Feelings Trump Reasons: Irrationality and Procrastination

The alarm goes off at 5 a.m. Why? Because you set it last night with the intention of an early-morning run. Instead, you shut off the alarm, choosing the pleasures of sleep over the benefits of exercise. Peter Ubel writes, "No one could call this choice irrational." Not so. I can, and it's an irrationality that we know as procrastination.

As I wrote in my previous blog, I've been reading Peter Ubel's wonderful book, Free Market Madness: Why human nature is at odds with economics and why it matters. Today, I want to focus on just 3 pages from this book. I take issue with some of Peter's arguments, or perhaps add to them.

Blogger's note: This is a long entry. If you just want a quick read, skim the three short paragraphs below and skip to the very last two paragraphs. If you're still interested, you can read backwards from there.

The Set up
The example of the 5 a.m. alarm and the choice to sleep more instead of fulfilling the previous night's intention to run is Peter's, taken from page 96. Using the economic notion of "utility," Peter writes,

"I faced a simple choice between the pleasures of sleep and the benefits of exercise, and because of how I FELT about those activities that morning, I chose to snooze. No one could call this choice irrational. Indeed, given my preference that morning, it was obvious that the utility of sleep loomed much larger to me than the utility of, ugh, a morning run" (emphasis added).

He adds in the next paragraph, "Only one problem with this story: at bedtime the previous night, I held an equally strong preference for exercise over sleep. Why else do you think I set the alarm for 5 a.m.? What's more, when I finally awoke at 6:30 a.m., I told myself I'd get up the next morning at 5 a.m. and get in that run" (p. 96).

Is this procrastination? Is it irrational?
Let's see, in this example, Peter had an intention and failed to act on it, delaying it until tomorrow. It has the necessary conditions for procrastination, but is it sufficient? It is a delay of an intended act, but is it an irrational delay? That would make it truly procrastination as opposed to just a delay (recall that I have argued previously that all procrastination is delay, but not all delay is procrastination).

I think it is irrational because, in this example, Peter provided no indication of being exceptionally tired, requiring the rest that morning. It was simply a preference for more sleep. Had he been up unexpectedly half the night and exhausted from the lack of sleep, the choice to get more sleep may have been rational despite the earlier intention to run. However, in Peter's case, the choice to sleep is only a preference BASED ON HOW HE FELT- a momentary mood in the context of a cozy bed.

How he felt - this is the key issue, I think. Although Peter writes about his choice as a preference, this preference for not running is based on how he felt. Interestingly, when he wrote about his preference the night before when he set the alarm, he didn't write that he felt like going for a run, just that it was an equally strong preference. My guess is that he reasoned that tomorrow morning would be a good time to get out for a run - a time in his very full days to squeeze this in (his words were "get that run in"). It certainly was not based on the feeling the night before, because the run was still only an intention, hours away yet. (I'll come back to this with some discussion of "there's always tomorrow".)

Certainly, a preference can be irrational. In fact, Peter argues this convincingly in his book. Is it rational, for example, to prefer heroin? Only if you begin with the assumption that humans are by nature rational, always acting on their rational preferences. However, Peter does a thorough job of explaining that this isn't true.

So, my first point is that in this example the decision to stay in bed is a voluntary irrational delay of an intended action - truly procrastination.

Why do we stay in bed?
There are a few explanations to explain this choice. Peter deals with two, whereas I think a third and fourth are the most parsimonious. Below I have listed the 4.

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1. Multiple selves compete for control
2. There's always tomorrow
3. We give in to feel good
4. We're really are good at deceiving ourselves

I'll say a bit about each.

Multiple selves compete for control
Borrowing from the Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling, Peter sets out a theory of multiple selves. Here are two selves: 1) Long-term self - Invest in a safe retirement account, exercise regularly, eat healthily, vs. 2) Short-term self -

Enjoy spending now, forgo exercise unless we feel like it, and eat what we want when we want. Of course, in is example, the short-term self won.

Peter writes, "If people have multiple selves, the free marketers say, it is for them to decide which self to obey at which time" (p. 97).

The thing is, we don't have multiple selves per se, only multiple motivations for this self to approach or avoid. To the extent that we have multiple selves, these are the selves of the future or the past that serve as self guides for motivation of the present, actual self. This actual self is a creature with limited self-regulatory strength, as Peter acknowledges, and a self that has many possible intentions for action at any one time.

Although we may have selves that we may want to become (ideal selves), think we should become (ought selves) or fear becoming (a feared possible self), it is the "actual" self that makes this choice. Notwithstanding the tremendous difficulty in defining the notion of self, what I think remains clear is that the self that made the intention to run in the morning did so on the basis of an ideal or ought self in the future, but failed to act on this intention when the time came. Why?

Peter offers reason #2 -
There's always tomorrow, and "tomorrow's always one day away"

Peter's argument here, in brief: ". . . when tomorrow arrives, it had become today, and the desire for immediate gratification once again wins out" (p. 96).

I agree. Chrisoula Andreou, a philosopher at the University of Utah, has developed this thoroughly as the notion of intransitive preference structures. As she explains it using the example of quitting smoking, no individual instance of smoking will actually be responsible for making you ill, so someone in the position of deciding whether to have a smoke at any given moment can rationally say that this cigarette won't harm his or her health. "I can quit tomorrow." As with the choice about running, but with potentially much more devastating consequences, we know how this can play itself out as the cumulative effects of these decisions can truly be fatal. There's always tomorrow.

Commitment devices
Both Chrisoula Andreou and Peter Ubel acknowledge that many people adopt strategies to ensure they will follow through with an intention and not irrationally put it off to tomorrow. Again, from Schelling, Peter points out that we adopt strategies to have one self (typically the long-term self) win out over the other.

For example, we put the alarm clock on the other side of the room to make it more difficult to shut it off and go back to sleep. Or, as Chrisoula discusses, we adopt an automatic savings account to ensure that we don't have to make the choice to save, we're already committed.

The thing is, some of us even procrastinate on moving the clock or setting up the automatic deposits. Chrisoula has labeled this second-hand procrastination.

Peter basically says the same thing in the last section of the chapter by writing, "But these strategies don't work if people don't employ them." (p. 98).

Second-order procrastination - we come full circle to the real problem, I think, how we feel at the moment.

Giving in to feel good and self-deception
Let's go back to the example at hand. The alarm goes off at 5 a.m. and we're faced with the choice, or so Peter says, of getting up or sleeping in. First of all, given that we set the alarm, it is possible that we wouldn't "choose" at all. We would simply get out of bed. Our habit and unconscious approach may be: 1) alarm sounds, 2) we wake, 3) get up, 4) get going. No choice involved.

It's not clear to me why Peter begins by saying, "I face a simple choice . . ." Can you imagine saying that about getting dressed in the morning? No, not today, I'll sleep in longer and not get dressed today. I'll get dressed tomorrow. Just this simple phrase indicates that Peter puts the intention to run into a whole different class of intentions. The intention to run is truly "optional" in his life. There are people for whom this is not the case. We know them as "runners."

However, I'll stick with Peter's example and say that we think about sleeping in instead, and we think, "I'd prefer to do that." In fact, as Peter noted, we really base our choice for further sleep on our feelings. We feel like sleeping, not running. The thought of running doesn't make us feel good, the warm bed does. We give in to feel good.

Incredibly, even when we give in to feel good, we manage to convince ourselves with a new intention (run tomorrow) of our good intentions. As Peter wrote in his example, "I told myself I'd get up the next morning at 5 a.m. and get in that run." I think we deceive ourselves. We get caught in the procrastination trap of intransitive preference loops based on how we feel and we undermine ourselves. This aspect of our irrationality is a key issue in Peter's book. We don't always act in our own best interests, even when we form an intention to act - we procrastinate - the ultimate self-defeating irrational act.

Concluding thoughts: The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing
I've already written too much, I realize that, so let me sum up very briefly.

In Peter's story, he wrote, "Only one problem with this story: at bedtime the previous night, I held an equally strong preference for exercise over sleep."

I think the source of these preferences was quite different. The preference to run was a reasoned, scheduling intention. The preference to stay in bed was a momentary mood, I don't feel like it. Peter reflects as much with, "...choice between the pleasures of sleep and the benefits of exercise." Pleasure trumps benefits, feelings trump reasons, at least for those of us who fail to self-regulate well.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. Isn't it ironic that our heart's health may depend on our ability to follow our reason?