Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- PART I BREAKDOWNS OF WILL: THE PUZZLE OF AKRASIA
- Part II A BREAKDOWN OF THE WILL: THE COMPONENTS OF INTERTEMPORAL BARGAINING
- PART III THE ULTIMATE BREAKDOWN OF WILL: NOTHING FAILS LIKE SUCCESS
- 9 The Downside of Willpower
- 10 An Efficient Will Undermines Appetite
- 11 The Need to Maintain Appetite Eclipses the Will
- 12 Conclusions
- Notes
- References
- Name Index
- Subject Index
12 - Conclusions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- PART I BREAKDOWNS OF WILL: THE PUZZLE OF AKRASIA
- Part II A BREAKDOWN OF THE WILL: THE COMPONENTS OF INTERTEMPORAL BARGAINING
- PART III THE ULTIMATE BREAKDOWN OF WILL: NOTHING FAILS LIKE SUCCESS
- 9 The Downside of Willpower
- 10 An Efficient Will Undermines Appetite
- 11 The Need to Maintain Appetite Eclipses the Will
- 12 Conclusions
- Notes
- References
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Summary
People's patterns of making self-defeating choices have seemed paradoxical from Plato's time down to the present. A patchwork of lore has accumulated to explain each particular paradox, but every local solution has been inconsistent with the solution that some other piece in the puzzle has seemed to require. As in the harder sciences, increased precision of measurement has revealed the possibility of a more comprehensive solution, which I present under the name picoeconomics (micromicroeconomics).
Choice experiments that were sensitive enough to test the difference between exponential and hyperbolic discount curves provided the necessary advance. Hyperbolic discounting confronts conventional utility theory with the likelihood that the conventional theory was not describing elementary principles of choice, but a higher-order cultural invention that doesn't necessarily operate in all people or in all situations. By demonstrating the basic instability of choice, this finding has promoted the problem of estimating value from a trivial matter of psychometrics into the crucial element of motivational conflict. Preferences that are temporary aren't aberrations anymore, but the starting place for a strategic understanding of functions that used to be thought of as organs: the ego, the will, even the self.
However much it has inconvenienced utility theory, the temporary preference phenomenon finally lets it explain self-defeating behavior. Furthermore, although hyperbolic valuation seems complex when compared with the exponential kind, it fits so many aspects of motivational conflict that it promises to simplify that subject substantially.
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- Information
- Breakdown of Will , pp. 198 - 200Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001