ABSTRACT
One of the most compelling mysteries to human behavior is why we choose not to avoid distress when we know it is avoidable. At times, our memories of the suffering that we have experienced teach us to behave differently—the proverbial hand on the hot stove that the startled child pulls reflexively away, never to return—but there are other hands that return to the glowing stove time after time after time, despite the scorching, searing pain that these returns produce. Why does the past sometimes teach us, and sometimes smite us? Or, perhaps more accurately, why do we so persistently arrange for the past to smite us? Does our pain pinion us, or do we ensure that we are pinioned by pain?
