Why do we do things that are bad for us? The ancient philosophers had an answer
We all break promises that we make to ourselves. Our dedication to a weekly running schedule falters; groceries wilt as we order takeout. Despite pledging to go to sleep earlier, we stay up late scrolling. This time we won’t leave that huge work project until the last minute – we swear – then we find ourselves procrastinating yet again.
When trying to live a healthy life, we have judgments about what we should do. Yet, in practice, we don’t always do what we know to be best.
Related: Oops, I did ink again: how to get a tattoo you won’t regret
This is puzzling. Shouldn’t it be easy to keep promises to yourself that align with what you think is right? Ancient Greek philosophers found this baffling too, and named the phenomenon of a person acting against what they believe to be in their best interest – akrasia. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle all wrestled with this relatable conundrum: why do we do what we know is bad for us?
Plato, Socrates and Aristotle weigh in
The concept of akrasia comes from a debate in ancient philosophy about whether it is possible to act against what you know to be good. In Protagoras, Plato wrote that the Greek philosopher Socrates didn’t think it was, because all of our voluntary actions were the product of reason. According to this view, someone who decides to do something must have judged it the best thing to do at that moment.
“Whoever learns what is good and what is bad will never be swayed by anything to act otherwise than as knowledge bids,” 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 so 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 clearly do something stupid?” said Sarah Paul, a professor of philosophy at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Socrates’ explanation for someone acting against their best interests was that they made a mistake about what is the best thing to do. If you chose to smoke a cigarette, for example, you fell prey to an illusion that it was good.
Aristotle had a name for what happens when you change your mind about what’s good for you in the face of temptation or desire: weak akratic action. After you do whatever it is, you might change your mind again, and revert back to your original judgment. He distinguished this from an impetuous akratic act, or when you do something without thinking too deeply about it, then later decide that it violated your judgments – something he likened to “overhasty servants who run out before they have heard all their instructions and they carry them out wrongly”.
Both Aristotle and Socrates ascribed akratic behaviors to a lapse in reason or knowledge. This is partly why, by the middle ages, akrasia got wrapped up with morality and religion. “There was the idea that akrasia was sinful,” said Annemarie Kalis, an associate professor in 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’ve succumbed to false ideas.
The opposite of akrasia is enkrateia, or the virtue of having self-control. The person with self-control still wants a cigarette or to skip the gym, but their judgment is not as corruptible.
“That tradition is still very much present in how people feel 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 ancient work on akrasia presumes that humans are inherently rational, which anyone with experience of being a person may not agree with. “It feels a bit idealistic,” said Richard Holton, a philosopher at Cambridge University. “All the time we decide to do things that we don’t judge to be the best.”
In other fields, there’s an understanding of how common it is for our actions not to line up with internal goals. In economics, revealed preference theory says that what we value is better revealed by our behaviors than our judgements. “You might say: ‘What I most wanted was to stick with this resolution to go to the gym three times a week,’” Holton said. “But insofar as you’ve stopped doing that, then that shows that wasn’t really what you wanted.”
Related: Are you always late? Here’s how to be on time
It can also be hard to make judgments about what’s best right now, and what would be best in the future. The economist George Ainslie called this tendency hyperbolic discounting, where people overvalue rewards in the present more so than ones in the future.
Holton doesn’t think 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. If you back out at the last minute, that could demonstrate weakness of will, but not akrasia since it’s in line with what you believe is best for you.
Other factors may be influencing our ability to follow through
When we make judgments that are too extreme about productivity, diets or even happiness, it can feel akratic when we fail to meet those standards – but the judgments themselves may be off. If you regularly have difficulty in keeping a commitment, “it can mean that your commitment is not the right one for you”, Kalis said.
It also may have little to do with you at all. Kalis’s research is on how the role of the environment has been underestimated in relation to akrasia. “Our society is structured in a way that it’s constantly appealing to our motivational processes and trying to hijack them,” she said.
The solution might not always be to suppress your conflicting desires, but to acknowledge and address the external factors that might be fueling the source of conflict. If you come home from work exhausted because of an unmanageable workload and opt for takeout over a home-cooked meal, is the problem your desires or your work life? “That is more the central problem than that you are weak or not capable of regulating your own emotions or desires,” Kalis said.
Paul studies whether some akratic behaviors are actually rational, rather than ignorant or weak or mistaken. “Some researchers take it for granted that you should be basically indifferent between near rewards and far rewards,” Paul said. “If you’re living in poverty, and your situation is really precarious, why on earth would you think you should plan a year ahead? It might be perfectly reasonable for someone in certain kinds of circumstances to reason in a very short-term way that looks myopic [to others].”
It’s important to take a nuanced view of akrasia and separate it from will power, said Reinout Wiers, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam and the author of a book on akrasia and addiction. Between our actions and our values lie our desires. These can easily come apart from that which we determine to be best for us, and are influenced by elements including our environments, upbringing, socioeconomic circumstances and biology.
“Framing everything in terms of willpower can have a strong backlash by demoralizing people,” he said. We might all aspire to be as rational as Socrates says we are, but if that’s not working, there are other ways to align your behaviors with your values.
How to do what you think is best
Can’t we have coexisting, conflicting desires? We can, Holton said, but at a certain point opposing intentions cannot coexist. If you can afford to go on vacation to either France or Mexico, you eventually have to select just one. “Both desires can persist,” he said. “But the desire has to translate into an intention.”
Related: Can these 1,800-year-old-wellness tips help you live better?
To achieve your goals, it can be more effective to put into place a defined plan that doesn’t let you reconsider. 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, then I will go to yoga class; if I buy spinach, then I will make this smoothie for breakfast the next morning.
Kalis added that changing your environment might be a better way to resist akrasia than trying to improve your willpower. These changes are called commitment devices: they don’t allow you to change your mind. As an extreme example, when Victor Hugo wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he told his assistant to lock away all of his clothes so that he was forced to stay inside and write.
Socrates had a steadfast belief in reason, but in The Republic, Plato provides a more complicated account of akrasia through his description of the tripartite, or three-part, soul. Plato acknowledged the importance of reason in understanding what we do and why, like Socrates, but presented additional driving forces: appetite and spirit. He used the metaphor of a chariot, where reason is driving and being pulled in opposing directions by two horses, one light and dark – the light horse towards virtue, and the dark horse towards doomscrolling and chain-smoking.
The nature of akrasia is still in dispute, but the enduring discussion shows that even very thoughtful and smart people had trouble keeping their dark horses in check. “This is a universal feature of being human,” Holton said.
