7. C. M. Atance and D. K. O’Neill, “Planning in 3-Year-Olds: A Reflection of the Future Self?” in The Self in Time: Developmental Perspectives, ed. C. Moore and K. Lemmon (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001); and J. B. Benson, “The Development of Planning: It’s About Time,” in Friedman and Scholnick, Developmental Psychology of Planning.
8. Although children begin to talk about the future at about two years, they don’t seem to have a full understanding of it until about age four. See D. J. Povinelli and B. B. Simon, “Young Children’s Understanding of Briefly Versus Extremely Delayed Images of the Self: Emergence of the Autobiographical Stance,” Developmental Psychology 34: 188–94 (1998); and K. Nelson, “Finding One’s Self in Time,” in The Self Across Psychology: Self-Recognition, Self-Awareness, and the Self Concept, ed. J. G. Snodgrass and R. L. Thompson (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1997), 103–16.
9. C. A. Banyas, “Evolution and Phylogenetic History of the Frontal Lobes,” in The Human Frontal Lobes, ed. B. L. Miller and J. L. Cummings (New York: Guilford Press, 1999), 83–106.
10. Phineas apparently took the rod with him wherever he went for the rest of his life and would probably be pleased that both it and his skull ended up on permanent display at Harvard’s Warren Anthropological Museum.
11. Modern authors cite the Gage case as evidence for the importance of the frontal lobe, but this is not the way people thought about the incident when it happened. See M. B. Macmillan, “A Wonderful Journey Through Skull and Brains: The Travels of Mr. Gage’s Tamping Iron,” Brain and Cognition 5: 67–107 (1986).
12. M. B. Macmillan, “Phineas Gage’s Contribution to Brain Surgery,” Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 5: 56–77 (1996).
13. S. M. Weingarten, “Psychosurgery,” in Miller and Cummings, Human Frontal Lobes, 446–60.
14. D. R. Weinberger et al., “Neural Mechanisms of Future-Oriented Processes,” in Haith et al., Development of Future Oriented Processes, 221–42.
15. J. M. Fuster, The Prefrontal Cortex: Anatomy, Physiology, and Neuropsychology of the Frontal Lobe (New York: Lippincott-Raven, 1997), 160–61.
16. A. K. MacLeod and M. L. Cropley, “Anxiety, Depression, and the Anticipation of Future Positive and Negative Experiences,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 105: 286–89 (1996).
17. M. A. Wheeler, D. T. Stuss, and E. Tulving, “Toward a General Theory of Episodic Memory: The Frontal Lobes and Autonoetic Consciousness,” Psychological Bulletin 121: 331–54 (1997).
18. F. T. Melges, “Identity and Temporal Perspective,” in Cognitive Models of Psychological Time, ed. R. A. Block (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1990), 255–66.
19. P. Faglioni, “The Frontal Lobes,” in The Handbook of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, ed. G. Denes and L. Pizzamiglio (East Sussex, U.K.: Psychology Press, 1999), 525–69.
20. J. M. Fuster, “Cognitive Functions of the Frontal Lobes,” in Miller and Cummings, Human Frontal Lobes, 187–95.
21. E. Tulving, “Memory and Consciousness,” Canadian Psychology 26: 1–12 (1985). The same case is described extensively under the pseudonym “K.C.” in E. Tulving et al., “Priming of Semantic Autobiographical Knowledge: A Case Study of Retrograde Amnesia,” Brain and Cognition 8: 3–20 (1988).
22. Tulving, “Memory and Consciousness.”
23. R. Dass, Be Here Now (New York: Crown, 1971).
24. L. A. Jason et al., “Time Orientation: Past, Present, and Future Perceptions,” Psychological Reports 64: 1199–1205 (1989).
25. E. Klinger and W. M. Cox, “Dimensions of Thought Flow in Everyday Life,” Imagination, Cognition, and Personality 72: 105–28 (1987–88); and E. Klinger, “On Living Tomorrow Today: The Quality of Inner Life as a Function of Goal Expectations,” in Psychology of Future Orientation, ed. Z. Zaleski (Lublin, Poland: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL, 1994), 97–106.
26. J. L. Singer, Daydreaming and Fantasy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); E. Klinger, Daydreaming: Using Waking Fantasy and Imagery for Self-Knowledge and Creativity (Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1990); G. Oettingen, Psychologie des Zukunftdenkens [On the Psychology of Future Thought] (Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe, 1997).
27. G. F. Loewenstein and D. Prelec, “Preferences for Sequences of Outcomes,” Psychological Review 100: 91–108 (1993). See also G. Loewenstein, “Anticipation and the Valuation of Delayed Consumption,” Economy Journal 97: 666–84 (1987); and J. Elster and G. F. Loewenstein, “Utility from Memory and Anticipation,” in Choice Over Time, ed. G. F. Loewenstein and J. Elster (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992), 213–34.
28. G. Oettingen and D. Mayer, “The Motivating Function of Thinking About the Future: Expectations Versus Fantasies,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83: 1198–1212 (2002).
29. A. Tversky and D. Kahneman, “Availability: A Heuristic for Judgment Frequency and Probability,” Cognitive Psychology 5: 207–32 (1973).
30. N. Weinstein, “Unrealistic Optimism About Future Life Events,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39: 806–20 (1980).
31. P. Brickman, D. Coates, and R. J. Janoff-Bulman, “Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36: 917–27 (1978).
32. E. C. Chang, K. Asakawa, and L. J. Sanna, “Cultural Variations in Optimistic and Pessimistic Bias: Do Easterners Really Expect the Worst and Westerners Really Expect the Best When Predicting Future Life Events?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81: 476–91 (2001).
33. J. M. Burger and M. L. Palmer, “Changes in and Generalization of Unrealistic Optimism Following Experiences with Stressful Events: Reactions to the 1989 California Earthquake,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 18: 39–43 (1992).
34. H. E. Stiegelis et al., “Cognitive Adaptation: A Comparison of Cancer Patients and Healthy References,” British Journal of Health Psychology 8: 303–18 (2003).
35. A. Arntz, M. Van Eck, and P. J. de Jong, “Unpredictable Sudden Increases in Intensity of Pain and Acquired Fear,” Journal of Psychophysiology 6: 54–64 (1992).
36. Speaking of electric shock, this is probably a good time to mention that psychological experiments such as these are always performed according to the strict ethical guidelines of the American Psychological Association and must be approved by university committees before they are implemented. Those who participate do so voluntarily, are always fully informed of any risks the study may pose to their health or happiness, and are given the opportunity to withdraw at any time without fear of penalty. If people are given any false information in the course of an experiment, they are told the truth when the experiment is over. In short, we’re really very nice people.
37. M. Miceli and C. Castelfranchi, “The Mind and the Future: The (Negative) Power of Expectations,” Theory and Psychology 12: 335–66 (2002).
38. J. N. Norem, “Pessimism: Accentuating the Positive Possibilities,” in Virtue, Vice, and Personality: The Complexity of Behavior, ed. E. C. Chang and L. J. Sanna (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2003), 91–104; J. K. Norem and N. Cantor, “Defensive Pessimism: Harnessing Anxiety as Motivation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51: 1208–17 (1986).
39. A. Bandura, “Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change,” Psychological Review 84: 191–215 (1977); and A. Bandura, “Self-Efficacy: Mechanism in Human Agency,” American Psychologist 37: 122–47 (1982).
40. M. E. P. Seligman, Helplessness: On Depression, Development, and Death (San Francisco: Freeman, 1975).
41. E. Langer and J. Rodin, “The Effect of Choice and Enhanced Personal Responsibility for the Aged: A Field Experiment in an Institutional Setting,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 34: 191–98 (1976); and J. Rodin and E. J. Langer, “Long-Term Effects of a Control-Relevant Intervention with the Institutional Aged,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35: 897–902 (1977).
42. R. Schulz and B. H. Hanusa, “Long-Term Effects of Control and Pr
edictability-Enhancing Interventions: Findings and Ethical Issues,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36: 1202–12 (1978).
43. E. J. Langer, “The Illusion of Control,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 32: 311–28 (1975).
44. Ibid.
45. D. S. Dunn and T. D. Wilson, “When the Stakes Are High: A Limit to the Illusion of Control Effect,” Social Cognition 8: 305–23 (1991).
46. L. H. Strickland, R. J. Lewicki, and A. M. Katz, “Temporal Orientation and Perceived Control as Determinants of Risk Taking,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 2: 143–51 (1966).
47. Dunn and Wilson, “When the Stakes Are High.”
48. S. Gollin et al., “The Illusion of Control Among Depressed Patients,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 88: 454–57 (1979).
49. L. B. Alloy and L. Y. Abramson, “Judgment of Contingency in Depressed and Nondepressed Students: Sadder but Wiser?” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 108: 441–85 (1979). For a contrary view, see D. Dunning and A. L. Story, “Depression, Realism and the Overconfidence Effect: Are the Sadder Wiser When Predicting Future Actions and Events?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 61: 521–32 (1991); and R. M. Msetfi et al., “Depressive Realism and Outcome Density Bias in Contingency Judgments: The Effect of the Context and Intertrial Interval,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 134: 10–22 (2005).
50. S. E. Taylor and J. D. Brown, “Illusion and Well-Being: A Social-Psychological Perspective on Mental Health,” Psychological Bulletin 103: 193–210 (1988).
Chapter 2: The View from in Here
1. N. L. Segal, Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us About Human Behavior (New York: Dutton, 1999).
2. N. Angier, “Joined for Life, and Living Life to the Full,” New York Times, 23 December 1997, F1.
3. A. D. Dreger, “The Limits of Individuality: Ritual and Sacrifice in the Lives and Medical Treatment of Conjoined Twins,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 29: 1–29 (1998).
4. Ibid. Since this paper was published, at least one pair of adult conjoined twins sought separation and died during surgery. “A Lost Surgical Gamble,” New York Times, 9 July 2003, 20.
5. J. R. Searle, Mind, Language, and Society: Philosophy in the Real World (New York: Basic Books, 1998).
6. Subjective states can be defined only in terms of their objective antecedents or other subjective states, but the same is true for physical objects. If we were not allowed to define a physical object (Marshmallow Fluf) in terms of the subjective states it brought about (“It’s soft, gooey, and sweet”) or in terms of any other physical object (“It’s made from corn syrup, sugar syrup, vanilla flavoring, and egg whites”), we could not define it. All definitions are achieved by comparing the thing we wish to define with things that inhabit the same ontological category (e.g., physical things to physical things) or by mapping them onto things in a different ontological category (e.g., physical things to subjective states). No one has yet discovered a third way.
7. R. D. Lane et al., “Neuroanatomical Correlates of Pleasant and Unpleasant Emotion,” Neuropsychologia 35: 1437–44 (1997).
8. C. Osgood, G. J. Suci, and P. H. Tannenbaum, The Measurement of Meaning (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1957). The typical finding is that words differ on three dimensions: evaluation (good or bad); activity (active or passive); and potency (strong or weak). So psychologists talk about a word’s E-ness, A-ness, and P-ness. Say these terms aloud and then tell me that scientists have no sense of humor.
9. T. Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Philosophical Review 83: 435–50 (1974).
10. See A. Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle 4 (1744), in The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, ed. H. W. Boynton (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1903).
11. S. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, vol. 1 of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1930; London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1953), 75–76.
12. B. Pascal, “Pensees,” in Pensees, ed. W. F. Trotter (1660; New York: Dutton, 1908).
13. R. Nozick, The Examined Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 102.
14. J. S. Mill, “Utilitarianism” (1863), in On Liberty, the Subjection of Women and Utilitarianism, in The Basic Writings of John Stuart Mill, ed. D. E. Miller (New York: Modern Library, 2002).
15. R. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
16. Nozick, The Examined Life, p. 111. Nozick’s “happiness machine” problem is popular among academics, who generally fail to consider three things. First, who says that no one would want to be hooked up? The world is full of people who want happiness and don’t care one bit about whether it is “well deserved.” Second, those who claim that they would not agree to be hooked up may already be hooked up. After all, the deal is that you forget your previous decision. Third, no one can really answer this question because it requires them to imagine a future state in which they do not know the very thing they are currently contemplating. See E. B. Royzman, K. W. Cassidy, and J. Baron, “ ‘I Know, You Know’: Epistemic Egocentrism in Children and Adults,” Review of General Psychology 7: 38–65 (2003).
17. D. M. MacMahon, “From the Happiness of Virtue to the Virtue of Happiness: 400 BC–AD 1780,” Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 133: 5–17 (2004).
18. Ibid.
19. For some discussions of the distinction between moral and emotional happiness, all of which take a position contrary to mine, see D. W. Hudson, Happiness and the Limits of Satisfaction (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996); M. Kingwell, Better Living: In Pursuit of Happiness from Plato to Prozac (Toronto: Viking, 1998); and E. Telfer, Happiness (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980).
20. N. Block, “Begging the Question Against Phenomenal Consciousness,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 15: 205–6 (1992).
21. J. W. Schooler and T. Y. Engstler-Schooler, “Verbal Overshadowing of Visual Memories: Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid,” Cognitive Psychology 22: 36–71 (1990.)
22. G. W. McConkie and D. Zola, “Is Visual Information Integrated in Successive Fixations in Reading?,” Perception and Psychophysics 25: 221–24 (1979).
23. D. J. Simons and D. T. Levin, “Change Blindness,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 1: 261–67 (1997).
24. M. R. Beck, B. L. Angelone, and D. T. Levin, “Knowledge About the Probability of Change Affects Change Detection Performance,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 30: 778–91 (2004).
25. D. J. Simons and D. T. Levin, “Failure to Detect Changes to People in a Real-World Interaction,” Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 5: 644–49 (1998).
26. R. A. Rensink, J. K. O’Regan, and J. J. Clark, “To See or Not to See: The Need for Attention to Perceive Changes in Scenes,” Psychological Science 8: 368–73 (1997).
27. “Hats Off to the Amazing Hondo,” www.hondomagic.com/html/a_little_magic.htm.
28. B. Fischoff, “Perceived Informativeness of Facts,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 3: 349–58 (1977).
29. A. Parducci, Happiness, Pleasure, and Judgment: The Contextual Theory and Its Applications (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995).
30. E. Shackleton, South (1959; New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), 192.
Chapter 3: Outside Looking In
1. J. LeDoux, The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
2. R. B. Zajonc, “Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences,” American Psychologist 35: 151–75 (1980); R. B. Zajonc, “On the Primacy of Affect,” American Psychologist 39: 117–23 (1984); and “Emotions,” in The Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, and G. Lindzey, 4th ed., vol. 1 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998), 591–632.
3. S. Schachter and J. Singer, “Cognitive, Social and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State,” Psychological Rev
iew 69: 379–99 (1962).
4. D. G. Dutton and A. P. Aron, “Some Evidence for Heightened Sexual Attraction Under Conditions of High Anxiety,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 30: 510–17 (1974).
5. It is also interesting to note that the mere act of identifying an emotion can sometimes eliminate it. See A. R. Hariri, S. Y. Bookheimer, and J. C. Mazziotta, “Modulating Emotional Response: Effects of a Neocortical Network on the Limbic System,” NeuroReport 11: 43–48 (2000); and M. D. Lieberman et al., “Two Captains, One Ship: A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Approach to Disrupting Automatic Affective Processes” (unpublished manuscript, UCLA, 2003).
6. G. Greene, The End of the Affair (New York: Viking Press, 1951), 29.
7. R. A. Dienstbier and P. C. Munter, “Cheating as a Function of the Labeling of Natural Arousal,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 17: 208–13 (1971).
8. M. P. Zanna and J. Cooper, “Dissonance and the Pill: An Attribution Approach to Studying the Arousal Properties of Dissonance,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 29: 703–9 (1974).
9. D. C. Dennett, Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/MIT Press, 1981), 218.
10. J. W. Schooler, “Re-representing Consciousness: Dissociations Between Consciousness and Meta-Consciousness,” Trends in Cognitive Science 6: 339–44 (2002).
11. L. Weiskrantz, Blindsight (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
12. A. Cowey and P. Stoerig, “The Neurobiology of Blindsight,” Trends in Neuroscience 14: 140–45 (1991).
13. E. J. Vanman, M. E. Dawson, and P. A. Brennan, “Affective Reactions in the Blink of an Eye: Individual Differences in Subjective Experience and Physiological Responses to Emotional Stimuli,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 24: 994–1005 (1998).
14. R. D. Lane et al., “Is Alexithymia the Emotional Equivalent of Blindsight?” Biological Psychiatry 42: 834–44 (1997).
15. The nineteenth-century economist Francis Edgeworth referred to this device as a hedonimeter. See F. Y. Edgeworth, Mathematical Psychics: An Essay on the Application of Mathematics to the Moral Sciences (London: Kegan Paul, 1881).
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