Weekly Article: Improving Self Control and Performance by Gargling

by Sonny Tat

As I review and add to my ever-expanding to-do list for the week and try to write an abstract while thinking about putting together a presentation, I also shake my fist at the Internet for providing so many avenues for distraction. Actually, the Internet is just a scapegoat. If I am locking myself down to get some real work done, someone could walk by and strike up a mundane conversation about SPSS functionality and I’d likely put down what I’m doing to talk. For the same reason, I change chairs in the office several times a day, and even read those emails about Outlook being down even though receiving the email itself means that email is by definition no longer down.

So when I saw this article in Forbes Magazine about a blinded trial about gargling glucose improving self-control, I got interested. Don’t ask me how I got onto this random article. Actually, just see paragraph above. Anyway, researchers in Georgia recruited 51 subjects to perform two sets of self-control tasks. These tasks were essentially really boring and tedious, therefore requiring concentration and self-control to complete.
 
Between sets of boring tasks, half of the participants gargled sugar-sweetened lemonade while the other half gargled Splenda-sweetened lemonade. Although students in both groups performed equally well before gargling, students who gargled the sugared lemonade performed better on the second boring task than those who gargled the Splenda lemonade (p < 0.05).

Similarly, last year Wired Magazine highlighted a study of professional cyclists in which they asked them to pedal for as long and as fast as possible. Again, two groups gargled with different drinks, one sugared and the other with a fake sugar. The group who gargled the sugared drink consistently put out more effort than the fake sugar group.

Both studies suggest that the act of tasting of the sugar is more important than ingestion and that the results may be related to activation of the reward centers and not metabolic centers. Reward center activation in turn motivates you to do more when you would otherwise stop.

So I thank Joelle for the supply of Halloween candy in the office. And I apologize in advance if you catch me chewing on a Twix briefly before spiting it out onto my desk. Or more likely Lauren's desk, since she sits next to me. But at least you'll know I'll be focused on the task at hand.

Shirk SD, et al. "The Gargle Effect: Rinsing the Mouth With Glucose Enhances Self-Control." Psychological Science. 2012.

Also, to answer your question, that is not a picture of me gargling. It's copied and pasted from the scapegoat. 

Update: Here's a clickable link to the fascinating New York Times article that Paul refers to in his post. Thanks, Paul!