Picoeconomics
Also known as: The breakdown of will, Interest within the person
Modeling self-control as bargaining among successive, competing selves over time.
What it means
Picoeconomics is Ainslie's framework that treats the conflicts of self-control as a contest among a series of transient interests within a single person, each governed by hyperbolic discounting. Because hyperbolic curves cross, the long-range interest and the momentary impulsive interest are genuinely opposed, so the person behaves like a population of competing agents bargaining over each choice. Will, in this account, emerges from intertemporal bargaining: by treating each present choice as a precedent that predicts future choices, a person can bundle decisions together to make resisting today's temptation imply resisting tomorrow's. This explains personal rules, their brittleness (a single lapse undermines the whole bundle, as in the what-the-hell effect), and the use of side bets and commitments. Picoeconomics offers a unified microeconomic theory of willpower, addiction, and self-defeating behavior grounded in hyperbolic discounting.
Examples
Resolving 'I never skip the gym' works because each session is staked on the credibility of all the rest, turning one workout into a vote for every future one.
Someone quitting smoking refuses the one cigarette at a party — not because one matters, but because accepting it would tell them every future refusal is negotiable too.
A dieter eats one biscuit and then finishes the packet: the rule was holding the whole week together, so once it breaks, tonight's restraint has nothing left to stand on.
First described in George Ainslie (1992, 'Picoeconomics').