Is it willpower that keeps me doing level grinding in RPGs when I’m not having fun and all I care about is getting to the next cutscene? Or that led me to make the 400th attempt at beating the final boss of “Prinny: Can I Really be the Hero?” after dying 399 times? (Note: It really did take me more than 400 attempts before I finally beat that boss!)
Is it willpower that makes me decide that I probably shouldn’t buy that bag of chips in the grocery store?
Is it willpower that I use when I tell my mom that no, I’m not going to do that task she’s telling me to do, and then stick to my decision in spite of her pressure on me to back down?
It could be, in any of those cases. You really don’t give enough information.
In the first two cases, it could be willpower, or habit and/or inertia, or some combination of the three. In the third, it depends on whether you find the chips to be tempting or not—making the same kind of decision over whether or not to buy apples is significantly less likely to involve willpower. In the fourth case, it could go either way, depending on how you react to that kind of situation: I find the rewards of that kind of assertiveness obvious enough that doesn’t usually take willpower to be assertive, but I also know people who find that kind of situation stressful and would definitely have to make an effort to stick to their decision.
This definition may be useful (though I usually like to mull definitions over before I share them, which I haven’t in this case): Willpower is the ability to override your system one reactions and impulses so that you can accomplish something that doesn’t have a reward that’s visible to system one. This implies that your system-one’s ability to model things (edit: and not get distracted by shiny things or overwhelmed by emotion) will have a large effect on what things you need to use willpower to do. (Which explains why I’m not a fan of using willpower, too.)
Is it willpower that keeps me doing level grinding in RPGs when I’m not having fun and all I care about is getting to the next cutscene? Or that led me to make the 400th attempt at beating the final boss of “Prinny: Can I Really be the Hero?” after dying 399 times? (Note: It really did take me more than 400 attempts before I finally beat that boss!)
Is it willpower that makes me decide that I probably shouldn’t buy that bag of chips in the grocery store?
Is it willpower that I use when I tell my mom that no, I’m not going to do that task she’s telling me to do, and then stick to my decision in spite of her pressure on me to back down?
It could be, in any of those cases. You really don’t give enough information.
In the first two cases, it could be willpower, or habit and/or inertia, or some combination of the three. In the third, it depends on whether you find the chips to be tempting or not—making the same kind of decision over whether or not to buy apples is significantly less likely to involve willpower. In the fourth case, it could go either way, depending on how you react to that kind of situation: I find the rewards of that kind of assertiveness obvious enough that doesn’t usually take willpower to be assertive, but I also know people who find that kind of situation stressful and would definitely have to make an effort to stick to their decision.
This definition may be useful (though I usually like to mull definitions over before I share them, which I haven’t in this case): Willpower is the ability to override your system one reactions and impulses so that you can accomplish something that doesn’t have a reward that’s visible to system one. This implies that your system-one’s ability to model things (edit: and not get distracted by shiny things or overwhelmed by emotion) will have a large effect on what things you need to use willpower to do. (Which explains why I’m not a fan of using willpower, too.)