Many of us find waiting in the doctor’s office for a surgical procedure more stressful than the procedure itself. Most of us prefer to remove a band-aid with a quick yank rather than a slow pull. Sometimes the human brain dislikes waiting for an unfavorable outcome more than it does the outcome itself. The cost of waiting is dread. The extreme dreaders are those who concentrate on the outcome more. (Which is also why some of us look away when being given a shot or poked by a needle for blood draw.) Dread is the result of what our brain sees as "the disutility" of waiting for an unavoidable and unfavorable outcome. Hence given the choice of waiting and the outcome, many among us just prefer to "get it over with."
"Deciding between two choices can be difficult, particularly when they are separated in time. Economic theory accommodates the calculation by discounting the future outcome by the amount of time, most simply via a hyperbolic function. An additional factor is the cost of waiting, which can be represented clearly when the outcomes are unpleasant (electric shocks to one’s foot), and the choice is between a stronger shock in a few seconds versus a weaker shock a half minute later. Many people will opt to "get it over with," primarily, one assumes, to avoid the anticipation of future pain, which is used as an operational definition by Berns et al. in examining the neural basis of dread."
….. "First, they put volunteers into a brain scanner and gave them something to dread: an electric shock to their feet. In the first part of the experiment, the 32 subjects were informed when the shock was coming and how big it would be. In the second part, they could choose between a big shock with a short time delay, or a smaller shock that they had to wait longer to experience.
Nine subjects went for more pain right away to avoid the agony of waiting. The functional magnetic resonance imaging showed heightened activity in the area of the brain responsible for perceiving pain, specifically in the region that pays attention to stimuli. In other words, these extreme dreaders focused so much on the impending shock that the wait was as unpleasant as the shock itself, Berns explains. Twenty-three were willing to wait longer for a smaller shock, and the same part of their brains showed no spike in activity. The team publishes their results in the 5 May Science.a"
The full news article about decision and dread here.
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