Joe Kable's guest appearances

Joe Kable

Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Jimmy Carter

Gordon Ramsay

Salman Rushdie

Jinho Choi

Joseph Ledoux

Anjan Chatterjee

Robert Frank

Melanie Mitchell

Matt Ridley

Chris Martin

Andy Clark

John Dunne

Dan Reynolds

Fiery Cushman

Molly Crockett

OwlTail

People often choose larger future rewards over smaller immediate ones, but then abandon that choice before the future reward arrives. Examples include starting a diet but then not sticking to it, quitting smoking but then relapsing, and most new year's resolutions. Psychologists often explain such behavior by reference to fundamental limitations in human cognitive systems, such as limited willpower or self-control. I will argue for an alternative explanation, in which the failure to persist toward delayed outcomes arises from a rational reevaluation process regarding temporally uncertain delayed rewards. I will talk about our work showing the critical role of uncertainty in persistence towards future outcomes and examining how different forms of uncertainty are encoded in the brain and affect other neural representations during voluntary persistence. (September 24, 2015)

<p>People often choose larger future rewards over smaller immediate ones, but then abandon that choice before the future reward arrives. Examples include starting a diet but then not sticking to it, quitting smoking but then relapsing, and most new year's resolutions. Psychologists often explain such behavior by reference to fundamental limitations in human cognitive systems, such as limited willpower or self-control. I will argue for an alternative explanation, in which the failure to persist toward delayed outcomes arises from a rational reevaluation process regarding temporally uncertain delayed rewards. I will talk about our work showing the critical role of uncertainty in persistence towards future outcomes and examining how different forms of uncertainty are encoded in the brain and affect other neural representations during voluntary persistence. (September 24, 2015)</p>

Lecture | Joe Kable | Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms of Persistence