Skip to main content

Cheap dopamine and dreaming

 

A golden fish is caught by an old man and speaks to him in a human voice, saying: “As long as you have desires, I will fulfill them all, but once you have no more desires, I will set you free and you will become free.” Jokes aside, scientific research shows that fantasies and desires do not increase the likelihood of achieving a goal, but also decrease it. When you visualize yourself achieving a goal, feel a pleasant pleasure, joy of success, and get a dopamine rush for free, it actually leads to failure. The brain perceives it as achieved, and the free dopamine reduces energy. It is easy to get hooked on cheap dopamine, which is why the industry of “motivation” or “desires” and media like “The Secret” thrive.

Research shows that fantasies lower motivation, reduce activity toward achieving a goal, and decrease the likelihood of achieving it. Students who dream of passing an exam do worse on it. Those who dream of losing weight lose less. Those who dream of their dream job receive fewer job offers and earn less. In fact, intrusive daydreaming is a problem, not an exercise. Intrusive fantasizing increases dissatisfaction with what you have and reduces the quality of life and can lead to impulsive actions (such as intrusive sexual fantasies provoking harassment).

Productive ways of thinking about the future include positive expectations (what you expect from yourself, how you will act in a particular situation), simulating the process (when you visualize the process of achieving a goal realistically and probabilistically), and negative fantasy (when we imagine what could go wrong on the path to achieving a goal and think of ways to overcome all possible obstacles).

Focusing on the process and thinking about obstacles is undoubtedly more difficult and less pleasant. However, by reducing impulsive desires and decreasing fantasies, you will act more rationally and effectively. As Buddha wrote, “Whoever in this world overcomes this unhappy, hard-to-conquer desire, to him sorrows end, like water drops slipping from a lotus leaf.” Or, to put it simply, cheap pleasure kills motivation and joy.

Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy Journal of Experimental Social Psychology Volume 47, Issue 4, July 2011, Pages 719–729

Self-Regulation of Goal Setting: Turning Free Fantasies About the Future Into Binding Goals Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2001, Vol. 80, №5, 736–753

Expectation, Fantasy, and Weight Loss: Is the Impact of Positive Thinking Always Positive? Cognitive Therapy and Research, Vol. 15, №2, 1991

High Risk Sexual Fantasies and Sexual Offending: An Overview of Fundamentals and Interventions Sexual Offending: Theory, Research, and Prevention, 2021, Vol. 16, Article e5291,

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Smoke kills

We worry about the quality of the air outside, but we forget that we spend 90% of our time indoors and often worsen the air quality ourselves. Scientists develop a concept of exposome — a combination of various factors affecting us. What we exhale, spray, and burn inside the room can bizarrely interact, forming a sea of toxins. Once our ancestors were sick and died prematurely because they drowned in black and swallowed soot. Now we have an opportunity to breathe high-quality air. Here are 10 ways we harm ourselves. Incense sticks. Incense sticks, when burning, form multiple incomplete combustion products that increase the risk of lung damage (COPD, lung cancer, respiratory tract cancers). Their regular use is associated with an increased risk of diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and cognitive impairment. 2. Gas stoves. Like any open flame in a closed room, they are harmful (an increase in levels of nitrogen oxide, PM2.5 benzene particles, etc.). Thus, 12.7% of cases of childho...
Read more

False invincibility (invulnerability).

False invincibility (invulnerability). American economist Samuel Peltzman discovered and described the cognitive bias of false invincibility, which states that people are more likely to take risks when they feel more protected (Peltzman Effect or risk compensation). This phenomenon manifests itself in various areas of life: when people begin to trust a salesperson, they are inclined to buy things they didn’t plan to buy; a person carrying a weapon behaves more recklessly, provoking aggression; even when wearing a mask, we tend to ignore illness symptoms and neglect basic hygiene rules, thereby increasing the risk of infection; a soldier wearing body armor moves less carefully and safely. A similar effect is observed when we protect ourselves from the sun. The effectiveness of sunscreen is calculated for ideal conditions, but in reality, people apply it unevenly, rarely reapply it, and so on. Most importantly, when using sunscreen, people spend much more time in the sun than they would ...
Read more