This is really powerful, Claire, thank you for sharing it!
Let me be clear that I am not responding to how you should feel, but just brainstorming about an instrumental approach toward the most effective emotional tonality.
For an ideal emotional tonality, I wonder if it might be helpful to orient not toward feeling sorrow for the lives not saved or morally relevant experiences not had, but to feeling neutral about them, and only get positive experience from additional lives saved and morally relevant experiences had. This can tap into the power of positive reinforcement and rewards, which research shows tends to function better than negative reinforcement in motivating effective behavior. Since sadness is, science suggests, not motivating, Effective Altruists might be better off orienting to avoiding sadness, and focusing on experiencing joy over successes.
This presumes an ability to self-modify one’s emotions, which is certainly doable, but quite effortful.
Again, this is not meant to be prescriptive, but just responding to what an ideal emotional tonality could be.
It was my understanding that thinking of both potential good and bad outcomes (mental contrasting) was more powerfully motivating than thinking of either alone. In my experience, psychology research on this subject also isn’t super reliable. Personally, I definitely find thinking about bad outcomes motivating, as I’m a naturally happy person and good outcomes don’t make me much happier than the baseline for long.
The motivational aspects do vary a lot from person to person :-) The nature of the specific emotions and their impact on motivation is more consistent across the majority, however—far from all, but for the majority.
Negative feelings of sadness/sorrow tend to be demotivating, and may lead to depression. Anxiety can be motivating or demotivating, depending on the extent of the anxiety. Anger/frustration tends to be motivating.
Positive feelings of satisfaction/contentment are usually demotivating. Joy/pleasure/excitement can be motivating, especially if coupled with a clear means of gaining these experiences.
This is really powerful, Claire, thank you for sharing it!
Let me be clear that I am not responding to how you should feel, but just brainstorming about an instrumental approach toward the most effective emotional tonality.
For an ideal emotional tonality, I wonder if it might be helpful to orient not toward feeling sorrow for the lives not saved or morally relevant experiences not had, but to feeling neutral about them, and only get positive experience from additional lives saved and morally relevant experiences had. This can tap into the power of positive reinforcement and rewards, which research shows tends to function better than negative reinforcement in motivating effective behavior. Since sadness is, science suggests, not motivating, Effective Altruists might be better off orienting to avoiding sadness, and focusing on experiencing joy over successes.
This presumes an ability to self-modify one’s emotions, which is certainly doable, but quite effortful.
Again, this is not meant to be prescriptive, but just responding to what an ideal emotional tonality could be.
Thanks Gleb.
It was my understanding that thinking of both potential good and bad outcomes (mental contrasting) was more powerfully motivating than thinking of either alone. In my experience, psychology research on this subject also isn’t super reliable. Personally, I definitely find thinking about bad outcomes motivating, as I’m a naturally happy person and good outcomes don’t make me much happier than the baseline for long.
I expect this varies a lot from person to person.
The motivational aspects do vary a lot from person to person :-) The nature of the specific emotions and their impact on motivation is more consistent across the majority, however—far from all, but for the majority.
Negative feelings of sadness/sorrow tend to be demotivating, and may lead to depression. Anxiety can be motivating or demotivating, depending on the extent of the anxiety. Anger/frustration tends to be motivating.
Positive feelings of satisfaction/contentment are usually demotivating. Joy/pleasure/excitement can be motivating, especially if coupled with a clear means of gaining these experiences.