Chapter 7 - Hedonism and Sensory Stimulation

Hedonism

The seeking of pleasure and avoidance of pain. “If it feels good, do it”. Goal objects become incentives because they arouse pleasure or pain

Hobbes

Proposed that all human actions are fundamentally motivated by the desire to obtain pleasure or avoid pain

Spencer

Added an evolutionary lens, arguing that pleasurable behaviors are adaptive and have survival value, while random responses that lead to pain are reduced in probability. The precursor to modern reinforcement theory

Three Categories of Sensory Stimulation

• Beneception: Stimuli that arouse pleasant feelings, such as sweet tastes, pleasant smells, and erotic stimuli

• Nocioception: Stimuli that arouse unpleasant feelings, such as pain, bitter tastes, extreme temperatures, hunger, and nauseating smells

• Neutroception: Stimuli that are hedonically neutral, such as standard vision, hearing, and normal touch

Hedonic Continuum

Proposes that sensations exist on a hedonic continuum ranging from pleasurable to unpleasurable. They argued that this feeling depends on how the sense organs react (e.g., light pressure on a sense organ might feel pleasant, which dull pressure feels unpleasant

Three Properties of Affective Processes that Drive Behavior

• Sign: A positive sign dictates an approach behavior, while a negative sign dictates avoidance

• Intensity: The strength of the preference or aversion, which can be charted in preference tests

• Duration: How long the feeling lasts

Sensory Stimulation as a Direct Motivator

Demonstrates that sensory stimulation by itself is motivating. He found that the mere sensation of taste on the tongue is sufficient to trigger approach or avoidance behaviors

Pain

Serves the fundamental function of telling us when we are injured, which causes us to alter our behavior. A form of nocioception. The experience of pain is highly subjective, there’s no direct relationship between the severity of an injury and the amount of pain a person experiences

Factors that influence how pain is perceived

• Attention and Anxiety: Focusing attention on pain causes you to experience it more intensely

• Gate Control Theory: Higher brain processes act as a gate to control and modulate exactly how much pain information actually reaches the brain

• Pathological Pain: Phantom libm pain prove that pain in not merely the result of stimulating remote pain receptors

• Gender Differences: Women have greater general pain sensitivity