The Ash Twins Blog

Loewenstein (2000) writes,

Visceral factors have also traditionally been seen as an erratic and unpredictable influence on behavior, but again the popular view distorts reality. Certainly, as highlighted above, feelings fluctuate, often rapidly. Their changeability should not be confused, however, with  unpredictability. In fact, both the determinants of visceral factors and their influence on behavior are highly systematic, whereas cognitive deliberations, which are commonly seen as the source of stability in behavior, are a major source of unpredictability. Thus, cocaine-addicted rats that are given free access to cocaine simply self-administer the drug repeatedly until they collapse from exhaustion or die. The behavior of human addicts is far more complex than rodents’ because human drug-takers cognitively deliberate the long-term consequences of drug-taking. They binge, go “cold turkey,” relapse, and engage in elaborate self-control strategies and self-deception. As Roy F. Baumeister and Kristin L. Sommer (1997 p. 77) write, “consciousness is not an essential mediator of human behavior because behavior can occur in elaborate, lawful, and predictable patterns without consciousness. Instead, … the function of consciousness is precisely the opposite: it overrides those lawful and predictable patterns.”