An experiment in pain and pleasure.
Post published by David DiSalvo on Feb 07, 2015 in Neuronarrative
Life is lived in loops. Here’s one you may know:
To this stinging realization we can add another, and—apologies ahead of time—it’s also a bit of a pill: Researchers have shown (link is external) that not only does stress predispose us to wanting pleasure, it makes our desire for it drastically out of proportion to our enjoyment. The reward never reaches the level of our want.
To demonstrate this, researchers recruited two groups of study participants—all of whom were chocolate lovers—for some fun with water and sweets. (The chocolate lover part will make sense in a moment.)
Members of the first group were made to experience stress by holding their hands in ice water (a well-tested means of inducing stress in psych research) while they were observed by the researchers. Those in the other group placed their hands in lukewarm water. After a little while, both groups were told to squeeze a handgrip that, they were instructed, would give them a nice stout whiff of chocolate.
As you might predict, the stressed group squeezed considerably harder for their chocolate—three times harder, in fact. Having received their dose of reward, the groups were then asked to rate their satisfaction. You might think that the group desiring the chocolate with three times the intensity would have rated it proportionally higher, but in the end the groups’ ratings were no different.
Using stress to spike desire did nothing to increase enjoyment.
Quoting Tobias Brosch (link is external), professor of psychology at the University of Geneva and one of the study’s authors: “Stress seems to flip a switch in our functioning: If a stressed person encounters an image or a sound associated with a pleasant object, this may drive them to invest an inordinate amount of effort to obtain it.”
Which explains why stress is a consistent trigger in everything from failing to stay on diets to addiction relapses. Whatever the object of our desire, feeling stress makes us think we need it like we need air to breath.
The same dynamic has held true in animal studies (link is external) with our friends the rats. It seems that if you get rats hooked on cocaine, and then get them clean from their addiction, you can induce a rapid relapse back into addiction by stressing them out with icy cold water. The same principle applies to us: Stress is the trigger that makes us want “it” more.
One takeaway: Keep a close eye on how you are reacting to stress—and the earlier the better. Your best chance of affecting your "loop" is well before you've reached the point of smoldering hot desire.
- We experience stress.
- To relieve the stress we do something pleasurable.
- When that pleasure exhausts itself, we experience more stress.
To this stinging realization we can add another, and—apologies ahead of time—it’s also a bit of a pill: Researchers have shown (link is external) that not only does stress predispose us to wanting pleasure, it makes our desire for it drastically out of proportion to our enjoyment. The reward never reaches the level of our want.
To demonstrate this, researchers recruited two groups of study participants—all of whom were chocolate lovers—for some fun with water and sweets. (The chocolate lover part will make sense in a moment.)
Members of the first group were made to experience stress by holding their hands in ice water (a well-tested means of inducing stress in psych research) while they were observed by the researchers. Those in the other group placed their hands in lukewarm water. After a little while, both groups were told to squeeze a handgrip that, they were instructed, would give them a nice stout whiff of chocolate.
As you might predict, the stressed group squeezed considerably harder for their chocolate—three times harder, in fact. Having received their dose of reward, the groups were then asked to rate their satisfaction. You might think that the group desiring the chocolate with three times the intensity would have rated it proportionally higher, but in the end the groups’ ratings were no different.
Using stress to spike desire did nothing to increase enjoyment.
Quoting Tobias Brosch (link is external), professor of psychology at the University of Geneva and one of the study’s authors: “Stress seems to flip a switch in our functioning: If a stressed person encounters an image or a sound associated with a pleasant object, this may drive them to invest an inordinate amount of effort to obtain it.”
Which explains why stress is a consistent trigger in everything from failing to stay on diets to addiction relapses. Whatever the object of our desire, feeling stress makes us think we need it like we need air to breath.
The same dynamic has held true in animal studies (link is external) with our friends the rats. It seems that if you get rats hooked on cocaine, and then get them clean from their addiction, you can induce a rapid relapse back into addiction by stressing them out with icy cold water. The same principle applies to us: Stress is the trigger that makes us want “it” more.
One takeaway: Keep a close eye on how you are reacting to stress—and the earlier the better. Your best chance of affecting your "loop" is well before you've reached the point of smoldering hot desire.
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