controlled cognition + willpower
effortful disbelief
Believe things by default, need to use controlled cognition to assess whether it is true/false Descartes: 1. Comprehension 2. Disbelief/belief Spinoza: 1: Comprehension = belief 2. Disbelief
action vs. omission
Killing vs Letting Die → action vs. omission Same situations essentially, but different reactions to both: one is illegal, the other is a constitutional right DLPFC: when people read about negation, ppl have to use cognitive control Active killing activates an automatic moral judgment, letting die requires more of an active judgment
Beta-Delta Model
Mixture of the step function that cares about the present, and exponential function that cares about the future - instincts/habits control decisions in the present - controlled cognition controls decisions in the future
controlled cognition
Thinking that occurs in our conscious awareness, deliberately considering an issue or idea.
strategy: change structure of today
Use capacity for planning to reconstruct the environment to remove temptation
push polling
a polling technique in which the questions are designed to shape the respondent's opinion
confirmation bias
a tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions
learning goals
achievements that are motivated by the desire to enhance one's knowledge and skills * success + failure --> approach
strategy: make temptation hurt
bind temptation with negative stimuli; align immediate self interest with long-term interest
delay of gratification
declining a pleasant activity now in order to get greater pleasure later
Stroop Effect
delay in reaction time when color of words on a test and their meaning differ - reliance on habituated word reading routines that we have used for years
affective forecasting
efforts to predict one's emotional reactions to future events
availability heuristic
estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; taking ease of access as fact of matter - focus on what is available rather than what is harder to retrieve
representativeness heuristic
estimating the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information
What is controlled cognition good for?
flexibility
performance goals
goals framed in terms of performing well in front of others, being judged favorably, and avoiding criticism * success --> approach * failure --> avoid
temporal discounting
in decision making, the greater weight given to the present over the future * exponential discounting is rational, but humans display hyperbolic discounting * Today we make choices about our lives tomorrow. Tomorrow, we'll have changed our minds
reversal learning
learning that a previously rewarded stimulus or response is no longer rewarded
Control is required for negation, but
most of the world struggles to apply cognitive control when it comes to negation
why is willpower hard?
motivation: opportunity costs
strategy: reshape automatic responses
negation is more difficult -- higher rates of choosing the default option
exogneous
outside of you, dictates response to a stimulus
implementation intentions
people's specific plans about where, when, and how they will fulfill a goal
controlled judgment
processing what didn't happen
automatic judgment
processing what happened
endogenous
produced from within -- inside of you, dictating your behaviors unlike having a stimulus in front of you
u-index
proportion of time an individual spends in an unpleasant state
A-not-B error
tendency of 8- to 12-month-olds to search for a hidden object where they previously found it even after they have seen it moved to a new location - Difference between innate mechanisms and learned mechanisms that require controlled cognition to focus attention on an external stimulus/task
future thinking is driven by
the DLPFC: model-based learning, cognitive control
stimulus response learning
the ability to learn to perform a particular behavior when a particular stimulus is present ex. rote memorization of simple multiplication
cognitive load
the amount of mental activity imposed on working memory * more cognitive load = more aligned with stimulus right in front of you
willpower
the self-control strength used to overcome counterproductive impulses to achieve difficult goals
present thinking is driven by
the ventral striatum: model-free reinforcement learning
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)
upper portion of the prefrontal cortex thought to be important in cognitive control * Removal of the DLPFC makes monkeys act like infants in the A not B task
conjunction fallacy
when people think that two events are more likely to occur together than either individual event; probability of the conjunction of two events cannot be higher than each event on its own