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How We Decide Jonah Lehrer

How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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Page 1: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

How We DecideJonah Lehrer

Page 2: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

• Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

Page 3: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

• Reason vs. emotion: false dichotomy

• decisions DEPEND on emotion

• case history: tumor in orbitofrontal cortex

• OFC connects “primitive brain” to conscious thought

Page 4: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

• 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

Page 5: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

• metacognition: only in humans (??)

• done by “newer” parts of brain; still have a lot of “bugs”

• older parts of brain debugged much longer

Page 6: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

• dopamine—pleasure centers; helps regulate all emotions & helps us decide

• Shultz: “prediction neurons”

• if expectation confirmed: increased firing rate of “dopamine neurons”

Page 7: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

• 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

Page 8: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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

Page 9: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

Artificial Intelligence

• similar programs used for high rise elevators, flight schedules

• program finds optimal solution itself

Page 10: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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

Page 11: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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

Page 12: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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.)

Page 13: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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)

Page 14: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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

Page 15: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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

Page 16: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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)

Page 17: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

“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

Page 18: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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”)

Page 19: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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?

Page 20: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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

Page 21: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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

Page 22: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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.

Page 23: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

too much information

• more info—diminishing returns, then negative returns

• better to focus on few most important factors

• adding low quality info hurts

Page 24: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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

Page 25: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

Moral Decisions

• are based on emotions

• reasons (rationality) comes later

• siblings example

• personal vs. impersonal decisions: trolley examples

• animal examples of fairness sensitivity

Page 26: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

games and fairness

• ultimatum game

• dictator game

• most people make fair offer to a person

Page 27: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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

Page 28: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

Knutson & Loewenstein study

• could predict choice by which area most active

Page 29: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

what if deadlocked?

• not always best to “force” a decision

• better to tolerate uncertainty, gather more information (unless not to decide is to decide)

Page 30: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

existing beliefs

• confirmation bias—avoid info that contradicts existing beliefs; seek confirming info

• study: evaluate contradictions by Bush & Kerry

Page 31: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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

Page 32: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

existing beliefs

• ideologies can make people disregard contradictory info

• “prisoners of their preconceptions”

• real experts learn from dissonant data

Page 33: How We Decide Jonah Lehrer. Important question: when to use rationality vs. intuition

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