EXERCISING WILLPOWER: DIFFERENCES IN WILLPOWER DEPLETION AMONG ATHLETES AND NONATHLETES

Abstract

the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless. --Aleister Crowley I. INTRODUCTION Participation in high school and college athletics has been linked to an earnings premium of between 4% and 10% (Barron, Ewing, and Waddell 2000; Cabane and Lechner 2014; Ewing 1998, 2007; Lechner 2009; Lechner and Downward 2013; Lechner and Sari 2014; Long and Caudill 1991; McCormick and Tinsley 1987; Rehberg and Schafer 1968; Rooth 2011; Spreitzerand Pugh 1973; Stevenson 2010). Stevenson (2010) identified a causal link between athletic participation and greater labor force participation and higher wages among women. What remains unclear, however, is the avenue through which this wage premium for athletes occurs. If the wage premium exists, holding constant measurable skills such as grade point average (GPA) and standardized test scores, do athletes possess other noncognitive skills that are valued by the market such as willpower, determination, competitiveness, and teamwork? In this study, we consider athletes and willpower. Based on Stevenson's findings, it is plausible that an athlete's willpower reserves could be an important source of their earnings premium. The significance of willpower as an important noncognitive skill was first recognized by Walter Mischel (1958) with his famous marshmallow experiments in which he linked the ability to stave off immediate gratification among small children to larger rewards later in life such as higher grades, greater graduation rates and, ultimately, higher earnings. Recent research (Baumeister, Heatherton, and Tice 1994; Baumeister et al. 1998; Muraven, Tice, and Baumeister 1998) has established that individuals have a limited supply of willpower that can be depleted. Hence, willpower is like a muscle that becomes exhausted with use. One can, however, strengthen this muscle with exercise, and develop an ability to diminish willpower depletion. (1) Based on the sports earnings premium literature, we hypothesize that athletes, by their participation in formal physical activities over many years, have developed and strengthened their willpower muscle, (2) and when tested, will exhibit less depletion as compared to nonathletes. In order to test this, we conduct a laboratory experiment based on the procedure laid out by Muraven, Tice, and Baumeister (1998) in which participants are timed while attempting to solve an unsolvable puzzle. Participants in treatment groups underwent a willpower-draining task of restraining from expressing emotions while watching an emotionally provocative video before attempting the puzzle, while control group participants watched the same video but were able to express emotions. We randomly assigned athletes and nonathletes into control and treatment groups, resulting in four separate experimental groups: athlete-treatment, athlete-control, nonathlete-treatment, and nonathlete-control. We hypothesized that athletes in the treatment group would spend more time on the puzzle, thereby exhibiting less willpower depletion. We found that treated athletes worked significantly longer on the difficult task than nonathletes. Because of the random assignment of treatment group and control group participants, we interpret this finding as causal evidence that after expending some self-control, athletes experience less willpower depletion than nonathletes in subsequent tasks. This article proceeds as follows: Section II describes the previous literature results on both the links between participation in athletics and an earnings premium as well as the literature on willpower and willpower depletion. Section III describes the experiment, Section IV describes the model and the results, and Section V concludes the article. II. LITERATURE REVIEW High school and college athletes earn more in labor markets (Barron, Ewing, and Waddell 2000; Cabane and Lechner 2014; Ewing 1998, 2007; Lechner 2009; Lechner and Downward 2013; Lechner and Sari 2014; Long and Caudill 1991; McCormick and Tinsley 1987; Rehberg and Schafer 1968; Rooth 2011; Spreitzer and Pugh 1973; Stevenson 2010). …