So there's been a lot of talk about how John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for VP demonstrates the danger of trusting your instincts and making important decisions with your gut. But I think such a conclusion is unfair - not to McCain, but to our very own brain.
After all, one of the major findings of neuroscience in the last decade or so has been the tremendous power of the emotional mind. The unconscious, long derided as a Freudian underworld, is now seen as an adaptive supercomputer. Antonio Damasio, for instance, has demonstrated that when people lose the ability to experience emotion - usually because of damage to the orbitofrontal cortex - they also lose the ability to make "rational" decisions. In other words, our gut instincts are a necessary ingredient of reason.
Consider this experiment, led by Ap Dijksterhuis and published in Science. He got together a group of Dutch car shoppers and gave them descriptions of four different used cars. Each of the cars was rated in four different categories, for a total of sixteen pieces of information. Car number 1, for example, was described as getting good mileage, but had a shoddy transmission and poor sound system. Car number 2 handled poorly, but had lots of legroom. Dijksterhuis designed the experiment so that one car was objectively ideal, with "predominantly positive aspects". After showing people these car ratings, Dijksterhuis then gave them a few minutes to contemplate their decision. In this "easy" situation, more than fifty percent of the subjects ended up choosing the best car.
Dijksterhuis then showed a separate group of people the same car ratings. This time, however, he didn't let them consciously think about their decision. After he gave them the automotive facts, he distracted them with some simple word games for a few minutes. He then interrupted their fun and asked the subjects, rather suddenly, to choose a car. Dijksterhuis designed the experiment so that these people would be forced to make a decision using their unconscious brain, by relying on their gut instincts. (Their conscious attention had been focused on solving the word puzzle.) The end result was that they made significantly worse choices than those who were allowed to consciously think about the cars.
So far, so obvious. A little rational analysis could have prevented the "unconscious choosers" from buying a bad car. Such data confirms the conventional wisdom: reason is always better. We should think before we decide. John McCain should have gone with Tim Pawlenty.
But Dijksterhuis was just getting warmed up. He then repeated the experiment, only this time he rated each car in twelve different categories. (These "hard" conditions more closely approximate the confusing reality of car shopping, in which consumers are overwhelmed with facts and figures.) In addition to learning about the quality of the transmission and the engine's gas mileage, people were told about the number of cupholders, the size of the trunk, and so on. Their brain had to deal with forty-eight separate pieces of information.
Did conscious deliberation still lead to the best decision? Dijksterhuis found that people given time to think in a rational manner - they could carefully contemplate each alternative - now chose the ideal car less than 25 percent of the time. In other words, they performed worse than random chance. However, subjects who were distracted for a few minutes - they were forced to choose a car with their gut - found the best car nearly 60 percent of the time. They were able to sift through the clutter of automotive facts and find the ideal alternative, as the best car was associated with the most positive feelings. These irrational thinkers were the best decision-makers by far. (It's worth noting that this theory of unconscious thought remains controversial.)
The question, then, isn't whether McCain chooses with his emotional instincts or his prefrontal cortex. Good decisions can emerge from either mental process. The more important point is whether or not McCain exercises his instincts in the proper manner, and takes the time to assimilate all the relevant information before making a choice. (Remember, Dijksterhuis exposed the subjects to all of the automotive facts: the unconscious can't operate in a vacuum.) Initial reports suggest that this wasn't the case, and that McCain made a decision before Palin was fully vetted. If so, then he was trusting instincts that weren't fully informed - and that's when decision-making gets dangerous.
Brain & Behavior
Comments (15)
Posted by: Tegumai Bopsulai, FCD | September 3, 2008 2:01 PM