THE MOLECULE OF MOREwhether it’s worth stopping for—and deciding what to do if he pulls
over. Control dopamine takes the excitement and motivation provided
by desire dopamine, evaluates options, selects tools, and plots a strategy
to get what it wants.
For example, a young man is planning to buy his first car. If all he
had was desire dopamine, he would buy the first one that caught his eye.
But since he also has control dopamine, he’s able to refine that impulse.
There are any number of reasons to prefer one car over another; let’s
say this young man is thrifty, and wants the best car he can afford at the
lowest price. Tapping into desire dopamine energy, he spends hours on
the internet, poring over car review sites and developing negotiation
strategies. He wants to know every detail he can so he can maximize
the value of his purchase. When he sits down with the car dealer, he is
so well prepared that nothing will take him by surprise. He feels good:
he has dominated the car-buying situation by mastering all available
information.
Consider a woman on her way to work. She drives to the train sta-
tion, taking a roundabout route that avoids the morning rush hour traf-
fic. When she gets to the station, she navigates to an unoccupied corner
of the parking garage that few people know about, and easily finds a
place to park. She waits on the platform at the precise spot where she
knows the doors to the commuter train will open, putting her at the
front of the line, ready to get one of the remaining empty seats for the
long ride to the city. She feels good: she has dominated her commute.
It’s fun figuring out things, and it’s fun carrying out the strategies
developed to “game” the intricacies of car buying and the daily trip to
work. Why? As always, the function of dopamine flows from the imper-
atives of evolution and survival. Dopamine encourages us to maximize
our resources by rewarding us when we do so—the act of doing some-
thing well, of making our future a better, safer place, gives us a little
dopamine “buzz.”