OUT OF CONTROL - VISCERAL INFLUENCES ON BEHAVIOR

Understanding discrepancies between behavior and perceived self-intere st has been one of the major, but largely untackled, theoretical chall enges confronting decision theory from its infancy to the present. Peo ple often act against their self-interest in full knowledge that they are doing so; they experience a feeling of being ''out of control.'' T his paper attributes this phenomenon to the operation of ''visceral fa ctors,'' which include drive states such as hunger, thirst and sexual desire, moods and emotions, physical pain, and craving for a drug one is addicted to. The defining characteristics of visceral factors are, first, a direct hedonic impact (which is usually negative), and second , an effect on the relative desirability of different goods and action s. The largely aversive experience of hunger, for example, affects the desirability of eating, but also of other activities such as sex. Lik ewise, fear and pain are both aversive, and both increase the desirabi lity of withdrawal behaviors. The visceral factor perspective has two central premises: First, immediately experienced visceral factors have a disproportionate effect on behavior and tend to ''crowd out'' virtu ally all goals other than that of mitigating the visceral factor. Seco nd, people underweigh, or even ignore, visceral factors that they will experience in the future, have experienced in the past, or that are e xperienced by other people. The paper details these two assumptions, t hen shows how they can help to explain a wide range of phenomena: impu lsivity and self-control, drug addiction, various anomalies concerning sexual behavior, the effect of vividness on decision making, and cert ain phenomena relating to motivation and action. (C) 1996 Academic Pre ss, Inc.