Picoeconomics in neural and evolutionary contexts

Abstract

Hyperbolic delay discount curves reflect a basic psychophysical principle and are not maladaptive in nonhumans. However, in people who plan, they create conflicts between present motives and expected future motives. Unlike conflicts between simultaneous motives, these cannot be resolved by simply weighing the alternatives against one another, but instead confront a person with sequential strategic choices. Such choices are the subject of picoeconomics (micro—micro—economics). In recent centuries willpower has become the most approved means of stabilizing intertemporal conflicts, in addition to social commitment. In willpower a variant of repeated prisoner‘s dilemma can be inferred from behavioral experiments and common experience—as clarified by thought experiments—but current neuroimaging techniques cannot visualize the self—interpretations that are hypothesized. fMRI does suggest that a unified reward network is modulated by prefrontal cortical activity, which is recruited even by the process of choice itself.