Repeated unpleasant associations with a task condition a flinch that stops the mind approaching it, so the task becomes unthinkable rather than merely unattractive.
The claim is about attention rather than motivation. A task that has produced anxiety several times acquires a field around it: the mind slides off before deliberation begins, so the person does not experience a decision to avoid it and cannot report one. The prediction is that the cost of the task is almost always smaller than the accumulated cost of the flinch.
In practice
- An unopened envelope from an insurer sits for four months, and opening it takes ninety seconds.
- A project nobody has raised in six standups is not forgotten; it is the one everyone's attention slides past.
- Possible explanations
- The proposed explanation is conditioning: a task associated with anxiety several times acquires a flinch, so attention slides off it before deliberation begins and the person never experiences a decision not to do it.
- In its favour
- The phenomenon is recognisable and fits research on avoidance learning, in which the relief from not approaching a feared thing reinforces the avoidance.
- Against it
- It is a coinage of the rationalist community, argued from examples rather than tested, and framed in terms of operant conditioning without direct evidence for that mechanism in this case.
- Standing
- A coinage of the rationalist community, argued from examples rather than tested. Framed in terms of operant conditioning without direct evidence for that mechanism. The observable pattern, that avoided tasks become progressively harder to consider, is not in dispute.
- Subject
- Creativity & Work
- Essay
- Protecting the conditions for good work