Self-Constraint vs. Self-Liberation

I stumbled onto a paper by Tyler Cowen, an Austrian school economist at George Mason University. He presents an alternative and interesting view on self-management, from the perspective of an economist. I had no exposure to rational choice literature on self-management before this paper, especially the established view in this field. And this is not the first time that I was drawn to a new subject by the 'maverick' view in the first place: my first encounter with social psychology was Weick's sensemaking, and I became fascinated by his work and later psychology at large.

The mainstream view is that individuals have multiple selves, particularly there are a long-run, rational, rule-oriented self, and a short-run, impulsive, irrational self. The rule-oriented self represents the forces that attempt to impose regularities and controls on a person's behavoir while the latter represents those of spontaniety and unpredicability. Much of the literature in this field is focused on the strategies rule-oriented self uses to induce cooperations from impusive self, with the assumption that impusive self is less strategically inclined. An example is that a smoker might destroy cigarettes to quit.

Cowen first argues that compusive self can employ strategies also in its struggle with the rule-oriented self. Compusive self does not always mean the myopic, instant gratification, and it can also engage in precommitment, one example is that people make pledges of contributions right after an address, when the desire to contibute is still high.

Cowen then questions the mainstream idea of the desirability of victory for the rule-oriented self, i.e., an individual's well-being is directly linked to the ability of the rule-oriented self to win the battle against the impusive self. Obvious examples are giving up somking or drinking.

Many cases, such as the abuse of alcohol or hard drugs, may require the victory of the rule-oriented self for the personal welfare, but too many victories for the rule-oriented self can be injurious to mental health. A person who continually thwarts the desires of his impulsive self may become frustrated and overly rigid and lose his capacity for spontaneity. Although our impulsive sleves somtimes act irresponsibly, they are also responsible for much of the fun we have.

Cowen claims that mental health requries the balancing of victories between the rule-based self and the compulsive self, and people tend to be overdisciplinary. Excessive self-control could be harmful, and the goal of self-management should be personality integration. The evidences here to support his argument is not quite convincing, from my point of view. However, he brings up a very interesting point that an effective rule-oriented self might wish to stimulate the impusive self rather than contain it, after all it depends on the counterbalancing activities from the impulsive self. In his view, self-liberation, not self-constraint, should be the goal of self-management.

The impulsive self might also provide the burst of creativity and innovation whose value can be harnessed only by the rule-oriented self. In addition, some cheating on rules may be desirable to prevent a complete breakdown of discipline.

Having presented his challenges to mainstream views on self-management, Cowen turns his attention the implications of his reconceptualization for our understandings of specific economic and social problems, after all he is an economist.

On risk taking behavior like buying lottery or gambling: If paying lottery increases one's hope and encourages greater self-cooperation, buying lottery tickets with an apparent negative expected value(like 60 cents on a dollar) might acutally increase one's utility in the long run.

On addiction: Addiction is not alway the result of weak will: when it lacks the impusive, spontaneous pleasure in a person's life, addictions may have more appeal to him or her. So an incentive to quit addiction is to find out alternative sources of pleasure.

On markets and advertising: do advertising and other persuasive marketing practices increase or reduce consumer welfare? Based on the veiw of self-constraint, they will lead to welfare loss, but not under the view of self-liberation. Cowen argues that persuasive advertising may favor the impulsive self and improve one's well-being.

A intesting observation by Cowen: the freedom associated with capitalism tends to generate permissive moralities, and many conservatives criticize capitalism for its destruction of traditional values, but ironically, the looser moral codes generated by capitalism are conducive to personal freedom.

The final point on self-constraint and liberation as collective goods is excellent, and I am sure it would be greatly appreciated by most economists. It's possible that self-liberation is maxizing individual's utility, but not socially desirable. In essence, self-contraint can produce positive externalities for society by inducing hard work, savings and predictable behavior. And on top of the issue of positive externalities, there is another problem of Prisoner's Delimma: each person would be better off if he or she were liberated but others were not.

Overall I think this is a well-written and interesting paper, and I tend to agree with the view of balancing the rule-oriented self and the impulsive self. On the other hand, there is not much practical things I can take home from this paper, even though I can relate to some of his arguments in a personal sense. I beleive that the right line between constaint and liberation remains very individualistic, and people draw different utility from prudence and pleasure.