How to change – Part 1: Cybernetics

Have you ever been inspired to improve your eating habits after you read a book, watched a documentary or even consulted a nutrition professional? How long did it take you to figure out that simply getting better educated about the power of diet changes to transform your health and well-being, does not automatically translate to actually eating better?

To be successful in changing your behaviour, you need to gain an accurate understanding of why we humans behave the way we do.

In a nutshell, all behaviours result from a process of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) that is continuously being run inside our brains, largely by regions such as the basal ganglia which carry out their work beneath our conscious awareness.  

No matter how irrational or self-destructive our current diet and lifestyle habits may appear to others (and even to ourselves), these choices are rational in that they result from a favourable CBA – that is, the perceived benefits of the behaviour outweigh its perceived costs.

For a behaviour to change, the CBA of the current behaviour must tip in a less favourable direction (higher cost/lower benefit), and/or the CBA of the healthier alternative must tip in a more favourable direction (lower cost/higher benefit).

For example, a smoker will continue to smoke until the perceived costs of smoking (inconvenience, social stigmatising, financial expense, cosmetic and health impacts) outweigh the benefits (relaxation, bonding with smoking peers, avoidance of nicotine withdrawal), and/or the perceived benefits of being a non-smoker outweigh the costs.  

However, I’m sure you’ve noticed that a) there are striking differences between individuals in their CBA with respect to any given habit that impacts on health and b) new inputs can rapidly (but unpredictably) shift an individual’s CBA on a particular habit in either direction.

I vividly recall a client who completely overhauled her habitual way of eating in order to resolve a fairly minor case of acne. Others with serious illnesses that are highly responsive to diet and lifestyle change have refused to make even minor adjustments in their habits. Still others made changes, experienced dramatic health benefits including substantial weight loss, pain relief and remission of illness, and then relapsed into old behaviour patterns and became overweight and ill again.  

An understanding of cybernetics and personality neuroscience can help you understand why there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to behaviour change, and dramatically enhance your ability to set and achieve effective health improvement goals.  

In this post, we’ll dig into cybernetics, and next week we’ll explore personality neuroscience.

Cybernetics 

Cybernetics is defined as “the study of principles governing goal-directed, self-regulating, information-processing systems (artificial and living)”.

All organisms, including humans, are cybernetic in that we must be able to regulate ourselves in order to pursue our goals.

There are two types of goals that behavioural scientists recognise:

Primary goals are directed toward gene survival, and revolve around securing food and sexual partners.

Secondary goals help us achieve our primary goals, and include gaining esteem (recognition from others), affiliation (love, friendship and useful trading partners) and material resources (money and goods).

Wait… is this all that human life amounts to – figuring out ways to acquire friends and accumulate ‘stuff’ so that we can obtain food and get laid?

Well, yes and no.

First, the ‘yes’. Gene survival is the purpose of life, and our brains evolved a plethora of complex mechanisms to guide us to set and work towards goals – most of them non-conscious – that further our chances of survival and reproduction.

Now, the ‘no’. As a consequence of these complex mechanisms, we have also developed an amazing capacity to love deeply, imagine richly, and create boundlessly, and it’s these expressions of human capacity that weave the meaning of life.

The fact that the experience we describe as ‘love’ grew out of adaptations that were favourable to our selfish genes’ drive to propagate themselves through reproducing and caring for our offspring, does not negate the genuineness of that love as we experience it.

OK, back to cybernetics.

The cybernetic cycle involves 5 stages: 

1. Goal activation: emergence of a primary concern in that moment, from a field of competitive motivations.
2. Action selection: choice of an operator (e.g. motor action, including speech, or cognitive function) with which to pursue the goal.
3. Action: using the operator to carry out the action.
4. Outcome interpretation: assessing the state of the world after carrying out the action.
5. Goal comparison: comparing the current state to the goal state. If they match (i.e. goal achieved), another primary concern will emerge to guide the system; if they do not, the cycle will begin again with the same goal in place, or the goal may be deemed unattainable and abandoned – either temporarily or permanently. 

As a simple example, while writing this article, I suddenly become aware that I’m thirsty (Step 1). My basal ganglia direct the motor neurons that control my arm and hand to activate so that I can reach for the water bottle on my desk (Step 2). I bring the water bottle to my lips and drink (Step 3). After taking a few sips, I assess whether I’m still thirsty (Step 4). If not, I continue drinking until I’m no longer thirsty; once thirst has been quenched, I put the water bottle down (Step 5) and return to writing the article (Step 1 of a new cybernetic cycle).

It’s important to understand that these stages are not discrete and sequential. The tasks that comprise each stage occur in parallel in the human brain, and moreover, the system is always pursuing multiple goals at the same time, some of them mutually contradictory.  

For example, having stepped on the scales this morning and noticed that you’ve gained weight, you might set a goal to eat healthfully today, and go to the gym after work.

To achieve this conscious goal, your brain will have to co-ordinate hundreds of behaviours (each of them a cybernetic goal in itself) such as preparing a healthy lunch and snacks, packing workout clothes into your gym bag, and remembering to drive to the gym after work rather than heading straight home.

However, if a friend texts you and asks you to meet up for lunch at a burger joint, you’ll be faced with conflicting goals. What should you prioritise: your affiliation goals (pleasing your friend) or your weight loss goal, which is at its most fundamental level a gene survival goal?

Your solution to this problem of contradictory goals will depend on many factors, including personality… which we’ll get to in Part 2.

Are you struggling to put your nutrition knowledge into practice? Need help with making the changes you know you need to make? Apply for a Roadmap to Optimal Health Consultation today; online, phone and in-person appointments are available.