Quantifying Willpower

Gregness · 04-08-2011, 07:40 PM

From time to time in pop culture you'll hear a line like "he kept going on willpower alone" or "kept going long after his body quit" etc. In a less media centered context, you might hear a person complaining only to have someone else tell them to suck it up or fight through it. So, something I've wondered then, largely due to my RPG background I guess, is if there's ever been any serious research done regarding devising a serious measure of human willpower.

For intelligence, we've come up with a number of IQ tests, for stamina we can measure VO2(max), and for strength we can just see how much shit you can lift, but what can we do for willpower?

Now, the idea of willpower seems ubiquitous enough across cultures that it seems reasonable to suspect that there's something real going on, but how much of these phenomenon can be attributed to force of will and not other factors? After the battle of Marathon, there's that greek dude who ran the whole way back to Athens to report the victory, then promptly died. Did his body JUST HAPPEN to only be good for the 26 miles or did he really manage to push himself past his limits? Now, that's a millenia old story and so there may be more than a little hyperbole in there by now, but it's documented fact that we put our modern special forces through some pretty brutal training. Is this some affect of willpower, or would anyone with sufficient physical conditioning be able to make the cut? Then, there's all the crap attributed to tibetan monks...

Basically, if me and some other dude have a contest to see who can run at a given pace for the longest time, (or stay awake longest, whatever) is it completely determined by our states heading into the event, or is there really something to all that "you gotta want it more than the other guy" stuff you see so often?

04-08-2011, 07:40 PM	#1
Gregness Never give up. Never give in. Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Sacramento, CA Posts: 1,034	Quantifying Willpower From time to time in pop culture you'll hear a line like "he kept going on willpower alone" or "kept going long after his body quit" etc. In a less media centered context, you might hear a person complaining only to have someone else tell them to suck it up or fight through it. So, something I've wondered then, largely due to my RPG background I guess, is if there's ever been any serious research done regarding devising a serious measure of human willpower. For intelligence, we've come up with a number of IQ tests, for stamina we can measure VO2(max), and for strength we can just see how much shit you can lift, but what can we do for willpower? Now, the idea of willpower seems ubiquitous enough across cultures that it seems reasonable to suspect that there's something real going on, but how much of these phenomenon can be attributed to force of will and not other factors? After the battle of Marathon, there's that greek dude who ran the whole way back to Athens to report the victory, then promptly died. Did his body JUST HAPPEN to only be good for the 26 miles or did he really manage to push himself past his limits? Now, that's a millenia old story and so there may be more than a little hyperbole in there by now, but it's documented fact that we put our modern special forces through some pretty brutal training. Is this some affect of willpower, or would anyone with sufficient physical conditioning be able to make the cut? Then, there's all the crap attributed to tibetan monks... Basically, if me and some other dude have a contest to see who can run at a given pace for the longest time, (or stay awake longest, whatever) is it completely determined by our states heading into the event, or is there really something to all that "you gotta want it more than the other guy" stuff you see so often?