Uncertainty as wealth

Emotional satisfaction cannot be increased above "normal"-the same normal as the caveman's-for any length of time, but the wealth and consumption style of modern civilization may systematically reduce some people's satisfaction below normal. Hyperbolic discounting of delayed, expected rewards suggests causes for this reduction in humans, and for how we often respond to it, while conventional exponential discounting does not. Hyperbolic discounting has been well demonstrated by four experimental routes; and there is moderate evidence that it motivates impulse control by an intertemporal bargaining technique, proposed as the mechanism of willpower. A theoretical model is described in which emotion is a reward-dependent behavior rather than a stimulus-bound respondent. Positive emotion is then limited by premature satiation of the appetite for it, a relentless process motivated by the impatience that is described by hyperbolic discount curves. This satiation can be restrained only by using adequately rare and unpredictable occasions as cues for the emotion. Willpower not only is helpless against the urge for premature satiation, but it exacerbates the satiation problem by making anticipation more thorough. The result is an asymmetrical contest between systematic attempts to vouchsafe satisfying events and impetuous attempts to put them at risk. Despite their adversarial relationship, both may to some extent be in the person's long range interest. Published by Elsevier B.V.