How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition.
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Transcript of How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition.
![Page 1: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition.](https://reader035.fdocuments.net/reader035/viewer/2022062417/551c1571550346a34f8b55f5/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
How We DecideJonah Lehrer
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• Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition
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• Reason vs. emotion: false dichotomy
• decisions DEPEND on emotion
• case history: tumor in orbitofrontal cortex
• OFC connects “primitive brain” to conscious thought
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• Feelings guide our choices
• rational thoughts tend to come AFTER decision has been made
• LeDoux: feelings = summary of unconscious info processing
• consciousness a small part of what brain does
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• metacognition: only in humans (??)
• done by “newer” parts of brain; still have a lot of “bugs”
• older parts of brain debugged much longer
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• dopamine—pleasure centers; helps regulate all emotions & helps us decide
• Shultz: “prediction neurons”
• if expectation confirmed: increased firing rate of “dopamine neurons”
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• if expectation disconfirmed: decreased firing rate of dopamine neurons = prediction error signal
• also: if expectation disconfirmed--anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)—error-related negativity signal (“oh, shit” circuit)
• unexpected result focuses attention• ACC remembers feedback and adjusts
expectations
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Artificial Intelligence
• Deep Blue—chess. rigid, can’t learn from experience
• Tesauro—backgammon. learn from playing games (similar to tic-tac-toe matchbox computer)
• program predicts moves and refines predictions over thousands of games
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Artificial Intelligence
• similar programs used for high rise elevators, flight schedules
• program finds optimal solution itself
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Iowa Gambling Task
• two types of card decks
• one high risk, one conservative
• conservative has higher long-term payoff
• 10 cards: GSR increase for risky deck
• 50 cards: start choosing conservative deck more often
• 80 cards: can explain deck preference
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Deliberate Practice
• best for improving decisions
• focus on mistakes, not successes
• “self criticism is the secret to self improvement”
• Dunning—”incompetence” & need to use external feedback
• Dweck studies
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When do emotions mislead us?
• gambling: anticipation of reward excites dopamine system (note Parkinson’s ex.)
• unpredictable rewards—tend not to adapt
• incorrect beliefs cause incorrect expecations & actions
• e.g., hot hand in basketball
• e.g., finding patterns that are not there (T maze ex.)
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emotions misleading us
• e.g., stock chartists
• Deal or No Deal—base decisions on how deal “feels” instead of rational analysis
• can work, but can mislead when emotions too strong (e.g., overreact to previous bad choice)
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emotions misleading us
• framing: loss aversion
• credit cards—less emotional attachment than actual money
• small vs. large expenditures: stronger emotional response to large, but numerous small ones add up to more
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emotions misleading us
• adjustable loans
• smaller payment NOW: midbrain emotion areas
• larger payment LATER: prefrontal cortex for rational planning
• decision based on which is more active brain area
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emotions misleading us
• Evolutionary psych “mismatch hypothesis”
• our emotions evolved to solve adaptive problems in our evolutionary past; they may not be well-suited to decisions we make in modern life (as described by Loewenstein)
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“Nudge”
• Thaler: we should design choice programs to make good decisions more likely
• e.g., his “save more tomorrow” program: ask employees to opt into savings plan that will start in a few months
• opt-out vs. opt-in programs
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Self Control
• ability to delay gratification—a consistent personality trait
• depends on prefrontal cortex controlling emotion centers
• experts better able to control emotions in emergency situations (“deliberate calm”)
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When to think less
• skilled athletes do better with less conscious control; e.g., golf studies
• (note: Van de Velde description not completely accurate!!)
• poster study: justify choice leads to less happiness with chosen poster; why?
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When to think less
• too much analysis—focus on variables that don’t matter
• poster we are happy with should be based on emotion, not logic
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When to think less
• wine tasting: if know brand or price, it affects our rating
• should choose blind to get what we actually like best
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ways we are bad at math
• serving sizes affect how much we eat & drink
• how far would you drive to save $15?
• Ariely study & Social Security nos.
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too much information
• more info—diminishing returns, then negative returns
• better to focus on few most important factors
• adding low quality info hurts
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too much info
• MRI and back pain study
• 2/3 of asymptomatic people had MRI that looked like a problem
• doctors aware of this study still wanted MRI for their patients
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Moral Decisions
• are based on emotions
• reasons (rationality) comes later
• siblings example
• personal vs. impersonal decisions: trolley examples
• animal examples of fairness sensitivity
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games and fairness
• ultimatum game
• dictator game
• most people make fair offer to a person
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brain and decisions
• Bechara—brain areas compete for control
• competition is mostly unconscious
• Knutson & Loewenstein study—consumer choice
• nucleus accumbens—dopamine pathways
• insula—aversion
• prefrontal cortex—rational analysis
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Knutson & Loewenstein study
• could predict choice by which area most active
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what if deadlocked?
• not always best to “force” a decision
• better to tolerate uncertainty, gather more information (unless not to decide is to decide)
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existing beliefs
• confirmation bias—avoid info that contradicts existing beliefs; seek confirming info
• study: evaluate contradictions by Bush & Kerry
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existing beliefs
• self delusion “feels good” because we enjoy feeling certain
• another author: overconfidence is worst cognitive bias
• professional pundits study—predictions worse than chance; most famous were worst predictors
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existing beliefs
• ideologies can make people disregard contradictory info
• “prisoners of their preconceptions”
• real experts learn from dissonant data
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playing poker
• rational approach—know odds, keep track of cards
• emotion—a feel for when to bluff, when to fold, etc.
• experience—know when to rely on math and when to go with feel
• use conscious mind to learn, and intuition to make choices