WThey all break the promises we make to ourselves. Our commitment to a weekly running schedule is faltering; groceries wilt when we order takeout. Even though we promise to go to sleep earlier, we stay up late scrolling. This time we will not postpone that huge work project until the last minute – we swear – then we find ourselves procrastinating again.
When we try to live a healthy life, we have judgments about what to do. Yet in practice we do not always do what we know is best.
This is a mystery. Shouldn’t it be easy to keep promises to yourself that align with what you think is right? Ancient Greek philosophers also found this baffling and called the phenomenon of a person acting against what they believe is in their best interests: akrasia. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all struggled with this familiar conundrum: why do we do what we know is bad for us?
Plato, Socrates and Aristotle participate
The concept of akrasia stems from a debate in ancient philosophy about whether it is possible to act against what you know is right. In Protagoras, Plato wrote that the Greek philosopher Socrates thought not, because all our voluntary actions were the product of reason. According to this view, someone who decides to do something must have considered it best at the time.
“He who learns what is good and what is bad will never be tempted by anything to act differently from what knowledge requires,” Socrates said to the philosopher Protagoras. That is, once you know what actions are virtuous, why would you ever do anything else?
Of course, in real life it’s not that simple. Even philosophers like Socrates had observed the contradictory phenomenon and tried to understand it. In other words, they too wanted to know, “What happens when we do something obviously stupid?” said Sarah Paul, professor of philosophy at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Socrates’ explanation for someone who acted against his best interests was that he was mistaken about what was the best thing to do. For example, if you chose to smoke a cigarette, you fell prey to the illusion that it was good.
Aristotle had a name for what happens when you change your mind about what is good for you despite temptation or desire: weak akratic action. After you do whatever it is, you may change your mind again and go back to your original judgment. He distinguished between this and an impetuous akratic act, where you do something without thinking too deeply about it and later conclude that it conflicts with your judgment – something he compared to “hasty servants who run away before hearing all their instructions and carry them out incorrectly.”
Both Aristotle and Socrates attributed akratic behavior to a lack of reason or knowledge. This is partly why Akrasia became embroiled in morality and religion in the Middle Ages. “There was the idea that akrasia was sinful,” says Annemarie Kalis, associate professor of theoretical philosophy at Utrecht University. This is why we can feel so guilty when we make ‘unhealthy’ choices – we think we should have known better and acted accordingly, or that we have succumbed to wrong ideas.
The opposite of akrasia is enkrateia, or the virtue of having self-control. The person with self-control still wants a cigarette or wants to skip the gym, but his judgment is not as corrupt.
“That tradition is still very much alive in the way people think about this phenomenon,” Kalis said. “It’s a moral problem if you act akratically, even if it’s just about eating chocolate.”
What modern philosophers and thinkers say
All the old work on akrasia assumes that humans are inherently rational, which anyone with experience in being human might disagree. “It feels a bit idealistic,” says Richard Holton, a philosopher at the University of Cambridge. “Every time we decide to do things that we don’t consider the best.”
In other areas, there is insight into how often our actions do not align with our internal objectives. In economics, revealed preference theory says that what we value is better revealed by our behavior than by our judgments. “You could say, ‘What I wanted most was to stick to my goal of going to the gym three times a week,’” Holton said. “But to the extent that you stopped doing that, it shows that this wasn’t really what you wanted.”
It can also be difficult to judge what is best now and what would be best in the future. The economist George Ainslie called this trend hyperbolic discounting, where people overvalue rewards in the present more than rewards in the future.
Holton does not think that akrasia is the same as weakness of will, which is better defined as not doing what you said you would do. “Maybe you’ve decided to do something that you actually think is pretty stupid,” Holton said. Withdrawing at the last minute may be a sign of weakness of will, but not of akrasia, because this is in line with what you think is best for you.
Other factors may affect our ability to persevere
When we make judgments that are too extreme about productivity, dieting, or even happiness, it can feel akratic when we don’t meet those standards—but the judgments themselves can be wrong. If you regularly have difficulty keeping a promise, “it may mean that your commitment is not the right one for you,” says Kalis.
It could also be that it has nothing to do with you at all. Kalis’ research is about how the role of the environment has been underestimated in relation to akrasia. “Our society does structured in a certain way that it constantly appeals to and tries to hijack our motivational processes,” she said.
The solution may not always lie in suppressing your conflicting desires, but in recognizing and addressing the external factors that can fuel the source of conflict. If you come home from work exhausted due to an unmanageable workload and opt for takeout instead of a home-cooked meal, is the problem your desires or your work life? “That’s more the central problem than you being weak or unable to regulate your own emotions or desires,” Kalis said.
Paul examines whether some akratic behaviors are actually rational, and not ignorant, weak, or wrong. “Some researchers assume that you should basically be indifferent between rewards that are near and far,” says Paul. “If you live in poverty and your situation is truly precarious, why on earth would you think you should plan a year ahead? It may be perfectly reasonable for someone in certain circumstances to reason on a very short-term basis, which (in the eyes of others) seems short-sighted.”
It’s important to have a nuanced view of akrasia and separate it from willpower, says Reinout Wiers, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam and the author of a book about akrasia and addiction. Between our actions and our values lie our desires. These can easily become disconnected from what we believe is best for us, and are influenced by elements such as our environment, upbringing, socio-economic circumstances and biology.
“Framing everything in terms of willpower can have a strong backlash by demoralizing people,” he said. We may all strive to be as rational as Socrates says, but if that doesn’t work, there are other ways to align your behavior with your values.
How to do what you think is best
Can’t we have co-existing, conflicting desires? That’s possible, Holton said, but at some point opposing intentions can’t coexist. Ultimately, if you can afford to take a vacation to France or Mexico, you should only select one. “Both desires can remain,” he said. “But the desire must translate into an intention.”
To achieve your goals, it can be more effective to create a well-defined plan so that you don’t have to think about it anymore. The psychologist Peter Gollwitzer called this an implementation intention: come up with a specific if/then statement that helps you achieve your goal. If it’s Tuesday, I go to yoga class; When I buy spinach, I make this smoothie for breakfast the next morning.
Kalis added that changing your environment may be a better way to resist akrasia than trying to improve your willpower. These changes are called commitment devices: they ensure that you cannot change your mind. As an extreme example, when Victor Hugo wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he told his assistant to lock all his clothes so he would be safe. forced stay indoors and write.
Socrates had a steadfast faith in reason, but in The Republic Plato provides a more complex account of akrasia through his description of the tripartite or tripartite soul. Plato recognized the importance of reason in understanding what we do and why, as did Socrates, but presented additional driving forces: appetite and mind. He used the metaphor of a chariot, in which reason rides in opposite directions and is pulled by two horses, a light horse and a dark horse – the light horse towards virtue, and the dark horse towards doomscrolling and chain smoking.
The nature of akrasia is still up for debate, but the ongoing debate shows that even very thoughtful and clever people had difficulty keeping their dark horses in check. “This is a universal characteristic of being human,” Holton said.