtues of self discipline and self sacrifice. So where does that leave us? If successful people are self-disciplined, then presumably successful communities are filled with people of self discipline. But we’re a place whose persona is instant gratification, excess and self indulgence. Can we be both things at the same time?

Hard to say.

There are some things to think about here for our educators. For all of us actually.

Of course, in all likelihood, you didn’t have the self discipline to read my whole column.