Intermittent Reinforcement & Clinging to Hope

Although originally thought to be mainly involved as a function of reward, research by Wolfram Schultz has shown that dopamine more prevalently figures in the anticipation of reward, and further, that it works in forming the impetus behind our determination to do the work we believe will help us to get at our goal.

Curiously, the biggest spike in dopamine comes when the possibility of reward is 50/50. Uncertainty is very alluring to us and redoubles our determination to persist. 

This finding hearkens back to B.F. Skinner and his pigeons, which I wrote about before.

In another of Skinner's experiments, he conditioned birds to get their food when they pecked a certain number of times. When they were accustomed to this, he changed his system to dispense the food randomly, not at all what they had been used to. While his control-group of unconditioned pigeons would quit after roughly 300 futile pecks, these expectant birds persevered longer - some would peck over 10,000 times in hopes of reward! It took them a very long time to give up.

This hopeful, pigeon-like behavior is easily seen in gamblers. If they were to receive a consistent rate of return on every bet placed, the excitement would be gone. The chance that maybe their next bet would result in the big win is what is seducing.

I cannot help but see the glaring application to my marriage. During the first 2 months of hormonal rampage we were like love-birds. After that, it was the perseverance of the pigeon hoping for reward - in my case, affection in any form.

It was the rare occasions of reward that kept me hanging on and trying. Never mind that I was completely blinded to the fact that affection towards me was utterly unnatural for him. Filled with anticipation and hope, I kept doing my best to please him in what must have surely been nothing but nauseatingly obsequious behavior. Until finally, like an exhausted pigeon, I gave up after my ten-thousands of times.

Motivational Influences on Perception

Further research into a slightly different aspect of the confirmation bias was carried out by Emily Balcetis and David Dunning of Cornell University.* 

They did numerous experiments to test the hypothesis that people see what they are motivated to see. One such experiment was as follows: Subjects were presented with 2 beverages, one tasty, one disgusting-looking. They were told that the one they would drink depended on whatever image flashed on the computer screen before them for only a fraction of a second. This image was ambiguous, it could be interpreted as either a horse or a seal (or in another experiment, a B or a 13). The subjects were not told what the object they would see would be, but rather were told in general terms that it would be either a farm animal or a sea animal. Different groups were assigned differently, but the results were consistent in this and all their experiments.

The participants' motivations to avoid the disgusting drink and get the desired juice biased their perceptions. In cases where the farm animal meant they would have the juice, the vast majority saw a horse. If the farm animal meant they were to have the disgusting beverage, the vast majority saw a seal.  

This is quite an eye-opening finding for those of us who have been duped by cults, namely, that we saw what we were motivated to see. I surely spent many years giving way to the bias of wishful thinking, which Dunning describes as, "the motivation to think of one’s self and one’s prospects in a favorable way, to believe that one will achieve positive outcomes while being able to avoid aversive ones, and to enhance self-worth and esteem." The implications are wide, and can be thought of in terms of so-called answered prayers, and the concept of faith and the afterlife in general. "God will take care of everything!" we blithely believed.

Not only that, but we, as humans, also tend to be less questioning of messages that we feel are favorable for us. This has obvious implications regarding cult literature. Dunning goes on to say, "Other work in motivated reasoning has shown that information consistent with a favored conclusion is held to a lower standard of scrutiny than information consistent with an unwanted one." In my case, cult literature definitely received very little scrutiny before acceptance. If I had questioned, well, that would be considered the sin of "doubt." I was motivated to believe.

This tendency not only affects information we receive at the time, but it also influences our evaluation of ourselves and our futures, and helps us to make sense of our pasts, providing an internal impetus for the self-serving confabulation and rationalization of our memories.

*See What You Want to See: Motivational Influences on Visual Perception

Scarcity

In TFI we were required to report our statistics at the end of each month. This meant filling in a 2 page report form that included places for total number of pieces of literature distributed, "souls saved" (meaning the number of people who prayed with us to receive Jesus, no matter how shallow or insincere this was), and in the heyday of Flirty Fishing, girls had to fill out the number of men they had sex with and the number of times. 

Simple psychology dictates that such reporting would breed a sense of competition and a tendency to want to inflate the numbers reported to "look good." Of course, that was commonplace.  

This reporting also added a sense of pressure to life, knowing that we would have to report how we did that month. Add to that the financial pressure - we also had to report our total income, our tithe amount, and the breakdown of where our additional financial gifts were to go each month.

All the while, we were not to take "System" jobs, but to remain "God's dropped out children," put simply, beggars and prostitutes.

The constant struggle for survival, especially in the Third World countries in which we were instructed to live, created a sense of scarcity.

Insight into the psychological effects of this struggle can be found in Cara Feinberg's summary of recent research on scarcity, the depletion of willpower, and the practical use of nudges in creating desirable behavior. When life is made up of a scramble for survival, mental processes are affected. "Scarcity steals mental capacity wherever it occurs—from the hungry, to the lonely, to the time-strapped, to the poor."

So much "mental bandwidth" is used battling for survival - raising funds, meeting all sorts of proselytizing quotas, sticking to the daily schedule - that the mind is compromised. To quote from the article linked above, 

"If the mind is focused on one thing, other abilities and skills—attention, self-control, and long-term planning—often suffer. Like a computer running multiple programs, Mullainathan and Shafir explain, our mental processors begin to slow down. We don’t lose any inherent capacities, just the ability to access the full complement ordinarily available for use."

As I wrote before (Neural Atrophy), people who live in a state of chronic subordination experience a decrease in new brain cell growth. It is as if our minds were attacked from all sides: the struggle for survival, constant subordination to capricious leaders, and the ever-present readings of the Mo Letters. 

I am beginning to see why the idea of leaving the group took so long to appear.

Financial Fleecing

Another aspect to finances in the COG/TFI was that each home was supposed to be completely self-supporting in addition to their required tithing. This wasn't so hard in the early days, when we were relatively unknown and people seemed more trusting of random strangers asking for donations on street corners.

As the years passed, however, TFI had to get more creative. "Flirty Fishing" opened up a new and bigger method of raising funds. We women were instructed to, in effect, give men sex, proselytize them, and receive in return a "donation for our work." This process, religious persuasion aside, can be called nothing if not prostitution - and it paid well.

Naturally, some women found this harder than others. I enjoyed the chance to go out and meet people, have a nice meal, dance, socialize. As for sex, I was completely inexperienced and self-conscious. Perhaps in a subconscious rejection of any mental association with prostitution or the dehumanization of the men I met, I could never refer to them as "fish" or "kings" as they were called in the publications and therefore by group members.

As awkward as this behavior was, the hardest part was dealing with my leaders in the Homes regarding the money brought in. During my early days of Flirty Fishing, I was publicly shamed by the leader for being the one in the Home that brought in the least money for a certain month. I was deeply mortified. 

A few years later, I felt so much pressure from another particularly avaricious leader that just the thought of coming back from a trip abroad where I had gone to meet one of my "friends" without a substantial amount of money filled me with such fear that I actually wrote the man a note after we had parted and left it at the hotel front desk for him. This, after his kindness and generosity to me, as well as his tolerance of my "witnessing." He had even given me money for shopping which I used to buy the items on the list given me by my leaders. (Far be it from me to buy anything for myself.) Gentleman that he was, he found me and gave me more money. That was the last time I ever heard from him.

My fear of facing the leader with whom I lived was greater than the fear of offending my friend. The leader won, and I lost a friend.

For about 8 years I had a another dear friend who was a lawyer. He was very generous in his care for me and his gifts to the group. Among other kindnesses, he would take me grocery shopping for our big Home each week. If, perchance, we bumped into that greedy leader in the store, my friend would offer to pay for his shopping, too. Whereby Mr. Greedy would pick up all kinds of expensive items he normally wouldn't buy as we made our way to the cashier. Yes, that annoyed me, but I was in no position to correct my "elder in the Lord."

Misplaced loyalty, indeed.

Diet and Polar Bears

When I first met the COG at the tender age of 16, I had been anorexic for about 9 months. I don't really know how I looked, due to the skewed nature of the self-perception of the anorexic, but I would guess I was somewhat skeletal.

Joining the cult gave me a sense of purpose for my life, and a distraction from whatever brought on that eating disorder. My extreme dedication led me to spend any spare moment reading the bible and the various publications of the group - as new members ("babes in Christ") were supposed to do. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby." (1 Peter 2:2)

As well, since "bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness is profitable unto all men" (I Timothy 4:8), I felt compelled to stop exercising and instead spend my time studying.

You can imagine the physical consequences of those decisions.

Anorexia had robbed my body of its natural appetite and natural control. I had lost the sense of proper eating. I ended up, obviously, eating too much for the minute amount of physical activity I was doing, and I gained weight - ending up weighing more than when I decided to stop eating at the beginning of my anorexia.

At age 18, when I moved into the COG colony (as the communal home was called), the problem only worsened with the diet of cheap food and limited, old, poor quality fruit and vegetables. I gained even more, until I was about 10 kilos overweight, which was very upsetting for this former anorexic.

Try as I might, I could not get that weight off. As the years passed, the more I thought about cutting back on eating, the more I didn't cut back on eating. Focusing on dieting always backfired.

It was when I became pregnant at age 23 that the breakthrough came. I finally stopped thinking about losing weight, and changed my focus to obtaining the optimal nutrition for my unborn child. I counted protein grams, and was very mindful of my intake of vitamins and minerals, and I went for daily walks. All this, for the purpose of growing a healthy baby.

The result? When I brought my 4.5kg, 2 day old baby home from the hospital I weighed less than when I had conceived. Changing focus was all that was needed.

Recently I learned of the research done by psychologist Daniel Wegner on "ironic processes." Inspired by Dostoevsky's words, "Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute," Wegner observed that experimental subjects told not to think of polar bears for 5 minutes, true to Dostoevsky's idea, thought of them, on average, more than once per minute.

So it went with my dieting attempts. Trying to think of not eating, made me think of eating, and it followed that trying not to eat, made me eat.

One of Wegner's suggestions for overcoming this tendency was exactly what I had stumbled on - to focus on something else. If our minds are busy with something else, there is no room for the thought we are trying to avoid to enter.

"Tithing"

Many religious groups practice tithing, the rule of giving 10 percent of one's income to the group. The COG also required tithing as a requisite for full-time membership - the "highest calling" for God's chosen people which I aspired to. 

But the COG went way further than requiring 10 percent. There were always extra percentages added on, for the maintenance of leadership, printing of publications, and the like. Additionally, if we wanted to give above and beyond that, we were encouraged to do so.

We also read appeals from people around the world who were doing more humanitarian type work in the COG, and these pulled at our heart-strings, succeeding in getting us to send them money. As well, I had a friend who was doing, I felt, noble work with helping orphans, so I gave an extra 5% to her - of course, via the group. This brought our tithe to around 20%, which I would say was the average that we gave over the years that we actually had income in the group.

Most of our time in the group was spent with only the pittances that we got from begging, oh, I mean, "witnessing" (proselytizing). Naturally, all of that went to the group. We received daily meals and a roof over our heads, which was considered sufficient. "We were the blessed and chosen people of God," after all, so who would complain? "Our treasures were being laid up in heaven." Matthew 6:20 

Clothing was usually in the form of donations - often used clothing. Indeed, we were often clothed in ill-fitting, ill-matched, and unflattering clothes. 

The obvious trouble with this short-sighted financial policy is that now, as we grow older, we have no retirement funds. The fanciful feeling in the group was that we would "serve the Lord" until we died, and the group would continue to grow and provide a safe haven for us. Reality is that the young people left in droves, many older people left as well, and the COG is in no way a viable place for the care of the elderly. 

Those that left the group were left high and dry: no savings, no social network, nothing. We were forced to start from $0 and support our (generally) large families, and save for retirement or else come up with a way to support ourselves when we grow old and frail.

Of course, the money given to that nonsense was a very unfortunate waste. If it had instead been placed in a retirement fund, surely we would feel more secure about our futures.

On the positive side, living in poverty for so many years has certainly taught me, and my older children who experienced it more than the younger ones, how to live very frugally; so frugal that saving money and spending as little as possible is second nature to me. Sadly, though, it seems to be the case of too-little, too-late.

Future Prospects

MRIs have shown that the area of the brain that is activated when subjects think of their future selves is the same area that is activated when they think of strangers. Without conscious effort, we each have a physiological disconnect from the older "us."

Further, we tend to think of our future selves as more favorable versions of our present selves. We idealize our futures - how self-disciplined we will be, how healthy we will be, how secure our positions will be - without envisioning the unknowns (How can we?) that pop up in daily life that derail even our most well-made plans. 

This idea is promulgated by the media in the popularity of stories about, for example, very fit elderly people, as if this were some sort of state that all of us could partake of, if we would just (fill in the blank with whatever is being promoted): exercise more, eat raw foods, abstain from vices, etc. This results in an availability cascade of information that feeds an unrealistic image.

We could even fall prey to this bias by sabotaging our goals, whatever they may be, by telling ourselves we'll do better the next day. "Tomorrow I will..." and make up for today's lapse. But tomorrow we will still be ourselves and subject to the same randomness that we had to deal with today.

This inherent tendency to be disconnected from our future selves may account for, among many other things, why people have dusty workout equipment in their houses. Bought with the best of intentions of regular use, reality came into play and the dust gathered, illustrating that our future selves are more likely to be like our present, procrastinating, disorganized selves, than what we might prefer to imagine.

(Perhaps some businesses use this tendency to their advantage, such as those who sell gym memberships to all those New Year's resolution makers with their unrealistic ideas of their year ahead.)

In my case, for years, virtually afraid to say "no," I overloaded myself continually. Due to my optimistic appraisal of what I would be able to accomplish in the future (even the next hour or day), I allowed leaders to give me work, yea, I volunteered for more work than would be physically possible for me to do. Enter stress and all its accompanying physical and mental ramifications, and final nervous breakdowns.

I wonder what things that I should do today that I prefer to push off onto that nebulous future me? Or conversely, what undesirable things will I give myself permission to do today that I think my future self will not do, or perhaps be so virtuous as to make up for?