A Tip for Congregational Meetings

Ego-depletion is the experience we have when we engage in a series of demanding choices and decisions.  When we have to force ourselves to do or decide something, we have fewer cognitive and emotional resources available for the next choice or decision.  The series of difficult mental and emotional tasks drains our personal reserve bit by bit.  This is called “ego-depletion.”  Ego-depleted people are more likely to quit in the midst of difficult task and more likely to succumb to loss of self-control.

•    “…if you have to force yourself to do something you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around…ego-depleted people therefore succumb more quickly to the urge to quit” (Kahneman, pages 41-42).
•     “Unlike cognitive load, ego depletion is at least in part a loss of motivation.  After exerting self-control on one task, you do not feel like making an effort in another, although you could do it if you really had to” (Kahneman, page 42).

Experiments by Roy Baumeister and colleagues have indicated a relationship between sugar-intake and ego-depletion.  The efforts involved in dealing with conflict and self-control are very glucose-intensive.  Neurons are eating sugar at very high rates during such activities.  If there isn’t enough sugar for the busy little nerve cells, their work slows and I feel ego-depleted.  I lose motivation and hope.  I become anxious and crabby.  I am less able to resist my impulses and more willing to give in to various temptations.  These realities have a simple implication for conflict in the church.

I have participated in numerous congregational meetings that were scheduled prior to a meal—either lunch or dinner.  The logic in such scheduling is that people who are hungry will be motivated to move through the meeting with a minimum of fuss and bother.  After all, they want to get to the important business—the food!  Baumeister’s research would indicate that this is an inaccurate, unhelpful and even dangerous strategy.

Imagine that you have a bunch of church members at such a meeting.  Lunch is waiting.  Some of them didn’t get a very good breakfast in their hurry to get to worship, followed by a meeting.  They are hungry—or at least glucose-deficient.  What are some of the possible outcomes based on the research?

•     They will be more likely to make intuitive errors of judgment than people with enough glucose.  So they will be more likely to draw conclusions that are quick, easy and wrong.
•       They will be more likely to see problems as intractable, the future as bleak and the outcome of a problem as hopeless.
•     They will have less motivation at the beginning of the meeting, and that motivation level will rapidly decrease with each problem confronted or decision made.
•      They will have less self-control and will be more likely to say things to one another that they would keep to themselves in a better-fed condition.  The potential for people to feel insulted by one another increases.
•      They will rely on default positions and judgments and be less able to engage in creative thinking and decisions with some measure of risk.

 In case you think this is an exaggeration, you might want to read the results of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Danziger, Levav and Avnaim-Pesso, 2011).  The study examined 1,112 judicial rulings made by eight Israeli parole board judges over a 10-month period. Each judge heard between 14 and 35 cases in a day and took mid-morning and mid-afternoon meal breaks. The data included the time of day at which the prisoner’s request was considered and its place in the day’s docket.  Here is a summary of the results.

“We find that the percentage of favorable rulings drops gradually from 65% to nearly zero within each decision session and returns abruptly to 65% after a break.  Our findings suggest that judicial rulings can be swayed by extraneous variables that should have no bearing on legal decisions.”

Kahneman delivers the “verdict.”  He writes, “The best possible account of the data provides the bad news: tired and hungry judges tend to fall back on the easier default position of denying requests for parole.  Both fatigue and hunger probably played a role.” (Kahneman, 2011, p. 43)

If that is the case for highly-trained, broadly experienced judges within a practice rooted in rational decision-making, what does that mean for a bunch of sugar-deprived folks deciding whether to borrow a million bucks for a building or to ask a troubled pastor to leave without another call?  So the practice of scheduling meetings prior to meals may be part of a formula for creating conflict.  It would be wise to offer some healthy snacks prior to or even during the meeting.  Fruit and nuts at the tables of a meeting could go a long way to avoiding “fruit and nuts” outcomes at the meeting!

This insight also applies to personal situations.  When we are grieving, for example, we are carrying a huge cognitive and emotional load.  I have to spend much more time monitoring my energy levels than I did in my former life.  I make sure that I have a small snack with me most of the time.

Candy makers understand this as well.  Just re-watch one of those Snickers commercials that portrays the sugar-starved actor as a difficult person until the candy treatment is applied.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MixNh9L7G5M