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An Adaptive Motivation Approach to Understanding the ‘How’ and ‘Why’ of Wellbeing

A new model provides insight into the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of wellbeing to better understand the ‘what’. Informed by evolutionary psychology and neuroscience, it proposes that systems for adaptive motivation underpin experiential and reflective wellbeing. The model proposes that the brain learns to predi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Rusk, Reuben D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9566260/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36232083
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912784
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author Rusk, Reuben D.
author_facet Rusk, Reuben D.
author_sort Rusk, Reuben D.
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description A new model provides insight into the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of wellbeing to better understand the ‘what’. Informed by evolutionary psychology and neuroscience, it proposes that systems for adaptive motivation underpin experiential and reflective wellbeing. The model proposes that the brain learns to predict situations, and errors arise between the predictions and experience. These prediction errors drive emotional experience, learning, motivation, decision-making, and the formation of wellbeing-relevant memories. The model differentiates four layers of wellbeing: objective, experiential, reflective, and narrative, which relate to the model in different ways. Constituents of wellbeing, human motives, and specific emotions integrate into the model. A simple computational implementation of the model reproduced several established wellbeing phenomena, including: the greater frequency of pleasant to unpleasant emotions, the stronger emotional salience of unpleasant emotions, hedonic adaptation to changes in circumstances, heritable influences on wellbeing, and affective forecasting errors. It highlights the importance of individual differences, and implies that high wellbeing will correlate with the experience of infrequent, routine, and predictable avoidance cues and frequent, varied, and novel approach cues. The model suggests that wellbeing arises directly from a system for adaptive motivation. This system functions like a mental dashboard that calls attention to situational changes and motivates the kinds of behaviours that gave humans a relative advantage in their ancestral environment. The model offers a set of fundamental principles and processes that may underlie diverse conceptualisations of wellbeing.
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spelling pubmed-95662602022-10-15 An Adaptive Motivation Approach to Understanding the ‘How’ and ‘Why’ of Wellbeing Rusk, Reuben D. Int J Environ Res Public Health Article A new model provides insight into the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of wellbeing to better understand the ‘what’. Informed by evolutionary psychology and neuroscience, it proposes that systems for adaptive motivation underpin experiential and reflective wellbeing. The model proposes that the brain learns to predict situations, and errors arise between the predictions and experience. These prediction errors drive emotional experience, learning, motivation, decision-making, and the formation of wellbeing-relevant memories. The model differentiates four layers of wellbeing: objective, experiential, reflective, and narrative, which relate to the model in different ways. Constituents of wellbeing, human motives, and specific emotions integrate into the model. A simple computational implementation of the model reproduced several established wellbeing phenomena, including: the greater frequency of pleasant to unpleasant emotions, the stronger emotional salience of unpleasant emotions, hedonic adaptation to changes in circumstances, heritable influences on wellbeing, and affective forecasting errors. It highlights the importance of individual differences, and implies that high wellbeing will correlate with the experience of infrequent, routine, and predictable avoidance cues and frequent, varied, and novel approach cues. The model suggests that wellbeing arises directly from a system for adaptive motivation. This system functions like a mental dashboard that calls attention to situational changes and motivates the kinds of behaviours that gave humans a relative advantage in their ancestral environment. The model offers a set of fundamental principles and processes that may underlie diverse conceptualisations of wellbeing. MDPI 2022-10-06 /pmc/articles/PMC9566260/ /pubmed/36232083 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912784 Text en © 2022 by the author. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Rusk, Reuben D.
An Adaptive Motivation Approach to Understanding the ‘How’ and ‘Why’ of Wellbeing
title An Adaptive Motivation Approach to Understanding the ‘How’ and ‘Why’ of Wellbeing
title_full An Adaptive Motivation Approach to Understanding the ‘How’ and ‘Why’ of Wellbeing
title_fullStr An Adaptive Motivation Approach to Understanding the ‘How’ and ‘Why’ of Wellbeing
title_full_unstemmed An Adaptive Motivation Approach to Understanding the ‘How’ and ‘Why’ of Wellbeing
title_short An Adaptive Motivation Approach to Understanding the ‘How’ and ‘Why’ of Wellbeing
title_sort adaptive motivation approach to understanding the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of wellbeing
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9566260/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36232083
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912784
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