Pleasure as a Sign of Efficacy of Mental Activity

Abstract

Previous work has shown that sensory pleasure is both the motor and the sign of optimal behaviors aimed at physiological ends. From an evolutionary psychology point of view it may be postulated that mental pleasure evolved from sensory pleasure. Accordingly, the present work tested empirically the hypothesis that pleasure signals efficacious mental activity. In Experiment 1, ten subjects played video-golf on a Macintosh computer. After each hole they were invited to rate their pleasure or displeasure on a magnitude estimation scale. Their ratings of pleasure correlated negatively with the difference par minus performance, i.e., the better the performance the greater the pleasure reported. In Experiments 2 and 3, the pleasure of reading poems was correlated with comprehension, both rated by two groups of subjects, science students and arts students. In the majority of science students pleasure was significantly correlated with comprehension. Only one arts student showed this relationship; this result suggests that the proposed relationship between pleasure and cognitive efficiency is not tautological. Globally, the results support the hypothesis that pleasure is aroused by the same mechanisms, and follows the same laws, in physiological and cognitive mental tasks and also leads to the optimization of performance.

Media Entertainment as a Result of Recreation and Psychological Growth

“…Cabanac et al (1997) suggest that pleasure results from effective cognitive mental work. In one of their studies, students displayed greater enjoyment of a poem, the more they were able to comprehend it.…”

“…Namely; enjoyment derived from recreation and psychological growth. This corresponds to the general notion that pleasure is tied to adaptive mechanisms (Cabanac et al, 1997;Damasio, 1999;Dutton, 2009;Kahneman et al, 1997;Miron, 2006;Rozin, 1999;Wbite, 1959). It is tempting to speculate that media entertainment still provides adaptive functions today.…”

Instrumentalizing Cognitive Dissonance Emotions

“…Experimental demonstration of CD emotions is possibly the main contribution of this paper. Choice decisions appear to be made in the hedonic dimension of consciousness (Cabanac et al, 1997(Cabanac et al, , 2011; the hedonic experience takes place as an actual or an expected reward. In this paper we made a step toward exploring a new type of emotions, aesthetic emotions related to dissatisfaction of the knowledge instinct, or more specifically, emotions of CD related to contradictions between two pieces of knowledge.…”

“…This study followed a classical psychologic method that explored mental experience in interviews where participants answered printed questionnaires Balasko & Cabanac, 1998;Cabanac et al, 1997Cabanac et al, , 2002Cabanac & Bonniot-Cabanac, 2007;Ramirez et al, 2005Ramirez et al, , 2009Perlovsky, Bonniot-Cabanac et al, 2012). Thirty four anonymous participants (who were referred to by numbers only), 17 men (age 12 -70) and 17 women (age 16 -72) were presented two questionnaires each containing ten items.…”

Aggression, Pleasure, and Cognitive Dissonance

“…Cabanac [2][3][4] suggested its paramount role in all motivations and decisions: maximization of pleasure is the way decisions are made. It has been found in some realms of purely mental functioning optimization activity, such as enjoying poetry or video games, ethics, and mental calculus [5,6].…”