Cognitive Biases Archives - Page 5 of 7

Civil Discourse, Critical Thinking…and Facebook

October 9, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell 8 Comments

I’m going to tell you about my abortion, but first some background. Facebook has only been accessible to the general public for about 10 years, but it’s hard to remember life before it—probably impossible for those of a certain age. As a social networking site, it started out as a place to share personal information and photos and to meet like-minded others. It developed a reputation for focusing excessively on “what people had for lunch,” which is how those who disdain it still think of it.

Honestly, I can’t remember why I joined Facebook, and there have been periods when I haven’t paid much attention to it. It’s a curious phenomenon. At my Monthly Meeting of the Mind (& Brain) last month, I asked everyone to share the first word or phrase that came to mind when I said “Facebook.” The responses varied; mine was information. That’s primarily why I use it now, and why I would be loathe to give it up. So many educational, scientific, and just plain thought-provoking sources update their Facebook feeds on a regular basis that it allows me to keep current without having to spend hours going to individual websites or searching the internet for what I might not even know is available.

But more and more Facebook is also becoming a place for us to let everyone know where we stand in matters political, social, religious, moral, dietary, and in regard to the age-old question: which makes a better pet, a cat or a dog? I guess this is only natural, a logical outcome of the sharing we do of our favorite movies, the books we’ve read, the sports teams we follow, and the posts we “like.”

The cat vs. dog argument rarely gets ugly. The same can’t be said for our stances in those other, more highly charged, areas. That’s because we don’t simply want to let others know our position. Kind of like chest-beating apes, we want to proclaim our superiority. We want to demonstrate how right we are and how wrong those who disagree with us are. As a result, many such posts amount to a whole lot of signifying, righteous indignation, and extreme disdain for those on the other side. Because if we’re on one side, there has to be another side. And if we’re right, those others have to be wrong.

This cognitive bias is known as black and white thinking. It’s a simplistic way of viewing an issue that doesn’t allow for shades of gray. Imagine two groups of people shouting at each other across a vast chasm. Neither group is listening to the other; no difference is being made. But everyone has a sense of satisfaction as a result of expressing their opinion.

The problem is that although no practical difference is being made, this state of affairs is not innocuous. If one person proclaims his or her position and implies that those on the other side are misinformed, mentally challenged, or flat-out evil, you can bet those others are going to react. It’s like throwing a metaphorical hand grenade into a crowd. Most likely, those on the receiving end are going to respond as if they’re being threatened. How do you react when you’re being threatened? Do you stop to evaluate the merits of your aggressor’s point of view?

On the Other Hand…

I have this crazy idea that Facebook could be a possibility for civil discourse between people of opposing views, so every once in a while I attempt to engage with someone who clearly doesn’t see things the way I do.

One of my friends shared a recent meme suggesting that men who want to purchase guns should be required to go through the same hoops women seeking abortions have to go through. One of her Facebook friends commented that most people who buy guns never kill anything, but every woman who has an abortion kills a human being.

I had an abortion many years ago, and this woman’s assertion hit me hard. After taking a deep breath, I decided to respond. I replied that what she’d said was a generalization that wasn’t true. Her response was that regardless of my opinion, abortion was MURDER (caps hers). She also indicated she had children, who had been “valuable human beings from the moment of conception.” At that point I realized it was the ideology talking, so it was futile to pursue a dialogue. I told her she was fortunate to have been able to conceive and bear children, which wasn’t the case for some of the rest of us. And I ended the interaction.

But it was painful to have this woman who knows nothing about me or my experience make unwarranted assumptions about me and obliquely, at least, cast me in the role of a murderer. Every woman who has an abortion kills a human being. Based purely on the fact that I’d disagreed with her, she determined I was on the opposite side, and therefore in favor of abortion. Since, in her mind, there are only two sides (you’re either with us or against us), that meant I was wrong and she was not interested in hearing anything I had to say.

I’m pro-choice. That doesn’t mean what anti-abortionists think it means. In my case, having an abortion was not only the last thing I wanted to do, it didn’t actually involve much choice on my part.

Failure to Conceive

I’d always assumed I would have children—that it would just happen when I was ready to start a family. I don’t recall ever thinking otherwise. Both of my younger brothers had married and had children by the time I got married. But it never happened for me. I spent more than two years going through fertility treatments, seeing different doctors, taking my basal body temperature every day, having to show up at the gynecologist’s office at the crack of dawn, and facing the same disappointment month after month. I joined the subculture of women who are consumed by their attempts to get pregnant. And I mean consumed. Getting pregnant was the number one focus of our attention, the main thing we read about, talked about, and thought about.

Finally, as a result of the most painful medical procedure I’ve ever had, it was determined that my Fallopian tubes were blocked, which meant all of my efforts of the previous two years had been futile. I could not get pregnant. There might have been further treatment available. I can’t remember. I do know I was worn out from the ordeal by then. So I came to terms with the situation and settled into my childless life. No one had told me it was possible for Fallopian tubes to become unblocked all by themselves—which is what happened to me a few years before menopause.

I’d been feeling tired and run down, but didn’t think anything of it at first. I wasn’t nauseous. I just didn’t feel like myself. Then I noticed I hadn’t had a period for two months. A couple of friends kept asking me if I’d had a pregnancy test, and I remember being quite irritated. So late one Friday evening, I drove to a drugstore and bought a test solely to be able to prove they were wrong. The insert that came with the test showed a pale pink “positive” response. What I got was hot pink—closer to fuschia. I was stunned.

I wasn’t working at that time and had no health insurance. I was also in my mid-40s, and my then partner (the same person I’d been married to previously—another story altogether) was 14 years older than me. But after the shock wore off, I immediately started trying to figure out how I could do this thing. I checked out every pregnancy book the local library had on its shelves. I told several of my friends—and everyone I spoke to offered to help me any way they could. One person gave me the name and number of her gynecologist, and early on Monday I called for an appointment. They got me in within a couple of days, by which time I already knew there were potential problems and risks associated with having a first pregnancy at my age.

Happy Valentine’s Day

I had an amniocentesis. My fingers were crossed for the better part of a week. If the baby was OK, I would have it. I would be a mother! But that wasn’t the way this story played out. When the doctor called to give me the test results, he told me that I would eventually miscarry, and if I waited for that to happen, it could be dangerous, even life-threatening. He wanted me to have the abortion procedure as soon as possible. In fact, he had a cancellation that week. It was on Valentine’s Day. I took the appointment.

I’m sure the Facebook commenter who thinks all women who get abortions are murderers is quite confident she is in the right. For my part, it’s hard to imagine how someone who was able to have children—something I may have spent more time, attention, energy, and money attempting to do than she did—could possibly have anything but sympathy for me. It’s true she doesn’t know the particulars of my situation. But that’s exactly my point. When you’re shouting (MURDER) across the chasm at the other side, you don’t need to be bothered by particulars. There are no shades of gray.

It doesn’t matter what the issue is or what side of the political spectrum we’re on or how confident we feel about our beliefs or positions. If we’re participating in this shouting match, we’re part of what’s wrong in the world. It’s so easy to share things on Facebook or to dash off a righteously indignant comment that we don’t even have to think about it. But we ought to think about it. We ought to engage the conscious part of our brain for a few seconds to ask ourselves what we’re doing. Do we really need to keep shouting and lobbing metaphorical hand grenades at each other? Is that the best we can do?

How Quickly Can You Turn Success into Failure?

September 18, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

We don’t have to make a point of looking for what isn’t working or the places where we haven’t lived up to our expectations. Our brain automatically notices those things and points them out to us. It’s wired to pay more attention to negative events than to positive ones. That’s because while positive events may be extremely pleasurable and possibly even good for us, negative events could kill us or put us in grave danger. At least that’s how the unconscious part of the brain (System 1) perceives them. This automatic tendency is so universal it has a name: the negativity bias.

In and of itself, having a brain that points out what isn’t working or measures how far we missed the mark isn’t a bad thing. That kind of information is potentially very useful. It’s the way we over-value and respond to negative information that gets us into trouble. Because we have a brain that is primed to notice the negative, it’s easy for us to overlook the positive altogether, even when there’s plenty of positive for the eye to behold.

When Good Isn’t Good Enough to Qualify

Several of my clients are addressing health-related issues in my Goals, Habits & Intentions course. They have either set long-term goals to achieve specific results in terms of such things as diet and exercise or they are working on changing or creating habits that support the level of health and well-being they want to achieve.

One person who has diabetes is working on lowering her blood glucose level (which is measured by a test called the A1c). She decided to aim for lowering her A1c to a specific number and created a goal action plan to help her do that. She was following her plan just fine until she purchased a kit from a drugstore to do a home test and got a result that was better than the one she was aiming for.

At that point, she pretty much stopped following her plan. But when she got her official A1c test results back from the lab a few weeks later, they were disappointing. The number was not as low as the one she’d gotten from her home test. Her view of the situation was that she had failed—not just in continuing to follow that specific goal action plan, but in doing the Goals, Habits & Intentions coursework.

So I was surprised to learn that her A1c result was lower than it had been the last time she was tested. And the number last time she was tested was lower than it had been at the beginning of the year. From the first test to the third test, she had lowered her A1c by 1.6 points! By any objective measure, that’s a significant success. Instead of celebrating it, however, she discounted it. Her successful results were a failure in her own eyes because they weren’t quite as amazing as she’d thought they would be.

I suggested she make a visual chart that tracked her A1c numbers over the course of this year and put it up in a prominent location so the irrefutable evidence of her success would be harder to ignore.

The Default Response

This is a pernicious problem we all face: jumping to conclusions about the information provided to us by our brain and by external sources. It can happen at either end of the scale (“good” news or “bad” news), but the interesting thing is that the result of both good news and bad news is often the same: we stop whatever it is we were doing. And the culprit in both cases is System 1 thinking, which is focused entirely on the short term.

If the news is “good,” we stop because we think we achieved our goal so we don’t need to continue working toward it. That makes a certain amount of sense because that’s what you do when you actually achieve a goal. But in a lot of cases we need to set up a goal in order to change or start a habit so we can maintain our success. This is especially important in the area of health and wellness. If we want to maintain long-term changes, we can’t stop doing the things that are making us healthier. Instead, we need to turn them into habits. (As an aside, I read a blog post a couple of years ago by someone who set out to develop a 30-day habit of strength training. After the 30 days he decided he had been successful and didn’t need to do it any longer.)

If the news is “bad,” we use it as evidence of our poor character (lack of self-control, powerlessness, etc.) and of the pointlessness of our attempts. Why bother? Nothing works, anyway. The automatic tendency isn’t to evaluate what might have gone wrong, but to chuck the whole thing, thus guaranteeing failure and maybe even overlooking evidence of success.

Celebrate Success!

I used to be able to count on getting in several workouts at the gym each week. And I loved it. But at the beginning of this year, my daily schedule went bonkers and has stayed that way. After months of attempting to fit the gym into my new schedule, I traded the gym for walking every day because I can break walking into smaller segments of time and fit them into the breaks between classes and appointments. As September approached, I decided it was time to exchange a couple of days of walking each week for using the treadmill at the gym.

I went to the gym at the beginning of the first week, loved it, and thought I could probably get in not just one more visit but two that week. Nevertheless, I managed only the one visit. The same thing happened the next week and then the week after that. I noticed I had failed to follow through on my original intention. I noticed the impulse to interpret my once-a-week gym visits as a failure. But I also acknowledged I really hadn’t had an opportunity to get in more time at the gym, and I’d kept up my walking and even increased it. I reminded myself that baby steps and perseverance are an almost unbeatable combination. At the end of three weeks, I looked at the notations on my calendar and realized I’d gotten in three more workouts on the treadmill than I would have if I hadn’t set an intention.

In order to celebrate success, we have to notice it, which means not having a knee-jerk reaction to every realization we haven’t met or exceeded our expectations. The game is only over when we stop playing—and that is largely up to us.

When have you turned a success into a failure? What do you think you could do to change your perspective in those kinds of situations?

Brain Dead: Is Your Mind Temporarily Offline?

September 4, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Your brain has two systems for processing the stimuli and experiences of your life and determining how you act upon them.

Conscious: The processing system you’re aware of is called System 2. It is logical and intentional and sometimes referred to as “true reasoning.” (A formal outline is a good example.) It is also slow, limited, and easily depleted. It processes about 40 bits of information at a time.

Unconscious: The processing system you’re not aware of is called System 1. It is associative, which means it sees patterns and connects dots. (A mindmap is a good example.) It is fast, vast, and always on. It processes about 11,000,000 bits of information at a time.

If System 1 were to go offline, you would, too. Game over! But you can still function when System 2 is temporarily offline, even for long periods of time, such as when you’re asleep. So when you think or talk about being temporarily brain dead, you’re talking about exhausting System 2 attention.

If you’re in good health, there’s not much you can do to tax or exhaust the capacity of System 1—and there are things you can do to enhance its functioning. However, your supply of System 2 attention is always limited, and anything that occupies your working memory reduces it. Some examples of things that tax System 2 attention are:

Physical illness (even minor), injury, or lack of sleep
Making numerous trivial decisions throughout the day
Stress, anxiety, and worry
Exercising will power (forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do or to not do something you do want to do)
Monitoring your behavior
Monitoring your environment if it is new or you consider it unsafe
Learning something new, traveling an unfamiliar route, etc.
Completing a complex computation
Trying to tune out distractions
A long period of concentrated or focused attention
Trying to remember dates, numbers, or unrelated facts
Listening to me talk

Since System 1 is fast, vast, always on, and has an answer for almost everything—and since you don’t need System 2 attention for most of what you do when you’re awake—what’s the big deal if you run out of System 2 attention from time to time?

Three Categories of Errors

Optimally, the two systems work together, and neither type of processing is superior. However, System 1 is more useful in some situations, while System 2 is not only more useful but also required in other situations.

System 1 is pretty good at what it does because its models of familiar situations are accurate so its short-term predictions tend to be accurate. But that’s not always the case. System 1 sacrifices accuracy for speed, meaning it jumps to conclusions. It also has biases and is prone to making logical errors.

One of System 2’s jobs is to detect System 1’s errors and adjust course by overriding System 1’s impulses. As Daniel Kahneman says in Thinking, Fast and Slow:

There are vital tasks that only System 2 can perform because they require effort and acts of self-control in which the intuitions and impulses of System 1 are overcome.

Bear in mind that System 1 is not rational. If System 2 is depleted and can’t veto or modify the non-rational impulses of System 1, those impulses then turn into actions (or speech).

There are three categories of errors you tend to make when System 2 is depleted.

Logical Errors

System 1 thinking uses shortcuts. System 2 thinking takes the long (logical/linear) way home. So when you’re out of System 2 attention, you’re more prone to making mistakes in anything that requires logical, linear thinking. Errors of intuitive thought can be difficult for System 2 to catch on a good day. When System 2 is offline, you automatically assume them to be correct. As a result:

You will have trouble making, following, or checking the validity of a complex logical argument. You’ll be more likely to be led by the cognitive biases and distortions System 1 uses because they don’t require any effort and give you a comforting sense of cognitive ease.

You will have difficulty comparing the features of two items for overall value. If you have to make a choice, you’ll be more likely to go with what intuitively feels right or the item that has some emotionally compelling attribute (it reminds you of the one your mother had, for example, or reminds you of your mother).

You will be more gullible. You’ll be more likely to believe things you wouldn’t otherwise believe or be persuaded by empty messages, such as in commercials. System 2 is the skeptic, so the best time for someone to take advantage of you is when it is offline.

Intention or Response Errors

System 1 continuously picks up on cues and triggers in your environment to determine what situation you’re in and to predict what’s next. Any deviation from the norm requires System 2 attention. If it isn’t available, you’re likely to do not what you intended to do but whatever is normal for you in that situation. And without System 2 attention, you’re much more likely to respond automatically (habitually) to the stimulus (cue or trigger).

System 2 is in charge of self-control, continuously monitoring your behavior, keeping you polite, for example, when you’re angry. In the heat of the moment, when you’re out of System 2 attention, you’re much less likely to be able to suppress your immediate emotional reactions to people and situations.

System 1 has an answer for almost everything. But when it encounters a surprising situation (something it hasn’t previously encountered or that is unusual in that situation), it notifies System 2. You don’t need System 2 attention to drive a familiar route, but if you encounter an obstacle along that route, you need System 2 to figure out what it is and to respond appropriately to it.

System 2 is also in charge of will power. If you are in the process of trying to stop doing something you habitually do (such as raiding the refrigerator in the evening), you need System 2 to belay the impulse from System 1 to see if there’s more pie. Without System 2, you’re more likely to give in, look for the pie…and eat it.

You need System 2 if you want to take a different route from your usual one or make an extra stop you don’t normally make. Without adequate System 2 attention, you’re likely to find yourself taking the usual route and forgetting to make that stop.

Gatekeeping Errors

We all have biases, whether or not we’re aware of them and whether or not we want to admit it. While it’s easy to spot overt biases and prejudices in other people, most of your own biases are hidden even from you. In the case of biases toward specific groups of people, you’ve likely come to a reasoned conclusion they’re wrong and have chosen not to think about and treat other people based on stereotypes. But that doesn’t mean the biases have disappeared. They’re still part of System 1’s associative processing operations. It’s just that when System 1 suggests a biased response to System 2, System 2 normally overrides it. Per Daniel Kahneman:

Conflict between an automatic reaction (System 1) and an intention to control it (System 2) is common in our lives.

When System 2 is depleted, there is no one at the gate to keep the biased or prejudiced responses from getting through. You may simply have a biased thought. You may say something in the presence of others that you wouldn’t normally say. Or you may respond to another person based on a group stereotype. The thought, comment, or behavior may be something you later regret. If you were to claim it doesn’t represent what you believe or the way you really feel or think, you’d most likely be right.

But when you see a blatant expression of bias or prejudice in someone else—especially a celebrity—you might have a different reaction. You might assume their true colors are showing. We think that what we see in other people when their guard is down and they’re pushed or stressed reveals the truth about them. But the actual truth is that to the extent we have any civility at all, it’s because System 2 maintains it. Without System 2 you and I would have no ability to question our biases or prejudices, no ability to come to reasoned conclusions about them, and no ability to monitor and veto System 1’s automatic reactions.

Conclusion

It isn’t always necessary, advisable, or even possible to override System 1. But when you deplete System 2, you can’t override it even when you want or need to. Without System 2, you can’t think straight (logically and linearly). So:

Don’t try to make important decisions of any kind when you feel brain dead.
Don’t assume you’ll feel or think the same way about something the next day as you do when you’re stressed, sick, just completed your annual tax return, or have recently fallen in love.
Don’t stay up late to watch the QVC channel unless you have a lot of money you’re trying to unload.
Don’t keep pie around if you’re trying not to eat it.
Don’t get into debates about complex issues after you’ve had a few beers.
Don’t tax your working memory with details you can keep track of some other way.
Don’t take System 2’s censoring of your biases and prejudices for granted. And don’t assume other people’s mental lapses reveal deep-seated truths about them.

Feedback Loops: Use Them or Be Used by Them

July 17, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

It isn’t too much of a stretch to say that feedback loops make the world go round. Among other things, feedback loops keep machinery—both digital and analog—running smoothly, moderate our weather, and maintain homeostasis in our bodies. Feedback loops also function to either maintain or disrupt the status quo within businesses and other organizations, in politics, in the economy, in interpersonal relationships, and even in regard to our own behavior.

David DiSalvo calls feedback loops “the engines of your adaptive brain.” He says research across multiple disciplines—psychology, sociology, economics, engineering, epidemiology, and business strategy, for example—has validated feedback loops as a solid governing principle.

Day in and day out, we make decisions based on the results of feedback loops that run in our minds without our noticing. None of us stops to think through each stage of the loop—how the data we’ve gathered is being processed to lead us to our next action. And yet, even without our conscious monitoring, the loops just keep moving.

Decision-making requires conscious thought. So it may be more accurate to say we react based on feedback loops rather than that we make decisions. In the same way that our brain has criteria for evaluating the data provided by physiological feedback loops (in order to, say, maintain our body temperature and signal when we need to eat or drink—or stop eating or drinking), it also has criteria for evaluating the data provided by our mental, emotional, and behavioral feedback loops. The problem is that these criteria are part of our mental model of the world, much of which is unconscious, which means we’re not aware of it.

If we don’t stop to think through “how the data we’ve gathered is being processed,” we’re more likely to maintain the very habits of thinking and behaving we’re trying to change.

What Exactly Is a Feedback Loop?

The four stages of a feedback loop as described by science writer Thomas Goetz in Wired Magazine are:

Evidence
Relevance
Consequence
Action

A feedback loop involves four distinct stages. First comes the data: A behavior must be measured, captured, and stored. This is the evidence stage.

Second, the information must be relayed to the individual, not in the raw-data form in which it was captured but in a context that makes it emotionally resonant. This is the relevance stage.

But even compelling information is useless if we don’t know what to make of it, so we need a third stage: consequence. The information must illuminate one or more paths ahead.

And finally, the fourth stage: action. There must be a clear moment when the individual can recalibrate a behavior, make a choice, and act. Then that action is measured, and the feedback loop can run once more, every action stimulating new behaviors that inch us closer to our goals.

When it comes to behavior-related feedback loops, such as changing an old habit or starting a new one, the sequence looks more like this:

Action
Evidence
Relevance
Consequence
New Action (or Reaction)

Just about any activity generates feedback of some sort. The result of an action can be large or infinitesimal, desirable or undesirable. Ideally, you notice what happens and use the feedback to determine what to do next. If you’re driving your car along a snowy road and it begins to skid, the skid is evidence that road conditions require you to make some type of adjustment to your driving. The evidence is relevant to you because you want to avoid an accident, which is a potential consequence of not paying attention to the evidence. Your reaction might be to slow down.

That’s a fairly straightforward example. Another driving-related example, one you may have encountered and which Goetz wrote about in Wired, involves “dynamic speed displays,” also called driver feedback signs. These speed limit signs include radar sensors attached to digital readouts that flash your vehicle’s speed once you get in range. Driver feedback signs have been so successful in decreasing speeding they’re springing up in more and more locations.

The basic premise is simple. Provide people with information about their actions in real time (or something close to it), then give them an opportunity to change those actions, pushing them toward better behaviors. Action, information, reaction.

The Premise May Be Simple, But the Process Isn’t.

The apparent result of an action we’ve taken—the evidence—must first be interpreted before we can proceed through the steps of the feedback loop to determine how to react. A roadside sign that tells you both the speed limit and your current speed provides you with straightforward, unambiguous evidence. If all the evidence we were faced with was similarly unambiguous, our lives would be much less complex and our decisions would be much easier to make. Alas, such is not the case.

As stated above, DiSalvo says we make decisions based on the results of feedback loops, but even in cases where we’re making decisions rather than simply reacting, it would be more accurate to say we make decisions based on our interpretation of the results of feedback loops.

Because we perceive the world through our particular mental model, we’re predisposed to interpret the results of our actions in certain ways. This can be problematic in general, but it’s especially so when we’re presented with negative evidence. Things didn’t work out the way we planned; we did something other than what we intended or wanted to do; or we’re faced with unexpected obstacles. The most useful way to respond to such information is to look at it objectively. We tried something and it didn’t work. We can then try to figure out why it didn’t work and decide whether to try it again or to try something else.

Instead of viewing the negative results of our actions objectively, however, we’re prone to interpreting them as evidence of failure. Once we interpret the results as evidence of failure, we’re much less likely to try to figure out what didn’t work and what to do next, and we’re much more likely to give up. At that point, the habit or behavior we were trying to change becomes even more entrenched than it was before we attempted to do something about it. And the goal we were trying to achieve seems even more distant.

A student in one of my classes reported struggling for several years with a particular issue of having to document, in detail, time spent caretaking a family member. Every time she tried and failed to find a system that worked, she interpreted it as evidence of personal failure. One day in class, she outlined something new to try. When she returned the following week, she was very excited, but not because the new system had worked. It hadn’t. What she was excited about was that when she realized that particular system didn’t work, rather than viewing it as more evidence of failure she was able to view it objectively. Because she was able to view it objectively, she didn’t waste time beating herself up over it. Instead, she immediately decided to try something else and that new system did work.

Confirmation bias is very powerful. If we believe we’re lazy or incapable or don’t follow through on anything, we’re likely to view the negative results of our actions as confirmation of our preexisting belief and then behave as though that belief is reality. So it’s important to remember that our automatic interpretations can’t always be trusted; sometimes we need to slow down long enough to question them.

Not everything you try is going to go smoothly or work out the way you hoped it would. Sometimes the road is slippery, under construction, or takes a detour. Noticing that what you tried simply didn’t work will allow you to use the information as feedback to help you determine the best way to correct your course—or to chart a brand new one.

Is Coffee Ruining your Life?

July 10, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell 5 Comments

This past week, Scientific American online ran an article titled “The Problem of Artificial Willpower.” It was based on a research paper by Torben Kjaersgaard, who is in the Department of Sport Science at Aarhus University in Denmark. Kjaersgaard’s concern is the off-label use of prescription stimulants—such as Adderall, which is normally used in the treatment of ADHD, and modafinil, which is normally used in the treatment of daytime sleepiness caused by sleep apnea or narcolepsy—to enhance motivation. This might not have caught my attention had Kjaersgaard not also targeted coffee.

Kjaersgaard acknowledges that healthy individuals who use prescription stimulants—and/or caffeine—to enhance their performance report increased motivation as a significant effect. This is certainly not surprising. It’s also not surprising that it makes them feel good. What concerns Kjaersgaard is the ethics of motivation enhancement.

In this article I discuss ethical issues of motivation enhancement induced by currently available prescription drugs. I argue that medically enhanced motivation raises questions concerning the ethics of accomplishment and the value of human effort [emphasis mine].

Kjaarsgaard—and the author of the Scientific American blog post, Hazen Zohny—appear to believe that coffee drinkers may simply be masking “the meaninglessness of it all” until, “several thousand of those (caffeine) hits later, you find yourself middle-aged and struggling with a sense that you haven’t quite spent your life as you would have liked.” All because of…coffee.

Zohny wonders if we should really be “using substances that enhance our enjoyment and interest in…pursuits we would otherwise find meaningless and alienating.”

Might we end up leading deeply inauthentic lives, using pharmaceutically-induced willpower to waft through a life that otherwise means nothing to us?

Kjaersgaard is concerned that our lack of motivation for a task or a job is a symptom of a deeper problem, in which case instead of enhancing our motivation temporarily (for example by having a cup of coffee), we should instead stop and re-evaluate the course of our lives. Say what? I’m pretty sure my lack of motivation for some of the tasks I have to do is directly related to the nature of the tasks (I find them boring or otherwise unpleasant, but such is life) rather than indicative of “a deeper problem.” Sometimes it’s a cup of coffee that provides me with artificial motivation and sometimes it’s loud, upbeat music or a brisk walk. Should I give up the music and the walking along with the coffee? I was reassured to see that the majority of Scientific American commenters didn’t buy what Kjaersgaard and Zohny were selling, either, and so I went about my caffeinated life.

However, the next day I came across an even more over-the-top take on the subject in a Facebook post titled “Drugs that Make Us Feel Smart Are Ruining Our Lives.” Yes, that would be Adderall, Ritalin, and caffeine. The author reports that “college students feel amazing when they take Adderall.” He doesn’t object to the students’ use of prescription stimulants per se, but to the fact that the drugs cause these students to be “artificially interested in topics they otherwise wouldn’t care about.”

So instead of finding their true, authentic selves, they bend their will to ace exams they feel no passion for.

Well, I’m sure all colleges would be happy to allow students to take only courses they are interested in—and, of course, students already know what they are interested in at the time they enroll. But no; it turns out that “young people are meant to be discovering their true interests” while in college. So…wait, what?

This bizarre line of thinking is a wacky combination of Puritanism and New-Age nonsense, which is why it makes no sense and is insulting to boot. The idea that everyone not only has the luxury of discovering their “true interests” and spending their lives engaged in pursuing them (all intrinsically motivated), but also the duty to do so is ridiculous. This is the kind of first-world, made-up problem we ought to be ashamed of even entertaining. I would like to be pointed in the direction of any person, anywhere who never wants or could use some artificial motivation.

Mom, is your baby keeping you up at night? Instead of having that cup of coffee every morning, you might want to re-evaluate this whole parenthood thing.

As a former substance abuse counselor, I’m certainly not advocating the unfettered recreational use of prescription drugs. But the use of caffeine and prescription drugs isn’t really the issue.

One issue is that the authors of these articles want us to stop trying to make ourselves feel better, stop trying to “tolerate a long-term circumstance,” stop trying to make ourselves “feel up to the task.” Instead we should “experience the incongruity” and change our lives. This advice seems doctrinaire, heartless, and wildly unrealistic. What if the long-term circumstance can’t be changed?

Another issue is rampant insensitivity to the lives and experiences of masses of other people who are not like them. What about those who are unemployed, hungry, homeless, abused, enslaved, trafficked, live in the middle of a war zone, or are without the basic necessities we take for granted? Is it OK for them to do whatever they need to do to get through the day—and through whatever unfulfilling, uninteresting, possibly dangerous and/or backbreaking work they may be able to find? Or should they, too, be focused on discovering their true interests and true, authentic selves because settling for less would be a cop out?

A third issue is their attempt to impose their belief system on other people. I was glad to see quite a few commenters call out the author of the Facebook article (as did I) on his assumption of the existence of a true, authentic self. I offered the possibility that one’s true, authentic self might be a caffeine fiend. Several others agreed with me. (One person said his true, authentic self wanted to be someone else.)

When a commenter asked what I would consider “evidence” of what I referred to as the vague and nebulous authentic self, someone immediately suggested he read Candide.

Instead of obsessing over finding our true, authentic selves, we might be better off trying to be kinder to each other, cutting each other more slack, and working a little harder to level the playing field for the people, both in our own neighborhoods and on the other side of the world, who would be more than happy to trade their problems for this imaginary one.

And I will most definitely not be giving up coffee anytime soon.