George Ainslie
Biographic Data
| ID | 341402 |
|---|---|
| NAME | George Ainslie |
| GIVEN NAMES | George |
| FAMILY NAME | Ainslie |
| SIGNATURE | AINSLIE G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Coatesville Veterans Affairs Medical Center |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9201-9144 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 114 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Elster’s eclecticism in analyzing emotion
Fine examination of our accumulated cultural knowledge is especially helpful in studying the emotions, which are only tangentially accessible to experimental manipulation. Here I use the six properties of emotions that Elster has summarized to suggest how they show a need for changes in the science of motivation. The apparent adaptive purpose of emotions lies in their action tendencies – what they add to the cold calculation of advantage. Subject…
Intertemporal Bargaining in Addiction
The debate between disease models of addiction and moral or voluntarist models has been endless, and often echoes the equally endless debate between determinism and free will. I suggest here that part of the problem comes from how we picture the function of motivation in self-control. Quantitative experiments in both humans and non-humans have shown that delayed reward loses its effectiveness in proportion to its delay. The resulting instability …
Disorders of Volition
Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, and psychiatrists examine the will and its pathologies from theoretical and empirical perspectives, offering a conceptual overview and discussing schizophrenia, depression, prefrontal lobe damage, and substance abuse as disorders of volition. Science tries to understand human action from two perspectives, the cognitive and the volitional. The volitional approach, in contrast to the more dominant "outs…
The picoeconomic approach to addictions
The branch of behavioral economics called “picoeconomics” (Ainslie ) models behavior as the competition between successive motivational states within the individual. This approach is particularly well suited for investigating addiction and recovery from addiction. We begin by outlining behavioral findings that provide the foundation for picoeconomics. Next we discuss strategies of self-control available to the individual guarding against her own …
The fragility of cooperation
Breakdown of Will
Ainslie argues that our responses to the threat of our own inconsistency determine the basic fabric of human culture. He suggests that individuals are more like populations of bargaining agents than like the hierarchical command structures envisaged by cognitive psychologists. The forces that create and constrain these populations help us understand so much that is puzzling in human action and interaction: from addictions and other self-defeating…
Breakdown of Will
Picoeconomics
A Utility-Maximizing Mechanism for Vicarious Reward
Julian Simon correctly argues that people discount what happens to their future selves in a curve more bowed than an exponential curve. His radical assertion that we relate to other people in the same way that we relate to future selves is also supportable, but his equation of social distance with temporal distance is an oversimplification. To show that empathic satisfactions can be treated like conventional economic goods, it is necessary to exp…
Choice and Consequence
Rationality and the emotions; a picoeconomic approach
Behavioural economics II
A behavioral economic approach to the defense mechanisms
Specious reward
Specious reward
A behavioral economic approach to the defense mechanisms
Behavioural economics II
Rationality and the emotions; a picoeconomic approach
Choice and Consequence
Picoeconomics
A Utility-Maximizing Mechanism for Vicarious Reward
Julian Simon correctly argues that people discount what happens to their future selves in a curve more bowed than an exponential curve. His radical assertion that we relate to other people in the same way that we relate to future selves is also supportable, but his equation of social distance with temporal distance is an oversimplification. To show that empathic satisfactions can be treated like conventional economic goods, it is necessary to exp…
Breakdown of Will
Ainslie argues that our responses to the threat of our own inconsistency determine the basic fabric of human culture. He suggests that individuals are more like populations of bargaining agents than like the hierarchical command structures envisaged by cognitive psychologists. The forces that create and constrain these populations help us understand so much that is puzzling in human action and interaction: from addictions and other self-defeating…
Breakdown of Will
The fragility of cooperation
Disorders of Volition
Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, and psychiatrists examine the will and its pathologies from theoretical and empirical perspectives, offering a conceptual overview and discussing schizophrenia, depression, prefrontal lobe damage, and substance abuse as disorders of volition. Science tries to understand human action from two perspectives, the cognitive and the volitional. The volitional approach, in contrast to the more dominant "outs…
The picoeconomic approach to addictions
The branch of behavioral economics called “picoeconomics” (Ainslie ) models behavior as the competition between successive motivational states within the individual. This approach is particularly well suited for investigating addiction and recovery from addiction. We begin by outlining behavioral findings that provide the foundation for picoeconomics. Next we discuss strategies of self-control available to the individual guarding against her own …
Intertemporal Bargaining in Addiction
The debate between disease models of addiction and moral or voluntarist models has been endless, and often echoes the equally endless debate between determinism and free will. I suggest here that part of the problem comes from how we picture the function of motivation in self-control. Quantitative experiments in both humans and non-humans have shown that delayed reward loses its effectiveness in proportion to its delay. The resulting instability …
Elster’s eclecticism in analyzing emotion
Fine examination of our accumulated cultural knowledge is especially helpful in studying the emotions, which are only tangentially accessible to experimental manipulation. Here I use the six properties of emotions that Elster has summarized to suggest how they show a need for changes in the science of motivation. The apparent adaptive purpose of emotions lies in their action tendencies – what they add to the cold calculation of advantage. Subject…
Psychology (12 works) · Economics (10 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Cognitive psychology (7 works) · Positive economics (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (5 works) · Microeconomics (5 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Action (physics) (3 works)