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Picoeconomics in Neural and Evolutionary Contexts

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Social Neuroscience and Public Health

Abstract

Hyperbolic delay discount curves reflect a basic psychophysical principle and are not maladaptive in nonhumans. However, in people who plan, they create conflicts between present motives and expected future motives. Unlike conflicts between simultaneous motives, these cannot be resolved by simply weighing the alternatives against one another, but instead confront a person with sequential strategic choices. Such choices are the subject of picoeconomics (micro–micro-economics). In recent centuries willpower has become the most approved means of stabilizing intertemporal conflicts, in addition to social commitment. In willpower a variant of repeated prisoner’s dilemma can be inferred from behavioral experiments and common experience—as clarified by thought experiments—but current neuroimaging techniques cannot visualize the self-interpretations that are hypothesized. fMRI does suggest that a unified reward network is modulated by prefrontal cortical activity, which is recruited even by the process of choice itself.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to John Monterosso and to Shan Luo for comments and suggestions. This material is the result of work supported with resources and the use of facilities at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Coatesville, PA, USA. The opinions expressed are not those of the Department of Veterans Affairs or of the US Government.

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  1. Veterans Affairs Medical Center, University of Cape Town, Coatesville, US

    George Ainslie

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  1. George Ainslie
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Correspondence to George Ainslie .

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  1. , Department of Applied Health Sciences, University of Waterloo, University Avenue West 200, Waterloo, N2L 3G1, Ontario, Canada

    Peter A. Hall

Highlights

Highlights

  • Human motivational conflict is best analyzed in the relationship between present and expected future selves, rather than between separate motivational centers.

  • People have inherited a delay discount curve that is probably a pure hyperbola, making us prone to addictions and impulsive behaviors.

  • The motivational force of willpower comes from seeing a current choice as a test case that predicts future choices in similar cases (recursive self-prediction).

  • Current neuroimaging techniques can reveal the interaction of motivational centers in self-control, but not their semantic content, such as the hypothesized recursive self-prediction.

  • Hyperbolic discount curves have survived in evolution because they have a deeply rooted psychophysical form, and are harmless in species whose future planning is instinctive.

  • There is no dimension of impulse control that is best maximized, since the major available strategies, social pressure and willpower, both have serious limitations.

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Ainslie, G. (2013). Picoeconomics in Neural and Evolutionary Contexts. In: Hall, P. (eds) Social Neuroscience and Public Health. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6852-3_1

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