Drives and Explanations

• Published in: Bodily Sensibility
• Main Author: Schulkin, Jay
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY Oxford University Press 08.04.2004; Oxford University Press, Incorporated
• Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Cognitivism, cognitive theory; Psychological testing & measurement; Psychology; Psychology of Perception; processing; information; representations; systems; divorced
• ISBN: 9780195149944; 0195149947
• DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195149944.003.0006

A fundamental feature of our condition is our curiosity, our exploration of events. We are driven, for a variety of reasons, to represent the world around us; representations lie at the heart of our evolution. But it is often not just representations divorced from action. The information-processing systems are up close and personal, not in the sense that the mechanisms are subject to introspection, but that visceral information predominates. As one cognitive scientist rightly has put it, “As visceral factors intensify, they focus attention and motivation” (Loewenstein, 1996, p. 273). The recognition of discrepant events, as I pointed out in previous chapters, is a heuristic that pervades information processing in the brain, including the organization of motivated behaviors. While the detection of discrepant events underlies the sense of the beautiful and the mundane, it also underlies the regulatory and the basic physiological behaviors (e.g., sodium cravings). Cognitive resources are required in trying to understand our surroundings and to forge a coherent world in which to move, in which to decide, and in which to act.