The Chemistry of Making Choices
Decisions, motivations, and the difference between "liking" and "wanting"
"Volition, also known as will or conation, is the cognitive process by which an individual decides on and commits to a particular course of action" - Wikipedia page for Volition (Psychology)
Chemistry defines us. We are part of the same 4-billion-year-old chemical reaction from which all life on earth is manifest. Replication, reproduction, multi-cellularity, sensation, emotion, thought, consciousness, all of it is a product of this epic chemical reaction, begun so long ago, from a fortunate mixing of ingredients in the primordial seas. Everything we are is chemical. Why is this important? Because chemistry can be influenced and changed. I'm not even speaking necessarily of pharmacological chemistry (medicines and drugs), because our own cognition and conscious self has a certain amount of influence over these chemical reactions going on, especially in the brain. Although subject to the limitations imposed on us by our own physiologies - meaning it's not possible to think our way out of serious mental illness, neurodegeneration, or brain damage - we can use our knowledge of the brain to influence our decision making in certain directions. Yes, that's right, decision making isn't entirely at the mercy of your conscious mind. Yet again, the answer is: it's all chemistry.
Every minute of every day, we are making choices. We might not even be aware of it most of the time. Do I sit, or do I stand up? Should I look this way? Should I walk over there? Should I eat this bacon & egg roll? Should I slap this person I've never met in the face? Should I run from the Police that are trying to arrest me for assault and battery? Endless possibilities, and our brain is constantly having to decide between them.
Vital to this process is a simple calculation that I call the "Volition Equation", which - in over-simplified form - takes a predicted value and subtracts predicted costs in order to arrive at an overall value that can be used to compare against other possible actions being considered. Lets go back to that B&E roll: the value might be that it will satiate hunger, that it will be delicious and a pleasant sensory experience, and it's got bacon (what's not to love?). The cost might be a few dollars, pounds, yen, baht, rupees, and you have to talk to a cashier to tell them what you want, and then there's the energy expenditure required to eat the roll, and to clean yourself of all evidence afterwards. This is a single course of action. If it were the only one our brain was considering at the time - which is literally never the case, by the way - then the value wouldn't matter. There is no alternative option being considered, it wins by default.
Lets add another option to our scenario: Ice Cream. You know how no matter how much you eat, there's always room for ice cream? There's obvious value here: it's delicious. The catch is, it's not exactly nutritious. If you eat enough of it, you might be able to trick your body into not being hungry anymore, but that won't last long. Costs would include cash to pay for it, etc etc, but then it also introduces a bit more of a health risk, due to the high sugar content, low nutritional content, and so on. But damn, it so delicious tho.
Looking at the situation rationally, the Bacon & Egg roll should definitely come out as the better option of the two. It's not without negatives of its own - high fat and cholesterol content and whatnot - but if you're hungry, the roll is much more likely to provide you with some of the nutrients you need than the ice cream. When we run each option through the Volition Equation, the roll should win by a comfortable margin.
There's just one problem: we're humans. Thinking rationally is only something we ever do in retrospect or when discussing contrived scenarios like "who would win in a fight, bacon or ice cream?" (live on pay-per-view!). Ice Cream is a much more formidable opponent just on the taste aspect alone, which our brain tends to assign a *lot* of value to.
The truth is, what's actually going on in the brain is a lot more complex than this. Value and Cost aren't just fixed items on a balance sheet like this; they are in constant flux. For example, the value of choosing something to eat includes how hungry we are feeling. Even if you profoundly dislike the taste of bacon for some strange reason, your sense of hunger can become so great that once you take a bite, you'll think it's the most delicious thing you have ever tasted in your entire life. Once that overwhelming hunger is satiated enough and you're no longer feeling at risk of starving to death, your dislike of bacon might return again.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the values and costs are all *predictions* at this stage, and the output of the Volition Equation is essentially the *predicted* outcome value. If I am hungry, I *predict* eating this B&E roll would satisfy that hunger. However, if I know I am allergic to bacon (god forbid), I predict it would send me into anaphylactic shock, or cause some other severe allergic reaction. These predictions are constructed from all of the available information we have on hand at the time from many sources: current place and time, body state (hunger), sensory input (I smell bacon), memories of past experiences (I ate bacon once, and it was amazing). Even just one variable factor can change a predicted positive outcome into a predicted negative outcome, like social contexts - my friend is vegan and would have my head if they saw me eating bacon, maybe - or our current body state - feeling nauseous or have over-eaten, no longer hungry.
Another major factor in predicting the outcome of a possible course of action is, of course, previous experience. If I've eaten a bagel before and liked it, that strengthens the chances of a positive outcome. If I didn't like it, especially if I had multiple past exposures to bagels and did not like any of them, that will weaken it.
Predictions also have a confidence level. For example, there is a chance of winning the lottery if I purchase a lottery ticket and pick some numbers. If the ticket only costs $2, but the prize money were $10 million, on the face of it the potential value would seem to vastly outweigh the cost, but while we can guarantee the ticket will cost us $2, we are not guaranteed to win. In fact, our chances of actually winning are mind-bogglingly low, and if we are thinking rationally, we might realise it's not actually worth the $2. The chances of a net positive outcome from that course of action are vanishingly small.
Each factor contributes a certain weight to the scales on one side or the other: positive or negative, value or cost. The brain will then subtract predicted cost from predicted value for each option under consideration, and compare the results. The option with the most valuable predicted outcome after subtracting cost will always win, every time. Guess what neurotransmitter is used by the neurons that predict value?
Dopamine.
The Chemistry of Yuck
Who here likes the taste of cough medicine? Okay, let me rephrase that: who here from my generation or older liked the taste of cough medicine as a kid? How about Spinach? Blergh. I'm one of those few people that can't stand the taste of liquorice. Contact with my taste-buds forces my facial muscles to contract in a way that can clearly be identified as "UUUUUGHHHH EWWW" (that's the technical scientific terminology, by the way).
If you're a person that finds the taste of liquorice disgusting, how often do you find yourself "wanting" more liquorice? Or more broadly: how often do you find yourself wanting to consume something that tastes disgusting, and has no other good reason for being consumed (i.e no particular medical or health benefit)? If your answer to that question is "never", followed by a long and pronounced "duuuuuhhhhhh that's like, impossible", then do I have news for you!
My good friend Prof. Kent C. Berridge discovered the concept of Motivational Salience, which is a type of attention given to obtaining a certain outcome (or incentive associated with that outcome) and divided into 2 opposing parts: Incentive Salience, the neurological definition of value associated with a particular stimulus and encourages "approach behaviour", and Aversive Salience, the aversive form of Incentive that encourages "avoidance behaviour". His work revealed there's a big difference between "liking" something and "wanting" something.
To "like" something is to enjoy it as a sensation, a physical experience, one that you can feel. To "want" something is to be drawn to it psychologically; the motivation and desire to obtain it, essentially a “motivational salience”. He proved many times over how one can "like" something without ever "wanting" it, and more interestingly, "want" something while seriously "disliking" it. How in God's name does someone want something they don't like and don't otherwise need? It turns out the answer is - again - chemistry.
It turns out that the "yuck" face is an incredibly reliable and consistent response in many animals, and can be used as a measurement, telling us what that creature thinks of your cooking. In 2000, Prof Berridge published his paper on "*Measuring hedonic [pleasure] impact in animals and infants*", providing guidelines on measuring the "affective facial reactions" to sweet/pleasant taste and bitter/unpleasant taste, "made by human infants, other primates, and even rats".
The discovery made by Prof Berridge and his colleague Terry Robinson was that it is possible to chemically disable or enable the circuitry of "wanting" and of "liking" independently of each other. In 1998 they published the results of an experiment originally intended to study the effects of dopamine depletion. They injected Oxidopamine (6-hydroxydopamine) into the brain which selectively destroys dopaminergic neurons, which reduced levels of dopamine by up to 99%. They then tested "taste reactivity" on the rats to see how they responded to sweet tastes vs bitter tastes. Sweet-tasting sucrose generates a "pleasurable" facial response, while bitter quinine invokes the "yuck" response, and the expectation at the time was that depleting dopamine should prevent the experience of pleasant sensations, like the sweet taste of sucrose. The surprise was that when given the sucrose, it was clearly still a pleasant experience for them! Their response had not changed at all, except that they no longer seemed particularly interested in getting more of that sweet, sweet sucrose.
It turns out that by disabling the action of dopamine, they had inadvertently turned off the "wanting" functions of the brain, while leaving in-tact the function for experiencing pleasure. The rats were still liking things, but no longer cared about obtaining it.
Okay, so dopamine is for wanting; what about liking?
"The pleasure of a taste you like is not in the taste itself, but rather in your brain's reaction to that taste." Prof Berridge emailed me in response to my question on the taste experience. "The brain supplies what the psychologist Nico Frijda called a 'hedonic gloss' to make the taste pleasant. The taste is a key, but the hedonic gloss is the lock that the key unlocks. Brain hedonic hotspots are mechanisms of the lock."
Hedonic gloss - the word "hedonic" is greek for "pleasure" - can be applied to a stimulus, giving it the attributes of pleasantness, and allowing our brain to learn this association. Pleasantness isn't already part of the stimulus itself, it has to be added to it, like a topping. The stimulus however can act as a key to unlock this gloss, allowing the association to be made in the brain. Unlocking hedonic gloss involves a special molecule called a peptide, which is different to a neurotransmitter which allows a message to pass from one neuron to another: a peptide is more like a trigger. A peptide attaches to a receptor, and activates some preset signal. In this case, one of the peptides in question has a name with which we would all be familiar:
Endorphins.
Endorphins are part of a group called "endogenous opioids". Endogenous meaning "native" or "natural", essentially something our own body produces for itself. Opioids are molecules that can bind to the special peptide receptors like mu-opioid in the brain which - among other things - produces our conscious experience of pleasure. This is the main mechanism by which liking happens: the lean mean orgasmic machine, giving us the good stuff. Typically, triggering the hedonic gloss will also trigger an increase of dopamine signalling in the nucleus accumbens, basically telling the brain that whatever it was you just did, it was "damn good" and should be remembered as a rewarding stimulus.
Yep, your own brain is a manufacturer of hard-core opiates, and you probably had no idea. Before going to the nearest police station and turning in your brain to the authorities, keep in mind that *all* human brains produce opioids: even police officers! So you might find yourself sharing a cell with everyone else on earth. Not a terribly pragmatic result if I'm honest. Thankfully it's not illegal for your own brain to do its thing!
Then there are "exogenous opioids". Exogenous meaning "from outside", as in, not produced by your own body. This is the one that can indeed get one into all kinds of trouble, should legal process not be abided by. Opioids are very useful for treating pain. It turns out activating the pleasure receptors dampens our pain signalling, a lot. There's just one problem: taking an exogenous opioid - like codeine, morphine or the like - can also trigger that secondary signalling of incentive value to the stimulus which in this case is the consumption of the opioid. This can result in addiction if great care is not taken.
Top 3 methods for influencing our own decision-making and overcoming inertia
The old analogy of the carrot and the stick holds some wisdom here: the carrot is an incredibly effective self-motivator. The stick not so much. We can in fact create artificial value, adding more weight on the positive scale by associating some known reward with the prediction stimulus. Just like with the study of hand-washing at a hospital, or like at the doctors office when you were a kid getting your vaccinations, the offer of a lollipop in return for compliance could sometimes make all the difference.
I’ve compiled my top 3 ideas for how to generate motivational salience to get you through those tough tasks. Do you have any others? Have you tried any of these before? Let me know in the comments!
1. Sticker Chart
Make yourself a sticker chart — no, really! — and upon earning a certain number of stickers, obtain some bonus reward.
2. Checkbox List
Basically the same as the sticker chart, the checkbox list is great because you also get that small bump from the act of crossing out a task. It’s nice to see them getting crossed out one by one.
3. Cheerleaders
Have your friend or partner, (or colleagues, or manager), be extra vigilant in catching you out for doing the right things, and giving praise and encouragement! It’s really a lot more effective than we think.
These 3 are even more effective if you have a friend or partner administering the rewards. And for the really tough tasks, make the reward something special, that you really want, within reason of course.
Stay tuned for more brain stuff right here! Thank you so much for reading and for having me in your inbox!