Hi and welcome to another episode of the savvy psychologist.

I'm your host Dr. Ellen Hendrixen and every week I'll help you meet life's challenges with evidence-based research, a

sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.

Now we all do things we know we shouldn't.

Eat that party-sized bag of m&M's when we shouldn't. Eat that party size bag of M&Ms when we're stressed.

Have just one more drink, sleep with our X,

or get a tattoo of the KFC Double Down sandwich.

And this actually happened, and you can check out a link in the show notes.

Now there is even an entire city built on the knowledge that we will do stupid things.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. So today we'll talk about three

reasons why, even as our conscience or our common sense screams know, we watch

ourselves do things we know will regret. And reason number one is two kinds of

pleasure. From a 2007 paper in the journal Psychopharmacology comes the idea that there are actually two types of pleasure.

Now the first type is how we usually think of pleasure, a state of happy satisfaction.

For example, we get this kind of pleasure from a good meal, sex

in its afterglow, or from that first sip when we're really, really thirsty. And we'll call this

pleasure liking. But it turns out there is a

second kind of pleasure, the pleasure of pursuing something, excitement,

anticipation, seduction, or feeling powerful as you know you got this.

And we'll call this pleasure wanting.

So in other words, we usually think of liking pleasure as Julia Roberts and eat pray love, falling in love, eating

gelato, that feeling of satisfaction, relaxation, and feeling loved and safe.

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