Forming new habits. Part 5: Choice.

For part 2, 3 and 4 go here, here and here

Why do you make the choices you make?

Why do some people choose to exercise and eat healthily and others don't.

Every day you are exposed to an enormous amount of information. According to Plassman et al (2012)

"Each second we are exposed to an estimated 11 millions bits of information that reach us through our senses, yet humans are capable of processing only around 50 bits of that information."

Think about that for a second (and if you did, 11 millions bits of information were just missed by you). Your brain filters information so it doesn't get overwhelmed.

Your brain and body use autopilot, short cuts and what Daniel Kahneman calls fast thinking all the time (see part 2 for a description of this system 1). Without it you would probably be paralyzed by indecision everyday. You get up, shower, clean your teeth, get to work without much thought. These become habitual activities. When you travel somewhere new, have you noticed how much you have to concentrate, in the car you have to turn the radio off and really focus on the sat nav and the road, not the same as when you do your daily commute.

Certain decisions have been taken out of your hands from an early age. Where you were born and your parents preferences have already determined the language you speak, the foods you culturally like, the school you went to, many of the hobbies and past times you chose. You may not even be aware of other choices, you can't miss a food you've never had or are not even aware of. And that job you drifted into after school or university, it may have not been your top choice, but possibly, only years later you realize you want to do something else.

This fast system of shortcuts is useful. Going out for a coffee on your lunch break if you live in a big city could be overwhelming. If you were really to evaluate all the options you would have to go to every coffee shop, try every different type of coffee, weigh up the price and distance from your work places and then make a decision (okay, I may have actually done this). Whereas, most people will intuitively go to the same coffee shop and order the same drink.

If the choice is limited it is easier, only one coffee shop, you go there. Only one gym, you join that one. In fact, it has been shown the more choice people are given the harder they find it to make a choice. In one study, given  a choice between two different types of jam, you pick one quite easily. Given the choice of 10 or 20, then what? You are frozen with indecision over a pot of jam.

Extrapolate that to big life decisions like choosing a career or partner, the number of variables is overwhelming. This is where the shortcut, intuitive system, works best.

Dijksterhuis et al (2006, good luck pronouncing that name by the way) state that conscious thought works best when you are making simple choices like "buying towels or an oven mitt" but more complex matters like choosing a house, or car (or life partner) should be left to unconscious thought. What they call "deliberation without attention". Your unconscious mind has much bigger processing power and your conscious mind finds it hard to focus on more than one thing at a time.

When buying a car, studies have shown people make better decisions when they don't consciously think about all the variables.

Dijksterhuis et al (2006) got people to choose a car based on 4 attributes or 12 attributes (safety, mileage etc). They were given 4 minutes to think about their choice, or 4 minutes distracted by doing anagrams. The people who were distracted doing anagrams and therefore used their unconscious mind, made a much better choice when choosing a car when they had to think about 12 attributes.

We make emotionally driven choices all the time. We are not even aware we are making them.

Companies and marketers know you can be influenced, so they exploit these systems.

You are influenced by marketing even when you think you are not.

Think about all the advertising you are exposed to. Does it influence you? Of course not, you are smarter than that. Or may be not.

In a study by Bagdziunaite (2014) three group of people were shown commercials before going in to a store to buy paint.
Group 1 - random commercials
Group 2 - random commercials plus adverts for brand A paint
Group 3 - random commercials plus longer adverts for brand A paint

They were then told to go and buy some paint for redecorating.
Group 1 - 78% chose brand A
Group 2 - 94% chose brand A
Group 3 - 100% chose brand A!!

Group 2 and 3 also spent more time looking at brand A on the shelf. And guess what, 23 out of 25 participants did not perceive the link between exposure to advertising and their purchase.

And ALL of the participants who saw brand A remembered it, but reported it did not affect their choice!

Now think about the adverts you are exposed to, the filter bubble you live in, the shops you go to, the choices you make. In the supermarket, trying to make healthy choices...

Plassman et al (2012) state

"At fast decision speeds a significant number of food choices were biased towards the food items with bright packaging, even when subjects preferred the taste of alternative food options." 

In fact, given less than 1 second you will choose the most salient thing, given a second or more you will choose your preference,

Now given that most foods that are brightly packaged are processed, and if someone has been eating unhealthy for a while and has certain in built preferences, what choices do you think they are going to make?

You will choose from the menu on offer. 

There is a myth that humans will make rational economic choices. Choosing between an apple and a snickers, you choose the one that costs the least or has the most benefit for you. Except in the Western world the cost difference between these purchases is irrelevant.

The value you assign to anything is subjective. For example, chocolate or strawberry ice cream have no intrinsic value, you make a decision which one you prefer (Padoa-Schioppa, 2011). And if one is not available, it doesn't figure in your decision making process.

Or put it another way, do you want a �1000 or a glass of water? The answer is obvious unless you just came out of the desert, you're dying of thirst and someone offers you that choice. Context matters.

The orbital frontal cortex (OFC) front part of your brain has neurons that are particularly active when you prefer one option. They are not sensitive to the menu, but decide based on what is on offer.

For example, Padoa-Schioppa (2007) offered monkeys* raisins or apple slices. Monkeys prefer raisins, but eventually when the monkeys are offered 3 times as many apple slices to raisins they switch to choosing the apple. The OFC neurons then start to fire off more, as they react to one decision that is clearly better than the other.

This also happened when the monkeys had to choose between drops of water and kool aid. The monkey prefer water, until they were offer 6 times as many drops of kool aid to water, and then they switched and chose the kool aid and the OFC part of the brain was more active and helped make this decision. They even did this when they were given 2 food options they had never encountered before, they would make a choice and then switch if significant quantity of their less preferred option was given.

What does this mean for you? It means you can switch your own choices.

I read somewhere that you should crowd your diet with healthy choices. If you eat enough vegetables and whole foods, you will 'crowd out' the unhealthy options. (Sorry, I can't remember where I read this, if this is your idea, let me know, and I will credit you)!

Eventually, you brain will choose from the menu you on offer.  You can control the menu and the quantity of the menu as well.

You go to a petrol station...

How does this all work in practice. A classic way people lose track of their diet.

They have gone to a petrol station to fill up the car. This is a top down conscious decision.

But then in the shop they are confronted by chocolate bars and crisps. All brightly coloured. There are no healthy options on offer, you're hungry (you've just left the gym) and you are not carrying any healthy snacks.

Before you know it you are making a bottoms up decision, you had no intention of buying chocolate. But it's there, and the menu on offer is chocolate or more chocolate. Before you know it you are in your car eating a snickers and your diet has been derailed before you've even had time to think. The pleasure centres in your brain are firing off and you go home and wonder what happened.

Why you will be fooled by expensive wine and works of art.

The orbital frontal cortex helps you make choices. And the medial part of it (mOFC) is believed to activate more when you experience pleasantness.

In one study by Plassman et al(2008) they measured the activation of peoples brain in an fMRI scanner while they were given wine of different value, they were told the wine cost $90 or $5 o $10. Of course, there was no difference in the wines but people experienced more activation in the pleasantness areas of the brain when they thought they were drinking the more expensive wine.

The perceived price did not change the activation of the primary taste centre of the brain, but the expectation of how good it was meant to be changed the activation in the pleasantness centre of the brain.

(And as a side note: Wine experts can't even tell the difference between red and white wine when blind folded!).

In another study people valued works of art more and had more engagement in the mOFC when they thought they were painted by an expert rather than a novice. Of course, none were painted by an expert.

If I told you I painted this you'd give me �1 for it. But if I told you Jackson Pollock did, you might be willing to pay way more.

This has led to the idea of "placebo marketing".

Why do people spend �200 more on a computer because it has an apple on it? (like the one I'm typing this on).

In the world of fitness and nutrition you could use this effect to your advantage. If you spend �80 a month on a gym membership or get the platinum super duper personal training package with the best trainer in town, you may well perceive that your results will be superior to the �20 a month gym and the free programme you got given.

You may possibly work harder and just have more belief in the product.

In terms of nutrition, the super detox juice you bought for �6 a glass may seem more beneficial than the apple and bag of spinach you bought in the supermarket.

This may also explain why people see famous online coaches, posting up pictures of clients, and testimonials. You may automatically perceive this person as an expert and expect to get results when you buy their programme or online product.

Even if objectively the expensive options are no better than the cheap options.

Where does this leave us?

So you know your brain is now making decisions on autopilot all the time and whether you like it or not marketing can influence you.

Here are a few take home points relating to health and fitness

• Make it as easy as possible for your brain to make the right decision. Reduces the cognitive load. This is why Steve Jobs wore the same outfit everyday. Put your gym gear in your bag ready to go in the morning. I once heard someone give the advice of sleeping in your gym kit and then getting up and going, it might be going too far, but you get the idea.
• Put the gym session or class on your schedule, it becomes an autopilot activity.
• Not sure what to do in the gym, get a plan/programme that is not too complex and stick to it. Again it will take another decision out of your hands.
• You will choose from the menu on offer. Fill your cupboards with healthy options, crowd out the unhealthy.
• Be prepared when out and about. Take your own snacks with you, a box of nuts in the car may stop you buying chocolate in the garage. Also prepare your own lunches.
• Avoid the office on cake day!
• Trying to give up fizzy drinks/soda? Try drinking 6 glasses of water when you feel the need for a soda. (I'm serious, give it a go, but don't over hydrate).
• You can change your preferences with regards to food, they are subjective and you can switch them.
• Take a shopping list to the supermarket. Take your time, when tempted by bright colours and packaging. Pause, take a breath and stick to the list.
• You may think the more expensive product is better, it may not be.
• OR if you are a personal trainer or gym, people may perceive your product as better if you charge more and be more willing to listen to you if they perceive you as an expert. (Testimonials, qualifications etc can help with this).
• Sometimes your brain will make the right decision without you thinking about it, especially if it is a complex decision.
• Beware of placebo marketing and living in a filter bubble.
• Your environment and the people you surround yourself with will influence your choices. The old adage that you are the sum of the 5 people you spend most time with is true. Expand that to environmental influences, the websites you visit, the TV shows you watch, the books you read.
• Buy cheap wine and tell people it's expensive. They wont know any different!

References.

Choosing paint research
Expensive wine research
Monkeys choose raisin or apple
OFC in making choices overview
Plassman et al "Branding the brain"
An Introduction to Neuroeconomics: How the Brain Makes Decisions. www.coursera.org
An Introduction to Consumer Neuroscience & Neuromarketing. www.coursera.org


*Yes, I find the research involving monkeys problematic, as they don't get to choose to be part of the study. But it is what it is.

Forming new habits. How long will you wait for results? Part 3.

How long before people abandon their new nutrition plan or exercise habit?

For parts one and two, go here and here.

Research shows that by now most people have given up on their new year exercise plan or nutrition plan. Dry January or Veganuary have quickly turned into beer and a burger for quite a few people.

But why? And why are some people still going and sticking to their plan?

Temporal Discounting.

In behavioural economics and neuroscience there is something called Temporal Discounting. Basically, how long are you willing to wait for a reward. And in general humans (and animals) prefer immediate reward to delayed reward.

For example, its not unusual for people to say after a week of exercise 'I haven't lost any weight yet' or a week of more healthy eating 'I don't feel any different, when will I lose weight?'.

The brain wants immediate results and rewards.

"Large probable, immediate rewards are preferred to smaller, less likely and distant ones." (Gazzaniga et al, 2008:p528)

This could explain two phenomena we all see on a daily basis. One, people weighing themselves after every workout, in the hope there has been an immediate loss of fat or gain in muscle mass. Two, people rewarding themselves with a chai latte and cake after a workout and immediately consuming more calories than they burned off.

Most of the studies focus on monetary rewards in humans (sometimes while they are are in an MRI scanner) or giving juice to monkeys, or sometimes a poor rat with an electrode implanted in the 'reward' centre of the brain.

A common question in these studies is, would you like �10 now or �11 tomorrow,? Most people choose �10 today. But if you say would you like �10 in a year, or �11 in a year + 1 day? It is so far in the future people will choose the �11. (McClure, 2004).

It is not uncommon for lottery winners to be offered a lump sum now, but half the actual amount they won, or the total sum in portions over several years. People opt for the lump sum, even though it is less money.

Exercise and new nutrition habits are by their very nature delayed rewards for people new to it. They are not necessarily exercising because they love it, they are doing it because of a future delayed reward such as fitting into a dress, looking good on the beach. And for many people this reward seems 'distant' and unlikely (due to past failures).

The brains reward system likes immediate rewards. The release of dopamine creates pleasure. It activates neurons in the Nucleus Accumbens/ Ventral Striatum (the 'reward' centre deep in the brain).This dopamine release can be caused by drugs, but also by other things such as a tasty cake. Therefore, your reward system can say 'eat the cake, weightloss is too far away to think about, we need a reward now, we've had a tough day at work.'

Back to rat in the lab, when it has an electrode in its brain that fires off some dopamine reward cells every time it hits a lever, guess what it does? It hits that lever obsessively, in fact ignoring food and water until it collapses from exhaustion because it values the activation of the reward centre in the brain over everything else.

If you keep checking social media every 5 mins, or have ever played a computer game all night, you are basically that rat hitting the lever, looking for a hit of dopamine.

BUT, humans are not rats. We have some (newer from an evolutionary point of view) parts of the brain that deal in self control and planning. The Pre Frontal Cortex (PFC), at the front of your brain.

You can make your brain choose healthy foods.

For example, in one study on dieters (Hare et al, 2009). There were two groups, a group exercising self control, a group not exercising self control.  They rated 50 different foods for taste ( very bad to  very good) and healthiness (unhealthy to very healthy). These foods included 'junk' food like crisps and candy, and healthy foods like fruit and vegetables.

Then while in a MRI scanner they had to reject foods on offer and choose other ones. They had actually not eaten for three hours, and the food they choose they got to eat at the end. The self controllers rejected the unhealthy foods they liked and choose healthy ones they disliked more often. It is not that they didn't find junk food tasty or really likes healthy foods, they just had better self control. In fact, a part of their brain called the dlPFC was more activated in the self controllers. This is the part of the brain that is making more deliberate decisions. This part of the brain was operating far sighted behaviour.

And your brain does this all the time. For example, people book holidays in the future, they save money for pensions and they go to University, when the reward of a degree is years away.

Our brain would like things as soon as possible (Kable and Glimcher, 2010), but it knows that this might involve a delay. For example, you order something on the internet, it wont arrive for 3 or 4 days, but you are prepared to wait. If you went into a shop and they said you had to wait 3 or 4 days before you could buy an item, you would go somewhere else. Your brain understands context.

The reward has to be big enough and important enough. �10 now or �10,000 in a year, err I'll wait a year thanks. The problem is most people aren't thinking about the rewards of exercise and nutrition like this. In their mind the reward isn't big enough to wait.

They are thinking about it much more like a monkey being given juice. A trigger goes off, a few seconds later the monkey is given some juice, there is a dopamine spike in the brain and the reward centre is activated. After a while, there is a dopamine spike when the trigger happens, before the monkey has had the juice. The expectation of reward is triggering a response in the brain. But, if there is a trigger and no reward, eventually the monkey gets wise and realises there will be no reward, the expectation has gone, that 'reward' part of the brain no longer activates.

This is like someone who starts exercising, the anticipation of weight loss and feeling better drives them, but after a while they get no results, they get despondant and give up, the reward system is not firing anymore. A cake will fire it off immediately.

Whereas, the crash diet industry knows how to hit the reward system. Have a novel food you have to eat, restrict calories, lose a lot of weight in a short period of time, weigh yourself five days later and the reward system in the brain goes into overdrive. But the pain is too much, eventualy they give up.

Your emotions are affecting your decisions.

Attractive women, bad decisions and blue oceans.

In one study called Do Pretty Women Inspire Men to Discount the Future ( Wilson and Daly, 2003), the researchers offered men a small monetary reward tomorrow or a larger sum in the future (7 to 236 days). One group were shown pictures of 'hot women' (yes, the researchers actually got the pictures from hot or not.com). The men who viewed the hot pictures were more likely to accept the smaller offer tomorrow than a larger amount in the future. They forgot about the future, the planning part of their brain wasn't thinking that far ahead.

Or to put it another way, a young guy is doing some shoulder rehab work and mobility exercises in a gym, an attractive female in yoga pants walks past, next thing you know he is doing max bench press and bicep curls and ignoring his shoulder health.

The researchers found no such effect with women looking at hot men, they were better at keeping a sense of perspective!

Imagine a calming blue ocean...

In another study (Delgado et al 2008), a group of people were asked to visualise a small money monetary reward, $4, or imagine something in nature that is calming and blue, while in an MRI scanner.

The people imagining the calming blue ocean had less activation in the reward centre of the brain and more activation in the control, future planning centre of the brain. They weren't thinking about the money they were going to get.

Now, this doesn't mean emotions are bad. In fact, people who have damage to the emotional parts of the brain make notoriously bad decisions or no decision at all.

The point of this is not that you should avoid hot women or imagine blue calming things, but how even the most basic visualisation and exposure to pictures can affect your brains activation centres and decisions.

What if you actually applied these principles in a much more in depth, sophisticated way?

Where the rubber meets the road.

This is what neuroscientist Sam McClure calls where the rubber meets the road. The practical advice arising from all these studies.

He also points out the hippocampus (where memories are made) is now known to be involved in prospecting about the future.

He recommends:

1) Envisioning future rewards. Make them easy to envision. Envision what the reward will do for your life.

So, really imagine how exercise and nutrition will make you feel and look.

2) Change how you frame things.

Frame rewards in different ways. See the exercise session as a reward in itself. Or in relation to food, demotivate appreciation of unhealthy foods, try seeing cookies like inanimate objects like a rock and think of green tea as a reward or treat.

3) Become more myopic in the way rewards are represented.

Attach more positive emotions to healthy foods. The self controlling dieters knew the junk food was tasty, they were just more focused on their goal and choose a 'less tasty' healthy option. Or even better make it so you see the healthy food as tasty and a rewarding. There are plenty of visualisation techniques to do this. Its just most people don't do them, and have no systematic approach.

And don't forget

'neurons that fire together wire together'

The more you use a pathway in the brain, the more you practice, the stronger the connection gets.

And one last thing, aerobic exercise is shown to activate that deliberate dlPFC part of your brain more. It becomes a self fullfilling prophecy, the more you exercise, the better your brain will get at decision making and planning!


Nuts and bolts are easy.

The fitness and nutrition industries have focused on the nuts and bolts, the programme, the recipe. But this is the easy bit, the nuts and bolts.

The hard part is making people stick with it. The future will be the coach who can change mindset.

Some visualisation techniques have been dismissed in the past as pseudoscience. However, neuroscience is now showing us how important envisioning and mindset are in framing your goals, seeing where you want to be and succeeding.

Lastly, associating the process itself as the reward. Taking pleasure in the exercise, looking forward to cooking that healthy meal. The people who stick with exercise are the ones who look forward to going to the gym or for a run. It becomes their passion, their reward.

Or as Adrienne of Yoga with Adriene said this week:

"The journey is the reward, the process is the candy."

Or for another excellent article I read this week about focusing on the process and forgetting goals by James Clear please click here 

In part 4 we will cover memory.

References:

Gazziniga et al (2008) Cognitive Neuroscience

McClure et al (2004) Separte Neural Systems Value Immediate and Delayed Monetary Rewards.

Hare et al (2009) Self control in dieters study.

Wilson and Daly (2003) Hot women cause men to discount the future study.

Kable and Glimcher (2010) We want things 'as soon as possible'

Interview with Sam McClure, Introduction to Neuroeconomics MOOC.

Forming new habits. Why is it so hard to give things up? Part 2.

Why losing things is twice as painful as gaining things.

In this series I am going to cover some of the behavioural science and neuroscience of forming habits, giving up bad habits, goals and rewards. I am going to come at it from a different tack possibly to the usual writings on fitness and nutrition, and at points I am going to extrapolate, stretch the science if you will, or apply some principles to exercise and diet that you may not have seen framed in this way before.

Human decisions are complex, the brain is complex(go figure), so there will be some simplification as necessary.

Over the next few posts I will cover the parts of the brain that deal with addiction and reward, loss and memory, making comparisons, motivation and decision making.

But lets break it down.

First up

Prospect Theory.

I've covered forming new habits before, see here for part one.

Essentially, I don't think the process of forming the new habit is hard. What is hard is the things you have to give up for the new habit to work.

It might be time you have to give up to go to the gym, this could be time when you normally watch TV or cruise the internet.

It could be some foods you have to reduce or give up and then replace with better alternatives. Despite what you may have read, you can't just eat what you want and lose weight, you may have to actually modify what you eat.

I am an example myself. Yes, I add in healthy foods, vegetables, green tea and all that but I still eat way too much cheese. Yes, there may be some addiction here (which I will cover in future posts) but basically I don't want to give it up.

If humans were following purely rational utility, then we would not eat the donut if there was an option of an apple as well. But as we all know, this is not always the case.

Most of these traditional theories of economics and utility ignore emotions but obviously your emotions have a profound impact on what you choose.

Human beings are risk averse and loss averse.

In some classic studies by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, they showed people when given a choice generally accept the less risky option. Even if they could possibly win more money, people generally go with the sure thing.

Two of their classic problems:
Which do you choose:
Get $900 for sure OR 90% chance to get $1000?

Which do you choose?
Lose $900 for sure OR 90% chance to lose $1000


Most people choose option 1 in the first problem and option 2 in the second problem, essentially for the same reason. People don't like losing things, they like the sure thing, but will take a risk if the sure thing could involve a loss.

In fact, most people find losing something twice as 'painful' as gaining something.

See the graph below.

Prospect Theory graph: Note how losing something causes twice as much psychological pain, as the joy of gaining something.

(The caveat being if you trade on the stock market and take class A drugs there is a chance you are not risk averse and are prepared to lose big time).

These studies are normally done in purely economic terms, you could win money, but what if we applied these ideas to fitness and nutrition?

If you are trying to develop a new lifestyle there is uncertainty and this cause emotional arousal.

Yes, logically you know eating healthier and  exercising is good for you But these are things that are going to happen in the 'future'. All the time you brain is making a cost benefit analysis.

To frame prospect theory in fitness and nutrition terms, as some people see it:

Which do you choose:
Give up an extra hour in bed, eating crisps and chocolate, sitting on the sofa when you get home OR the chance you may lose weight, feel better and possibly prevent a future disease.

Or when taking out a gym membership think of it this way:

Lose �40 a month for sure (gym membership fees) and you may get fitter and lose weight and prevent disease

OR

Keep �40 a month for sure (don't join a gym) and you might get fitter a lose weight by going for a walk everyday or may not develop those diseases anyway by doing nothing.


Some speculation on my part...

There is the potential loss of your old self or things you enjoy. This can fire off a part of the brain called the Insular Cortex. This part of the brain is also monitoring body states such as disgust, if you are eating something you find horrible then could this part of the brain fire. If you find exercise painful and not enjoyable then this part of the brain could again be active. Meanwhile the part of the brain that responds to reward and potential gains (the fabled dopamine response) could not be so active.

Going into a gym, getting out of your comfort zone, trying something new are all 'risky' things. And to begin with you may not perceive them as pleasurable, in fact they may be decidedly uncomfortable to begin with.

Where you Insular is, in case you were wondering.

Then we have the amygdala, the so called fight or flight part of the brain. But, it is a bit more complicated than this. The amygdala is also working out cost benefit (should I do this new thing, what is the cost, what is the benefit), fear conditioning and more.

Of course, if you start to really enjoy exercising, or enjoy the health new foods, and enjoy the feeling of being healthier and maybe carrying a little less fat, then the potential gain has outweighed the potential loss of Dominos pizza and 10 hours on the internet. But, the gain would have to be perceived as twice as much as the loss.

This also relates to what Kahneman calls system 1 and 2 of thinking.

In general system 1 is quick, emotional, intuitive and can actually make better decisions than your logical mind when there are a lot of factors to consider.

System 2 is slow and rational.

When you eat that donut, you are probably already licking your lips before system 2 has had a rational chance to start working.

People are not risky in all aspects of their life, for example, people can make sound financial decisions, wear a seat belt while driving and still smoke.

People normally view monetary risk in terms of the status quo, you don't want to lose what you've already got.

In terms of health and well being you have to re-frame it in your mind. Make the potential gains and benefits overwhelming.

So to re-frame one of the statements above:

Invest �50 a month in your health, add a new enjoyable activity into your life for 4 hours a week, try some new nutritious food and it is a sure thing your health and fitness will improve and you will probably live longer and have less chance of developing certain diseases (and look better naked!).

People make subjective probability choices rather than objective ones. For example, If people were being objective they would never buy a lottery ticket, and they would realize that something like a terrorist attack in the western world has a very low probability (which they will tend to overreact to, thanks media) whereas heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes have a large probability and people tend to under react to them.

Except, if they get a health scare, then some people modify behaviour but some people don't.

One thing Prospect Theory cannot contend with is regret and disappointment. The choice you should have made, that could have been an easy financial win but you were greedy. OR in terms of health, the small lifestyle changes you could have made that would have had a profound impact on your well being but you chose the status quo instead.

Why is that? Why would your brain let you continue on a path of behaviour that may result in its early demise?

Find out in part 3.

References:
Kahneman D (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Introduction to Neuroeconomics, How the Brain Makes Decisions, MOOC, Higher School of Economics(Moscow).