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November 1, 2023 - February 8, 2024
the biggest online games have accumulated billions of data points about their players. They know exactly what lights up dopamine, and what turns it off—though game designers are not thinking of these events as dopamine triggers, but simply as “what works.”
So, what do the data tell us about the ideal portion of treasure chests that should contain gems? It turns out tha...
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It’s worth mentioning that there are also H&N pleasures in video games that contribute to their appeal. Many games let you play with friends. The pleasure we get when we socialize for no other reason than the enjoyment of the company of others is an H&N experience. On the other hand, when we get together to accomplish a shared goal, it’s dopaminergic because we’re working toward a better future (even if it’s just capturing the enemy’s base). Video games provide both types of social pleasure.
Americans spend more than $20 billion per year on video games; they spent only half that much on movie tickets in 2016, the biggest U.S. box office year in history.
It’s natural to confuse wanting and liking. It seems obvious that we would want the things that we will like having. That’s how it would work if we were rational creatures, and despite all evidence to the contrary, we persist in thinking that we are rational creatures. But we’re not. Frequently we want things that we don’t like. Our desires can lead us toward things that may destroy our lives, such as drugs, gambling, and other out-of-control behaviors.
The dopamine desire circuit is powerful. It focuses attention, motivates, and thrills. It has a profound influence over the choices we make. Yet it isn’t all-powerful. Addicts get clean. Dieters lose weight. Sometimes we switch off the TV, get off the couch, and go for a run. What kind of circuit in the brain is powerful enough to oppose dopamine? Dopamine is. Dopamine opposing dopamine. The circuit that opposes the desire circuit might be called the dopamine control circuit.
Systems that contain opposing forces are easier to control. That’s why cars have both an accelerator and a brake, and why the brain uses circuits that counter each other.
Impulse without reason is not enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift. —William James
One cool judgment is worth a dozen hasty councils. —Woodrow Wilson
Desire dopamine makes us want things. It is the source of raw desire: give me more. But we’re not at the ungoverned mercy of our desire. We also have a complementary dopamine circuit that calculates what sort of more is worth having. It gives us the ability to construct plans—to strategize and dominate the world around us to get the things we want.
How does a single chemical do both things? Think of rocket fuel that powers the main engines of a spaceship. The same fuel that pushes the rocket forward can be redirected to drive directional thrusters to steer the ship, as well as retrorockets to slow it down. It all depends on the path the fuel takes before it’s ignited—different functions, but all working together to get the spaceship to its destination. In a similar way, dopamine moving through different brain circuits yields different functions, too, and toward a common end: a relentless focus on enhancing the future.
Urges come from dopamine passing through the mesolimbic circuit, which we call the dopamine desire circuit. Calculation and planning—the means of dominating situations—come from the mesocortical ci...
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its purpose is to manage the uncontrolled urges of desire dopamine, to take that raw energy and guide it toward profitable ends. Also, by using abstract concepts and forward-looking strategies, it allows us to gain cont...
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In addition, the dopamine control circuit is the source of imagination. It lets us peer into the future to see the consequences of decisions we might make right now, and thus allows us to choose which future we prefer. Finally, it gives us the ability to plan how to make that imaginary future a reality. Like the desire circuit, which only cares about things we do not have, control dopamine works in the unreal world of the possible. The two circuits begin in the same place, but the desire circuit ends in a part of the brain that triggers excitement and enthusiasm, while the control circuit goes
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desire dopamine is the kid in the back seat shouting for his parents to “Look! Look!” every time he sees a McDonald’s, a toy store, or a puppy on the sidewalk. Control dopamine is the parent at the wheel, hearing each request and considering whether it’s worth stopping for—and deciding what to do if he pulls over. Control dopamine takes the excitement and motivation provided by desire dopamine, evaluates options, selects tools, and plots a strategy to get what it wants.
Dopamine encourages us to maximize our resources by rewarding us when we do so—the act of doing something well, of making our future a better, safer place, gives us a little dopamine “buzz.”
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. —Thomas A. Edison
Success takes years of hard work and so many revisions to the original idea that it’s barely recognizable by the time it gets to market. It’s not enough to just imagine the future. To bring an idea to fruition we must struggle with the uncompromising realities of the physical world. We need not only knowledge but also tenacity. Dopamine, the chemical of future success, is there to deliver.
The feeling of hunger (or the absence of hunger) changed how much the rats valued the pellets, but it did not diminish their willingness to work. Hunger is an H&N phenomenon, an immediate experience, not an anticipatory, dopamine-driven one. Manipulate hunger, or some other sensory experience, and you affect the value of the reward earned through work. But it’s dopamine that makes the work possible at all: no dopamine, no effort.
The ability to put forth effort is dopaminergic. The quality of that effort can be influenced by any number of other factors, but without dopamine, there is no effort at all.
Drugs such as cocaine and amphetamine boost dopamine, and one result is an increase in self-efficacy, often to pathological levels. People who abuse these drugs may confidently take on so many projects that it is impossible to complete them all. Heavy users may even develop grandiose delusions. With no evidence whatsoever they may believe they will write the most brilliant treatise ever produced, or invent a device that will solve the world’s problems.
In the early 1960s, doctors prescribed large amounts of dopamine-boosting amphetamine to promote “cheerfulness, mental alertness, and optimism,” as described by a contemporary advertisement. Most of these prescriptions were written for women, who were twice as likely as men to be prescribed amphetamine to “adjust their mental state.” As one doctor described it, amphetamine allowed them to be “not only capable of performing their duties, but to actually enjoy them.” In other words, if you don’t like cooking or cleaning, it helps to be on speed. But that’s not all. In addition to making
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Most of the time, we mirror the actions of people we’re talking to. If one person touches his face or gestures with his hands, so does the other. But this time it was different. When it comes to dominant and submissive postures, the research participants were more likely to adopt a complementary posture rather than mirror the same posture. Dominance triggered submission, and submission triggered dominance.
Success inspired confidence; confidence produced success.
agentic,
Affiliative relationships,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American poet, wrote: “Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.”
In the control circuit, dopamine drives domination of the environment, not necessarily the people in it. Dopamine wants more, and it doesn’t care how it gets it. Moral or immoral, dominant or submissive, it’s all the same to dopamine, as long as it leads to a better future.
In modern society, submissive behavior is often a sign of elevated social status—think of the strict adherence to manners, the focus on social customs, and, in conversation, the deference to others that is part and parcel of the behavior of what we might call “the elite.” The common name for this behavior is courtesy, a word derived from the word court, because it was the behavior originally adopted by the nobility. By contrast, dominant behavior, representing the opposite of courtesy, may stem from personal insecurity or an imperfect education.
Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon.
Just as desire dopamine facilitates becoming addicted to drugs—chasing the high and receiving less and less dopamine “buzz” from it—some people have so much control dopamine that they become addicted to achievement, but are unable to experience H&N fulfillment.
These individuals exhibit the effects of an imbalance between future-focused dopamine and present-focused H&N neurotransmitters. They flee the emotional and sensory experiences of the present. For them, life is about the future, about improvement, about innovation. Despite the money and even fame that comes from their efforts, they are usually unhappy. No matter how much they do, it’s never enough. The family crest of James Bond, the resourceful, relentless, often ruthless secret agent, contains the motto Orbit Non Sufficit: The World Is Not Enough.
People who live with ADHD are at high risk of addiction, especially adolescents, because of their poorly functioning frontal lobes. Years ago, when the illness was less well understood, doctors and parents were reluctant to give these vulnerable children addictive drugs such as Ritalin and amphetamine. It sounded reasonable: don’t give addictive substances to people at risk for addiction. But rigorous testing showed unambiguously that adolescents who were treated with stimulant drugs were less likely to develop addictions. In fact, those who started the drug at the youngest age and took the
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A massive study involving 700,000 children and adults, including 48,000 with ADHD, found that children with ADHD were 40 percent more likely to be obese, and adults were 70 percent more likely to be obese.
Country of residence did not affect the relationship between ADHD and obesity. There was also no difference between men and women.
Just because we find that people with ADHD are more likely to be obese doesn’t necessarily mean that having ADHD causes obesity. What if it was the other way around? What if being overweight somehow affected the brain in a way that caused ADHD?
biology is not destiny. People whose control-dopamine systems are at one extreme or the other can change. People with ADHD can improve dramatically with medication, psychotherapy, and sometimes just time.
I like to win, but more than anything, I can’t stand this idea of losing. Because to me, losing means death. —Lance Armstrong
Why would this legendary athlete cheat, this man of steely determination who never gave up, even in the face of cancer? Oddly enough, he may have cheated because he was so successful. Dopamine doesn’t come equipped with a conscience. Rather, it is a source of cunning fed by desire. When it’s revved up, it suppresses feelings of guilt, which is an H&N emotion. It is capable of inspiring honorable effort, but also deceit and even violence in pursuit of the things it wants.
Dopamine pursues more, not morality; to dopamine, force and fraud are nothing more than tools.
Winning competitions, along with eating and having sex, is essential for evolutionary success. In fact, it’s winning competitions that gives us access to food and reproductive partners. As a result, it’s not surprising that winning competitions releases dopamine.
The surge of dopamine feels good, but it’s different from a surge of H&N pleasure, which is a surge of satisfaction. And that difference is key: the dopamine surge triggered by winning leaves us wanting more.
It’s not enough to win the Tour de France. It’s not enough to win it twice or even seven times. Winning is never enough. Nothing is ever enough for dopamine. It is the pursuit that matters, and the victory, but there is no finish line, and never will be. Winning, like drugs, can be addictive.
Yet the pleasurable rush that never satisfies is only half of the equation. The other half is the dopamine crash that feels so awful.
No one likes to lose, but it’s ten times as bad after you win.
Winners cheat for the same reason that drug addicts take drugs. The rush feels great, and withdrawal feels terrible. Both know that their behavior has the potential to destroy their lives, but the desire circuit doesn’t care. It only wants more. More drugs, more success.
Violence is sometimes the result of dysfunction or pathology. But most of the time, violence is a choice—a coercive and calculated way to get the thing you want.
Violence comes in two flavors: planned violence inflicted for a purpose, and spontaneous violence set off by passion. Violence for a purpose, designed to get something the perpetrator desires, might be as prosaic as mugging someone on the street, or as earth-shattering as launching a global war. The emphasis in each case is on effective strategy, planned in advance, sometimes in excruciating detail, and always aimed at gaining resources or control. This is dopamine-driven aggression, and it tends to have a low emotional content. It is cold violence.
Emotion is almost always a liability that interferes with calculated action. In fact, a common strategy of domination is to stimulate emotional reactions in one’s adversary to interfere with his ability to execute his plans. In sports it comes in the form of trash talk on the basketball court or at the line of scrimmage.
Aggression driven by passion is a lashing out at provocation. This is not a calculated action orchestrated by the dopamine control circuit—just the opposite. When passion drives aggression in response to provocation, dopamine is suppressed by the H&N circuits, and people who display this type of aggression usually degrade their future well-being. They can end up injured, arrested, or simply embarrassed.
