One problem with the future is its vagueness. While you are able to imagine in your mind going to the gas station or cooking dinner in general, the exact details of these activities are not clear. You don’t know which pump you’ll use at the gas station, or precisely what time you’ll remove the pizza from the oven. In this way, the future is fuzzy. This fuzziness can make the future less appealing. Remember the marshmallow experiment that tested the willpower of children to resist the temptation to eat a marshmallow placed on a table in front of them, so they could receive two marshmallows after they waited? Research suggests that if that one marshmallow was made more abstract—such as hiding it from view or just showing a picture of it—the reward would become less appealing and more similar in appeal to receiving two marshmallows at a future time. On the flip side, making the future less fuzzy by focusing on the details—eating double the marshmallows currently being presented—could also make the future marshmallows more attractive than the present singular marshmallow. In this way kids would have an easier time resisting the one marshmallow now in exchange for the two marshmallows in the future.
Perhaps a combination of this fuzziness research (i.e., delay of gratification research) with recent neuroeconomics research—linking impulsivity with a lack of future thinking—could be useful for clinicians who are developing treatment plans for impulsive individuals. Because the future is fuzzy and impulsive people have an especially hard time imagining it, clinical treatments could involve de-emphasizing the present, making it more abstract, and building a concrete image of the future. For example, while it may be quicker, easier, and cheaper to buy fast food for dinner—immediate rewards that are all very desirable—people could learn to visualize larger future rewards when deciding what to eat, such as avoiding ailments like obesity and Type-2 diabetes. They could also avoid driving past their favorite fast food restaurants and only stock their cupboards with nutritious foods so the most visually salient meal options are healthy ones. This could help shift the attractive light from being cast on the present desire for fast food to instead being on the future desire for a healthy body.
For impulsive individuals who repeatedly make decisions that satisfy their current desires at the expense of their future needs, the negative effects on their health can be significant. Given the host of public health issues that involve impulsivity, research in neuroeconomics could prove important. Future research could measure the effects of an intervention on the brain. Can we get impulsive people to produce activity in their brain that shows they’re thinking about the future in a concrete way, making them look and act more patiently in the laboratory? Do these interventions lead to real-life choices to invest in the future and not give in to present impulses? Not to mention, could adapting the mindset that the future is worth waiting for help the rest of us keep some of our New Year’s resolutions?
Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.
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Add CommentNone of this things are temptations unless you try to resist. Then they become opportunities. It's much easier to deal with an opportunity, you can think, "Good, but not right now, I'll do it later." It's much easier than to think "Never!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI get the idea. Make the future reward more concrete and less abstract than you are more likely to wait for the future reward thus overcoming the present impulse. However, the bias not seen here is the virtue of impulsive action. In all the literature I've read on the subject, very few mention the benefits of impulsive action and the side effects of over-reflection.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is much easier to use the built in patterns of the subconscious than it is to reflect on every action, and nor would you want to reflect on every action. Using past learned patterns, we can do many mundane behaviors without over taxing our brains. For instance, we can recognize danger without reflection. Imagine, your house is on fire, and then imagine reflecting on your action. Should I get down on my hand and knees and leave this house, is what is around me really fire, and is leaving my burning house something I really want to do?
Impulsivity can save lives. We learn patterns, so that way we can use them impulsively without being over taxed by reflection. We should as humans only reflect when we have enough sucrose for our brains to use for reflection. Since our brains use up 20% of our digested sugars and since reflection over uses the brain, we should only reflect after we have eaten sugar.
Now, do you understand the catch 22 of the above's Scientific American Mind's article. Reflect to stop eating sweats, but reflection uses a lot of sugar. If you want to reduce cravings it would be best to look at another organ, the pancreas. For the pancreas has more to do with gaining and losing weight than the brain does.
The important question is how to TEACH impulse control, that is how to teach people to gradually tolerate longer and longer periods of delay between the availability of the smaller reinforcer and the availability of the greater reinforcer. Beth Sulzer Azaroff at the University of Massachusetts has done successful work in this area.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find that the really big problem with instant gratification is that it takes too long.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou need to get a grip and learn to like only the right stuff; then bring it in size appropriate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf every man is unique how dare you draw universal conclusion to avoid this and accept this.Can you change the attitude of anyone.We all take decision accordingly our unconscious mind,our conscious is slave of our unconscious mind.We behave mostly irrationally.Only fools believed in rational mind and and senselessly draw conclusion.They never came to be true
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am diabetic and have little problem in avoiding sweets. All I have to do is imagine the future if I yield to temptation - a worsening of my diabetes: short term gratification vs long term misery and horror. That makes the decision very easy. So why all this needless discussion? Why belabor the obvious?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInstant gratification ought to be a constitutional right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy bother making a constitutional right out of something so obviously dominant in the culture? Other than keeping lawyers and pundits occupied, of course.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are people who like the taste of vegetables. I am one of them. A taste for healthy things can be developed. When an individual actually wants what is good for them, then the temptations of unhealthy things largely go away.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHunger, or what one believes is the feeling of hunger, triggers an automatic survival strategy that may subtract from one's willpower to wait. There may be subconscious behavioral learning from media sources that cause us to respond in a similar fashion and reinforce impulsive behavior. In other words, you learned as a child from television to act a certain way to get what you want, and it has now become normal. Thank those brilliant Madison Avenue marketing geniuses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHunger, or what one believes is the feeling of hunger, triggers an automatic survival strategy that may subtract from one's willpower to wait. There may be subconscious behavioral learning from media sources that cause us to respond in a similar fashion and reinforce impulsive behavior. In other words, you learned as a child from television to act a certain way to get what you want, and it has now become normal. Thank those brilliant Madison Avenue marketing geniuses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThought (essentially through verbalization) and instinct (actual arising in the body and brain) are always in fighting mode.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThought wants to win the fight by suppression or indulgence.
Understanding dawns when this attempt is spontaneously aborted. There arises a fused compromise between thought and instinct.
“I want to eat sugar. Thought comes in and stops that it is not good for health. Now if I do not eat sugar, there is friction in the mind. If I do not eat it, I am satisfied that I have controlled my senses. To overcome the friction of not eating, I want to convert it into my satisfaction of winning over my senses. This satisfaction is also a friction as it involves sacrificing the taste of sugar.
Can I watch that whatever side I choose, it will cause friction? To see that you are helpless in overcoming this friction lets you operate with a sense of freeness. Just see one thing is sure to happen, you will eat sugar or you will not. It will not matter
whether the result is eating sugar or leaving sugar. You enjoy a sense of freeness by absorbing the friction. This freedom is not dependant upon results.”
http://www.fundamentalexpressions.com
Thought (essentially through verbalization) and instinct (actual arising in the body and brain) are always in fighting mode.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThought wants to win the fight by suppression or indulgence.
Understanding dawns when this attempt is spontaneously aborted. There arises a fused compromise between thought and instinct.
“I want to eat sugar. Thought comes in and stops that it is not good for health. Now if I do not eat sugar, there is friction in the mind. If I do not eat it, I am satisfied that I have controlled my senses. To overcome the friction of not eating, I want to convert it into my satisfaction of winning over my senses. This satisfaction is also a friction as it involves sacrificing the taste of sugar.
Can I watch that whatever side I choose, it will cause friction? To see that you are helpless in overcoming this friction lets you operate with a sense of freeness. Just see one thing is sure to happen, you will eat sugar or you will not. It will not matter
whether the result is eating sugar or leaving sugar. You enjoy a sense of freeness by absorbing the friction. This freedom is not dependant upon results.”
Fundamental Expressions
Thought (essentially through verbalization) and instinct (actual arising in the body and brain) are always in fighting mode.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThought wants to win the fight by suppression or indulgence.
Understanding dawns when this attempt is spontaneously aborted. There arises a fused compromise between thought and instinct.
“I want to eat sugar. Thought comes in and stops that it is not good for health. Now if I do not eat sugar, there is friction in the mind. If I do not eat it, I am satisfied that I have controlled my senses. To overcome the friction of not eating, I want to convert it into my satisfaction of winning over my senses. This satisfaction is also a friction as it involves sacrificing the taste of sugar.
Can I watch that whatever side I choose, it will cause friction? To see that you are helpless in overcoming this friction lets you operate with a sense of freeness. Just see one thing is sure to happen, you will eat sugar or you will not. It will not matter
whether the result is eating sugar or leaving sugar. You enjoy a sense of freeness by absorbing the friction. This freedom is not dependant upon results."
Thought (essentially through verbalization) and instinct (actual arising in the body and brain) are always in fighting mode.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThought wants to win the fight by suppression or indulgence.
Understanding dawns when this attempt is spontaneously aborted. There arises a fused compromise between thought and instinct.
“I want to eat sugar. Thought comes in and stops that it is not good for health. Now if I do not eat sugar, there is friction in the mind. If I do not eat it, I am satisfied that I have controlled my senses. To overcome the friction of not eating, I want to convert it into my satisfaction of winning over my senses. This satisfaction is also a friction as it involves sacrificing the taste of sugar.
Can I watch that whatever side I choose, it will cause friction? To see that you are helpless in overcoming this friction lets you operate with a sense of freeness. Just see one thing is sure to happen, you will eat sugar or you will not. It will not matter
whether the result is eating sugar or leaving sugar. You enjoy a sense of freeness by absorbing the friction. This freedom is not dependant upon results.”
Fundamental Expressions
Basically nonsense. We reflect where the decision matters and requires choices. We decide where we wish to use these choices. By planning our choice options relative to our beliefs and desired outcomes around the choices that are important to us we can manage those decisions that matter to us, whatever our blood sugar level.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn a disaster or emergency situation you do not postpone action because your blood sugars may be low. You make a best considered choice of action. Ill thought effectively emotional feeling based choices frequently end in making the situation worse. Ideally you use training, goal setting, vision work, pre planning to make informed choices despite a stressful situation. Considering making a decision based on blood sugar would be nonsense, though one might well be conscious of blood sugar levels and then taking additional moments to reflect on the planned action recognising the possible added difficulty of decisions under stress.
you have a belief system which clarifies your decision process and makes your choices in this area simple. The issue is how to support the development of belief systems to support beneficial choices when individuals do not have these long term goals such as your protecting yourself from diabetes. E.G Lance Armstrong blithely taking drugs, bullying people without any long term concept of consequences - like testicular cancer - a side effect of some the drugs he appears to have taken in the early mid 90s.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes every person is unique. But that does not stop me being able to draw a picture which most people would then say "that looks like a person". We are each unique but share much as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistry making a positive statement about a goal which rejects the negative choice: I am a non smoker, don't drink sugared drinks cola, I drink tea, water, coffee whatever. Positive going towards statements.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe brain does not use any more sugar to reflect and consider than it does to act impulsively. There is no catch 22 when it comes to impulsive action. The only issue is that many people fail to have a proper decision tree in place before a decision is needed. Meditation training can do wonders to correct the failure to have a valid decision tree, as well as training in logical thought.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder if this research implies that addiction suppresses the Anterior Prefrontal Function?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaste makes waste. People who wait it out are usually happier in the long run of their lives. My experience tells me to calm down the chemicals boiling in my brain, urging me to make haste - call up the hiring manager soon after the interview, go get those burritos from Taco Bell. But have seen waiting it out, and giving time for things to happen mostly yielded happier results
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my opinion, I think that delay mediate gratification seems to be a good policy. People normally see things differently whenever they aspire something instantly or desperately. They do not perceive the tangible benefits which they would receive after a long waiting season has been gone. Technically, they prefer immediate gratification so that they would feel a sense of achievement and satisfaction in return. There is nothing wrong at all because it is a personal decision. I do not judge them. More importantly, I agree with the idea on how the brain process works either before or after a decision-making process has been done. Maybe in the long run the good return will lead people to think more carefully before make a good decision. What about if we need to make a spontaneous decision. How could we maintain or change the attitude regarding which options are about to offer benefits to all of us most?
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