Mentales Zeitreisen / Vorauswandern:

Salopp gesagt: Der Mensch kann zu jedem Zeitpunkt und beliebig oft in die Zukunft wandern. Er kann dort mögliche und unmögliche Zukunftsszenarien erschauen, um anschließend, diese Anschauungen verwertend, die Gegenwart angemessen auf eine gewollte Zukunft hin zu gestalten.

Rewards & Punishments:

"From the cybernetic perspective, rewards are any stimuli that indicate progress toward or attainment of a goal[.]"

"From a cybernetic perspective, punishments are any stimuli that signal definite inability to attain a goal, whereas threats, or cues of punishment, signal a decrease in the probability of attaining a goal."

Colin DeYoung

Facts and Actions:

"Our brains interpret the world primarily as a forum for action and only secondarily as a realm of facts[.]"

Colin DeYoung

Conscious-Psychological Systems:

"The core conscious-psychological mechanism .... is an explicit mental representation of situations that are centered on the self and one’s relationship with other people or one’s access to biological and physical resources that are of significance in the culture and ecology in which the person is situated. The representations are of past, present, or potential future states and might be cast as visual images, in language, or as memories of personal experiences, that is, episodic memories (Tulving, 2002). Of central importance is the ability to create a mental representation of a desired or fantasized state, such as a relationship with another individual, and to compare this to a mental representation of one’s current state, such as the nature of the current relationship with this other individual. These are conscious-psychological representations of present and potential future states that are of personal significance and are the content on which more conscious and effortful reasoning and problem-solving processes are applied (Evans, 2002; Stanovich & West, 2000). The predicted evolved function of these conscious-psychological mechanisms is to generate a fantasy representation of how the world “should” operate, that is, a representation of the world that would be most favorable to the individual’s reproductive (e.g., fantasy of the “perfect” mate; Whissell, 1996) and survival interests (Geary, 1998, 2005). This mental representation serves as a goal to be achieved and is compared against a mental representation of current circumstances. [...] problem solving and reasoning processes serve as the means for simulating social and other behavioral strategies that will reduce the difference between the ideal and actual states. If the behavioral strategies are effective, then the difference between the ideal state and the current state will be reduced and the individual will be one step closer to gaining access to and control of the fantasized social and other resources."

David C. Geary

Despots:

"In most contexts and for most people, the motivation to control is constrained by formal laws, informal social mores (e.g., enforced through gossip; Barkow, 1992), and by affective mechanisms (e.g., guilt) that promote social compromise and reciprocal social relationships (Baron, 1997; Trivers, 1971). For most people, adherence to these laws and mores provides benefits that are sufficient to avoid the risks associated with attempts to achieve, for instance, absolute despotic control (Simon, 1990). Moreover, there are also very likely to be basic differences in the personality (e.g., high on need for power, and low on social affiliation) of despots compared to most other people. Still, consideration of history’s despots allows a peeling away of these constraints and a more direct glimpse at the motivation to control. By definition, despots are individuals who have considerable social power and whose behavior is not typically constrained by affective or social consequences. With the absence of reciprocal cultural mores (i.e., democracy) and a professional police force and military that will suppress despotic behavior, these individuals and their coalitions gained control of the first six human civilizations—ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Aztec and Inca empires, and imperial India and China (Betzig, 1986, 1993). Across these and many other civilizations, the activities of despots were (and still are) centered on diverting the material and social resources of the culture to themselves and to their kin, typically to the detriment of many other people. On the basis of the historical record, they lived in opulence and the men almost always had exclusive sexual access to scores—sometimes thousands—of women (Betzig, 1986)."

David C. Geary

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"As with other traits, it is almost certain there are individual differences in the intensity of the motivation to control and individual differences in the manner in which it is expressed (Pratto, 1996). Nonetheless, gaining some level of control over the activities of daily life, important social relationships, and material resources affords many of the same benefits, albeit on a much smaller scale, as those enjoyed by despots."

The Motivation to Control:

"The evolved function of brain, cognitive, affective, conscious-psychological, and behavioral systems is to enable animals to attempt to gain control of the social (e.g., mates), biological (e.g., prey), and physical (e.g., nesting spots) resources that have tended to covary with survival and reproductive outcomes during the species’ evolutionary history."

David C. Geary

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