7 - The Ever-Growing Importance of Self-Control

Summary

This is the first chapter of Part II, which covers the wider implications of the psychological findings. The chapter explains why good self-control used to be less relevant in earlier times, but has grown more and more important for successfully navigating life. The first half considers the longue durée. Building on the work of Norbert Elias and like-minded sociologists on the “civilizing process,” I argue that self-control has been growing increasingly important since the late Middle Ages. The second half focuses on the last fifty years and shows that the long-term trends identified by Elias have only accelerated, due to the “punitive turn” in the legal domain, the growing emphasis on conditionality in social benefits, and the advent of neoliberal policies in general. By recounting these sociohistorical developments, this chapter furnishes an explanation of why scholarly thinking and public policy have – to date – almost exclusively focused on cognitive capacities and neglected self-control.