Some of the issues and empirical results are painlessly expressed in this 11 minute video from RSA animate: Dan Pink on drive.
Interesting. The studies described in the first 5 minutes look like an empirical validation of my long-professed notion that “what pushes you forward, holds you back”.
I’m rather curious, because it’s implied these effects occur even when the thing pushing people forward is something quite positive, as opposed to a fear of something negative (e.g., losing the possible reward). But I don’t imagine that the studies included any sort of control for how participants represented the situation to themselves from a prospect-theory point of view.
The video is only the tip of the iceberg of the science in lukeprog’s post though; yesterday I wrote a 3400 word missive for the Mindhackers’ Guild exploring a narrow subset of the practical applications of just a couple of bits of the neural math described here. It very nicely ties together a whole bunch of stuff that was basically personal and/or Guild folklore, and offers us some new research directions for applied motivation.
For example: prospect theory appears to imply that if you want to reinforce a new positive behavior, you need to not expect yourself to perform the behavior. Otherwise, performing the behavior will not result in positive reinforcement (after all, it’s just what you expected!), and failing to perform the behavior will be punishing, due to the perception of loss. So, you end up literally training yourself (in a behaviorist sort of way) to extinction, just by the way you frame your thinking about your goal.
(I’ve already been teaching a similar idea for years, but I missed the connection to reinforcement and the application to encouraging new behaviors. So I’m testing that application on myself right now.)
For example: prospect theory appears to imply that if you want to reinforce a new positive behavior, you need to not expect yourself to perform the behavior.
How would this work, assuming I don’t have a hidden benefactor to surprise me? Do you just pick a simple first step and tell yourself “aw, I’m never going to succeed, but I’m gonna try anyway” until it sticks?
I don’t see how I can simultaneously want to build a habit of doing X, not expect to do X, but still actually do X, and not just once, but regularly. Isn’t this explicit doublethink? I mean, either I believe my realistic estimate (but then I expect it) or I screw up my ability to model my own behavior (e.g. by having bad calibration or introspection).
Also, wouldn’t being overly deterministic about an unwanted habit help extinguish it? If I predict I will be wasting time on reddit in 10 minutes, 20 minutes, … and so on, all day, then no matter what happens, I win. That doesn’t seem right.
I don’t see how I can simultaneously want to build a habit of doing X, not expect to do X, but still actually do X, and not just once, but regularly. Isn’t this explicit doublethink? I mean, either I believe my realistic estimate (but then I expect it) or I screw up my ability to model my own behavior (e.g. by having bad calibration or introspection).
This is a language problem: I’m using “expect” in the prospect theory sense here, not the probabilistic one. It’s about emotional investment in the outcome, not anticipating probability of occurrence.
You could say that it’s a distinction between “should” expectations and “is” expectations. Prospect theory—or at the very least this application of it—is about “should” expectations, as it’s the basis for establishing a decision frame , which includes a notion of investment/cost as well as expected utility.
The hack I’m experimenting with is setting a perceptual frame where not doing the desired action is perceived as zero loss, and doing the action is perceived as a cheap gain. (In contrast to having an expectation that the default should be that I do the action, in which case doing it is perceive as zero-gain, and failing to do it is a loss.)
I don’t have any long-term experience with the reinforcement aspect yet, but my early results so far (1 behavior, 3 instances in two days) is that the framing is fun. It feels like “You mean I get points just for doing that little thing? Cool!”
(The trickiest part was that I had to first mind-hack away the mental blocks that made it seem low-status to me to think this way.)
Some of the issues and empirical results are painlessly expressed in this 11 minute video from RSA animate: Dan Pink on drive.
Interesting. The studies described in the first 5 minutes look like an empirical validation of my long-professed notion that “what pushes you forward, holds you back”.
I’m rather curious, because it’s implied these effects occur even when the thing pushing people forward is something quite positive, as opposed to a fear of something negative (e.g., losing the possible reward). But I don’t imagine that the studies included any sort of control for how participants represented the situation to themselves from a prospect-theory point of view.
The video is only the tip of the iceberg of the science in lukeprog’s post though; yesterday I wrote a 3400 word missive for the Mindhackers’ Guild exploring a narrow subset of the practical applications of just a couple of bits of the neural math described here. It very nicely ties together a whole bunch of stuff that was basically personal and/or Guild folklore, and offers us some new research directions for applied motivation.
For example: prospect theory appears to imply that if you want to reinforce a new positive behavior, you need to not expect yourself to perform the behavior. Otherwise, performing the behavior will not result in positive reinforcement (after all, it’s just what you expected!), and failing to perform the behavior will be punishing, due to the perception of loss. So, you end up literally training yourself (in a behaviorist sort of way) to extinction, just by the way you frame your thinking about your goal.
(I’ve already been teaching a similar idea for years, but I missed the connection to reinforcement and the application to encouraging new behaviors. So I’m testing that application on myself right now.)
How would this work, assuming I don’t have a hidden benefactor to surprise me? Do you just pick a simple first step and tell yourself “aw, I’m never going to succeed, but I’m gonna try anyway” until it sticks?
I don’t see how I can simultaneously want to build a habit of doing X, not expect to do X, but still actually do X, and not just once, but regularly. Isn’t this explicit doublethink? I mean, either I believe my realistic estimate (but then I expect it) or I screw up my ability to model my own behavior (e.g. by having bad calibration or introspection).
Also, wouldn’t being overly deterministic about an unwanted habit help extinguish it? If I predict I will be wasting time on reddit in 10 minutes, 20 minutes, … and so on, all day, then no matter what happens, I win. That doesn’t seem right.
This is a language problem: I’m using “expect” in the prospect theory sense here, not the probabilistic one. It’s about emotional investment in the outcome, not anticipating probability of occurrence.
You could say that it’s a distinction between “should” expectations and “is” expectations. Prospect theory—or at the very least this application of it—is about “should” expectations, as it’s the basis for establishing a decision frame , which includes a notion of investment/cost as well as expected utility.
The hack I’m experimenting with is setting a perceptual frame where not doing the desired action is perceived as zero loss, and doing the action is perceived as a cheap gain. (In contrast to having an expectation that the default should be that I do the action, in which case doing it is perceive as zero-gain, and failing to do it is a loss.)
I don’t have any long-term experience with the reinforcement aspect yet, but my early results so far (1 behavior, 3 instances in two days) is that the framing is fun. It feels like “You mean I get points just for doing that little thing? Cool!”
(The trickiest part was that I had to first mind-hack away the mental blocks that made it seem low-status to me to think this way.)