On the Rationality of Desire

or What you Should Want vs. What you Want

Multitudes of motivational gurus stand ready to tell you how to go out and get what you really want out of life. But before you can follow their advice, you need to know what you want. So, how do you decide that? How can you know whether a course of action will make your future self happy? Or more pithily, as Cinderella says in Into the Woods,

“How can you know what you want

‘Til you get what you want

And you see if you like it?”

Wanting something isn’t a purely cognitive thing. You know this if you’ve ever tried to talk yourself a decision using a pro/con list. Maybe you think, I’m dating such a kind, stable, and loving person. My friends tell me how lucky I am. Perhaps you’ve said, “My job pays well and I’m respected. It’s much better than most jobs out there.” But yet you’re just… not feeling it. You tell yourself, I should want this partner/job/house/degree program.

You can try to talk yourself into wanting things, but if that emotional component — that desire — is missing, it will always be a struggle. In fact, people with damage to emotional centers in the brain, who don’t want things, have trouble making decisions and taking action at all. It doesn’t seem that we can make ourselves want things just becuase we can make a logical argument for why we should want them. As they said on G.I. Joe,

“Knowing is Half the Battle.”

But, as it turns out, only half. Research shows that we need to anticipate our emotional response to the outcome of a choice we make in order to make good decisions. Simply predicting the outcomes cognitively isn’t enough — we need to be able to anticipate the feeling of reward or punishment that may come from different choices in order for us to make future choices that increase reward and decrease punishment.

To make good decisions you need the cognitive and the emotional.

Here are the take home points:

1. Should is Not Enough — Don’t pursue things just because you can construct arguments about why you should want them. It will never be enough to motivate you when things are hard.
2. Be Kind to Future You — When you do want things, envision your future self. How does Future You feel about the outcomes that are likely to come to pass from these choices?