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Thinking:Emotion or Cognition?
Ruth ByrneProfessor of Cognitive Science
[email protected] of Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience, Lloyd Building Room 3.44
Thinking: Deciding, judging, reasoning, choosing
Fast intuitive processesEmotion
Slower deliberative processesCognition
Kahneman, 2011
Thinking, fast and slowFast
automatic, quick, little or no effort, no sense of voluntary control, innate skills we share with animals
Sloweffortful mental activities,
requires allocation of attention, leads to subjective experience of agency, choice, concentration
Danny Kahneman
Thinking, fast and slowFast
…can detect simple relations, integrate information about one thing
Slow…can follow rules,
compare objects on multiple dimensions, make deliberate choices
Thinking, fast and slow
Dual processes‘In two minds’ Evans,
2003
Stanovich & West, 2000;
Sloman, 1996
Steven Sloman
Keith Stanovich
OutlineTrust: Anger or assessment?
Moral judgment: Passion or reason?
Counterfactual thoughts: preparatory or affective?
Ultimatum Game
Two players must divide a sum of moneyThe proposer specifies the
divisionThe responder has the
option of accepting or rejecting the offer.
If the offer is accepted, the sum is divided as proposed.
If it is rejected, neither player receives anything
Alan Sanfey
Ultimatum gameSuppose you’re the proposer. You have 10 euro
to divide between you and anonymous B.
B has the option of accepting or rejecting your offer.
If B accepts your offer, the sum will be divided as you proposed.
If B rejects your offer, neither of you will get anything.
What amount would you offer B?
Ultimatum gameSuppose you’re B. Anonymous A offers you
1euro
You have the option of accepting or rejecting A’s offer.
If you accept A’s offer, the sum will be divided as A proposed.
If you reject A’s offer, neither of you will get anything.
Would you accept A’s offer?
Game theoryNash equilibrium prediction
If people are motivated purely by self-interestthe proposer should offer the
smallest nonzero amount.the responder should accept
any offer
Game theory?
In fact, the modal offer is a 50/50 split
Low offers of less than 20% of the total amount are rejected about half of the time
Guth et al, 1982
Why don’t people accept ‘something for nothing’?
Emotional decisionsLow offers are often rejected after an angry
reaction to an offer perceived as unfair
Pillutla, & Murnighan, 1996
Unfair offers induce conflict between cognitive (“accept”) and emotional (“reject”) motives
Sanfey et al, 2003
Humans and computersShown pictures, told were of their
partners
10 trials with 10 different partners
10 trials with computer
Sanfey et al 2003
Ultimatum game
Participants accepted all fair offers, with decreasing acceptance rates as the offers became less fair.
Unfair offers of $2 and $1 made by human partners were rejected at a significantly higher rate than those offers made by a computer
Sanfey et al 2003
Ultimatum gameTwo brain regions
particularly active when participant confronted with an unfair offeranterior insula
(emotional processing)dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex (dlPFC) (deliberative processing)
Sanfey et al, 2006
Ultimatum game
If insula (emotion) activation greater than dlPFC (cognitive) activation, tended to reject the unfair offer
If dlPFC (cognitive) activation greater than insula (emotion) activation, tended to accept the offer.
Neural evidence for a two-system account of decision-making
Sanfey et al 2006 emotive cognitive
Ultimatum game
Transcranial magnetic stimulationdisrupt processing in dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex
Van’t Wout et al, 2005
OutlineTrust: Anger or assessment? Emotion first? Cognition overrides?
Moral judgment: Passion or reason?
Counterfactuals: affective or preparatory?
Trolley (train) problem‘You are at the wheel of a runaway train quickly
approaching a fork in the tracks. On the tracks extending to the left is a group of five railway workmen. On the tracks extending to the right is a single railway workman. If you do nothing the train will proceed to the left, causing the deaths of the five workmen. The only way to avoid the deaths of these workmen is to hit a switch on your dashboard that will cause the train to proceed to the right, causing the death of the single workman. Would you hit the switch?’
Moral dilemmasMost people say
they would hit the switch
They decide to sacrifice the life of the single workman in order to save the five workmen
Mikhail, 2009
Footbridge problem‘You are on a footbridge over the railway tracks
towards which a runaway train is quickly approaching. On the tracks beyond the footbridge is a group of five railway workmen. If you do nothing the train will proceed on the tracks, causing the deaths of the five workmen. The only way to avoid the deaths of these workmen is to push a nearby stranger off the bridge so that his large body will stop the train, causing the death of the stranger. Would you push the man?’
Footbridge problemMost people say
they would not push the man
Deontological reasonKant (1788/2002)
People reason to moral judgments
Deontological principlePeople follow a
moral principle only if they would approve of it being universalised
Immanuel Kant
Passions“Morals excite passions, and
produce or prevent actions. Reason itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason”
Hume (1739-1740/2004)
David Hume
Moral intuitions
‘The emotional dog and its rational tail’
Haidt, 2001
Jonathan Haidt
Emotions occur first?
Abortion, child sexual abuse
People have nearly instant implicit reactions to scenes or stories of moral violations
Luo et al, 2006
Affective reactions are usually good predictors of moral judgments and behaviors
Sanfey,et al, 2003
Dual processes
Joshua Greene
A role for both reason and emotion as ‘dual processes’
Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001
fMRIFootbridge-type but not train-type problems
activate emotional areas of brain, detected in fMRI scans
Greene et al, 2001
Greene et al, 2001
Brain impairment6 patients with focal bilateral damage to the
ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC)a brain region necessary for normal generation of
emotions, social emotions
Compared to Normal Controls and Brain Damaged Controls
NB: Patients with VMPC lesions exhibit diminished emotional responsivity and reduced social emotions (e.g., compassion, shame, guilt)
Koenigs et al, 2007
Abnormally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of judgments on personal moral dilemmas Normal in other moral dilemmas - Koenigs et al, 2007
But cognition does matter…Increased cognitive load interferes with
judgments to e.g., hit the switch in impersonal dilemmas, take longer
Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom & Cohen, 2008
Working memoryWorking memory capacity influences
judgments on ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ dilemmas
Moore, Clark & Kane, 2008
Separate systems of emotion and cognition…
Are moral intuitions guided by separate evaluative and emotional processes,
independent systems operating in parallel
Bucciarelli, Khemlani & Johnson-Laird, 2008
Phil Johnson-Laird
Monica Bucciarelli
Sunny Khemlani
EvidenceDilemmas
Emotion questions and moral questionsEmotion question: does it make you feel
good or bad?Moral question- is it right or wrong?
Faster response to emotion questions for ‘emotional-prevalent’ scenarios, faster to moral questions for ‘evaluation-prevalent’ scenarios
Not always emotion first…Emotions sometimes precede evaluations and
evaluations sometimes precede emotions, and so one is not always dependent on the other
Bucciarelli et al, 2008
OutlineTrust: Anger or assessment?Emotion first? Cognition overrides?
Moral judgment: Passion or reason?Emotion and Cognition separate?
Counterfactual thoughts: preparatory or affective?
OutlineTrust: Anger or assessment?Emotion first? Cognition overrides?
Moral judgment: Passion or reason?
Emotion and Cognition separate?
Counterfactual thoughts: preparatory or affective?
Alternatives to realityCommon in entertainment
Alternatives to realityHistorical analyses
‘What if … Hitler had chosen to make his major attack …into Syria and the Lebanon?
Would he have avoided defeat?’
Keegan, 1999; Tetlock & Lebow, 2001
Counterfactual Alternatives- Regularities
People think ‘if only’ most often after bad eventse.g., traumatic accidents, deaths,
job losses, relationship break-ups
but also sometimes after good events, ‘lucky chances’E.g. winning a prize, meeting
someone new, escaping a bad event
Mandel et al 2005
People think ‘if only’ most often after unexpected eventsMarkman et al 2010
David Mandel
Functions of counterfactual thoughts
Preparatory function
If he’d been wearing a seatbelt he wouldn’t have been injured
Learn from mistakes, work out causes, form intentions, plans, to avoid bad outcome in future
responsibility, fault
Key learning mechanismEpstude & Roese, 2008
Neal Roese
Functions of counterfactual thoughts
Affective function
If he’d been wearing a seatbelt he wouldn’t have been injured
Amplify emotions such as guilt, regret, remorse
Roese & Olson, 1995Neal Roese
Functions of counterfactualsAmplify emotionIndividual goes to a party,
her friend’s boyfriend flirts with her and before leaving asks for her telephone number which she gives. Her friend is later very distressed.
Niedenthal, Tangney & Gavanski, 1994
Functions of counterfactualsAmplify emotionParticipants asked to imagine
themselves as the individual and think ‘if only’
Directed to change Something about the
individual’s actionsSomething about the
individual’s personalityRated emotions they expect character to experience
Functions of counterfactualsAmplify emotionSomething about the
character’s actionsE.g., If only I hadn’t flirted
with himGUILT
Something about the character’s personalityE.g., If only I wasn’t so
disloyalSHAME
Counterfactual imagination
Amos Tversky
Danny Kahneman
• People mentally simulate events
• They create an alternative to reality by changing an aspect of their simulation
• Emotions are ‘amplified’
Kahneman & Tversky, 1982
What happens when you can’t create counterfactual alternatives?Counterfactuals and the BrainBrain injuryParkinson’sSchizophrenia
Counterfactuals and the Brain
Patient with damage to the DLPFCExhibited perseveration
and social impairments
“a complete absence of counterfactual expressions” p.1367
Recently experienced various emotional stressors e.g., mother’s sudden death, career failure, typically associated with counterfactual thinking
Knight & Grabowecky 1995
Counterfactuals and the Brain
18 patients with PFC lesions, 26 controls
Beldarrain, Garcia-Monco, Astigarraga, Gonzalez, & Grafman, 2005
Counterfactuals and the Brain
Participants write down whatever was on their minds in response to 3 questions for 5 min: (a) recall a negative event in the past year, (b) what are you thinking about right now, (c) you just have completed a task for us. Record your reaction to it and any other thoughts about your performance on this task
Record number of mentions of a counterfactual thought; grammatical markers, such as might have, could have, almost, if only, what if, if or wish that.
Counterfactuals and the Brain
Number of mentions of counterfactual thoughts
Controls M = 4
PFC patients M = 1
Beldarrain,et al 2005
Counterfactuals and the Brain
“This selective impairment in self-generated counterfactual thoughts should be considered and mentioned as part of the dysexecutive syndrome exhibited by patients with PFC lesions
and cognitive rehabilitation programs should consider cueing counterfactual thoughts to help these patients reflect on their behaviors.”
Beldarrain, Garcia-Monco, Astigarraga, Gonzalez, & Grafman, 2005, p. 276
Jordan Grafman
Counterfactuals and the BrainParkinson’s disease
Prefrontal dysfunction in patients with advanced Parkinson’s
24 people with Parkinson’s, 15 controls
Asked to recall a negative personal event; given three minutes to consider in detail; asked explicitly if they had any thoughts of how things might have gone differently, thoughts of ‘if only’s’ or ‘what if’s’.
Controls M = 2.07
Parkinson’s patients M = 0.77
McNamara, Durso, Brown & Lynch, 2003
Counterfactuals and the Brain-Parkinson’s disease
1) Janet is attacked by a mugger only 10 feet from her house. Susan is attacked by a mugger a mile from her house. Who is more upset by the mugging?
a) Janet (86% norms)
b) Susan (0)
c) Same/can’t tell (14%)
Controls M = 2
Parkinson’s patients M = 1.17 (chance level)
McNamara, et al, 2003
Counterfactuals and the Brain-Parkinson’s disease
“Counterfactual impairment may be one reason why these patients fail to learn from past mistakes and thus why they persist in maladaptive or dangerous behaviours…
If patients suffer counterfactual impairment they are less likely to be able to handle social conversations fluently, to formulate plans easily, or to compare alternative outcomes imaginatively…”
McNamara et al, 2003, p.1069
Patrick McNamara
Counterfactuals and the Brain-Schizophrenia
Frontal lobe deficits in some patients with schizophrenia (40%-50%)
14 schizophrenia patients, 12 controls
Recall personally experienced negative events; recorded mention of counterfactual thoughts
Controls M = 2.08
Schizophrenia patients M = 1
Hooker, Roese & Park 2000
Counterfactuals and the Brain-Schizophrenia
Counterfactual Inference Test
Controls M = 2.33
Schizophrenia patients M = 1.29 (chance level)
Hooker, et al 2000
SummaryTrust: Anger or assessment?Emotion first? Cognition overrides?
Moral judgment: Passion or reason?
Emotion and Cognition separate?
Counterfactual thoughts: preparatory or affective?Cognition first? Emotion arises from cognition?
Emotion or cognition?
Dual processes of fast and slow thinkingEmotion is important aspect of ‘fast’ thinking
Relationship of emotion and cognition is complex
In some cases, emotion is immediate and cognition overrides it, e.g. trust
In some cases, emotion and cognition appear to be separate systems – e.g., moral
In some cases, cognition gives rise to emotion – e.g., counterfactual
Reading
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Sanfey,A. et al (2003) The Neural Basis of Economic Decision-Making in the Ultimatum Game, Science 300, 1755-1758
Haidt, 2007, The new synthesis in moral psychology, Science 316, 998-1001.
http://reasoningandimagination.wordpress.com/
https://mentalmodelsblog.wordpress.com/
