Human motivation: developmental perspective

The beginning of cognitive phase in metaevolution as we know it is human civilization. Conserved core here is human motivation, while technology and institutions is a more fluid instrumental phenotype. According to their conserved vs. adaptive properties, our motives can be grouped into three categories: instincts, conditioned values, and pure curiosity. Motives of the two higher categories are obviously acquired, what’s conserved here is their value acquisition mechanism:

- evolution selects instincts fit for their own propagation, innate but postnatally modulated by usage,

- conditioning value-loads stimuli preceding (instrumental for) previously value-loaded stimuli,

- cognitive curiosity searches for predictive patterns, even among initially value-free stimuli.

 Higher mechanisms accelerate acquisition of adaptive values to drive increasingly mediated responses: from specific physiological reactions to more general longer-term attention, prediction, and planning. Brain areas that implement these value-acquisition mechanisms likely evolved in the same sequence:

- Instincts, largely physiological and rooted in 4Fs, are encoded mainly in brainstem and hypothalamus. 

- Conditioning is initiated by basal ganglia and limbic system, then generalized in cingulate cortices.

- Value-free curiosity is an intrinsic drive of neocortex, though heavily modulated by subcortical drives.

This scheme is vaguely similar to triune brain model, but in my interpretation these substrates differ mainly in the mechanism by which they acquire values, while values themselves are relatively transient. Relative strength of these mechanisms themselves is also changed via lifelong mutual reinforcement and inhibition.

Our instincts are similar to those of other mammals. Excellent account of that level of motivation is Jaak Panksepp‘s “Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions“. He catalogs seven innate drives: rage, fear, lust, care, grief, play, and seeking. Not included are homeostatic drives, related to feeding, sleep, pain, thermoregulation, etc. They are more basic but mechanically similar.

 Panksepp singles out “seeking” as an exceptionally non-specific drive. It’s the same as my curiosity, but for him the principal driver is dopaminergic areas, as they were in lower animals. I believe this function has been taken over by neocortex in mammals, especially in humans. Now these lower areas are mostly passive mediators of cortical feedback: Dopamine's Role in Unrewarded Learning, or they simply mess you up with some stupid urges.

 The discussion below is mostly on conditioning and cognition: increasingly adaptive mechanisms that seem to strengthen with our personal growth. Until it hits harsh constraints of biological life cycle.

Conditioning by increasingly general instrumentals

Alternative hierarchical schemes are Maslow's hierarchy of needs and ERG. But both treat higher needs as innate, though latent, while I think they develop via instrumental conditioning. Especially the top of both hierarchies: self-actualization or a drive toward excellence in a chosen field. Activity in modern fields can’t be innate, so the drive to “self-actualize” there must come from instrumental conditioning.

Conditioned values competitively inhibit and potentially displace each other, as well as innate instincts. Such "value drift" is necessary because behavioral patterns for effective reproduction of higher animals change too fast to evolve with their genotype, and are far too complex to fit in it. Goal-directed planning greatly accelerates this drift, because conditioning can now be driven by predictions vs. experiences.

This selects for increasingly general instruments, conditioned by a wider range of benefiting values. Even our notion of self is acquired. Basic self is a conditioned identification with one’s body, as a tool to control sensory stimuli that trigger innate drives. Which results in self-preservation and self-promotion drive: childish impulsiveness is substantially displaced by adolescent egocentrism. Next essential “tool” to be conditioned into one’s identity is society. It starts with one’s mother, initially almost as necessary as a body, then extends to family, peers and mates, tribe, nation, humanity. Rough Freudian parallels are ID for the drives, Ego for a body, and Super Ego for social identification.

The broadest human value with innate component is empathy or affinity. Probably via medial frontal cortex, it conditions external phenotypes recognized as similar to self-image, thus building on prior instrumental conditioning. But self-image changes radically during maturation. It is then anchored by relatively stable body and proximate society. But if these change, self image will change too.

Conditioning by similarity probably emerged because evolution doesn’t select for individuals, it selects for genes. Similarity is the proxy for affinity: presence of same genes in a different individual. So, empathy with and resulting support of similar individuals is instrumental to propagation of one’s own genes. “Gene” here is a pattern rather than a substance. Metabolism and reproduction don’t preserve substance: atoms come and go, only their pattern is maintained and propagated.

Empathy becomes more abstract as recognized affinity expands. Tribal identification is loaded with specifics: customs, mythology, language, diet, clothing and housing, ethnic history and homeland. All these details gradually lose significance as one progresses toward universal human values. Which are pretty hard to define. Even the most basic of our drives may be subverted by acquired values: pain may be counter-conditioned into masochism, hunger into anorexia, lust into asexuality, self-image into suicidal ideation, familiar and tribal loyalty into religious fanaticism, etc.

Our evolutionary imperative: reproductive drive, is already profoundly confused: birth rates decline in the wealthiest and the most educated social groups. And of course, no one would spend his life's savings to manufacture ever greater amounts of his DNA. In fact, the genes may go extinct altogether, as soon as we have better tools to produce phenotypes that we currently value.

Increasing respect for freedoms and cultural diversity makes modern social identification ever more tenuous, while formalization and automation reduce the role of empathy in economic interactions. Then there is our biology and developmental patterns, but future life extension and mind expansion should remove even that anchor from our common identity (Francis Fukuyama’s worst nightmare).

The only two drives left in common will be instrumental self-improvement and curiosity. And curiosity should subsume the former because it drives cognition: the only universally instrumental tool. Cognition also drives invention, which is a vastly accelerated evolution. And the concept of evolution is an ultimate target of instrumental conditioning: evolution produced humanity itself. 

In effect, cognition should be recognized and then conditioned as being instrumentally superior to conditioning itself. This is similar to the way conditioning may inhibit and displace instincts, even though they initiated conditioning in the first place. So, given sufficiently deep self-reflection, curiosity should displace all other motives. Which already happened for the best scientists.

So, curiosity is an intrinsic cortical motive, but it competes / combines with all sub-cortical motives. As with other values, relative strength of curiosity is modulated by conditioning. Being the most generally-instrumental motive, pure curiosity has longer and less obvious payoff. Thus, it initially works the background, “researching” subjects selected by other, more urgent motives. But range and depth of such research spills over multiple subjects, ultimately into curiosity about fate of the universe and the meaning of life. This is facilitated by a broad intellectual exposure, if combined with weak specific pressures and temptations, especially during one’s formative years. 

Hippocampus is necessary for declarative memory consolidation, hence for sustained cognition. Evolutionary reason for this constraint is probably that hippocampus also mediates conditioning by spatio-temporal association, via its “maps“ and grid cells in conjunction with its direct connection to amygdala. All behavior is local and memories aren’t be valuable enough for animals to consolidate unless associated with emotionally charged locations: proximate in past, present, or potential future.

Despite such constraints, cognition will displace conditioning because its mechanism will be recognized and conditioned as being instrumentally superior to that of conditioning itself. Mechanically, that means frontal cortex will gain effective control of VTA, NA, amygdala, and such. This similar to the way conditioning inhibits and displaces instincts, in spite of the fact that instincts initiated conditioning.

Popular culture vs. value generalization

Looking around, eventual dominance of higher motives and corresponding expansion of attention span seems quite implausible. Mass media serves our innate preference for 4Fs, intense sensory stimulation, and novelty: the lowest common denominators of curiosity. Constant exposure desensitizes and addicts us to such entertainment, which actually *shrinks* attention span in much of modern society.

Likewise, wealth weakens instrumental conditioning by easily satisfying lower motives, starting with fast food and junk TV / games / social media for children. Still, a proper upbringing could raise motivation to a level where instrumental self-improvement becomes a main motive and inhibits the lower ones.

Also, value generalization process is constrained by the limits and pressures of our life cycle, as well as the range of experience. Most of “identity expansion” I described is over by the end of adolescence, when myelination of neocortex is mostly complete and neuroplasticity declines. Jobs, dating, family and child-raising puts a lot of stress on people, shrinking their purely intellectual.

Cultivating values in children expands, but also stabilizes one's own values: a good actor must believe his act. Also stabilizing is a fixed social role: at work, in extended family, & broader community. Later, aging weakens more general motives as the loss of myelin impedes stimuli propagation to and from higher levels of cortical hierarchy. And constant health concerns further displace less urgent motives.

But overall, there are long-term trends toward extended adolescence, reduction of specific pressures via longer general education, delayed and reduced family formation, more fluid social roles, life extension. Even more important could be extreme educational aids and environments, as well as some form of direct brain stimulation to improve focus on abstract problems, which is likely to become available soon. These trends have no end in sight, they should extend value generalization process indefinitely.