Ainslie George
116A Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Coatesville and Temple Medical School, 19320, Coatesville, PA, USA
Behav Processes. 2003 Oct 31;64(3):369-385. doi: 10.1016/s0376-6357(03)00138-4.
Emotional satisfaction cannot be increased above "normal"-the same normal as the caveman's-for any length of time, but the wealth and consumption style of modern civilization may systematically reduce some people's satisfaction below normal. Hyperbolic discounting of delayed, expected rewards suggests causes for this reduction in humans, and for how we often respond to it, while conventional exponential discounting does not. Hyperbolic discounting has been well demonstrated by four experimental routes; and there is moderate evidence that it motivates impulse control by an intertemporal bargaining technique, proposed as the mechanism of willpower.A theoretical model is described in which emotion is a reward-dependent behavior rather than a stimulus-bound respondent. Positive emotion is then limited by premature satiation of the appetite for it, a relentless process motivated by the impatience that is described by hyperbolic discount curves. This satiation can be restrained only by using adequately rare and unpredictable occasions as cues for the emotion. Willpower not only is helpless against the urge for premature satiation, but it exacerbates the satiation problem by making anticipation more thorough. The result is an asymmetrical contest between systematic attempts to vouchsafe satisfying events and impetuous attempts to put them at risk. Despite their adversarial relationship, both may to some extent be in the person's long range interest.
情感满足无法在任何时长内提升至“正常”水平之上——这一正常水平与穴居人的相同——但现代文明的财富与消费方式可能会系统性地将一些人的满足感降至正常水平以下。对延迟的预期回报进行双曲线贴现揭示了人类出现这种满足感降低的原因，以及我们对此的常见应对方式，而传统的指数贴现则无法做到这一点。双曲线贴现已通过四条实验路径得到充分证明；并且有适度的证据表明，它通过一种跨期讨价还价技巧来激发冲动控制，这种技巧被认为是意志力的机制。本文描述了一个理论模型，其中情感是一种依赖奖励的行为，而非受刺激驱动的反应。积极情感随后会因对其的过早满足而受到限制，这是一个由双曲线贴现曲线所描述的不耐烦情绪驱动的无情过程。这种满足感只能通过将足够罕见且不可预测的场合用作情感的线索来加以抑制。意志力不仅对过早满足的冲动无能为力，而且还会因使预期更加彻底而加剧满足感问题。结果是，在确保令人满意的事件的系统性尝试与鲁莽地使其面临风险的尝试之间展开了一场不对称的较量。尽管它们处于对抗关系，但两者在某种程度上可能都符合个人的长远利益。
