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Pessimists and Optimists

I discussed before a role of dopamine for motivation and reward-seeking. I want to highlight a paper by Colin G. DeYoung that tries to establish "a unifying theory of the role of dopamine in personality." 

One of the interesting point that Dr. DeYoung highlights is that "what is uncertain or unpredicted is unique as a class of stimuli in being simultaneously threatening and promising." The promising nature of uncertainty explains why people like gambling so much.

So what do people do when faced with uncertainty, what do people do? They do what every organism is hardwired to do: “… the organism should have two competing innate responses to an unpredicted event—caution and exploration…”

I think this is where pessimists (caution) distinguish themselves from optimists (exploration). Pessimists routinely lack the skill to be lucky.

Here's DeYoung's overarching theory: “the general function of dopamine is to promote exploration, by facilitating engagement with cues of specific reward (value) and cues of the reward value of information (salience).” 

If we can use the dopaminergic drive of exploration to our advantage, we can learn to see the upside of uncertainty. When in doubt, explore.

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