By reading the first section of How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, I became very intrigued by how we actually make decisions. Decisions are a part of our everyday life, even the minute ones we may not place much thought into. On the contrast, life is also full of perplexing choices, creating our decision-making process very important. For a long time, humans believed that emotions interfered with one’s way of “rational thinking”, creating them to make mistakes, but they were wrong. Confused by many, decisions are actually a result of our emotions. “If it weren’t for our emotions, reason wouldn’t exist at all” (Lehrer). I was surprised to hear this, and at first not convinced, I continued to read and my mind was changed. Lehrer goes on to give many examples of how this is shown and proved, over and over.
Based on a group of patients, neurologist Antonio Damasio began to find similarities connecting with emotional issues, decision-making, and a particular part of the brain, called the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). “The patients all appeared intelligent and showed no deficits on any conventional cognitive tests. And yet they all suffered from the same profound flaw: because they didn’t experience emotion, they had tremendous difficulty making any decisions” (Lehrer). Sadly, these patients all experienced damage to, or were missing, their OFC, creating their enormous difficulties. The orbitofrontal cortex is responsible for integrating visceral emotions into the decision-making process. Without this, one is unable to conquer simple decisions, such as in routine tasks. For example, Elliot, one of Damasio’s patients, was overwhelmed by “irrelevant details, like whether to use a black or blue pen, what radio station to listen to, and where to park his car” (Lehrer). When our OFC’s can’t comprehend our emotions, we are actually losing are our own opinions we are accustomed to relying on.
Now knowing that our decisions and emotions are tightly connected, the question is, where does this integrated process begin? Discovered by accident, the answer to this question is the fluctuations of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). “Scientists now know that this neurotransmitter helps to regulate all of our emotions, from the first stirrings of love to the most visceral forms of disgust” (Lehrer). Dopamine neurons are like “prediction neurons” because they predict rewards given to the body. For example, in the book they talk about an experiment with monkeys. Every time a man sounded a loud noise, he gave the monkeys a drop of juice. Once the monkeys learned that after the sound, they were given juice, the neurons began firing at the sound of the tone. “If the cellular predictions proved correct, and the reward arrived right on time, then the primate experienced a brief surge of dopamine, the pleasure of being right” (Lehrer). Dopamine neurons continuously create patterns based on experience.
We don’t even realize this is going on, in what could be a decision we make in less than 10 seconds. We may notice something so miniscule that it doesn’t even occur to us, but we will make a decision based on that observance because it created an emotion in us such as fear or excitement. For example, in the book, he tells a story of a Lieutenant Commander who saved a battleship because of this intuitive reason. Watching the radar on his shift, he immediately had a bad feeling about a blip that appeared heading straight for an American battleship. It had the same route of a friendly aircraft, but he had this gut feeling it was an incoming missile. He ordered it to be shot down without knowing, hoping he was making the right decision. After analyzing the radar tapes, they discovered that the missile, right off the coast, didn’t show up on the radar until the third sweep. If it was an American aircraft, it would have shown up the first radar sweep because of the difference in altitudes they each start off at. The Commander was unconsciously evaluating the altitude of the blip, even though he didn’t know he was doing it. Although he couldn’t explain it, he had felt so scared. He acted on this emotion, making the decision to shoot the Iraqi missile down.
While reading this first section of the book, what came to mind was the Carter Racing article we read and discussed in class. As we came to find out, it was actually a representation of a story of the launching of a spaceship. If the people at NASA had all the data they did, what made them make the decision they did to launch it? What emotion or feelings did they encompass that lead them to still launch it under the conditions? I’m not sure of the answer of this, but in reading the rest of the book, maybe I will be able to make some more conclusions.
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