You Can’t Always Want What You Like
Dr. Laurie Santos, with guests Paul Bloom, Kent Berridge, and Hedy Kober, explores why our brains struggle to want what we like (Type 2 fun) due to a "wanting" vs. "liking" disconnect. They discuss strategies like mindfulness and savoring to bridge this gap for a happier life.
Deep Dive Analysis
13 Topic Outline
The Paradox of Not Wanting What We Like
Differentiating Between Type 1 and Type 2 Fun
The Psychology Behind Chosen Suffering and Deeper Satisfaction
Flow State: Engaging Activities That Make Time Fly
The Brain's Design Flaw: Wanting vs. Liking
Kent Berridge's Research on Brain's Liking Hotspots
Dopamine's True Role: Driving Wanting, Not Pleasure
The Disconnect Between Cognitive Wanting and Incentive Salience
Why Automatic Craving is Absent for Type 2 Rewards
Hedy Kober's Strategies for Self-Regulation
Urge-Surfing: Mindfully Managing Cravings for Type 1 Rewards
Savoring: Boosting Desire for Type 2 Rewards
Applying Mindfulness to Cultivate Type 2 Pleasures
9 Key Concepts
Type 1 Fun
This refers to fun that is simply fun, involving no effort or pain whatsoever. It feels immediately nice and includes activities like eating hot fudge sundaes or drinking margaritas.
Type 2 Fun
This is a form of fun that doesn't immediately feel good when starting the activity, often involving effort, discomfort, or challenge. Despite the initial difficulty, people often really like these activities anyway, such as hard workouts or frustrating puzzles.
Chosen Suffering
This concept describes adversity or discomfort that becomes pleasurable when one willingly decides to engage in it. The element of choice is critical; without it, these experiences are merely torture or misery.
Flow
A psychological state where an individual becomes so deeply involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter, leading to a loss of track of time and self. It occurs in a 'sweet spot' where the activity is challenging enough to be engaging but not so difficult as to be stressful.
Hedonic Hotspots
These are surprisingly small, clustered neural regions in the brain that are responsible for the experience of sensory pleasure, or 'liking.' Research found that natural selection did not build a lot of neural real estate for this function.
Incentive Salience
This is an automatic, often unconscious form of 'wanting' or craving, driven by dopamine, that compels individuals to take action towards a reward. It can lead to moving toward a goal before consciously deciding if it's desired.
Cognitive Wanting
This refers to the conscious desire for a particular outcome or goal, which is the everyday experience of wanting that people typically notice. It often involves planning and deliberate effort to act on.
Urge-Surfing
A mindfulness practice for managing cravings where one intentionally and non-judgmentally pays attention to the present moment, allowing a sense of wanting to be present without acting on it. It treats urges as temporary waves that will crest and subside.
Savoring
A mindfulness process that involves actively and intentionally thinking about the positive aspects and benefits of an effortful but rewarding activity. This practice helps to boost both cognitive and automatic 'wanting' for Type 2 rewards.
8 Questions Answered
Our brains have a 'bug' in their reward circuitry, leading to a disconnect between 'wanting' and 'liking.' We often don't automatically 'want' what we intellectually 'like' or know is good for us.
Type 1 fun is immediately pleasurable and requires no effort (e.g., hot fudge sundaes), while Type 2 fun doesn't feel good initially but provides deeper satisfaction or meaning after effort (e.g., a hard workout, solving a puzzle).
We pursue difficult activities, especially 'chosen suffering,' because they can bolster our identity, give us a sense of meaning and purpose, and take up mental bandwidth, relieving us from worries.
Flow is a state of deep engagement in an activity where time seems to disappear, and one forgets oneself. Activities that induce flow, often Type 2 fun requiring skill and effort, are associated with greater happiness than passive pleasures.
Dopamine is primarily responsible for 'wanting' or motivating us to seek out rewards (incentive salience), not for the experience of pleasure or 'liking' itself.
Our brains have a powerful, automatic 'incentive salience' system (driven by dopamine) for Type 1 sensory rewards, which can compel us to act on cravings even when our conscious 'cognitive wanting' system wants to resist.
Yes, through practices like mindful savoring, intentionally focusing on the positive aspects and benefits of an effortful activity can increase both cognitive and automatic 'incentive salience' wanting for it.
Mindfulness, specifically urge-surfing, involves non-judgmentally observing cravings as temporary experiences without acting on them. Additionally, mindfully focusing on the long-term downsides of a Type 1 reward can help reduce its 'wanting.'
10 Actionable Insights
1. Practice Urge-Surfing
When experiencing a craving for an easy ’type 1’ reward, mindfully notice the feeling without acting on it, recognizing that the urge is temporary and will pass. This helps manage automatic wanting for things you don’t cognitively desire.
2. Savor Type 2 Rewards
To increase automatic wanting for effortful ’type 2’ rewards, mindfully attend to and actively think about their positive aspects and benefits, boosting both cognitive and incentive salience wanting.
3. Mindfully Contextualize Difficulty
When facing a difficult activity, use mindfulness to recognize that difficulty is only one part of the experience, and connect the activity to your broader values for a more complete and rewarding perspective.
4. Focus on Reward Downsides
To reduce the automatic ‘wanting’ for a type 1 reward, intentionally focus on its long-term negative consequences or how it conflicts with your values.
5. Visualize Post-Activity Joy
When struggling with motivation for a difficult activity, vividly imagine and focus on the positive feelings, satisfaction, and sense of accomplishment you will experience at the end.
6. Seek More Flow Activities
To increase overall happiness and deeper satisfaction, prioritize engaging in flow-inducing activities that require a sweet spot of skill and effort over easy, low-effort ’type 1’ rewards.
7. Minimize Distractions for Flow
To achieve a state of flow and fully engage in effortful activities, proactively shut down potential distractions like social media, email, and texts.
8. Embrace Chosen Suffering
Engage in difficult or uncomfortable activities only when you willingly decide to do so, as this element of choice is critical for them to feel pleasurable or meaningful.
9. Bundle Exercise with Fun
Pair your exercise routine with a second fun and somewhat tempting experience, such as watching a favorite TV show, to make the activity more appealing and easier to start.
10. Make Workouts Frictionless
To reduce the startup cost and make morning workouts easier, have exercise equipment readily available in your house and lay out gym clothes the night before.
8 Key Quotes
The problem isn't that you can't always get what you want. It's that you can't always want what you like.
Dr. Laurie Santos
It's critical that you choose to do it. These things, in the absence of choice, are just terrible. They're tortured or misery.
Paul Bloom
Liking, in a sense, is a luxury. But even though liking might be an evolutionary luxury, there was a second function that natural selection decided was definitely non-negotiable. Wanting.
Kent Berridge
Dopamine is a mechanism by which we get motivated to go after the good sensory rewards of life.
Kent Berridge
We end up moving toward a thing before we've even had a chance to ask whether it's something we should have cognitively wanted in the first place.
Dr. Laurie Santos
Our dumb brains have no automatic method for going after all the effortful, flow-inducing pleasures in life. The ones that, as Paul Bloom pointed out, often make life worth living.
Dr. Laurie Santos
Mindfulness to manage cravings is one just knowing. This is a temporary experience. That you have the ability to just notice it as it is, right?
Hedy Kober
I think that all else being equal, I would be a cigarette smoker. My brain really loves nicotine.
Hedy Kober
2 Protocols
Urge-Surfing for Cravings
Hedy Kober- Allow the sense of wanting (craving) to just be there, without acting on it.
- Mindfully notice that your dopamine system is 'freaking out' or experiencing a craving.
- Recognize that this feeling is temporary and will not last forever.
- Deal with the feeling for a little while, understanding that it will eventually crest and come back down, typically within 15 to 20 minutes.
Mindful Savoring to Increase Desire for Type 2 Rewards
Hedy Kober- Intentionally and actively think about the positive aspects of the effortful but rewarding activity you have in mind.
- Focus on the deeper rewards and meaning you get from the activity, such as satisfaction, pride, or consistency with your values.
- Mindfully notice the immediate benefits during and after the activity, like feeling light during exercise or time flying by.