Masochism and misbehavior

July 27, 2020

We know masochism exists.

Some masochists are driven to physically painful experiences. Some are driven to psychologically painful experiences.

Masochists don’t smile and laugh as they experience pain or degradation. They seem as troubled as anyone. Yet they keep coming back for more,

Why?

Short of brain damage, how can a person become—and remain—a masochist?

To a neuron, reinforcement is reward,

We know that a person’s behavior is the result of both conscious and unconscious drives.

For a neural subsystem, ‘reward’ is simply ‘reinforcement.’ ‘Pleasurable feelings’ are a conscious experience. Reward by reinforcement is an unconscious phenomenon.

We could imagine “constructing a masochist” by rewiring a brain. We’d need to build an unconscious module that drove the organism toward painful experiences. We’d wire the pain sensors to that module so that pain would reinforce that behavior. We’d leave everything else alone. The pain sensors would be connected to the modules that produce avoidance behavior. And they’d be connected to the modules that produce the feelings of pain.

We would have constructed a creature that consciously feels pain, strives to avoid it, and yet unconsciously is driven toward that which it wants to avoid.

Normal alignment

Usually, ‘reinforcement,’ ‘reward,’ and ‘pleasure’ are aligned. But they don’t have to be.

Neurons don’t care about pleasure or pain, reward, or penalty. The only thing that matters is reinforcement.

Neuron firing is values-neutral.

A person can become a masochist if unconscious drivers of behavior that lead to pain are more potent than the conscious drivers that avoid it.

For a masochist, pain still hurts. But the brains of masochists still drives them to painful experiences, because reinforcement, not “reward,” is what drives behavior.

Adult misbehavior

Adults misbehave.

We do things that we know that we don’t want to do and that we know that we will regret the next day.

In extreme cases, the behavior is disruptive and dysfunctional—like drinking or drug-taking.

In the usual case, it’s mild: we spend more time than on social media than we want, or we eat things that we’ve decided that we don’t want to eat.

Adult misbehavior is driven by the same mechanism that drives the behavior of masochists: reinforcement of neural structures that are decoupled from consciousness.

The drive doesn’t have to be not legible or intelligible. In the end, it’s a bunch of neurons that can influence behavior and that have been trained to push behavior in a particular direction. Plus, another bunch of neurons that reinforce the behavior.

How does it happen?

Every life history is different. The mechanism is common, but the ways in which it can become activated are varied. When the issues are large enough, people seek therapy. When they are small, we learn to live with our deficiencies.

Misbehaving children

This theory explains the misbehavior of children.

It says that if a child is misbehaving, there are neural structures in that child’s brain that are driving that behavior. The neural structures are being reinforced by the consequences of that behavior.

Parents are confused. They’re doing everything that they can to discourage the behavior. The substantial cost of their disapproval should be enough to offset the small pleasure a child might get from its misbehavior.

And yet the behavior persists.

Remember, to a neural structure, reinforcement is reward.

If the child’s brain has gotten wired so that the parent’s disapproval reinforces the misbehavior, the child’s behavior will persist. The more disapproval, the more reinforcement.

How could that happen?

Every history is different. It’s hard to know. But if the behavior persists, there must be something reinforcing it.The challenge is discovering what it is and finding a way to avoid reinforcing.

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