It isn’t simply that people behave or even think “irrationally,” but that the conscious control we exert over our behavior has sometimes partial, sometimes little, and sometimes no bearing on our manifest actions. For anyone who has paid this any due attention, it is indeed hard not to get the impression that some antagonistic forces within us are constantly pushing, pulling, and determining our actions. Nearly all self-observant persons will concede that they are not in full control of their behavior.
Why can’t we force ourselves to work, even though we know it isn’t worth the stress and anxiety that we will experience in rushing to do it at the last second? And, of course, the work itself then suffers on top of that. Many will conclude that they just have “no willpower.” And yet, in those final moments right before the assignment is due, the “willpower” we call up to do it is nothing short of incredible.
Their behavior are thus incomprehensible to us. If we look closer, however, we will notice that what these people want are not those actions themselves, but merely their results.
Jim doesn’t want to write his paper, he wants to pass the class. Marie doesn’t want to go the gym, she just wants to slim down.
John doesn’t want to not smoke. Smoking brings him great satisfaction, he just want the final result. Junseo does not want to quit the videogame; he is enjoying the hell out of it. He only wants the benefits of quitting.
We can conclude that the reason he is able to finally write the paper is that the consequences of not doing so have become too dire.
In Jim’s case, he was trying to begin an activity. In Juneo’s case, he is trying to quit one.
Nevertheless, we can distinguish a pattern here: It is the concrete future events, with concrete consequences, that most effectively motivate a person to act in opposition to his present desires. That for so many people, the motivating effect of an obligation takes place only at the last make-or-break moment, is due to the fact that that is when its impending consequences are truly felt.
We must also not ignore that a strong feeling of hunger, quite similar in its psychological nature to a strong feeling of anxiety, causes Junseo to quit the game just like his promise to join his friends.
Such general terms as mental struggles, desirability, and deterrents can only get us so far.
It is very often the case in the scientific process that an intricate problem must be approached from multiple different angles before it yields a solution.
The true motivation a person has in this scenario and those like it is the simple one to get rid of pain, or at least to reduce it. And this doesn’t only apply to physical pain. It is true of literally everything that has a pain-like, unpleasant quality to it. The greater the physical sensation of hunger in a person, the more he will be motivated to eat to relieve it. The colder a person feels, the more motivated he will be to find warmth. The greater the magnitude of an itch, the more compelled a person will be to scratch it.
What is the fundamental difference in the situation of an angry person who wants revenge (or an anxious person who seeks safety) from the hungry person who wants food, the tired person who wants rest, the nauseous person who wants to vomit, or the horny person who wants sex?
Consider that a shy child, who is too anxious to ask his teacher if he can use the bathroom, finally overcomes this anxiety when his need to urinate becomes too great.
It is the existence of a deep psychological need — or, more accurately, compulsion — to reduce displeasure / pain when it arises that motivates / compels humans to undertake the behavior required for carrying out all of their vital biological functions.
If we take a person in what we will call a neutral state, when he experiences no pleasure or displeasure, we will find the most clear-cut common characteristic in the endless variety of things he will seek. They will all be of a pleasurable nature. The person in this state can essentially be described as bored.
If pleasurable activities are out of his reach, the person will be compelled to seek that pleasure from thought. He will indulge in imaginative fantasies, recall pleasant memories, or contemplate something of interest. And if for some reason he is unable to do even that, and to attain his pleasure consciously, his unconscious mind will step in by way of associations and hallucinations, supplying that pleasure.
But the mind does not simply want to obtain pleasure, it wants to increase pleasure. A person waking up in a neutral state will be quite content to take up a mildly pleasurable activity such as reading a book (one that isn’t extraordinarily exciting, perhaps a textbook) or working on a creative assignment. However, he will find it very difficult to do that same activity right after doing something that is more pleasurable, since that would constitute an overall decrease in pleasure.
When we pursue this issue further, we come across an infinitely more astounding discovery. We find that there is no aspect of human functioning in which this element is absent, and that the pleasure principle, in fact, plays the lead role in directing the course of a person’s behavior and thinking in every case.
Anger is itself unpleasant, and the ingrained biological way to get rid of that anger is by obtaining revenge — which also brings about a cathartic satisfaction, a great pleasure, when achieved. Anger is resistance to being harmed, retribution to the harmer. While it does not soothe the current injury it is a response to, it serves to protect oneself from future assaults by making it known to one’s attacker that there will be consequences.
That any animal when given the chance will know exactly how to mate because the motor notion of the act evokes inner excitement? Or that an animal voices a mating call to attract a mate, not as an unfeeling matter of course, but simply because that call feels satisfying — as a natural expression of its sexual yearning?
It may have puzzled us before that the emotion of anxiety, whose effect is notorious for producing avoidance, causes the procrastinator to burst into a flurry of the most purposeful action. Not to mention that, until those final moments, the impending assignment already caused him a fair amount of anxiety, yet failed to produce an effect. As long as there still remains time to dawdle, the unpleasant, anxiety-provoking thought of failing the assignment can be easily dismissed, along with its anxiety, by simply resolving to do the work later, and then brushing that thought from one’s mind.
Another extremely interesting fact to observe, is how intimately and inseparably a person’s emotional responses to future events are tied to his actual expectations of them in reality: The procrastinator, for instance, no matter how hard he tries, will never be able to trick or convince himself that he has already done his assignment or that no real assignment existed in the first place. In the same way, a person who tries to impose a deadline on himself, knowing that there will be no manifest consequences, is utterly powerless to convince himself that there will be, or to conjure up any of the anxiety he so automatically feels when facing a real deadline with real consequences.
We have to realize that there always exists in us the strongest need to utilize all our attention. And this is quite evident in the great amount pf displeasure we feel any time the entirety of our capacity for attention is not being put to use.
When this is the case, we will seek to find outlets for our unused attention. If we are playing a chess game with a weaker opponent, we will seek to supplement this activity with another: such as watching TV, or listening to music. Very often this manifests itself in unconscious movements, such as fiddling around with something in one’s hands or pacing around the room; and if such an action also serves to increase pleasure or relieve displeasure, all the better.
The curious nuance here lies in the undeniable fact that humans are able to exert some control over where they direct their attention. We can recognize this ability, and the aptitude a person has for utilizing it, to be what people normally call willpower. This willpower is in fierce competition with, and is often overpowered by, the pleasure unconscious.
The pleasure unconscious is extremely obscure, and to notice it within oneself and make its existence explicit is horrendously difficult. It is so well hidden from our consciousness that we take for granted all its effects on us, its utter dominance over our minds. It prompts no explanation and is in the most direct sense implicit. And all the while, this utterly unconscious system is always seeking to be satisfied: it is always present, not simply in short bursts as our emotions are, but as a force that is in our lives always.
The pleasure unconscious isn’t actually hard to satiate. Although the human mind will certainly seek pleasure when there is none, it is for the most part satisfied with just a small amount of it — or rather, a small increase in it. And a person is often able to meet his quota while only investing a small portion of his attention to do so. There is a great variety of ways to attain pleasure: Smelling a pleasant smell, looking at beautiful scenery or art, listening to music, feeling pleasure in a cool breeze or a hot shower, eating tasty food, taking drugs, doing an intricate task, playing a game, exercising, reading an interesting book, experiencing a pleasant emotion, entertaining an intriguing thought, indulging in fantasy, listening to comedy, hanging out with friends…
It is when we are able to gain pleasure with only a part of our attention, that we are free to invest what remains into a thought process or task of our own choice. And it is during the times when we waste little or no attention while experiencing pleasure, that we become capable of the greatest feats.
It is important to remember that the pleasure unconscious does not just seek pleasure, but seeks to increase pleasure. And this has very interesting effects on a person’s manifest actions. If a person is experiencing a small amount of pleasure — for instance, if he is listening to a song that he likes while working on an otherwise unpleasurable homework assignment — he will not particularly seek to change his activity to something more pleasurable; even though he could easily devote the mental assets he’s currently using to do his assignment to play a video game instead, which he would certainly enjoy a lot more.
One factor that makes many activities pleasurable is that they consume a lot and sometimes all of a person’s attention. And this, as we mentioned, is a very significant striving of the human mind. Playing a game, or building a structure, or creating a painting, or writing a paper, or programming a website, or making a soup… all share the same characteristics of being very involved and often thought-provoking.
In each such activity, a person is constantly thinking of what the situation requires next; breaking the larger problem into simpler, smaller pieces; thinking over how he should go about accomplishing each piece; then physically executing the necessary actions; and finally moving on to the next hurdle.
An interesting nuance of this involvement in an activity is that the enjoyment a person derives from it greatly depends upon his ability to engage in it. And this depends, in turn, on the amount of attention he’s able to devote to the activity. It is for this reason that, when a person’s capacity for attention naturally decreases throughout the day, the activity that had just been pleasurable for him, now becomes distinctly unpleasurable.
Interestingly, very much of their pleasurable effects are taken away once the person completes the game and already knows what to expect from it.
There aren’t many positive emotions, as compared to negative ones: There is happiness, excitement, and affection/love.
Following a greatly triumphant event, the happiness emotion can remain as a lingering pleasure for hours, or even days, rendering a person free to devote the entirety of his attention to whatever he sees fit, without the oppressive imperatives of the pleasure unconscious bearing down on him, since they are already satisfied.
Drugs may have a similar effect, but most drugs have a draining influence on attention and cognition in addition to providing free pleasure.
Without anxiety about fulfilling what others require of him (such as at his job, or in school, or in a family environment), or excitement for gaining someone’s praise (bragging about and showing off his accomplishments, or telling stories of his virtuous deeds), or the other great variety of pleasures and fulfillments that only interpersonal relations can provide, a person will likely find himself utterly dominated by the need to seek pleasure, and quickly default to the lowest and easiest pleasure available to him.
We divided a prospective task into 3 distinct parts: the action necessary to begin it, the process of the task itself, and its consequences.
Actions and scenarios become somewhat real to a person when he thinks about them, which renders them capable of evoking pleasure and displeasure in the present.
It is a completely different story when we have very little or no experience with an activity (perhaps only book-knowledge). Then we are prone to represent it completely fictitiously, with very little correlation to reality, and often with a lot of anxiety besides.
Almost always, the first thing that comes to a person’s mind is either the notion of the task itself, or the idea of its consequences: thoughts of what he must do to start the task naturally emerge later.
One serious problem is that although the emotions of guilt and shame do serve as demotivators against committing the actions a person wants not to do, they all too often aren’t potent enough to prevent him from committing them. We’ve all certainly heard of guilty pleasures.
What occurs psychologically during this weighing of pros and cons is that the pros of a pleasurable action seem at the time to fully justify it, even if they are objectively fickle or worthless; while the cons seem to be utterly insignificant, even if they are objectively great. Once again, we are brought to appreciate the utterly non-obvious fact that our mind holds pleasure and displeasure as the main currency of our psychological transactions.
In such situations, it’s best to form our conclusions beforehand, and then stick to them (remembering that they are more valid than whatever our reasoning will generate in the heat of the moment).
- The distribution of our attention, and thus the contents of our mind, are much more strongly determined by the pleasure unconscious than by any of our deliberate efforts or intentions.
- The pleasure-seeking thoughts that do compulsively occupy our mind cannot help but be strongly rooted in reality.
It follows from this that manipulating our external environment will have profound effects on what activities compel us and what our manifest actions will then be.