The Trouble with the Science of Gratitude

Alex Wood of the University of Stirling provides a skeptical voice at the Greater Good Gratitude Summit, exploring the scientific obstacles to understanding gratitude.

[ajmarr]

A novel procedure for positive arousal and pleasure (or 'happiness') refutable with one swift kick

The ideal for any scientist with a great idea is to be able to explain it in a minute, and to confirm or falsify it as quickly. The world record for this arguably goes to the English philosopher Samuel Johnson, who rejected Archbishop Berkeley’s argument that material things only exist in one’s mind by striking his foot against a large stone while proclaiming, “I refute it thusly!”

Here is a similarly novel and useful idea that can be confirmed or refuted with a proverbial large kick, and can also be simply explained through affective neuroscience (links below).

Summary
Endogenous opioids are induced when we eat, drink, have sex, and relax, and a responsible for our pleasures. Opioid activity however is not static, but labile, or changeable. When elicited, opioid release is always modulated by concurrently perceived novel act-outcome expectancies which may range from negative to positive. If they are negative (e.g. a spate of bad news or bad implications of our behavior), opioid activity is suppressed and our pleasures are reduced (anhedonia), but if they are positive, then opioid activity is enhanced and our pleasures are accentuated as well (peak experience, ‘flow’). This is due to dopamine-opioid interactions, or the fact that act-outcome discrepancy, or positive or negative surprises, can induce or suppress dopaminergic activity, which in turn can enhance or suppress opioid release. This can be demonstrated procedurally, and if correct, can provide a therapeutic tool to increase opioid release and positive wellbeing.

Basic Facts:
Endogenous opioids are induced when we eat, drink, have sex, and relax. Their affective correlate, or how it ‘feels’, is a sense of pleasure.

Fun Fact:
When we are concurrently perceiving some activity that has a variable and unexpected rate of reward while consuming something pleasurable, opioid activity increases and with it a higher sense of pleasure. In other words, popcorn tastes better when we are watching an exciting movie than when we are watching paint dry. The same effect occurs when we are performing highly variable or meaningful activity (creating art, doing good deeds, doing productive work) while in a pleasurable relaxed state. (Meaning would be defined as behavior that has branching novel positive implications). This is commonly referred to as ‘flow’ or ‘peak’ experience.

So why does this occur?
Dopamine-Opioid interactions: or the fact that dopamine activity (elicited by positive novel events, and responsible for a state of arousal, but not pleasure) interacts with our pleasures (as reflected by mid brain opioid systems), and can actually stimulate opioid release, which is reflected in self-reports of greater pleasure.

Proof (or kicking the stone):
Just get relaxed using a relaxation protocol such as progressive muscle relaxation, eyes closed rest, or mindfulness, and then follow it by exclusively attending to or performing meaningful activity, and avoiding all meaningless activity or ‘distraction’. Keep it up and you will not only stay relaxed, but continue so with a greater sense of wellbeing or pleasure. (In other words, this is a procedural bridge between mindful and ‘flow’ experiences that are not unique psychological ‘states’, but merely represent special aspects of resting states.) The attribution of affective value to meaningful behavior makes the latter seem ‘autotelic’, or reinforcing in itself, and the resultant persistent attention to meaning crowds out the occasions we might have spent dwelling on other unmeaningful worries and concerns.

A Likely Explanation, as if you need one!
A more formal explanation from a neurologically based learning theory of this technique is provided on pp. 44-51 in a little open-source book on the psychology of rest linked below. (The flow experience discussed on pp. 81-86.) The book is based on the work of the distinguished affective neuroscientist Kent Berridge, who was kind to review for accuracy and endorse the work.

Implications for positive psychology:
Affect in rest is labile, or changeable, and rest (i.e. the general deactivation of the covert musculature) is not an inert and non-affective state, but modulates affective systems in the brain. In addition, the degree of the modulation of pleasurable affect induced by rest is not dependent upon a species of attention (focal meditation, mindfulness meditation), but is ‘schedule dependent’, and correlates with the variability of schedules or contingencies of reward and the discriminative aspects of incentives (i.e. their cognitive implications). In other words, sustained meaningful activity or the anticipation of acting meaningfully during resting states increases the affective ‘tone’ or value of that behavior, thus making productive work ‘autotelic’, or rewarding in itself, and providing a consistent feeling of arousal and pleasure, or shall we say, ‘happiness’.


References:

Rauwolf, P., et al. (2021) Reward uncertainty - as a 'psychological salt'- can alter the sensory experience and consumption of high-value rewards in young healthy adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (prepub)

The Psychology of Rest

The Psychology of Incentive Motivation and Affect

Meditation and Rest, from International Journal of Stress Management, by this author

Berridge article on the Neuroscience of Happiness – from Scientific American