Mental Shortcuts, Not Emotion, Guide Irrational Decisions

Summary: Irrational decision making may be due to a lack of mental effort rather than emotions, a new study reports.

Source: Duke.

If you participate in a study in my lab, the Huettel Lab at Duke, you may be asked to play an economic game. For example, we may give you $20 in house money and offer you the following choice:

  • Keep half of the $20 for sure
  • Flip a coin: heads you keep all $20; tails you lose all $20

In such a scenario, most participants choose 1, preferring a sure win over the gamble.

Now imagine this choice, again starting with $20 in house money:

  • Lose half of the $20 for sure
  • Flip a coin: heads you keep all $20; tails you lose all $20

In this scenario, most participants prefer the gamble over a sure loss.

If you were paying close attention, you’ll note that both examples are actually numerically identical – keeping half of $20 is the same as losing half of $20 – but changing whether the sure option is framed as a gain or a loss results in different decisions to play it safe or take a risk. This phenomenon is known as the Framing Effect. The behavior that it elicits is weird, or as psychologists and economists would say, “irrational”, so we think it’s worth investigating!

In a study published March 29 in the Journal of Neuroscience, my lab used brain imaging data to test two competing theories for what causes the Framing Effect.

One theory is that framing is caused by emotion, perhaps because the prospect of accepting a guaranteed win feels good while accepting a guaranteed loss feels scary or bad. Another theory is that the Framing Effect results from a decision-making shortcut. It may be that a strategy of accepting sure gains and avoiding sure losses tends to work well, and adopting this blanket strategy saves us from having to spend time and mental effort fully reasoning through every single decision and all of its possibilities.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we measured brain activity in 143 participants as they each made over a hundred choices between various gambles and sure gains or sure losses. Then we compared our participants’ choice-related brain activity to brain activity maps drawn from Neurosynth, an analysis tool that combines data from over 8,000 published fMRI studies to generate neural maps representing brain activity associated with different terms, just as “emotions,” “resting,” or “working.”

As a group, when our participants made choices consistent with the Framing Effect, their average brain activity was most similar to the brain maps representing mental disengagement (i.e. “resting” or “default”). When they made choices inconsistent with the Framing Effect, their average brain activity was most similar to the brain maps representing mental engagement (i.e. “working” or task”). These results supported the theory that the Framing Effect results from a lack of mental effort, or using a decision-making shortcut, and that spending more mental effort can counteract the Framing Effect.

Then we tested whether we could use individual participants’ brain activity to predict participants’ choices on each trial. We found that the degree to which each trial’s brain activity resembled the brain maps associated with mental disengagement predicted whether that trial’s choice would be consistent with the Framing Effect. The degree to which each trial’s brain activity resembled brain maps associated with emotion, however, was not predictive of choices.

Brain activity when people make choices consistent with (hot colors) or against (cool colors) the Framing Effect. NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to Krasnow lab.adapted from the Duke news release.

Our findings support the theory that the biased decision-making seen in the Framing Effect is due to a lack of mental effort rather than due to emotions.

This suggests potential strategies for prompting people to make better decisions. Instead of trying to appeal to people’s emotions – likely a difficult task requiring tailoring to different individuals – we would be better off taking the easier and more generalizable approach of making good decisions quick and easy for everyone to make.

About this psychology research article

Source: Duke
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is adapted from the Duke news release.
Original Research: Abstract for “Reason’s Enemy Is Not Emotion: Engagement of Cognitive Control Networks Explains Biases in Gain/Loss Framing” by Rosa Li, David V. Smith, John A. Clithero, Vinod Venkatraman, R. McKell Carter and Scott A. Huettel in Journal of Neuroscience. Published online March 29 2017 doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3486-16.2017

Cite This NeuroscienceNews.com Article

[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]Duke “Mental Shortcuts, Not Emotion, Guide Irrational Decisions.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 31 March 2017.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/irrational-decisions-mental-shortcuts-6319/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]Duke (2017, March 31). Mental Shortcuts, Not Emotion, Guide Irrational Decisions. NeuroscienceNew. Retrieved March 31, 2017 from https://neurosciencenews.com/irrational-decisions-mental-shortcuts-6319/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]Duke “Mental Shortcuts, Not Emotion, Guide Irrational Decisions.” https://neurosciencenews.com/irrational-decisions-mental-shortcuts-6319/ (accessed March 31, 2017).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]


Abstract

Reason’s Enemy Is Not Emotion: Engagement of Cognitive Control Networks Explains Biases in Gain/Loss Framing

In the classic gain/loss framing effect, describing a gamble as a potential gain or loss biases people to make risk-averse or risk-seeking decisions, respectively. The canonical explanation for this effect is that frames differentially modulate emotional processes, which in turn leads to irrational choice behavior. Here, we evaluate the source of framing biases by integrating functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 143 human participants performing a gain/loss framing task with meta-analytic data from >8000 neuroimaging studies. We found that activation during choices consistent with the framing effect were most correlated with activation associated with the resting or default brain, while activation during choices inconsistent with the framing effect was most correlated with the task-engaged brain. Our findings argue against the common interpretation of gain/loss framing as a competition between emotion and control. Instead, our study indicates that this effect results from differential cognitive engagement across decision frames.


SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The biases frequently exhibited by human decision makers have often been attributed to the presence of emotion. Using a large fMRI sample and analysis of whole-brain networks defined with the meta-analytic tool Neurosynth, we find that neural activity during frame-biased decisions was more significantly associated with default behaviors (and the absence of executive control) than with emotion. These findings point to a role for neuroscience in shaping long-standing psychological theories in decision science.

“Reason’s Enemy Is Not Emotion: Engagement of Cognitive Control Networks Explains Biases in Gain/Loss Framing” by Rosa Li, David V. Smith, John A. Clithero, Vinod Venkatraman, R. McKell Carter and Scott A. Huettel in Journal of Neuroscience. Published online March 29 2017 doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3486-16.2017

Feel free to share this Neuroscience News.
Join our Newsletter
I agree to have my personal information transferred to AWeber for Neuroscience Newsletter ( more information )
Sign up to receive our recent neuroscience headlines and summaries sent to your email once a day, totally free.
We hate spam and only use your email to contact you about newsletters. You can cancel your subscription any time.