Research in neuroscience, psychology, business and economics tells us that a plethora of influences can alter the decisions we make. The author explored some of these factors in a Worldview Stanford course and wrote about them in a Stanford story package, Decisions, Decisions. This post is the last in a series on what she learned.
Our brains evolved to get the reward now and worry about consequences later. That, according to Stanford's Keith Humphreys, PhD, is in part why addiction treatment programs so often fail.
"An alcoholic person will always choose the swift and certain rewards of a drink now over the possible threat of punishment at some future time," he says.
In my story about how evolution shaped our decisions, I describe a program that allows people with drunken driving arrests to keep driving as long as they prove twice a day that they are sober:
Punishment is mild - a night in jail - but swift and certain if they are caught with alcohol in their bloodstream. And, according to a 2013 study, repeat offenses were down 12 percent where that policy was in effect.
Humphreys said he'd written about this program, to some skepticism. But when he explained evolutionary theory to an assembled group of law enforcement and lawyers he was surprised at how receptive they were.
"The rest of the conference everyone kept telling me that they had never thought about the neurological basis of why addicted offenders do what they do and why criminal justice systems which ignore this reality fail over and over again," he said.
The story has more about a new initiative within the Stanford Neurosciences Institute in which Humphries and other faculty members are hoping to use neuroscience to influence addiction policies.
Previously: Decisions, decisions: How group dynamics alters decisions, Keith Humphreys: Drug-addiction treatment programs for military families are outdated and "24/7 Sobriety" program may offer a simple fix for drunken driving
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