ABSTRACT
Motivational science has necessarily studied the control of behavior by external rewards, and so has not permitted explanations that do without such rewards. Addiction was long assumed to arise from the action of a drug. The obvious exception of gambling addiction was attributed to delusions about how the laws of probability govern the ostensibly rational goal of getting money. The chapter describes the several prominent proposals for which hyperbolic discounting has the greatest implications. Short-term interests based on addictions are aggressive bargainers by definition. They may make it necessary to cut the Gordian knot of intertemporal bargains and focus concretely on a single target. The persistence of addictions despite deteriorating reward has suggested the relevance of behavioral experiments on habit—the persistence of a choice after it is no longer rewarded. Sometimes the result is long-term artistic pleasure or sublimation, but occasions can also be structured to invite hedonic importance onto faster-paying patterns that can become addictive.
