Your Brain on Dread
If you are facing something what will certainly be painful, do you want to put it off or do you want to get it over with? Suppose you know it will be more painful now and less painful if you put it off? Surely, you will want to put it off. At least that’s what economists would say is the rational choice.
Economists and psychologists are always fond of showing that people don’t act rationally. In a recent study, people had just that kind of option. Most of the participants preferred to shorten the waiting period, but 28% (extreme dreaders) were willing to take more pain just to avoid waiting.
In this study, Neurobiology Of Dread, the researchers looked at why. Gregory Berns, MD, PhD, used fMRI to find the brain modules that were involved in dread. (Published in the May 5, 2006 issue of the journal Science) They found that the modules were parts of the pain network linked to attention. The modules that control fear or anxiety were not involved. The extreme dreaders, in particular, had more activity in the attentional modules. And the activity developed earlier in the trials than it did with the others.
Dr. Berns concluded that what makes dread intolerable is the attention devoted to the prospective pain and the response to it. Thus, dread is quire different from anxiety. Dr. Berns: “The key factor seems to be that extreme dreaders devoted more attention toward the part of their body that was about to be shocked.”
From that standpoint, the choices are not unreasonable. They just appear irrational to people who are not fully informed about the costs. Here is an explanation that economists could understand: A company is threatened by lawsuits. They are offered a settlement. They believe they could go to court and get of with a much lighter settlement. In this case, the economist will point out that litigation will require attention in the form of legal advice and actions to comply with it. (I skip other issues here because attention is the issue of interest.) The cost of attention (here in legal fees) may outweigh the gain of the delay.
Economists, like accountants, know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. If you don’t notice a price on attention, you may think it is free. People who hire you don’t think that way because your attention is what they are buying.
Dr. Berns reads the results as suggesting that dread (as in waiting for the dentist) can probably be reduced by diverting attention. Mothers already know this. Zen practitioners know this. The key concept here is what I call focus form. Focus form is the skill of targeting your focus on a project that you will later he pleased to have focused on. It is a skill you may want to practice. It has uses beyond dentistry.
Economists and psychologists are always fond of showing that people don’t act rationally. In a recent study, people had just that kind of option. Most of the participants preferred to shorten the waiting period, but 28% (extreme dreaders) were willing to take more pain just to avoid waiting.
In this study, Neurobiology Of Dread, the researchers looked at why. Gregory Berns, MD, PhD, used fMRI to find the brain modules that were involved in dread. (Published in the May 5, 2006 issue of the journal Science) They found that the modules were parts of the pain network linked to attention. The modules that control fear or anxiety were not involved. The extreme dreaders, in particular, had more activity in the attentional modules. And the activity developed earlier in the trials than it did with the others.
Dr. Berns concluded that what makes dread intolerable is the attention devoted to the prospective pain and the response to it. Thus, dread is quire different from anxiety. Dr. Berns: “The key factor seems to be that extreme dreaders devoted more attention toward the part of their body that was about to be shocked.”
From that standpoint, the choices are not unreasonable. They just appear irrational to people who are not fully informed about the costs. Here is an explanation that economists could understand: A company is threatened by lawsuits. They are offered a settlement. They believe they could go to court and get of with a much lighter settlement. In this case, the economist will point out that litigation will require attention in the form of legal advice and actions to comply with it. (I skip other issues here because attention is the issue of interest.) The cost of attention (here in legal fees) may outweigh the gain of the delay.
Economists, like accountants, know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. If you don’t notice a price on attention, you may think it is free. People who hire you don’t think that way because your attention is what they are buying.
Dr. Berns reads the results as suggesting that dread (as in waiting for the dentist) can probably be reduced by diverting attention. Mothers already know this. Zen practitioners know this. The key concept here is what I call focus form. Focus form is the skill of targeting your focus on a project that you will later he pleased to have focused on. It is a skill you may want to practice. It has uses beyond dentistry.
posted by Selby Evans at 12:46 PM
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