In the 21st century much energy is placed on having good health yet more and more people have poor health outcomes and low quality of life. What is not well understood is how external factors such as for example consumerism and internal factors such as neurotransmitters like dopamine in the brain affect our behaviours and the state of our health. Is Dopamine Dulling our Thinking? explores the relationships of what and how these factors affect our behaviours, thinking and quality of life.
Much of our behavioural activity happens well below the level of our awareness yet this will have a profound effect on the quality of our health in the long term. At the heart of consumerism today is this churn of technological products that support whole economies, underpinning economic recoveries by consumer spending. Consumerism is flourishing, it is also influencing behaviours to acquire more, do more, become busy all the time, leading to to a frantic pace of life in a complex, connected world, very difficult to disconnect from. What is self-evident at the same time is that there are significantly more health problems emerging on a global scale. What’s the connection between Dopamine, Behaviour and our Thinking?
Nothing happens by accident. For example, the cycle of relentless spending was engineered in the 1920s as Planned Obsolescence to encourage consumerism, that was an open secret. What is less known is how advertisers and marketers use knowledge that the brain is hardwired via neurotransmitters like Dopamine to be looking, searching and ultimately encourage spending. The effects of these combinations are starting to emerge on society ultimately influencing poor health outcomes.
While it may be the case that dopamine and the amygdala hijack the brain centres and thinking, this knowledge is also being hijacked by industries such as advertising and marketing to manipulate and influence consumer spending. Many people automatically respond to messages without thinking clearly and often get into problems that lead poor health outcomes. Clearly this is a case of acting before thinking that becomes a never ending cycle as a whole range of feelings are stimulated over and over leading to symptoms of withdrawal, chase, depletion, stimulation and exhaustion.
What is Dopamine?
One of the features of brain architecture is neurotransmitters, in particular Dopamine. Dopamine affects our thinking, motivation and seeking behaviours. It coordinates movement of the muscle and when Dopamine is depleted creates rigidity, tremors, Parkinson’s disease and this neuro chemical affects our ability to think clearly. Unpredictability is the key as dopamine is stimulated by unpredictability.
Examples of Dopamine at work include being ‘zoned’ out, automatic behaviours driven by external factors such as bells, whistles, colours, sounds. Research shows that these neurotransmitters function independently in respect to our thinking processes, below the level of our conscious awareness, as part of the automatic system, in turn our thinking processes get hi jacked by chemicals which have deleterious effects on our lives causing addictions if they are not kept in check.
Dopamine and opioids motivate humans to search, for example behaviours such as searching internet, social media, mobile phones, playing poker machines, and used in workplace motivational employee training. Searching for that next stimulating hit for instant gratification can lead to addictive behaviours such as gambling. Dopamine doesn’t care about the reward, it’s focussed on the search continuously and unless kept in balance becomes problematic. As Dopamine operates below the level of cognitive awareness, it is easily stimulated by external factors such as sounds, bells, whistles, and colours and does not evaluate our behaviours. It is up to us to become conscious about our thinking.
Behavioural Management Research – Classical and Operant Conditioning
In the late 1800’s while studying the digestive system based on his research with dogs Pavlov, a physiologist, noted that when his assistant brought food the dogs began to salivate and he hypothesised that it occurred automatically in response to specific stimuli that wasn’t under conscious control. However he quickly realised that this salivary response was not due to an automatic physiology process but rather to a learned response. Pavlov’s discovery of classical conditioning remains one of the most important in psychology’s history forming the basis of what would become behavioural psychology. Similarly Skinner a behaviourist, noted in 1938 that a method of learned behaviours occur through rewards and punishments he coined Operant Conditioning. These behaviours are influenced by the use of reinforcement after the desired response and a link made between behaviour and consequences of behaviour. Skinner believed that it was not necessary to look at internal thought but rather look only at external, observable causes of human behaviour. For example employees in the workplace learn which behaviours will get the pay off, however, when they do not know when the payoff is coming, they will try even harder. (How to Motivate People, by Le Michael Boeuf 1986 p113). Pavlov and Skinner showed that behaviours were learned by introducing consequences, in particular variable consequences when we didn’t know the reward is coming
What is the Link between Dopamine and Thinking?
As discussed Dopamine drives ‘the thrill of the chase’. It creates certain feelings of pleasure which motivate us to repeat these behaviours. Chemicals activated in the brain keep us ‘on the chase’ creating habitual patterns without taking into account whether these behaviours are good or bad for us that can lead to serious addictions.
When these complex activities occur in the brain they can be influenced by external factors driven by ‘old drivers’ in the brain reacting to stimuli. Much of this research is not new however there is little research into the link between these three factors – Dopamine, Learned Behaviours, Conscious Thinking and the effect of external factors influencing our thinking.
Much of this knowledge on conditioning such as Skinner and Pavlov training dogs to press a lever when they heard a sound that becomes associated with food. simply pressed the lever when they heard the sound even when there was no food. These techniques were now being applied in behavioural psychology, selling, training, advertising and gaming sectors.
In other words, when we get hooked on the pleasurable feelings of the chase, they get activated and repeated again and again, however we are not unaware how these factors are in fact stimulate our behaviours automatically, and of course may not be in our best interest. We need to actively intervene by seeing how these external influences impact and influence our behaviours if we wish to extinguish negative behaviours. It is a highly complex area as it is easy to disassociate thinking and feeling.
Research is required into understanding the link between the effects of how Dopamine operates on the level below our awareness, how it influences our behaviours without conscious thinking, develops automatic behaviours often negative, and how external factors affect behaviour and clarity of thinking to dull our thinking processes.
These are highly complex, interrelated issues that require in depth study. However, the benefits to health understanding these thinking processes would significantly improve quality of life.
Mindful Thinking, Agile Thinking
Mindful Meditation has long been used as a tool to help people become aware
of themselves, becoming aware of their behaviours and more conscious in the present moment. These techniques have been used by many Eastern philosophies and religions from the Greek philosopher Socrates who said : Know Thyself.
While we may not have conscious control over our internal systems we can
learn to become more aware of our thinking, our actions, our behaviours, our intentions and thoughts. In this way we can take back control over our behaviours to act more consciously with awareness in making conscious decisions and increasing clarity of thinking.
It is well known we need to develop insights into our behaviours, thinking and intentions. What is less known though outside of the medical establishment is how neurotransmitters like Dopamine play out in our own lives and have a direct result of our thinking.
If we are not aware how Dopamine and the effect of external factors motivate us to seek rewards, then we are like the lab rats in experiments following the lever. It switches on the basal ganglia and lets us know it is running low when you anticipate getting what you want. This translates into why the chase is better than the prize. It lights up in MRI scanner when you get a buzz of excitement. It’s the craving, the desire that drives Dopamine not actually getting the prize.
While we may not have conscious control over our internal systems such as the dopamine loop for pleasure seeking activities and good feelings, we can learn to become more aware of our thinking, our actions, our behaviours, our intentions and thoughts. In this way we can take back control over our behaviours to act more consciously with clarity of thought.
That’s why feeling and emotions are not always our best friends unless we know how to take control of these strong feelings we may not even be aware of their consequences on us. Learning to become more aware, think clearly, aware of both external and internal affects leads to doing more of what we want and better health outcomes.
In Conclusion
To live a better and healthier life takes conscious control over our activities, taking responsibility for our own health choices. We need to train our minds to work with awareness and mindfulness. The effects developed over time will help to decrease the feelings of reward/pleasure seeking behaviours as we are start to connect our thinking to our choices and become aware that external influences are fuelling negative loops. This is where knowledge becomes medicine. Understanding these connections can help us to break these cycles and start choosing what behaviours we want to live.
If we understand when dopamine decreases in the system this activates our motivation to search is simply an event to increase an activity, we can use our thinking processes wisely to make informed choices rather than being driven by automatic behaviours and external factors.
Feelings and emotions can be bad for us if we are not aware of their consequences. Learning Agile Thinking to question intelligently
leads to awareness of our actions and feelings increasing better health
outcomes to minimise dopamine dulling our thinking.
