math and psychology

When Arjuna vacillated about going to war against his cousins on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, he was not putting off doing something out of fear, lack of application or laziness. But a new study reported recently in Scientific American Mind would have us take a re-look at Arjuna's initial inability to act. The study suggests that the hesitation on the famous warrior's part can actually be reduced to a simplistic mathematical algorithm. The research, conducted by an industrial psychologist at the University of Calgary in Canada, would in fact have us believe that all human motivation behind any act of procrastination can be summed up in a short formula.Earlier last century psychologists belonging to various behavioural schools had tried to do the same thing to reduce the intricate reasons behind all action to rudimentary rules