tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/decisions-41312/articlesDecisions – The Conversation2023-04-17T04:46:38Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2013792023-04-17T04:46:38Z2023-04-17T04:46:38ZWe make thousands of unconscious decisions every day. Here’s how your brain copes with that<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517593/original/file-20230327-20-xu864f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=204%2C150%2C3389%2C2236&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">agsandrew/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Do you remember learning to drive a car? You probably fumbled around for the controls, checked every mirror multiple times, made sure your foot was on the brake pedal, then ever-so-slowly rolled your car forward. </p>
<p>Fast forward to now and you’re probably driving places and thinking, “how did I even get here? I don’t remember the drive”. The task of driving, which used to take a lot of mental energy and concentration, has now become subconscious, automatic – habitual.</p>
<p>But how – and why – do you go from concentrating on a task to making it automatic?</p>
<h2>Habits are there to help us cope</h2>
<p>We live in a vibrant, complex and transient world where we constantly face a barrage of information competing for our attention. For example, our eyes take in <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1564115/">over one megabyte of data every second</a>. That’s equivalent to reading 500 pages of information or an entire encyclopedia every minute.</p>
<p>Just one whiff of a <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12744840/">familiar smell</a> can trigger a memory from childhood in less than a millisecond, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2009.08.004">our skin</a> contains up to 4 million receptors that provide us with important information about temperature, pressure, texture, and pain.</p>
<p>And if that wasn’t enough data to process, <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/REPS-10-2018-011/full/html">we make thousands of decisions</a> every single day. Many of them are unconscious and/or minor, such as putting seasoning on your food, picking a pair of shoes to wear, choosing which street to walk down, and so on.</p>
<p>Some people are neurodiverse, and the ways we sense and process the world differ. But generally speaking, because we simply cannot process <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364661305001178">all the incoming data</a>, our brains create habits – automations of the behaviours and actions we often repeat.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/neurodiversity-can-be-a-workplace-strength-if-we-make-room-for-it-164859">Neurodiversity can be a workplace strength, if we make room for it</a>
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<h2>Two brain systems</h2>
<p>There are two forces that govern our behaviour: intention and habit. In simple terms, our brain has <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17437199.2016.1244647">dual processing systems</a>, sort of like a computer with two processors.</p>
<p>Performing a behaviour for the first time requires intention, attention and planning – even if plans are made only moments before the action is performed. </p>
<p>This happens in our prefrontal cortex. More than any other part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex is responsible for making deliberate and logical decisions. It’s the key to reasoning, problem-solving, comprehension, impulse control and perseverance. It affects behaviour via <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/handbook-of-behavior-change/changing-behavior-using-the-reflectiveimpulsive-model/A35DBA6BF0E784F491E936F2BE910FF7">goal-driven decisions</a>.</p>
<p>For example, you use your “reflective” system (intention) to make yourself go to bed on time because sleep is important, or to move your body because you’ll feel great afterwards. When you are learning a new skill or acquiring new knowledge, you will draw heavily on the reflective brain system to form new memory connections in the brain. This system requires mental energy and effort.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-what-happens-in-your-brain-when-youre-trying-to-make-or-break-a-habit-201189">Here's what happens in your brain when you're trying to make or break a habit</a>
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<h2>From impulse to habit</h2>
<p>On the other hand, your “impulsive” (habit) system is in your brain’s <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.neuro.29.051605.112851">basal ganglia</a>, which plays a key role in the development of emotions, memories, and pattern recognition. It’s impetuous, spontaneous, and pleasure seeking.</p>
<p>For example, your impulsive system might influence you to pick up greasy takeaway on the way home from a hard day at work, even though there’s a home-cooked meal waiting for you. Or it might prompt you to spontaneously buy a new, expensive television. This system requires no energy or cognitive effort as it operates reflexively, subconsciously and automatically. </p>
<p>When we repeat a behaviour in a consistent context, our brain recognises the patterns and moves the control of that behaviour from intention to habit. A habit occurs when your impulse towards doing something is automatically initiated because you encounter a setting in which you’ve done the same thing <a href="https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-015-0065-4">in the past</a>. For example, getting your favourite takeaway because you walk past the food joint on the way home from work every night – and it’s delicious every time, giving you a pleasurable reward.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517606/original/file-20230327-28-ant9ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A row of fried noodle dishes with a person filling up a foil container in the foreground" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517606/original/file-20230327-28-ant9ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517606/original/file-20230327-28-ant9ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517606/original/file-20230327-28-ant9ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517606/original/file-20230327-28-ant9ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517606/original/file-20230327-28-ant9ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517606/original/file-20230327-28-ant9ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517606/original/file-20230327-28-ant9ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Before you know it, picking up a delicious takeaway on your way home can become a regular habit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/mdWyghy08vg">James Sutton/Unsplash</a></span>
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<h2>Shortcuts of the mind</h2>
<p>Because habits sit in the impulsive part of our brain, they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2019.03.978">don’t require much cognitive input or mental energy</a> to be performed. </p>
<p>In other words, habits are the mind’s shortcuts, allowing us to successfully engage in our daily life while reserving our reasoning and executive functioning capacities for other thoughts and actions. </p>
<p>Your brain remembers how to drive a car because it’s something you’ve done many times before. Forming habits is, therefore, a natural process that contributes to <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0033-2909.124.1.54">energy preservation</a>.</p>
<p>That way, your brain doesn’t have to consciously think about your every move and is free to consider other things – like what to make for dinner, or where to go on your next holiday.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-shall-we-have-for-dinner-choice-overload-is-a-real-problem-but-these-tips-will-make-your-life-easier-193317">'What shall we have for dinner?' Choice overload is a real problem, but these tips will make your life easier</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gina Cleo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There’s so much to process in our daily lives, we need habits to get us through and give the brain a break.Gina Cleo, Assistant Professor of Habit Change, Bond UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2001242023-04-11T16:12:14Z2023-04-11T16:12:14ZWhy everyday decisions feel so stressful – and what to do about it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519533/original/file-20230405-22-nnp0uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C31%2C7040%2C4637&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Little decisions can feel stressful too </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pleasantlooking-guy-african-hairstyle-having-hesitation-674836279">Cast Of Thousands/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Almost every morning I face the same dilemmas. Whether I should wake up my wife with a kiss or let her sleep longer. Should I get out of bed or just press the snooze button? And that is even before I have had my first cup of coffee. </p>
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<p>Our daily life is rife with so-called trivial decisions. People often feel silly for overthinking low-stakes decisions but research has shown there are logical reasons for feeling this way. Understanding why you feel so stressed by smaller decisions can help you learn what to do about it. </p>
<p>First, sometimes the sheer number of options overwhelms us, as we find it difficult to compare and contrast the options. Economics scholars <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-47458-8_4#:%7E:text=and%20quality%20up.-,It%20is%20therefore%20no%20surprise%20that%20economists%20generally%20view%20more,can%20entail%20huge%20transaction%20costs.">long championed the notion</a> that it’s better to have more choices. But in 2000, US psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Leeper challenged this idea. </p>
<p>In one of their studies, <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.79.6.995">they set up a jam testing table</a> at a supermarket. Far more consumers bought a jam when they were given fewer options. Almost a third (30%) of customers went on to buy a jam when the stall had six flavours yet only 3% of customers bought jam when there were 24 flavours.</p>
<p>Drawing on these findings, US psychologist Barry Schwartz’s book <a href="https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-psychology/198/">The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less</a>, argues an abundance of choices can cause people anxiety. </p>
<p>People often lack, or believe they lack the expertise to properly assess their options. For example, when dealing with a financial decision. And if you have goals, a lack of certainty about how rigidly you want to stick to them is probably going to give you a headache. A vague goal to “start saving more” isn’t going to give you clarity when a friend suggests going out for food and your belly is rumbling.</p>
<p>Also, some of the decisions we label trivial may actually <a href="https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1515900/1/Thesis_final_C.Charpentier.pdf">have emotional high stakes.</a> Deciding what to wear for a date, for instance, is probably not just about fashion. </p>
<p>While each factor is enough to create stress, when all factors are combined <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1057740814000916">anxiety about the decision</a> is only going to be amplified.</p>
<h2>It’s your personality</h2>
<p>Another line of research has focused on the link between people’s decision strategies and wellbeing. Researchers have identified two main decision-making strategies: <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/judgment-and-decision-making/article/way-of-making-choices-maximizing-and-satisficing-and-its-relationship-to-wellbeing-personality-and-selfrumination/64424CFEE4D1BB8C8E6D875D0F84CD8E">Maximising and satisficing</a>. Maximising is a tendency to try and find the best option. Satisficing, a term introduced by Nobel prize winner Herbert Simon, is a strategy that terminates once an acceptable option is found. </p>
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<img alt="Asian woman in deep many thoughts" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519534/original/file-20230405-26-jvpasp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519534/original/file-20230405-26-jvpasp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519534/original/file-20230405-26-jvpasp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519534/original/file-20230405-26-jvpasp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519534/original/file-20230405-26-jvpasp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519534/original/file-20230405-26-jvpasp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519534/original/file-20230405-26-jvpasp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">It can all get a bit overwhelming.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/depressed-asian-woman-deep-many-thoughts-1836979756">Doucefleur</a></span>
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<p>Maximising and satisficing have been linked to personality traits. There are people who tend to maximise and others who are more satisficers. </p>
<p>Schwartz and his colleagues <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-18731-012">found a negative relationship</a> between a tendency to maximise and feelings of life satisfaction. Maximisers (compared with satisficers) were also more likely to experience post-decision regret. One explanation is that maximisers are always brooding about what they could have done and how they could have made a better decision. </p>
<p>To be clear, the study did not examine major life decisions about marriage or health but focused on every day decisions (although <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/36/3/337/2900261">similar findings</a> have been reported about more serious medical decisions). </p>
<h2>Make a habit of it</h2>
<p>Decisions can be <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-desk-jobs-alter-your-brain-and-why-theyre-so-tiring-190273">mentally exhausting</a>. So sometimes everyday choices feel hard because you have decision fatigue.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/style.33.1.67">William James</a>, one of the greatest thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries, suggested <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4077119/">habits help us cope with these complexities</a>. Habits take away the need to think. Investing your time in building habits can stop you from ruminating on everyday decisions.</p>
<p>William James’ insights have inspired <a href="https://larrygmaguire.com/psychology-of-habit-william-james/">many contemporary researchers</a>. One idea popularised by psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s book, <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/thinking-fast-and-slow/daniel-kahneman/9780141033570">Thinking, Fast and Slow</a>, is the notion that we use two different information processing mechanisms, system one and system two. System one is unconscious, fast, intuitive. It requires little effort. System two is purposeful thinking. </p>
<p>Waking up at the same time every morning, kissing my wife and then making coffee has become a habit that has helped me avoid thinking too much about these activities. I let my system one take charge as much as I can, at least until I have my first cup of coffee. </p>
<p>US writer <a href="http://www.merlinmann.com/">Merlin Mann</a> said “thinking can be the enemy of action”. While I am not sure I would agree completely, his words do resonate with many findings from psychology. </p>
<p>Herbert Simon developed the idea of satisficing because he believed humans have <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1957-01985-001">limited cognitive and other capacities</a> (such as memory and attention). Thinking too much — for example, whether to exercise today or not — can be stressful and frustrate the intention to do so. </p>
<p>You have to decide how to invest your resources (whether they are cognitive, emotional, or physical). Investing them in thinking about exercising can consume the energy you needed to exercise. </p>
<p>When it comes to our daily decisions, reducing the number of options can also help ease the process. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was well known <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/10/05/steve-jobs-always-dressed-exactly-the-same-heres-who-else-does/">for wearing similar outfits</a> almost every day (jeans and a turtle neck or a T-shirt) partly to simplify the decision process. </p>
<p>It’s about accepting you have limited “decision making juice” and being conscious about how you use it. Reducing choices, developing good habits, and letting our so-called system one take charge can help us face our daily decisions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200124/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yaniv Hanoch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sometimes a choice over what to order at a restaurant or wear to work can feel as much an ordeal as major life decisions. Here’s what psychology research shows about why.Yaniv Hanoch, Professor in Decision Science, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1902732022-10-19T16:40:03Z2022-10-19T16:40:03ZHow desk jobs alter your brain – and why they’re so tiring<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489812/original/file-20221014-17-wbdnit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5767%2C3847&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Friday never seems to come around fast enough at the office. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/tired-business-woman-sleepy-bored-sitting-2142729487">CrizzyStudio/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A long day in the office can leave you empty of energy and overcome with desire for TV and a takeaway. But you’ve been sitting down all day. So why do you feel as tired as your friends who have physical jobs? </p>
<p>Struggling through your list of essential tasks feels ever more gruelling as the clock ticks down for home-time. Worse still is bumping into a colleague on your way out who “just wants a quick minute”. It might seem obvious that you are more likely to make impulsive decisions at the end of a long day, but people often power through anyway. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35961314/">recent study</a> that scanned people’s brains at different points in their work day found high-demand tasks which require intense, constant concentration can lead to build-up of a potentially toxic chemical called glutamate. Normally used to send signals from nerve cells, in large quantities glutamate alters the performance of a brain region involved in planning and decision making, the lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC).</p>
<p>Science has shown time again that mental fatigue has real effects. There are numerous studies which show that court decisions can depend on how fatigued the judge is. For example, after a long day in court, <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1018033108">judges are more likely to deny parole</a> (which is considered the safer option). Studies show that <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4648561/">clinicians are more likely to prescribe</a> unnecessary antibiotics at the end of a tiring clinical session.</p>
<p>The new study, from Paris Brain Institute (ICM), investigated whether cognitive functions such as focus, memory, multitasking and problem-solving can cause fatigue of the lPFC, which influences the decisions we make when we cross things off our list. </p>
<h2>Opportunity cost</h2>
<p>The brain is the command centre of the body, regulating circulation, breathing, motor function and the nervous system. The brain coordinates these activities at the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6971497/">expense of huge energy use</a>.</p>
<p>Nerve cells break down nutrients to release energy (metabolism). But this process accumulates byproduct molecules known as <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/metabolite">metabolites</a>. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4133642/">Glutamate</a> is a type of metabolite. The brain clears this toxic waste chemical <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4651462/">in your sleep</a>. </p>
<p>The authors of the Paris study wanted to see whether prolonged cognitive tasks exhaust the brain’s supply of nutrients. They also tested whether this type of high-focus demand builds up a greater concentration of toxic substances in the lPFC than other parts of the brain. In this case, the authors compared lPFC to the primary visual cortex, which receives and processes visual information. </p>
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<img alt="Man reclines with eyes closed, holding paperwork" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489820/original/file-20221014-10772-azuds9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489820/original/file-20221014-10772-azuds9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489820/original/file-20221014-10772-azuds9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489820/original/file-20221014-10772-azuds9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489820/original/file-20221014-10772-azuds9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489820/original/file-20221014-10772-azuds9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489820/original/file-20221014-10772-azuds9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Familiar with this feeling? It could be time to restructure your work day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/exhausted-afro-business-man-looking-papers-1854941398">Stockbusters/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>To test their hypothesis the authors divided their 40 participants into two groups. Both groups sat in an office in front of a computer for six and a half hours. One group had to do difficult tasks that called on their working memory and constant attention. </p>
<p>For example letters were displayed on a computer screen every 1.6 seconds and participants had to sort them into vowels and consonants or, depending on the colour of the letter, upper or lowercase. The second group did similar but much simpler tasks. Both groups managed an average 80% correct response rate. </p>
<p>The scientists used magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to scan participants’ brains and measure levels of metabolites. The authors took readings at the beginning, middle and end of the day. </p>
<p>They found fatigue markers, such as increased glutamate concentration, but only in the high-demand group. The build up of toxic chemicals was only observed in the lateral prefrontal cortex [lPFC]) and not the primary visual cortex. </p>
<p>After the high and low-demand cognitive tasks, the two groups had decision tests. This included choices about their willingness to exert physical effort (whether to ride a bike at different intensities), cognitive effort (whether to perform harder or easier versions of the cognitive control tasks) and patience (how long they were willing to wait to receive a larger reward). The rewards ranged from €0.10 to €50 (8p-£43). Delays for receiving the reward ranged from immediate cash after the experiment or bank transfer after one year.</p>
<h2>Rethinking the work day</h2>
<p>The authors found that the high-demand group, which had an elevated level of metabolites in the lPFC, preferred choices that were less taxing. These participants’ pupils were less dilated (dilated pupils suggests arousal) and took less time to make decisions, which indicates they experienced this part of the experiment as undemanding.</p>
<p>So <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35961314/">the Paris study</a> also raises questions about whether the working day is structured in the best format. According to the results of the study we should break up high-demand cognitive control tasks that need working memory and constant attention and take into account the fact that performance takes a hit at the end of the day. Some professions may need very different structuring considering these results.</p>
<p>During their shift, air traffic controllers only guide aircraft for up to two hours, followed by a half-hour break. But bus drivers, clinicians and pilots would benefit from regular, compulsory rests too. </p>
<p>Our brains have many different areas that are active during different tasks, such as speaking, hearing and planning. So not all of our decisions can be explained by the Paris study findings. </p>
<p>Considering the interactions across the entire body, a <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-03072-001">2006 study</a> from the USA suggested that new information may be best processed in a state of hunger. But hunger makes it harder to store newly learned information. Satiety means fuels are available to build neuron circuits to <a href="https://www.elsevier.com/books/body-brain-behavior/horvath/978-0-12-818093-8">store long-term memory</a>. </p>
<p>Decisions about a third party, for example a judge delivering a verdict on a defendant, may be better in a state of satiety while tasks that involves fine motor functions, such as surgery, may be compromised. This is is because after a meal, self interest in survival is diminished because we do not need to search for food. </p>
<p>This allows us to more objectively judge our environment. But satiety is a time when the body needs to rest to process food, which is why complex fine motor skills aren’t at their best in this state. </p>
<p>Next time you have to make a difficult decision at the end of a long day, be aware you will be inclined towards low-effort actions with short-term rewards. If possible you should sleep on it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190273/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Office work feels draining for a reason. Your brain builds up toxic chemicals when you concentrate for a long time.Zoltán Molnár, Professor of Developmental Neuroscience, University of OxfordTamas Horvath, Professor of Neurobiology and Ob/Gyn, Yale UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1769682022-04-19T12:19:46Z2022-04-19T12:19:46ZPandemic decision-making is difficult and exhausting – here’s the psychology that explains why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458383/original/file-20220418-22-mu1qko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=367%2C62%2C4848%2C3409&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">So much uncertainty around risk can make it extra hard to decide what to do.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/young-hipster-woman-using-a-smart-phone-in-her-royalty-free-image/990991128">Richard Drury/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>You want to sit down for an indoor dinner with friends. A couple of years ago, this was a simple enough activity that required minimal planning. However, that is not the case in today’s world. Many people now face a stream of further considerations about benefits and risks.</p>
<p>Will I enjoy the experience? What are the potential downsides? Am I comfortable with the restaurant’s pandemic-related policies? What’s the ventilation like? Is it very busy there at this time of day? Am I planning to see lots of people, or people with compromised immune systems, in the near future? </p>
<p>This is exhausting! <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gFXRTf4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">As scientists</a> <a href="https://tricomilab.wixsite.com/ldmlab/people">at the</a> <a href="https://tricomilab.wixsite.com/ldmlab">Learning and Decision-Making Lab</a> at Rutgers University-Newark, we’ve noticed how many decision-making processes are affected by the pandemic. The accumulation of choices people are making throughout the day leads to what psychologists call <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jean-Twenge/publication/237738528_Decision_Fatigue_Exhausts_Self-Regulatory_Resources_-_But_So_Does_Accommodating_to_Unchosen_Alternatives/links/554b9ee40cf21ed21359ccbd/Decision-Fatigue-Exhausts-Self-Regulatory-Resources-But-So-Does-Accommodating-to-Unchosen-Alternatives.pdf">decision fatigue</a> – you can end up feeling overwhelmed and make bad decisions. The current pandemic can make this situation more pronounced, as even the choices and activities that should be the most simple can now feel tinged with risk and uncertainty. </p>
<p>Risk involves known probabilities – for example, the likelihood of losing a certain hand in poker. But <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/305826/the-signal-and-the-noise-by-nate-silver/">uncertainty is an unknown probability</a> – you can never really know the exact chance of catching COVID-19 by engaging in certain activities. Human beings tend to be both risk-averse and uncertainty-averse, meaning that you likely avoid both when you can. And when you can’t – as during a confusing phase of a pandemic – it can be draining to try to decide what to do.</p>
<h2>Rules are easy, decisions are hard</h2>
<p>Before the COVID-19 pandemic, most people didn’t think through some basic decisions in the same way they might now. In fact, even early in the pandemic you didn’t really need to. There were rules to follow whether you liked them or not. Capacity was limited, hours were restricted, or shops were closed. People were strongly urged to opt out of activities they’d normally engage in.</p>
<p>This is evident in data we collected from university students in fall 2020 and spring 2021. One question we asked was, “What has been the hardest part of the pandemic for you?” Responses included “Not being able to see my friends and family,” “Having to take classes online,” “Being forced to stay home” and many other similar frustrations. </p>
<p>Many of our survey respondents were either not able to do things they wanted to do or were forced to do things they didn’t want to do. In either case, the guidelines were clear-cut and the decisions were less of a struggle.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458384/original/file-20220418-76603-u14lyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="masked cafe worker puts out an 'open' sign" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458384/original/file-20220418-76603-u14lyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458384/original/file-20220418-76603-u14lyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458384/original/file-20220418-76603-u14lyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458384/original/file-20220418-76603-u14lyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458384/original/file-20220418-76603-u14lyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458384/original/file-20220418-76603-u14lyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458384/original/file-20220418-76603-u14lyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A pandemic world that is open for business sets the scene for a lot more daily decisions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/all-set-to-restart-business-royalty-free-image/1272761167">pixdeluxe/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>As restrictions ease and people think about “living with” the coronavirus, the current phase of the pandemic brings with it a new need to make cost-benefit calculations.</p>
<p>It’s important to remember that not everyone has experienced these kinds of decisions in the same way. Throughout the course of the pandemic there have been people who did not have the luxury of choice and needed to go to work regardless of the risk. There have also been those who have taken risks all along. On the other end of the spectrum, some people continue to stay isolated and avoid almost every situation with the potential for contracting COVID-19.</p>
<p>Those who experience the most decision fatigue are those who are in the middle – they want to avoid COVID-19 but also want to get back to the activities they enjoyed before the pandemic.</p>
<h2>Shortcuts can short-circuit decision-making</h2>
<p>Psychologist Daniel Kahneman wrote in his book “<a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374533557/thinking-fast-and-slow">Thinking, Fast and Slow</a>” that “when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead.”</p>
<p>Making decisions about risk and uncertainty is hard. For instance, trying to think through the probability of catching a potentially deadly virus while going to an indoor movie theater is difficult. So people tend to think in terms of binaries – “this is safe” or “this is unsafe” – because it’s easier.</p>
<p>The problem is that answering easier questions instead of trickier ones leaves you vulnerable to cognitive biases, or <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808098.002">errors in thought that affect your decision-making</a>.</p>
<p>One of the most prevalent of these biases is the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(73)90033-9">availability heuristic</a>. That’s what psychologists call the tendency to judge the likelihood of an event based on how easily it comes to mind. How much a certain event is covered in the media, or whether you’ve seen instances of it recently in your life, can sway your estimate. For example, if you’ve seen stories of a plane crash in the news recently, you may believe the probability of being in a plane crash to be higher than it actually is.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=science&source=inline-science-favorite">Weekly on Wednesdays</a>.]</p>
<p>The effect of the availability heuristic on pandemic-era decision-making often manifests as making choices based on individual cases rather than on overall trends. On one side, people may feel fine going to a crowded indoor concert because they know others in their lives who have done this and have been fine – so they judge the likelihood of catching the coronavirus to be lower as a result. On the other hand, someone who knows a friend whose child caught COVID-19 at school may now think the risks of transmission in schools are much higher than they really are.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the availability heuristic means these days you think much more about the risks of catching COVID-19 than about other risks life entails that receive less media attention. While you’re worrying about the adequacy of a restaurant’s ventilation system, you overlook the danger of getting into a car accident on your way there.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458385/original/file-20220418-87032-gbe2cc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="woman seated in restaurant booth looks out the window pensively" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458385/original/file-20220418-87032-gbe2cc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458385/original/file-20220418-87032-gbe2cc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458385/original/file-20220418-87032-gbe2cc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458385/original/file-20220418-87032-gbe2cc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458385/original/file-20220418-87032-gbe2cc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458385/original/file-20220418-87032-gbe2cc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458385/original/file-20220418-87032-gbe2cc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">You can’t know for sure whether you’ll get infected after meeting a friend.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/pensive-woman-sitting-by-herself-in-a-restaurant-at-royalty-free-image/1138424247">LeoPatrizi/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>A constant process</h2>
<p>Decisions in general, and during a pandemic in particular, are about weighing risks and benefits and dealing with risk and uncertainty.</p>
<p>Because of the nature of probability, you can’t be sure in advance whether you’ll catch COVID-19 after agreeing to dine at a friend’s house. Furthermore, the outcome does not make your decision right or wrong. If you weigh the risks and benefits and accept that dinner invitation, only to end up contracting COVID-19 at the meal, it doesn’t mean you made the wrong decision – it just means you rolled the dice and came up short.</p>
<p>On the flip side, if you accept the dinner invitation and don’t end up with COVID-19, don’t get too smug; another time, the outcome might be different. All you can do is try to weigh what you know of the costs and benefits and make the best decisions you can.</p>
<p>During this next phase of the pandemic, we recommend remembering that uncertainty is a part of life. Be kind to yourself and others as we all try to make our best choices.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176968/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>People tend to dislike uncertainty and risk – two things that are hard to avoid completely during a pandemic. That’s part of why it can feel especially draining to make even small decisions these days.Elizabeth Tricomi, Associate Professor of Psychology, Rutgers University - NewarkWesley Ameden, Ph.D. Student in Psychology, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1687112021-10-14T18:57:31Z2021-10-14T18:57:31ZPeople use mental shortcuts to make difficult decisions – even highly trained doctors delivering babies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426007/original/file-20211012-23-181b1i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=528%2C0%2C3665%2C2552&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The situation in the delivery room can change suddenly, and doctors need to react fast.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/obstetrician-at-work-royalty-free-image/154891439">naphtalina/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Being a physician is a difficult job. They must make complex, high-stakes decisions under severe pressure, with limited information about the patient, the disease and the treatment, while juggling personal and hospital priorities under the ever-present threat of lawsuits.</p>
<p>So what do physicians do in such highly uncertain situations?</p>
<p>Like all human beings, they unconsciously rely on quick rules that simplify complex decisions. Psychologists and economists call these mental shortcuts “<a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/heuristics/">heuristics</a>.”</p>
<p>For example, if your sandwich falls on the floor, you might employ the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-is-it-really-ok-to-eat-food-thats-fallen-on-the-floor-45541">five-second rule</a> to decide whether to pick it up and eat it or simply throw it away. That’s a heuristic – it allows you to approximate the correct decision quickly and easily, without getting mired in a lengthy mental debate about the pros and cons of each possible course of action.</p>
<p>While the average person’s reliance on heuristics is usually of little concern to society, the use of heuristics by physicians can have serious consequences.</p>
<h2>Heuristics in the delivery room</h2>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_SUPGvQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I’m a health economist</a> interested in the intersection of applied decision theory and health care.</p>
<p>There are all kinds of decisions a doctor must make while attending a birth: Should a woman continue to labor if the baby shows signs of distress? What interventions are warranted? Is it time for an emergency cesarean? The physician is responsible for life-and-death choices in a fraught, emotional environment.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc9818">In my recent research</a> published in the journal Science, I found that physicians use heuristics in the delivery room in ways that could potentially harm the mother and baby.</p>
<p>Looking at two academic hospitals’ data from more than 86,000 deliveries over 21 years, I saw that physicians who experienced complications during one patient’s delivery were more likely to switch to the other mode of delivery for their next patient, regardless of what the situation calls for. For example, if the physician’s last patient hemorrhaged during her vaginal delivery, the physician is more likely to perform a cesarean delivery for their next patient, even if a C-section is not indicated for that patient.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426008/original/file-20211012-21-1f3axac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="preparing for operation in darkened surgical suite" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426008/original/file-20211012-21-1f3axac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426008/original/file-20211012-21-1f3axac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426008/original/file-20211012-21-1f3axac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426008/original/file-20211012-21-1f3axac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426008/original/file-20211012-21-1f3axac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426008/original/file-20211012-21-1f3axac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426008/original/file-20211012-21-1f3axac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A doctor may lean toward a C-section because the last vaginal delivery had complications.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/two-male-surgeons-performing-an-operation-royalty-free-image/1227588366">SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>It appears physicians may overcorrect after a bad outcome, tending to shy away from the decision they believe caused it – even when faced with a new patient with her own unique circumstances.</p>
<p>Complications during a vaginal delivery increased the likelihood of a subsequent C-section by up to 3.6%. That’s about 23 potentially inappropriate C-sections per year per hospital. Complications during a cesarean increased the likelihood of a subsequent vaginal delivery by up to 3.4%. That’s about 50 potentially inappropriate vaginal deliveries per year per hospital.</p>
<p>It’s a sizable effect, considering the baseline effect should be zero. And patients at poorly resourced hospitals that have higher numbers of labor-and-delivery complications are more likely to be affected – as physicians experience more difficulties, this heuristic means they’ll be swayed toward more potentially inappropriate delivery choices.</p>
<p>There is evidence that this switching heuristic is harmful to the affected patient. For instance, if the physician switches delivery modes after the prior delivery had complications, my analysis found that the second patient and/or her baby are more likely to die than if the physician had switched delivery modes after no prior complications.</p>
<h2>What’s behind the overcorrection</h2>
<p>Since psychologists <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/pr/96/960605tversky.html">Amos Tversky</a> and Nobel laureate <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ImhakoAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">Daniel Kahneman</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.185.4157.1124">introduced the idea of heuristics and biases</a> into the mainstream a few decades ago, researchers have conducted hundreds of studies establishing the various types of heuristics people rely on in various contexts. While these mental shortcuts are often useful for making immediate judgments with limited information, they can lead people to make very predictable mistakes.</p>
<p>There are several heuristics that could explain the switching behavior I identified in the delivery room data.</p>
<p>Take, for instance, the “win-stay/lose-shift” heuristic, which has been seen in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-010-1679-0">birds</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2020.00137">bees</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.185.4153.796">rats</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/h0023269">monkeys</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/h0028753">children</a> and <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/101/52/18053.short">adults</a>. According to this heuristic, individuals stick with a strategy until they experience a “loss,” such as a labor-and-delivery complication. At that point, they switch strategies – like trying a different delivery mode.</p>
<p>Researchers have been especially interested in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016755">how experts use heuristics</a>, since it is not immediately clear whether people with enhanced knowledge of their specialized fields fall prey to the same decision-making flaws that afflict the lay individual. There is growing evidence that experts in a variety of fields – such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.09.001">forensic scientists</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(87)90046-X">real estate agents</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.1.129">elite athletes</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1018033108">judges</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1006/ijhc.2000.0393">academics</a> and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12414468/">physicians</a> – do, in fact, rely on heuristics. Whether the use of such heuristics leads to poor outcomes – whether it can be called a “bias” – is still a matter of debate. </p>
<h2>Useful time-saver or dangerous bias?</h2>
<p>A bias arising from a heuristic implies a deviation from an “optimal” decision. However, identifying the optimal decision in real life is difficult because you usually don’t know what could have been: the counterfactual. This is especially relevant in medicine.</p>
<p>Take the win-stay/lose-shift strategy, for example. There are other studies that show that after “bad” events, physicians switch strategies. Missing an important diagnosis makes physicians test more on <a href="https://doi.org/10.5811/cpcem.2019.9.43975">subsequent patients</a>. Experiencing complications with a drug makes the physician <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.38698.709572.55">less likely to prescribe it again</a>.</p>
<p>But from a learning perspective, it’s difficult to say that ordering a test after missing a diagnosis is a flawed heuristic. Ordering a test always increases the chance that the physician catches an important diagnosis. So it’s a useful heuristic in some instances – say, for example, the physician had been underordering tests before, or the patient or insurer prefers shelling out the extra money for the chance to detect a cancer early.</p>
<p>In my study, though, switching delivery modes after complications offers no documented guarantees of avoiding future complications. And there is the added consideration of the short- and long-term <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31930-5">health consequences of delivery-mode choice</a> for mother and baby. Further, people are generally less tolerant of having inappropriate medical procedures performed on them than they are of being the recipients of unnecessary tests.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426009/original/file-20211012-19-jbfnr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="doctor in scrubs using tablet" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426009/original/file-20211012-19-jbfnr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426009/original/file-20211012-19-jbfnr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426009/original/file-20211012-19-jbfnr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426009/original/file-20211012-19-jbfnr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426009/original/file-20211012-19-jbfnr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426009/original/file-20211012-19-jbfnr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426009/original/file-20211012-19-jbfnr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Decision support can be built into the systems doctors use as they make choices about care.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/integrating-the-modern-and-medical-worlds-royalty-free-image/1162117375">shapecharge/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Tweaking the heuristic</h2>
<p>Can physicians’ reliance on heuristics be lessened? Possibly.</p>
<p><a href="https://hbr.org/2018/03/how-mayo-clinic-is-combating-information-overload-in-critical-care-units">Decision support systems</a> that assist physicians with important clinical decisions are gathering momentum in medicine, and could help doctors course-correct after emotional events such as delivery complications. </p>
<p>For example, such algorithms can be built into electronic health records and perform a variety of tasks: flag physician decisions that appear nonstandard, identify patients who could benefit from a particular decision, summarize clinical information in ways that make it easier for physicians to digest and so on. As long as physicians retain at least <a href="https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2643">some autonomy</a>, decision support systems can do just that – support doctors in making clinical decisions.</p>
<p><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2499658">Nudges</a> that unobtrusively encourage physicians to make certain decisions can be accomplished by tinkering with the way options are presented – what’s called “choice architecture.” They already work for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-017-4286-5">other clinical decisions</a>.</p>
<p>Imagine a policy objective is to reduce prescription of drug X. The medical record system could present drug X as the last option in the physician’s drop-down menu, or auto-populate a default drug Y that the physician could choose to override. The physician would still be able to prescribe drug X, but it would require a little more mental involvement on their part to do so.</p>
<p>However, it is critical to understand that physicians frequently make highly consequential decisions under immense pressure. Any administrative barriers that hinder their ability to respond to clinical information in real time might harm patients even more. Designing and implementing interventions aimed at improving physician decision-making will be a challenge.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168711/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Manasvini Singh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s human nature to unconsciously rely on quick rules to help make spur-of-the-moment decisions. New research finds physicians use these shortcuts, too, which can be bad news for some patients.Manasvini Singh, Assistant Professor of Health Economics, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1679382021-10-03T17:06:32Z2021-10-03T17:06:32ZWhat happens when your brain looks at itself?<p>In 1884, while attempting to define the limits of human perception, <a href="https://philarchive.org/archive/PEIOSD">Charles Pierce and Joseph Jastrow</a> discovered something else: the limits of our insight into ourselves.</p>
<p>Participants in their experiments systematically under-rated their ability to correctly judge their own sensations, which Pierce and Jastrow offered as an explanation of “the insight of females as well as certain ‘telepathic’ phenomena”. These particular implications have thankfully been left behind (along with the conceptual relationship between telepathy and female insight). But by the late 1970s this approach of asking participants to rate their own performance had emerged as its own field of research: the study of <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Metacognition-and-Cognitive-Monitoring%3A-A-New-Area-Flavell/ee652f0f63ed5b0cfe0af4cb4ea76b2ecf790c8d">“metacognition”</a>.</p>
<p>Broadly, this ability to self-reflect and think about our own thoughts allows us to feel more or less confident in our decisions: we can act decisively when we’re confident we are correct, or be more cautious after we feel we’ve made an error.</p>
<p>This affects all aspects of our behaviour, from long-term abstract influences such as defining our life goals, to the basic influences of judging our own sensations (what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch).</p>
<p>We aren’t always good at metacognition. Some people are in general over-confident, some are under-confident and most people will occasionally feel very confident about a bad choice.</p>
<p>Metacognition is known to develop through childhood and adolescence, and poor metacognition has been implicated in several <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-psychiatry/article/abs/dysfunctional-metacognition-across-psychopathologies-a-metaanalytic-review/3EB4D6C4B21547750252ED1C85FD88A2">psychiatric disorders</a>.</p>
<p>It’s clear that we need to develop <a href="https://childmind.org/article/how-metacognition-can-help-kids/">educational tools</a> and <a href="https://mct-institute.co.uk/">treatments</a> to improve metacognition. But we are still far from fully understanding how it works.</p>
<h2>How should the brain look at itself?</h2>
<p>In order to think about your own thoughts, your brain effectively has to look at itself.</p>
<p>In theory, any time some of the hundreds of billions of cells in the brain get together and achieve a thought, feeling, or action, they also report how well they did it. All brain processes are monitored and evaluated, which gives rise to metacognition. One of the big questions is: how?</p>
<p>In our lab we study metacognition in its most basic form, our ability to judge our own sensations.</p>
<p>We still use similar methods to Pierce and Jastrow. In a typical experiment, we will show participants an image and ask them to make a simple decision about what they see, then rate how confident they are that they made the correct choice. As a simple example, we could show them an almost vertical line and ask them to judge whether it is tilted to the left or right. The participant should feel more confident when they feel they do not need to look back at the line to check that they’ve made the correct choice.</p>
<p>We call this “decision evidence”. Just like in a court a jury will decide if there is enough evidence to convict a criminal, the brain decides if there is enough evidence to be confident in a choice.</p>
<p>This is actually a big problem for studying what happens in the brain when people feel more compared to less confident, because a difference in confidence is also a difference in decision evidence. If we find a difference in brain activity between high vs low confidence, this could actually be due to more vs less evidence (the line is perceived more vs less tilted).</p>
<p>We need to separate the brain activity is related to the process of judging the tilt of the line from the brain activity related to feeling confident in judging that tilt.</p>
<h2>Separating confidence from decision evidence</h2>
<p>We recently <a href="https://elifesciences.org/articles/68491">found a way to distinguish between these processes</a>, by separating them in time. In the experiment, we measured participants’ brain activity as they made decisions about a whole sequence of images shown one after the other.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421136/original/file-20210914-27-1hpoy05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421136/original/file-20210914-27-1hpoy05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421136/original/file-20210914-27-1hpoy05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421136/original/file-20210914-27-1hpoy05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421136/original/file-20210914-27-1hpoy05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421136/original/file-20210914-27-1hpoy05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421136/original/file-20210914-27-1hpoy05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The task at hand in our experiment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tarryn XYZ</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We were able to see what happens in the brain as participants viewed the images and came to their decision. Sometimes, participants committed to their decision before all of the images had been shown. In this case, we saw the activity related to making the decision come to a halt. But some activity continued.</p>
<p>Even though participants made their decision early, they still checked the additional images and used them to rate their confidence. In these cases, the brain activity for making the decision is finished, so it can’t get mixed up with the activity related to confidence.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421137/original/file-20210914-15-18a4bvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421137/original/file-20210914-15-18a4bvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421137/original/file-20210914-15-18a4bvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421137/original/file-20210914-15-18a4bvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421137/original/file-20210914-15-18a4bvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421137/original/file-20210914-15-18a4bvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421137/original/file-20210914-15-18a4bvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The brain activity during the task is localized in the cortex.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tarry XYZ</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our first finding agreed with a lot of previous research: we found activity related to confidence in the areas of the brain that are also associated with goal-driven behaviour.</p>
<p>But in closely examining this brain activity, trying to address the question of how the brain looks at itself, we came across a different question: when?</p>
<h2>Extreme micro-management</h2>
<p>The default view of metacognition is that you make your decision first, then you check how much evidence you have to feel confident – first you think, then you think about thinking. But when we examined the pattern of brain activity related to confidence, we found it evolved even before participants made their decision.</p>
<p>This is like counting your chickens before they’ve hatched. The brain is the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/27/why-your-brain-is-not-a-computer-neuroscience-neural-networks-consciousness">most efficient computer</a> we know of, so it’s odd to think it would do something so unnecessary.</p>
<p>The default view suggests a large role of metacognition in moderating future behaviour: our subsequent actions are influenced by how confident we are in our decisions, thoughts, and feelings, and we use low confidence to learn and improve in the future.</p>
<p>But there’s an additional possibility: we could use confidence while we deliberate to know if we should seek out more evidence or if we have enough to commit to a decision.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15561-w">separate experiment</a>, we indeed found that people who are better at metacognition are also better at knowing when to stop deliberating and commit to a decision. This indicates that the brain could be continuously looking at itself, monitoring and evaluating its processes in order to control its efficiency; a system of extreme micro-management.</p>
<p>More than 130 years after Pierce and Jastrow first questioned the role of metacognition we are still discovering new ways this kind of self-reflection is important. In doing so, we are also discovering more about the brain and its amazing ability to look at itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167938/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pascal Mamassian has received funding from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Valentin Wyart has received funding from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) and the European Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tarryn Balsdon ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>For each decision we make, we assign a certain level of confidence. How does the brain decide how much?Tarryn Balsdon, Postdoctoral researcher, École normale supérieure (ENS) – PSLPascal Mamassian, chercheur CNRS en psychologie expérimentale, École normale supérieure (ENS) – PSLValentin Wyart, Directeur de recherche en neurosciences, InsermLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1659172021-08-12T12:27:31Z2021-08-12T12:27:31ZEmotion is a big part of how you assess risk – and why it’s so hard to be objective about pandemic precautions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415747/original/file-20210811-25-2qub9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=112%2C17%2C2613%2C1886&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It can be hard to see eye to eye when people don't see risk the same way.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/maskless-supporter-of-sean-feucht-argues-with-a-protester-news-photo/1230366959">Ringo Chiu/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>People tend to overestimate or underestimate risk. The pandemic brings this into stark relief. Picture someone wearing an N95 mask while walking their dog through a deserted park. Contrast that with someone entering a crowded bar maskless in an area with high coronavirus transmission rates.</p>
<p>Risk is a function of logical and physical factors, both qualitative and quantitative. A computer could combine them all into a measure that captures the likelihood, benefits and cost of an event occurring. </p>
<p>But people are prone to assess risk emotionally. This tendency explains why many view flying as riskier than driving, even though <a href="https://traveltips.usatoday.com/air-travel-safer-car-travel-1581.html">the reverse is true</a>.</p>
<p>What people often confuse with risk is <a href="https://www.fairinstitute.org/blog/control-deficiencies-are-not-risks">lack of control</a>. That’s one reason many have concerns about <a href="https://www.natlawreview.com/article/dangers-driverless-cars">self-driving vehicles</a>, where <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/16/1014672/building-a-self-driving-car-that-people-can-trust/">artificial intelligence algorithms</a> control the steering and braking.</p>
<p>People accept risks when they favorably <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cost-benefitanalysis.asp">weigh the perceived or potential benefits against the associated costs</a>. That trade-off explains why people gamble on casino games and lotteries, even though their <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/financial-services-and-commerce/lottery-payouts-and-state-revenue-2010.aspx">expected return is negative</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ZLTSUtsAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">As a data scientist</a> with expertise in data-driven decision-making under uncertainty, I’ve been watching how people react to coronavirus risks since the beginning of the pandemic. Choosing to be vaccinated, for instance, involves numerous factors – personal and public – that must be weighed to inform decisions. For some, this decision is obvious. For others, it is shrouded in fog. </p>
<p>At the heart of all such decisions is how you as an individual assess risk and make decisions based on your assessments. What are the different perspectives that lead to different ways to assess risk? Building bridges between such perspectives is crucial to reach a healthy societal compromise.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415748/original/file-20210811-27-1k7u77m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="two masked people hold homemade sign that reads 'Respect the virus, it kills'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415748/original/file-20210811-27-1k7u77m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415748/original/file-20210811-27-1k7u77m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415748/original/file-20210811-27-1k7u77m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415748/original/file-20210811-27-1k7u77m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415748/original/file-20210811-27-1k7u77m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415748/original/file-20210811-27-1k7u77m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415748/original/file-20210811-27-1k7u77m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When making decisions, one part of the population focuses on the threat from the coronavirus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/anti-protestors-rena-demeo-left-and-gail-simms-argue-with-news-photo/1214038309">Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>One pandemic, different perspectives</h2>
<p>There are two general COVID-19 perspectives; let’s call them receptive and skeptical. A wide schism of risk beliefs about the virus and the vaccines separate these two groups.</p>
<p>As a whole, the receptive faction views the pandemic scientifically. In general, they are emotionally charged when considering its impact and the path forward, viewing it as a major public health crisis. They know that many lives have been lost in the U.S., and support the societal responses taken so far – actions like stay-at-home orders, school closings and indoor dining shutdowns. They view the delta variant as the most recent emerging threat. They accept the value of wearing face coverings in public and feel everyone should be vaccinated.</p>
<p>In contrast, the skeptical faction generally views the virus to be on the same level of concern as seasonal influenza or the common cold. They recognize that many have died, but believe that these people likely already had other health problems, so the virus just hastened their demise. They question the benefits of the societal responses taken so far. Many believe a previous infection will protect them against the delta variant and that face coverings are ineffective for stopping the spread of the virus. They are wary of the vaccines – except possibly for people who really need it, like the elderly – preferring natural immunity as their best defense.</p>
<p>Both perceptions contain a mix of valid observations, flawed beliefs and misinformation.</p>
<p>The receptive perception reflects an aversion to risk. Those in this group overestimate the risk of the virus at the personal level. As such, they treat worst-case scenarios as expected outcomes. For this group, the benefits of responses outweigh their costs.</p>
<p>The skeptical perception reflects a high tolerance for risk. Their actions suggest that they underestimate the risk of the virus at the population level. As such, they treat best-case scenarios as expected outcomes. This group believes that the benefits of responses in the past did not warrant their costs.</p>
<h2>Finding a risk compromise</h2>
<p>The middle ground is where the truth lies, and risk can be assessed. So what is this fact-based middle ground?</p>
<ul>
<li><p>To date, over <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrendscases">615,000 people have died in the U.S.</a>, with <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics">95% of them over 50 years old</a>. This vulnerability helps explain why those in <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total">older age groups have been most receptive to vaccination</a>.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.epa.gov/covid19-research/evaluating-effectiveness-facial-coverings-and-masks">Face coverings</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252963">social distancing</a> have been effective in reducing virus transmission. Anecdotally, if they were not, other <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/03/30/981303287/should-masking-last-beyond-the-pandemic-flu-and-colds-are-down-spurring-a-debate">infectious diseases like influenza and the common cold</a> would not have virtually disappeared over the past year.</p></li>
<li><p>Every person infected presents a new opportunity for the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6">virus to mutate</a>. This is how the delta variant came about.</p></li>
<li><p>The vaccines available have provided the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-breakthrough-infection-6-questions-answered-about-catching-covid-19-after-vaccination-164909">most reliable way to prevent hospitalizations and deaths</a> from the virus.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>With so many factors contributing to the vaccine benefits and costs nexus, informed decision-making requires risk assessment that at best is challenging and at worst is simply overwhelming. This pushes people to simplify their decision process down to a single factor, effectively narrowing their risk assessment.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415749/original/file-20210811-21-lybfel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="man with child holds homemade signs that read 'pandemic is a fraud' and 'government is criminal'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415749/original/file-20210811-21-lybfel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415749/original/file-20210811-21-lybfel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415749/original/file-20210811-21-lybfel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415749/original/file-20210811-21-lybfel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415749/original/file-20210811-21-lybfel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415749/original/file-20210811-21-lybfel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415749/original/file-20210811-21-lybfel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Another part of the population perceives public health guidelines as government overstepping.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporters-of-president-donald-trump-and-their-children-news-photo/1213387624">David McNew/Getty Images News via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The field of <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/decision-analysis.asp">decision analysis</a> was created to inform such complex processes. It provides a set of tools to systematically balance multiple criteria when making a decision.</p>
<p>Even with all the data available, both receptive and skeptical factions base their assessment of risk on emotion. Receptive people are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intimp.2021.107724">fearful of the virus’s impact</a> on themselves and the population, and are willing to accept interventions recommended by public health officials to ameliorate any such outcomes. The end result are behaviors that help reduce, but not stop, the spread of the virus.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20226-9">Skeptical people are distrustful</a> of interventions espoused by government agencies like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, <a href="https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-profile-of-the-unvaccinated/">believing they are unnecessary</a> and threaten livelihoods, personal well-being and personal choice. The end result are behaviors that do not help reduce the spread of the virus, since they believe the need to stop it is exaggerated.</p>
<p>People with receptive and skeptical perceptions of the virus have not been able to find much common ground. The same conflicts exist around solutions to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/11/25/why-everything-they-say-about-climate-change-is-wrong/?sh=9ff669912d6a">climate change</a> and other political policies in the U.S. related to things like <a href="https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/309cc8e1-b971-45c6-ab52-29ffb1da9bf5/jec-fact-sheet---the-economy-under-democratic-vs.-republican-presidents-june-2016.pdf">economic growth</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_under_Democratic_and_Republican_presidents">job creation</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Overcoming philosophical divides requires each faction to <a href="https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/309cc8e1-b971-45c6-ab52-29ffb1da9bf5/jec-fact-sheet---the-economy-under-democratic-vs.-republican-presidents-june-2016.pdf">feel safe in its position and be provided with the opportunity to be heard</a>. Using <a href="https://phys.org/news/2017-12-facts-consensus-bridges-conservative-liberal-climate.html">data and facts to build consensus</a> can be effective. With multiple criteria weighted differently by each faction, everyone can be a decision analyst to help reach common ground for compromise. </p>
<p>Steps like these would help bridge the coronavirus-response divide – and possibly even help end the social chaos that erupted in response to the pandemic. It’s hard to imagine enough Americans setting aside the emotion at this point, though, to dispassionately calculate costs and benefits around vaccination, masking and all the other public health interventions.</p>
<p>There is a path forward – the key to ending the pandemic is getting both factions to walk it together.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165917/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sheldon H. Jacobson receives funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, "Optimal Real-time Decision-making in an Uncertain World,” FA9550-19-1-0106.</span></em></p>How you respond to a risk depends on how you weigh the costs and benefits of an action. The problem is you’re not just a logical computer, and emotions bias your interpretation of the facts.Sheldon H. Jacobson, Professor of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1605512021-05-07T10:45:55Z2021-05-07T10:45:55ZCuba’s push for coronavirus vaccine sovereignty<p><em>This is a transcript of episode 14 of The Conversation Weekly podcast ‘<a href="https://theconversation.com/cubas-race-to-make-its-own-coronavirus-vaccine-podcast-160324">Cuba’s race for a coronavirus vaccine + making life’s big decisions</a>’. In this episode, how Cuba is pushing ahead with developing its own coronavirus vaccines – and could be nearing “vaccine sovereignty”. And we hear from a researcher about what he learned from asking hundreds of people about the biggest decisions of their lives.</em></p>
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<p><em>NOTE: Transcripts may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.</em></p>
<p>Gemma Ware: Hello and welcome to The Conversation Weekly.</p>
<p>Dan Merino: This week, how Cuba is pushing ahead with the development of its own coronavirus vaccines, and could be nearing vaccine sovereignty.</p>
<p>Amilcar Pérez Riverol: They say, “We can do this, we have been doing this for a long time, so at least we should try.” </p>
<p>Gemma: And we hear from a researcher about what he learnt from asking hundreds of people about the biggest decisions of their lives.</p>
<p>Adrian Camilleri: Many people indicated they spent years thinking about the self-development decisions. </p>
<p>Dan: I’m Dan Merino in San Francisco. </p>
<p>Gemma: And I’m Gemma Ware in London. You’re listening to The Conversation Weekly, the world explained by experts.</p>
<p>Dan: COVID-19 first arrived in Cuba in early March 2020, when three tourists from Italy tested positive for the virus.</p>
<p>Gemma: Throughout last year, Cuba was able to limit the spread of the disease across the island. But case numbers have been increasing in 2021. Currently around 1,000 new cases are being recorded every day.</p>
<p>Dan: By the start of May, Cuba had registered <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/">675 deaths from COVID</a>. That’s a death rate of 60 people per million, which is pretty good compared to 1,751 per million here in the US, or 1,904 per million in the UK.</p>
<p>Gemma: The pandemic has hit Cuba hard in other ways though, and it’s economy shrunk 11% in 2020. As well as the loss of tourism, an important source of foreign currency for the island, other structural issues, including the strengthening of some US sanctions, have <a href="https://theconversation.com/cubas-economic-woes-may-fuel-americas-next-migrant-crisis-158260">caused a severe economic crisis</a>, which has led to food shortages.</p>
<p>Dan: Now, with cases rising, there’s an urgent need to get people vaccinated. But instead of relying on other countries’ vaccines, Cuba has decided to go it alone. </p>
<p>Gemma: Yeah, Cuba has a strong biotechnology and healthcare sector, and it’s been investing public money in a handful of different candidate vaccines for COVID over the past year.</p>
<p>Dan: For this episode, I’ve spoken to three experts, to help explain how Cuba’s race for a coronavirus vaccine is going, and where it fits into the wider picture of global vaccine diplomacy.</p>
<p>Dan: This is a story about a small country, that despite living under a very restrictive US trade embargo, could be on the cusp of making its own vaccine. But it also illustrates a bigger story about who controls access to pharmaceuticals, and how this makes it much harder for people in the global south to get the vaccines and drugs they need.</p>
<p>Dan: A few months into the pandemic in May 2020, the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, began pushing for his country to develop its own COVID-19 vaccine. The country’s biotech sector moved quickly into action, and today there are number of vaccines candidates, and a few are almost ready for use. </p>
<p>Amilcar: Cuba is working with five different a vaccine candidate for COVID-19, two of them in phase 3 of clinical trials. We should refer to as vaccine candidate because they don’t have yet the data related to efficacy and also they don’t have, emergency use authorisation or full use authorisations.</p>
<p>Dan: This is Amilcar Pérez Riverol. He’s a postdoctoral researcher at the University of São Paolo State and a former professor of virology at the University of Havana in Cuba. He has been closely watching the progress of the five vaccine candidates. </p>
<p>Amilcar: Soberena 01, 02 and Soberena plus are being developed by the Finlay Institute of Vaccines. </p>
<p>Dan: The Finlay Institute was set up in the late 90s and is part of BioCubaFarma, a state-run holding company that includes more than 30 research institutes and pharmaceutical manufacturers. In the late 1980s, a precursor to the Finlay Institute developed the world’s first vaccine against meningitis B. Today, the institute produces ten vaccines routinely used within Cuba, but also sends hundreds of millions of doses abroad. </p>
<p>It’s the Finlay Institute which is making Cuba’s three Soberena vaccines. The name Soberena is pregnant with meaning. In Spanish, it means sovereign.</p>
<p>Amilcar: And then you have Abdala and Mambisa, which are being developed mainly by the Center of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Havana.</p>
<p>Dan: Public money is being poured into the development of these vaccine candidates, which involve collaborations between a range of different institutions.</p>
<p>Amilcar: Most of them belonging to BioCubaFarma. </p>
<p>Dan: All five of Cuba’s candidate vaccines are what are called subunit vaccines. Subunit vaccines work by directly injecting a small piece of the targeted virus – a subunit – into a persons body. The body then generates an immune response against the subunit. This is different from mRNA vaccines, like Moderna’s and Pfizer’s – as well as adenovirus vaccines, like Johnson & Johnson and Astrazeneca’s, both of which deliver genetic material into the body and then a person’s own cells produce parts of the virus. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-are-covid-19-vaccines-made-an-expert-explains-155430">How are COVID-19 vaccines made? An expert explains</a>
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<p>Amilcar: Cuba have a great expertise in working with subunit vaccines. Most of the vaccines that are currently being using are based in the whole spike protein. In the case of Cuba vaccine, they use just part of this protein. </p>
<p>Dan: The specific part of the spike protein used in Cuba’s vaccines is called the RBD - or the receptor binding domain. This is the subunit in the subunit vaccines. </p>
<p>Amilcar: So the idea is that you produce the RBD, and then you immunise people with the RBD so these people are able to produce specific antibodies against the RBD and neutralise the virus. </p>
<p>Dan: Two of Cuba’s vaccine candidates have begun stage three clinical trials, and remember that’s the final stage before a drug or intervention is approved by medical regulators. </p>
<p>Amilcar: So they are running these classic phase 3 clinical trials. And for Soberana 02 they have 44,000 people in the trial, and in the case of Abdala they have 48,000 people. But also they are running a study, they call it intervention study with 150,000 people for Soberana 02. And the number is quite similar for Abdala. And they are particularly running this study with healthcare workers. This is, let’s say a non-classical approach. So far we don’t see this for any other candidate for COVID 19. </p>
<p>Dan: Data on the efficacy of Cuba’s vaccine candidates is still limited, but Amilcar says what information there is, is looking pretty good, at least in the academic pre-prints that have been publishd. In late April, Vicente Vérez Bencomo, director general of the Finlay Institute, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01126-4">told the journal Nature</a> that initial trial phases of the Soberena 02 vaccine generated an antibody response in around 80% of the people who got vaccinated. And that climbed to 100% when those people were given a booster dose of the Soberena Plus vaccine. </p>
<p>Amilcar: They are thinking that they will have the data related to efficacy, to the outcome of phase 3 clinical trials sometime around the end of May, June, or even July. </p>
<p>Dan: That’s pretty good, but other places have been giving vaccines to their population for months now. So, why you might be wondering, did Cuba decide to go it alone and produce its own vaccine? Well, according to Amilcar, it’s kind of because they can. </p>
<p>Amilcar: They say, “OK, we can do this, we have been doing this for a long time, so at least we should try.” Then they have mentioned that the country doesn’t have the money to pay for other vaccines. They say that they don’t have the money to enter in this Covax mechanism for World Health Organization. </p>
<p>Dan: Low- and middle-income countries can get vaccines from Covax for free. But Cuba is considered an upper middle-income nation so it would have to pay. </p>
<p>Amilcar: Also it will take time for the Covax facility to fulfil their commitment, you know, for the amount of those doses we need for immunise the whole population. </p>
<p>Dan: So Cuba decided to go it alone. The process hasn’t been all easy though. </p>
<p>Amilcar: I have to say that the embargo have an impact in Cuba biotechnology.</p>
<p>Dan: Though the US trade embargo on Cuba is not as tight as it once was, it’s still very difficult for Cuban organisations to access pharmacological raw materials and medical equipment, especially since Donald Trump’s toughened sanctions during his presidency. </p>
<p>Amilcar: They need, for example, some equipment that they use to conduct the analysis in the lab. And then you have also problem with some of the ingredients, that you need to produce the vaccine. But so far it looks like they will be able to finish the process of evaluation and also to produce the amount of doses that they will require to immunise the whole Cuban population and also to provide or offer doses to countries that eventually will be interested, for example, Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico and also Argentina. </p>
<p>Dan: Despite these difficulties, two of the Cuban vaccines are in phase 3 trials as of earl May and Cubans have been enthusiastic.</p>
<p>Amilcar: You can see that a lot of people are going to the place where the clinical trials are taking place to be volunteers. The general idea that I get from people that I talk to in Cuba is that they are confident and they want to be vaccinated as soon as possible. </p>
<p>Dan: But Amilcar also acknowledged concerns about these intervention studies – those are the two studies that have given the vaccine candidates to more than 100,000 health care workers each - and that is despite the fact that the phase 3 trials have yet to show efficacy.</p>
<p>Amilcar: This is a bit unusual, because you are immunising thousands of people with the candidate and you don’t know the efficacy yet. So you have some concern in the general population. </p>
<p>Dan: To be clear, the Cuban vaccines have been shown to be safe. The risk is that they just might not prevent COVID-19. </p>
<p>Amilcar: You will use a lot of resources in immunising a lot of people and you don’t know if this will have the benefits. I mean, for these vaccines, you have three doses. So you have to use a lot of resources to complete and to immunise these amount of people and you don’t know if they are protected and this can have an impact in the rate of infection in the country.</p>
<p>Dan: Pushing ahead with such a large number of vaccinations is certainly risky without efficacy results. Amilcar was waiting to see the results of the phase 3 trials showed, to really see how this whole thing would play out. </p>
<p>So that is where Cuba is at with the vaccine from a technical perspective, but perhaps just as interesting are the social dynamics of the pandemic in Cuba. Cuba is a one-party, communist state. Civil liberties and access to information are pretty severely restricted and expressing dissent can be, well, dangerous. In spite of, or perhaps because of this relationship between the government and people of Cuba, the coronavirus response seems to have been quite good. And this both from the perspective of outsiders, as well as those living on the island. </p>
<p>Jennifer: I’m Jennifer Hosek, I’m a full professor in languages, literatures and cultures at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. </p>
<p>Dan: Jennifer’s research on Cuban film and society means that she’s spent a lot of time there over the years. She’s been following the pandemic situation in the country really closely. Cuba has been able to keep death rates extremely low during the pandemic. She thinks one of the reasons for this is simply the country’s approach to healthcare. </p>
<p>Jennifer: The ratio between provider and patient is a very good one. There are neighbourhood clinics, family doctors, and a cradle-to-grave structure that basically aims to have the person be treated by family doctors that really know them and know them holistically. It’s also, of course, free and it focuses on public health and prevention rather than end of pipe. That also makes the healthcare much more affordable. </p>
<p>Dan: The government’s public health communication campaigns have made Cubans confident about their country’s vaccine strategy and health messaging in general. And there’s history here: this confidence has been earned through science-based campaigns to fight diseases including HIV, Ebola, dengue fever and the Zika virus.</p>
<p>Jennifer: Trust in the government in regards to healthcare that has been built up through many, many decades really stands the government in good stead because when it sends out clear, strong directives that are science-based and public health first, and it says, this is what you must do, and then it explains, why you must do it. And it explains it in different ways to different audiences. </p>
<p>Dan: This includes cartoons for children, where angry “red meanie” viruses are blocked by face masks. It also includes a daily news show with the epidemiologist Dr Fransisco Duran, who explains the science behind COVID-19 in accessible language. But to find out more about how Cubans have reacted to this health messaging, and to the politics around mask wearing during the pandemic, Jennifer surveyed residents of Havana online and later in-person while in Cuba in December and January. </p>
<p>Jennifer: I thought, “Wow! I wonder what’s going on in Cuba.” And you know, I have a big network there. So <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-scene-from-cuba-how-its-getting-so-much-right-on-covid-19-155699">I just started a sort of informal WhatsApp interview</a> using a snowball technique, which means that I started with people that I know and then asked them to interview people that they knew. </p>
<p>I think the most impressive or interesting, I guess, take-home message for me was that most people basically said: “It’s my responsibility to wear a mask because it’s, I’m responsible for myself, but I’m also responsible for others.” And I think that, that this kind of, that kind of idea of, like, “I am” in relation to the other, allows people to think, “I can only be healthy if the other is healthy.” Imagine if the global community thought this way. </p>
<p>Dan: According to Jennifer, the fact that Cuba is trialling five COVID vaccine candidates is because of the state’s dedication to science and the way it has prioritised its citizens’ health. </p>
<p>Jennifer: Cuba invested in healthcare. It invested in healthcare in a big way. They started in the 80s and 90s to build on this medical knowledge and build up biotech and medical research, because the Soviet Union was starting to end and Cuba needed to really stand on its own. And so they developed in this direction building on what they already had.</p>
<p>Dan: Cuba is famous for its medical diplomacy. It sees it as part of its international solidarity effort. Fidel Castro was the first to send Cuban medics to Algeria in 1963 and the country has sent more than 400,000 healthcare professionals to work in 164 countries, most notably this is done through its Henry Reeve Brigades, named after an American who fought, and died, for the Cuban independence forces in the mid-19th century. In late March 2020, Cuba sent 52 groups of doctors and nurses to Italy to help at the peak of the country’s first wave of coronavirus. </p>
<p>Cuba’s track record on healthcare diplomacy also means it’s been able to turn to a network of international collaborators when it’s come to trialling their vaccine candidates. </p>
<p>Jennifer: Cuba is characterised by internationalism and international collaboration and it’s drawing on this. China is one of the partners. Iran is another partner with which it’s working. In part to do the trials because they needed to have enough infected people to be able to do the trials, ironically enough. </p>
<p>So there are many countries that are really behind Cuba and that will help them produce even faster. It’ll enable Cuba to go back to some sort of normalcy, which will enable it to restart its economy. And tourism will be able to start, which is a big moneymaker for Cuba. </p>
<p>Dan: So that’s great for Cuba, but what about other countries in Latin America. Civil rights groups around the world are calling on companies or governments with successful vaccines to waive licences that prevent other manufacturers from producing vaccines, basically to share the intellectual property rights. I asked Jennifer if Cuba will allow other companies or places to make their vaccines. </p>
<p>Jennifer: Cuba has not yet made an official statement about this. What we do know is that Cuba has offered technology transfer, which means knowledge about the capacity to make vaccines, and also pharma supplies, to the country of Ghana. We know that Argentina is looking to collaborate to help Cuba produce its vaccine so that it can use it. We know that in the past what Cuba has done with its doctors, its famous Henry Reeve Brigades, that they typically send those brigades to poor countries for free and they charge for countries who can afford it.</p>
<p>Dan: Cuba’s push to make it’s own vaccine has benefits both internally, but also on the geopolitical map. Like the name of one of its vaccine candidates says, it’s given Cuba sovereignty. To understand more about where Cuba’s vaccine efforts fit into the complicated global politics of COVID-19, I called up to Peter Hotez. </p>
<p>Peter: I’m a professor of paediatrics and molecular virology at Baylor College of Medicine where I also co-direct the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development. We adopted a coronavirus vaccine program about a decade ago. We’ve developed several coronavirus vaccines, and now one for COVID-19 that’s being scaled up for production in India, going into phase 3 clinical trials. </p>
<p>Dan: Peter also has a long-term interest in the geopolitics of vaccines. </p>
<p>Peter: Vaccines are such powerful tools of public health that they become potentially very important instruments of foreign policy. </p>
<p>Dan: He recently wrote a book called <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/preventing-next-pandemic">Preventing the Next Pandemic</a>. It describes what he sees as a decline in global cooperation on vaccine programmes over the past few years. The Covax project aside, he sees this lack of a global strategy playing out during the coronavirus pandemic too.</p>
<p>Peter: Right now you’re clearly seeing haves and have-nots, so the US the UK, some western European countries and Israel have looked after themselves and the rest of the world, not so much. And that’s going to have a lot of implications.</p>
<p>Dan: This unequal distribution of access to vaccines could give the small country of Cuba a lot of leverage to throw around if it does achieve vaccine sovereignty.</p>
<p>Peter: I haven’t followed their vaccine too closely, but the hope is that they work with PAHO, the Pan-American Health Organization, in the western hemisphere and WHO to go through who pre-qualification. And at that point then they can start exporting vaccine or providing it to the Covax sharing facility. That would be the best ideal outcome, I think, and not do what the Russians have done, which is this very transactional encounters with countries, ‘cause that has a lot of downside implications. They’re doing these kind of one-on-one arrangements in this unilateral negotiation. And I think that’s odd and also a lot of these countries adequate pharmacovigilance systems in place. </p>
<p>Dan: The pandemic had exposed significant shortfalls in the private sector focused system of global vaccine development and production. </p>
<p>Peter: This insistence that the multinational pharmaceutical companies can do everything. It’s not working. I mean, the multinational companies have an important role of course, but we need redundancy in the system. We need to have the ability to develop vaccines locally in Africa, expand capacity in Latin America and the Middle East, and in Asia.</p>
<p>Dan: Peter says one way small countries can break their dependency on multinational companies is to basically invest in their own capacity to make vaccines and other drugs. </p>
<p>Peter: Cuba definitely punches above its weight through the Instituto Finlay and, and other organisations. And I think that’s great. We need better capacity. And so what’s happened is a number of organisations have got together and branded themselves as the developing country vaccine manufacturers network. And it includes Cuba, it includes Brazil and includes India of course. India is probably the most advanced in terms of this concept. But we need more of that. </p>
<p>Dan: All of this would require serious investment, and that needs to come from the world’s biggest economies. It won’t be a quick fix to the manufacturing bottlenecks and equality issues surrounding COVID vaccines. But Peter says that’s not really the point. </p>
<p>Peter: We won’t have it in time for this pandemic, but the other pandemics will surely follow. And I think that would be a very productive investment in terms of encouraging security.</p>
<p>Dan: It’s quite possible that little Cuba, could succeed in producing an effective COVID-19 vaccine quickly and cheaply. If this happens, it could really poke a hole in the status quo of the global vaccine and broader biotech ecosystem that keeps power concentrated in wealthy nations. Jennifer Hosek summed it up nicely. </p>
<p>Jennifer: I was thinking about that famous metaphor of the fish and the fishing pole.</p>
<p>Dan: You know the one. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach that person how to fish and you feed them for a lifetime. Today though, the idea doesn’t seem to be teach someone how to fish, it’s more teach them how to make a fishing pole. Or in this case, a vaccine. </p>
<p>Jennifer: And so the US is now going to give away it’s extra fish before the fish rot as it were, but actually people around the world know how to make fishing poles and fish in order to catch their own fish. But the many rich countries and big pharma are disallowing them from making those fishing poles and feeding themselves, you know, vaccinating themselves.</p>
<p>And Cuba definitely is a counterexample to that because it’s showing us how a country that uses its resources wisely can organise to catch its own fish and not wait for the castoffs of big pharma, and not also spend its hard-earned money to buy vaccines when it can make it itself. </p>
<p>Gemma: This hunt for vaccine sovereignty is like the holy grail of the early 2020s, isn’t it?</p>
<p>Dan: Vaccines are power, both locally – go to the pub, get a beer – or on the global stage. It would be huge for Cuba to get its own vaccine.</p>
<p>You can read a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-scene-from-cuba-how-its-getting-so-much-right-on-covid-19-155699">story that Jennifer Hosek has written for The Conversation</a> about the situation in Cuba by clicking the link in the shownotes. You can also follow the latest expert analysis on developments in coronavirus vaccines on our site.</p>
<p>Gemma: For our next story we’re talking about the big decisions that we all have to make in our lives. So Dan, tell me if you made any big decisions recently?</p>
<p>Dan: Yeah, I guess so. I decided to move back across the country to California after having lived on the east coast for a while.</p>
<p>Gemma: You know it’s funny. Sometimes you know that a decision that you’re about to make will be a big one, that it will change the course of your life. But sometimes you make a decision pretty quickly and realise afterwards just how big a choice it was. So to find out more about the process of making these kinds of decisions, I called up a psychologist.</p>
<p>Adrian: My name is Adrian Camilleri. I’m a consumer psychologist. I work at the University of Technology Sydney, and I’m interested in how people make judgement and decisions. </p>
<p>Gemma: Adrian’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-asked-hundreds-of-people-about-their-biggest-life-decisions-heres-what-i-learned-154885">recent research</a> was all sparked by a question that he used to ask people at dinner parties. </p>
<p>Adrian: So at dinner parties, I tend to come prepared. And one of my favourite questions to ask at these events is how many of your life’s ten biggest decisions do you think you’ve already made? And this is a question that usually gets a good conversation going because people start to reflect on, “OK, well, what is a big decision and how many have I made so far? And what are the future big decisions coming down the road?” But I thought that maybe I could ask this question in a more scientific way. So I started to put together a questionnaire. And my goal was really to try to understand, well, what are life’s biggest decisions. When do they occur? How do people make these big decisions? Retrospectively, how do they evaluate those big life decisions, and how accurate are people at predicting their future big life decisions?</p>
<p>Gemma: Really interesting stuff. So tell us how you went about doing this. </p>
<p>Adrian: Yeah. So I started to put the questionnaire together in 2019. So first I asked people to tell me about their ten biggest past decisions. The second part of the questionnaire asked people to make predictions about their biggest decisions that are going to happen down the road. And then finally, I asked participants to fill in a number of different questionnaires that measure things like life satisfaction, their decision-making style, impulsiveness, personality, risk tolerance, all of these different individual different variables. So people had an opportunity to type into a box the details of that decision, but then they were asked to categorise those big decisions into some predetermined categories. </p>
<p>But there were also some followup questions. So things like how much time did you spend thinking about the decision before you made it? How much advice did you seek from others? Was it a more intuitive or analytical type decision? And then finally I asked participants to judge in retrospect, whether it was a good or bad decision.</p>
<p>Gemma: Who were you targeting it at?</p>
<p>Adrian: I was looking for an even split of males and females. So I was looking for about 50:50 in every age decile. So I wanted 100 people in their 20s another hundred in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s to 70s. So all up in the end, I had 657 people complete the initial study and these participants were dispersed around the United States and they were roughly consistent with the population distribution in the states.</p>
<p>Since that initial survey was completed, I actually built a website that put a much simpler version of the survey up online. That’s located at <a href="https://tenbiggestdecisions.com/">tenbiggestdecisions.com</a> and thousands of people have now filled in that survey. </p>
<p>Gemma: Tell us, what were the kinds of some of the big life decisions that people revealed to you in this process?</p>
<p>Adrian: There were some fun stories in there of people, especially those who are older, doing fun things in the 50s and 60s, driving around the world. But the most commonly mentioned big life decisions are those that won’t surprise you. So starting a new job, getting married, pursuing a degree, having a child, relocating – so moving to a new state – buying a home. </p>
<p>But then there was some decisions that were – when they did occur, which was not that often in some cases – they were always right near the top of that ranking. And so these included ending a life. So this might be perhaps aborting a pregnancy. It could also relate perhaps to ailing parents, maybe who are on life support. But there was also some things up there like pursuing religion, or pursuing a philosophy. These got rated as quite important as well. </p>
<p>Gemma: So they might be rare, but they’re incredibly important to the person taking them?</p>
<p>Adrian: Exactly. </p>
<p>Gemma: So you’ve gone through so what are some of the biggest ones, but what do the results show about how people look back on certain decisions more positively or negatively?</p>
<p>Adrian: Yeah so for every decision that my participants mentioned, the final question was in retrospect, how do you evaluate that decision? Was it a good or a bad decision? And a couple of categories that stood out. The first were the self-destructive decisions, these include things like committing a crime and starting an addiction. So these decisions stood out as being quite different from the rest in that the majority of participants judge these as bad decisions. The other category that stood out were the self-developmental decisions. So these include things like starting a hobby or learning a new skill, travelling, pursuing a religion or a new philosophy. So these self-developmental decisions, the vast majority of participants indicated that these were good decisions.</p>
<p>Gemma: And are there any other trends that emerged in the way people evaluated or described the big decisions? </p>
<p>Adrian: There was two categories that stood out and again. It’s the self-destructive and the self-developmental categories. And when you look at these in terms of time spent thinking, the self-destructive decisions were uncommonly short in how much time was spent thinking. So the most commonly mentioned response was just seconds before engaging in whatever self-destructive activity that was. </p>
<p>And in contrast, if you look at the self-developmental decisions, these tended to be the ones that individuals spent the most time thinking about. So many people indicated they spent years thinking about the decision before they actually engaged in it. </p>
<p>Gemma: And I’m interested in that age question. So were there decisions that say younger people were more likely to have talked about than older people?</p>
<p>Adrian: So career-related decisions definitely increased over time and they actually peaked for people in their 60s. And that might be surprising for some people, but actually the final decision that one makes in their career is a huge one and that’s when to retire. </p>
<p>Other decisions that increase over time were finance-related decisions. So again, people tend to accumulate money, resources, and then they have to think about making decisions about these as they get older, including putting them in a will, which is also another big life decisions that happens later in life. We can also see increase in family-related decisions. </p>
<p>Gemma: You started this by asking people how many of their big decisions they think they have left. So was your data able to pull that out?</p>
<p>Adrian: Definitely. I got to ask my favourite dinner party question. What the results showed was that on average 20-year-olds tended to believe that they had already made three of their life’s biggest decisions.</p>
<p>Gemma: Three of ten. </p>
<p>Adrian: Three three of ten, that’s right. So it could have been maybe education-related decisions, maybe they’d had their first love. Maybe they’d moved already. The mid-point, the five decision point was at around age 44-years-old, that people kind of imagined that they had made half of their big life decisions.</p>
<p>And what was most interesting to me, I think, was looking at those who were older in the sample. So for example, those who were 70-years-old, they estimated that they’d made a little less than seven of their ten biggest decisions. So there were still three big life decisions coming. And when you started to look closely at some of the big life decisions that do happen later in life, you do start to realise that actually, there are a number of big decisions that keep coming up, whether you know, some people get married young, but then a lot of people get remarried when they’re older. </p>
<p>Gemma: What advice, drawing on all this analysis that you’ve done so far on the data that you’ve collected, would you give people on making big decisions in their lives? </p>
<p>Adrian: I guess the first thing to recognise is that, well, first big life decisions are front-loaded. So they happen most for those who are aged between say 16 and 35. But, they still occur for those of all ages. So, I guess keep an open mind to future big decisions and also don’t maybe put too much pressure on yourself when making current big decisions. I know they feel massive at the time, but in retrospect, sometimes they’re not as big. </p>
<p>Another thing that stood out was that there’s a lot of experience out there, that a decision-maker can utilise the wisdom from. So speaking to others and learning from those who have come before, I think are great options for those who are making big life decisions. The research that I conducted also suggests that taking your time is a good way to lead to a good decision, but also avoiding the burden of obligation. So there were some results suggesting that obligation-induced decisions led to poorer outcomes, and also using a more analytical approach rather than relying on pure intuition was more likely to lead to a positive outcome.</p>
<p>And in fact, in this regard, there’s some research related to regret and one way to avoid feelings of regret is to have very good justification for your decisions today. So that even if things turn out poorly down the road, you can turn back and think, “You know what? At the time, given what I knew about the situation, I made a good decision.”</p>
<p>And finally, I think there are some decisions that are very likely going to impact on your life satisfaction. So keep this in mind. So these self-destructive decisions that I’ve mentioned, like engaging in crime and taking up an addiction, these are very likely to lead, to decreases in life satisfaction. And I think the scary thing about these decisions is that they’re made in a fraction of a moment, but they actually tend to have very long-lasting consequences and put one on a treacherous life path. </p>
<p>On the flip side, self-developmental decisions, such as, you know, taking control of your life, pouring yourself into a pursuit or project, these tend to be associated with increased life satisfaction. So, although it can be hard to sometimes find the time for these non-essential, big life decisions, I think your future self will thank you. </p>
<p>Gemma: That’s some great advice there. </p>
<p>Adrian: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.</p>
<p>Gemma: Since I interviewed Adrian, I’ve been asking some of my friends his question. How many of your life’s big decisions do you think you’ve already taken? It’s a really good conversation starter, I recommend it. You can read more about Adrian’s research by clicking on a link <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-asked-hundreds-of-people-about-their-biggest-life-decisions-heres-what-i-learned-154885">to the story</a> that he wrote in the show notes. </p>
<p>Dan: Now, to end the show, we’ve got some recommended reading from one of our colleagues in New Zealand. </p>
<p>Finlay: Hi, this is Finlay Macdonald. I’m one of the two editors in New Zealand and I’m based in Auckland. I have a couple of recommended articles that we’ve recently published and the first one is something <a href="https://theconversation.com/nzs-hate-speech-proposals-need-more-detail-and-wider-debate-before-they-become-law-159320">I worked on with legal scholar, Eddie Clarke from Victoria University in Wellington</a>. So this is quite a long-running and important story in New Zealand and it goes back to the terrorist attacks on two mosques in Christchurch in 2019. So one of the official responses to that atrocity has been to propose new hate speech laws. And we think there’s going to be a heated debate later in the year between proponents of such laws and free speech advocates who worry about the state interfering in our right to say and think what we want.</p>
<p>But the first challenge of course, is to understand what might change if those proposals became law. As Eddie explains, it could well tighten up definitions of hate speech, but broaden their application in the process, so there’s a real risk of overreach if we don’t get it right.</p>
<p>The second article I’m recommending is very different, but still kiwi, although in this case, the bird and our national symbol. Specifically <a href="https://theconversation.com/forensics-and-ship-logs-solve-a-200-year-mystery-about-where-the-first-kiwi-specimen-was-collected-158410">how the kiwi was very first seen, identified and studied by Europeans</a>. The authors, Paul Scofield and Vanesa De Pietri, from Canterbury University have unravelled what until now was a 200-year-old mystery about how this sadly dead kiwi eventually made it to England. It’s a remarkable tale, told through historical records, ships’ logs from the early 1800s and modern forensic DNA techniques, which tell us as much about early colonial scientific activity as they do about the bird itself. Hope you enjoy it.</p>
<p>That’s all from me for now. Happy reading.</p>
<p>Gemma: Finlay Macdonald there in Auckland. </p>
<p>That’s it for this week. Thanks to all the academics who’ve spoken to us for this episode. And to The Conversation editors Lee-Anne Goodman, Michael Lucy, Finlay Macdonald and Stephen Khan. And thanks to Alice Mason, Imriel Morgan and Sharai White for our social media promotion. </p>
<p>Dan: You can find us on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TC_Audio">@TC_Audio</a> or on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/?hl=en">theconversationdotcom</a> or email us at podcast@theconversation.com. And if you want to learn more about any of the things we talked about on the show today, there are links to further reading in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/cubas-race-to-make-its-own-coronavirus-vaccine-podcast-160324">show notes</a> where you can also find a link to sign up to our <a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter?utm_campaign=PodcastTCWeekly&utm_content=newsletter&utm_source=podcast">free daily email</a>.</p>
<p>Gemma: The Conversation Weekly is co-produced by Mend Mariwany and me, Gemma Ware, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. </p>
<p>Dan: And I’m Dan Merinio. Thanks so much for listening.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160551/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
A transcript of episode 14 of The Conversation Weekly podcast, including how people make their life’s biggest decisions.Gemma Ware, Head of AudioDaniel Merino, Associate Breaking News Editor and Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly PodcastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1603242021-05-06T11:47:53Z2021-05-06T11:47:53ZCuba’s race to make its own coronavirus vaccine – podcast<p>In this episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-conversation-weekly-98901">The Conversation Weekly podcast</a>, how Cuba is pushing ahead with developing its own coronavirus vaccines – and could be nearing “vaccine sovereignty”. And we hear from a researcher about what he learned from asking hundreds of people about the biggest decisions of their lives. </p>
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<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-561" class="tc-infographic" height="100" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/561/4fbbd099d631750693d02bac632430b71b37cd5f/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Throughout 2020, the small island nation of Cuba was able to <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-response-why-cuba-is-such-an-interesting-case-135749">limit the spread of COVID-19 cases</a> and the number of deaths. By early May 2021, just under <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/">700 people had died from the disease</a> – that’s a death rate of around 60 people per million, compared with around 1,750 per million in the US. </p>
<p>While the death rate remains low, case numbers have been increasing in 2021 and there are currently <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/cuba">around 1,000 new cases</a> recorded each day. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the pandemic has hit the Cuban economy hard: its economy shrunk <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/cuba-economy-idUSL1N2IX1V9">11% in 2020</a>. Alongside the loss of revenue from tourism – an important source of foreign currency for the island – the strengthening of US sanctions against Cuba’s communist government caused <a href="https://theconversation.com/cubas-economic-woes-may-fuel-americas-next-migrant-crisis-158260">a severe economic crisis</a>, which has led to food shortages. The US sanctions <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10045.pdf">are aimed</a> at pressuring the Cuban government to improve the human rights situation in the country. </p>
<p>When it comes to vaccines, Cuba has decided to go it alone. For this episode, we spoke to three experts to explain how Cuba’s race for a coronavirus vaccine is going – and where it fits into the wider picture of global vaccine diplomacy. </p>
<p>Virologist Amilcar Perez Riverol is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of São Paulo State in Brazil. He explains that Cuba is working on five candidate vaccines for COVID-19, two of which have moved to phase 3 clinical trials – Soberena O2 and Abdala. These two vaccines are also being rolled out to over 100,000 healthcare workers. Riverol says it’s “a bit unusual” to immunise thousands of people with vaccine candidates for which “you don’t know the efficacy yet”. </p>
<p>Jennifer Hosek, professor of languages, literatures and cultures at Queen’s University, Ontario in Canada, tells us that in Cuba, “trust in the government in regards to healthcare has been built up through many, many decades”. The country has also invested heavily in its healthcare system over many years and is well-known for its <a href="https://theconversation.com/by-sending-doctors-to-italy-cuba-continues-its-long-campaign-of-medical-diplomacy-134429">medical diplomacy</a>, which includes sending doctors around the world as part of its focus on international solidarity. </p>
<p>And Peter Hotez, professor of paediatrics and molecular virology at Baylor College of Medicine in the US, puts Cuba’s effort to produce its own vaccine into some global perspective. “We need to have the ability to develop vaccines locally in Africa, expand capacity in Latin America and the Middle East and in Asia,” he says, arguing that it’s part of the answer to fixing the dependency on multinational companies, which don’t always produce the vaccines that are needed in low- and middle-income countries. </p>
<p>In our second story, we speak to Adrian Camilleri about <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-asked-hundreds-of-people-about-their-biggest-life-decisions-heres-what-i-learned-154885">his research asking people about the big decisions</a> they’ve made in their lives. It all stemmed from a question he used to ask people at dinner parties: imagine you will make ten big decisions in your life; how many of them do you think you’ve already made? He tells us what he found, including that the process of making a big decision can affect how you think about it later in your life. </p>
<p>And Finlay Macdonald, senior editor at The Conversation in New Zealand, gives us his recommended reads for the week.</p>
<p>The Conversation Weekly is produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. You can find us on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TC_Audio">@TC_Audio</a>, on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/?hl=en">theconversationdotcom</a>. or via email on podcast@theconversation.com. You can also sign up to <a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter?utm_campaign=PodcastTCWeekly&utm_content=newsletter&utm_source=podcast">The Conversation’s free daily email here</a>.</p>
<p>A transcript of this episode is <a href="https://theconversation.com/cubas-push-for-coronavirus-vaccine-sovereignty-160551">available here</a>. </p>
<p>News clips in this episode are from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqCZC-gFA6A">CNN</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KY-osTa9es">Sky News Australia</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6e4BHYgByA">Al</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev1UlOVm7oo">Jazeera</a>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/video/watch/cuban-doctors-arrive-in-italy-to-battle-id701114205">Reuters</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTRU69oSkto">teleSur tv</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDFbN2PCMKE">CGTN</a>. </p>
<p><em>You can listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, our <a href="https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/60087127b9687759d637bade">RSS feed</a>, or find out how else to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-listen-to-the-conversations-podcasts-154131">listen here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160324/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Plus, a psychologist on how we look back at our big decisions in life. Listen to episode 14 of The Conversation Weekly podcast.Gemma Ware, Head of AudioDaniel Merino, Associate Breaking News Editor and Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly PodcastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1511712021-03-19T11:30:24Z2021-03-19T11:30:24ZContext influences the decisions you make – whether you’re a homebuyer, a juror or a physician<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390492/original/file-20210318-15-11h9lnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=793%2C327%2C4958%2C3405&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How might a house that comes on the market today affect what you think of this one?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/home-for-sale-with-real-estate-sign-royalty-free-image/953511340">fstop123/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When my husband and I purchased a new home last year, the house we ultimately bought was one we had at first ruled out. While the house had many positives, including being affordable, it also had several negatives, so we’d kept looking.</p>
<p>A few months later, we thought we’d found the perfect home. But like all homes, it had its drawbacks. As we started the negotiation process, those negatives started to weigh on us.</p>
<p>It led us to rethink the previous house we’d initially rejected. Nothing about it had objectively changed, but we started weighing its various features differently. The more we thought about the two homes, the more our opinion shifted. In the end, we reversed our thinking and bought the one we’d at first counted out, which was luckily still on the market.</p>
<p>Our homebuying decision exemplifies one of the common characteristics of human decision-making: decisions depend on context.</p>
<p>Beliefs and choices are shaped by relative factors. When my husband and I were buying our house, we evaluated the various features – such aspects as price, location, construction quality and so on – through comparisons. How did this one stack up against that one?</p>
<p>Of course absolute criteria play a role; we had a hard upper bound on price, for instance. But contextual factors can alter your beliefs about the world around you, as well as what you choose. Laypeople like homebuyers are affected by these relative evaluations. So are experts; one study found that doctors diagnosing a urinary tract infection <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0272989X9801800409">would make a different judgment depending</a> on whether they first had access to laboratory data or the patient’s medical history. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=K2NJLPAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I’m a cognitive scientist</a> who studies the impact of contextual factors on human judgment and decision-making. Such factors can have good or bad consequences. Advertisers might exploit contextual factors to sell a particular product. But <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780143115267">context can also be used as a nudge</a> to help people make better decisions, such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-019-00095-4">going in for cancer screenings</a>. I’m interested in developing theories to predict how context will influence people’s choices and tools for improving decision-making.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390493/original/file-20210318-19-1ie078c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Lawyer speaking to jurors in a courtroom" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390493/original/file-20210318-19-1ie078c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390493/original/file-20210318-19-1ie078c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390493/original/file-20210318-19-1ie078c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390493/original/file-20210318-19-1ie078c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390493/original/file-20210318-19-1ie078c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390493/original/file-20210318-19-1ie078c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390493/original/file-20210318-19-1ie078c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Whose side of the case jurors hear first influences their ultimate judgment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/lawyer-addressing-the-jury-royalty-free-image/157644543">RichLegg/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Order matters</h2>
<p>Consider the important task of a juror judging whether a defendant is innocent or guilty.</p>
<p>Over the course of the trial, the juror hears a lot of information from the prosecution and defense. The juror’s job is to evaluate everything and ultimately make a judgment about guilt.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2011.01197.x">My laboratory research</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.400">and other studies</a> of jury decision-making have found that the order in which the information is presented influences judgments of guilt. Just hearing what the prosecution has to say first before hearing the defense’s side leads to different judgments than when the same information is presented in the reverse order, defense followed by prosecution.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(92)90002-J">This phenomenon is known as an “order effect.”</a> One common type of order effect is called a “primacy effect.” In this case, it is harder to update one’s beliefs after the first idea has taken hold. Later information is evaluated in the context of earlier information, resulting in the later information having less influence on beliefs.</p>
<h2>The decoy effect</h2>
<p>Consider a simplified version of my homebuying experience. Let’s assume that I care about only two features: price and location. Imagine that I’m deciding between two homes, one that is in a prime location and expensive (let’s call this house A) and another that is in a less desirable location and affordable (let’s call this house B). In this situation, I’m faced with making a trade-off between price and location.</p>
<p>Now, suppose a new option shows up on the market: house C, which is in a very similar location to house B, but slightly more expensive. In this case, house C is clearly worse than house B – costs more for an unfavorable location – so I would never choose it.</p>
<p>Even though I would never buy house C, research shows <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/208899">it influences my choice between the original two</a>. The presence of the inferior house C increases the likelihood that I will buy house B. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036137">This phenomenon is known as a “decoy effect.”</a></p>
<p>Similar to order effects, decoy effects occur because people evaluate options in the context of other options. Introducing a “decoy” option, such as the inferior house, changes how you evaluate what was originally on the table.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390494/original/file-20210318-21-1udl3jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="man looking at full grocery shelves" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390494/original/file-20210318-21-1udl3jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390494/original/file-20210318-21-1udl3jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390494/original/file-20210318-21-1udl3jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390494/original/file-20210318-21-1udl3jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390494/original/file-20210318-21-1udl3jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390494/original/file-20210318-21-1udl3jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390494/original/file-20210318-21-1udl3jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When a new option is introduced, it can change how you feel about your original choices.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/young-man-looking-at-bottles-of-oil-in-market-rear-royalty-free-image/200464108-001">Noel Hendrickson/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In situations where there are many options with lots of features, you can’t pay attention to all of the information simultaneously. Rather, you focus on a subset of the information – particular options, features or both. When a “decoy” option is introduced, it <a href="https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-018-1557-z">alters where your attention goes</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.12.003">and how comparisons stack up</a>. Decoys typically lead people to think more favorably of the similar, superior option – house B, in the real estate example – and can ultimately result in that option’s being chosen.</p>
<p>Research in my lab has shown that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612464241">decoy effects occur in simple perceptual tasks</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.1930">such as judging the area of geometeric shapes</a> in addition to consumer choice tasks. Scientists have also spotted decoy effects in other species, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-015-0885-6">from monkeys</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13347">to insects</a>.</p>
<h2>Why does context influence decisions?</h2>
<p>Decision-making is supported by other cognitive processes, such as memory and attention. These processes have limitations. For example, it is difficult to hold many pieces of information in your mind at the same time because of the limited capacity of your mind’s working memory. Contextual factors affect these more basic cognitive processes with the downstream consequence of influencing your choices. </p>
<p>Context effects are therefore not a decision-making quirk, but a result of how human minds work at a more basic level. Recently, my colleagues and I have used this insight to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/dec0000144">reduce and even reverse decoy effects in the lab</a>. Understanding how context influences basic cognitive processes allows us to predict how people might act in new situations. Such knowledge is important when researchers are thinking about how to shape policies that encourage effective choices and help people make better decisions. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151171/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Trueblood receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. </span></em></p>Cognitive scientists are investigating the ways relative factors like new options and the order they’re presented influence your choices and beliefs.Jennifer Trueblood, Associate Professor of Psychology, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1548852021-03-01T01:31:17Z2021-03-01T01:31:17ZI asked hundreds of people about their biggest life decisions. Here’s what I learned<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386358/original/file-20210225-21-1a7rg5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=264%2C50%2C5231%2C3646&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>You make decisions all the time. Most are small. However, some are really <em>big</em>: they have ramifications for years or even decades. In your final moments, you might well think back on these decisions — and some you may regret. </p>
<p>Part of what makes big decisions so significant is how rare they are. You don’t get an opportunity to learn from your mistakes. If you want to make big decisions you won’t regret, it’s important you learn from others who have been there before.</p>
<p>There is a good deal of existing research into what people regret in their lives. In my current project, I decided to approach the problem from the other end and ask people about their life’s biggest decisions. </p>
<h2>What are life’s biggest decisions?</h2>
<p>I have spent most of my career studying what you might call <em>small</em> decisions: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0354-z">what product to buy</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2122">which portfolio to invest in</a>, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2018.10.006">who to hire</a>. But none of this research was very helpful when, a few years ago, I found myself having to make some <em>big</em> life decisions. </p>
<p>To better understand what life’s biggest decisions are, I <a href="https://www.cloudresearch.com/">recruited</a> 657 Americans aged between 20 and 80 years old to tell me about the ten biggest decisions in their lives so far. </p>
<p>Each decision was classified into one of nine categories and 58 subcategories. At the end of the survey, respondents ranked the ten decisions from biggest to smallest. You can take the survey yourself <a href="https://tenbiggestdecisions.com/?utm_source=TC&utm_medium=article">here</a>. (If you do, your answers may help develop my research further.)</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/5uTmQVxaNrfQ89kzrXaMsB?si=NH6sYgndTiCckkTNQ66dqg&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A14O3EsEGWQ4mK3XpKzsncP&t=1440"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402835/original/file-20210526-21-15n67ft.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=212&fit=crop&dpr=1" alt="Promotional image for podcast" width="100%"></a>
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<em>Find other ways to listen to <a href="https://theconversation.com/cubas-race-to-make-its-own-coronavirus-vaccine-podcast-160324">The Conversation Weekly podcast</a> here.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The following chart shows each of the 58 decision subcategories in terms of how often it was mentioned (along the horizontal axis) and how big the decision was considered in retrospect (along the vertical axis).</p>
<hr>
<iframe src="https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/5400024/embed" title="Interactive or visual content" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="width:100%;height:600px;" sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-scripts allow-downloads allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
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<p>In the upper right of the chart we see decisions that are both very significant and very common. Getting married and having a child stand out clearly here. </p>
<p>Other fairly common big life decisions include starting a new job and pursuing a degree. Less common, but among the highest ranked life decisions, include ending a life – such as that of an unborn child or a dying parent – and engaging in self-harm.</p>
<p>Of course, the results depend on who you ask. Men in their 70s have different answers than women in their 30s. To explore this data more deeply, I’ve built a <a href="https://tenbiggestdecisions.com/allresults">tool</a> that allows you to filter these results down to specific types of respondents.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-help-take-control-of-your-brain-and-make-better-decisions-32434">How to help take control of your brain and make better decisions</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What are life’s biggest regrets?</h2>
<p>Much can also be learned about how to make good life decisions by asking people what their biggest regrets are. Regret is a negative emotion you feel when reflecting on past decisions and wishing you had done something differently.</p>
<p>In 2012, Australian caregiver Bronnie Ware wrote a <a href="https://bronnieware.com/regrets-of-the-dying/">book</a> about her experiences in palliative care. There were five regrets that dying people told her about most often: </p>
<ul>
<li>I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me</li>
<li>I wish I hadn’t worked so hard</li>
<li>I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings</li>
<li>I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends</li>
<li>I wish I had let myself be happier.</li>
</ul>
<p>This anecdotal evidence has received support from more rigorous academic research. For example, a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550611401756">2011 study</a> asked a nationally representative sample of 270 Americans to describe one significant life regret. The six most commonly reported regrets involved romance (19.3%), family (16.9%), education (14.0%), career (13.8%), finance (9.9%), and parenting (9.0%).</p>
<p>Although lost loves and unfulfilling relationships were the most common regrets, there was an interesting gender difference. For women, regrets about love (romance/family) were more common than regrets about work (career/education), while the reverse was true for men.</p>
<h2>What causes regret?</h2>
<p>Several factors increase the chances you will feel regret. </p>
<p>In the long run it is inaction — deciding <em>not</em> to pursue something — that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.3.357">generates more regret</a>. This is particularly true for males, especially when it comes to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167206286709">romantic relationships</a>. <em>If only I had asked her out, we might now be happily married.</em></p>
<p>Poor decisions produce greater regret when it is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00203">harder to justify</a> those decisions in retrospect. <em>I really value my friends and family so why did I leave them all behind to take up that overseas job?</em></p>
<p>Given that we are social beings, poor decisions in domains relevant to our sense of social belonging — such as romantic and family contexts — are <a href="http://doi.org/10.1177/1948550611435137">more often regretted</a>. <em>Why did I break up my family by having a fling?</em></p>
<p>Regrets tend to be strongest for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167208328329">lost opportunities</a>: that is, when undesirable outcomes that could have been prevented in the past can no longer be affected. <em>I could have had a better relationship with my daughter if I had been there more often when she was growing up.</em></p>
<p>The most enduring regrets in life result from decisions that move you <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000326">further from the ideal person that you want to be</a>. <em>I wanted to be a role model but I couldn’t put the wine bottle down.</em></p>
<h2>Making big life decisions without regrets</h2>
<p>These findings provide valuable lessons for those with big life decisions ahead, which is nearly everyone. You’re likely to have to keep making big decisions over the whole course of your life.</p>
<p>The most important decisions in life relate to family and friends. Spend the time getting these decisions right and then don’t let other distractions — particularly those at work — undermine these relationships. </p>
<p>Seize opportunities. You can apologise or change course later but you can’t time travel. Your education and experience can never be lost. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/running-the-risk-why-experience-matters-when-making-decisions-32268">Running the risk: why experience matters when making decisions</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Avoid making decisions that violate your personal values and move you away from your aspirational self. If you have good justifications for a decision now, no matter what happens, you’ll at least not regret it later.</p>
<p>I continue to ask people to tell me about their biggest life decisions. It’s a great way to learn about someone. Once I have collected enough stories, I hope to write a book so that we can all learn from the collective wisdom of those who have been there before.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154885/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian R. Camilleri does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Psychological research presents some unsurprising wisdom about how to make big decisions without regret: focus on people, don’t miss opportunities, and stay true to yourself.Adrian R. Camilleri, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1417832020-10-18T19:06:42Z2020-10-18T19:06:42ZHey Google … what movie should I watch today? How AI can affect our decisions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349783/original/file-20200728-33-4dru5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C5973%2C3988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Social media algorithms, artificial intelligence and our own genetics are among the factors influencing us beyond our awareness. This raises an ancient question: do we have control over our own lives? This article is part of The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-science-of-free-will-88888">series on the science of free will</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Have you ever used Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri or Amazon Alexa to make decisions for you? Perhaps you asked it what new movies have good reviews, or to recommend a cool restaurant in your neighbourhood.</p>
<p>Artificial intelligence and virtual assistants are constantly being refined, and may soon be making appointments for you, offering medical advice, or trying to sell you a bottle of wine.</p>
<p>Although AI technology has miles to go to develop social skills on par with ours, some AI has shown impressive language understanding and can complete relatively complex interactive tasks.</p>
<p>In several 2018 demonstrations, Google’s AI made <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5VN56jQMWM">haircut</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RHG5DFAjp8">restaurant</a> reservations without receptionists realising they were talking with a non-human.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D5VN56jQMWM?wmode=transparent&start=67" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Would you let Google Duplex make phone bookings for you?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s likely the AI capabilities developed by tech giants such as Amazon and Google will only grow more capable of influencing us in the future.</p>
<h2>But what do we actually find persuasive?</h2>
<p>My colleague Adam Duhachek and I <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797620904985">found AI messages are more persuasive</a> when they highlight “how” an action should be performed, rather than “why”. For example, people were more willing to put on sunscreen when an AI explained <em>how</em> to apply sunscreen before going out, rather than <em>why</em> they should use sunscreen.</p>
<p>We found people generally don’t believe a machine can understand human goals and desires. Take Google’s <a href="https://deepmind.com/research/case-studies/alphago-the-story-so-far">AlphaGo</a>, an algorithm designed to play the board game Go. Few people would say the algorithm can understand <em>why</em> playing Go is fun, or <em>why</em> it’s meaningful to become a Go champion. Rather, it just follows a pre-programmed algorithm telling it how to move on the game board.</p>
<p>Our research suggests people find AI’s recommendations more persuasive in situations where AI shows easy steps on how to build personalised health insurance, how to avoid a lemon car, or how to choose the right tennis racket for you, rather than why any of these are important to do in a human sense.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A robot hand playing the ancient Chinese boardgame called Go" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349805/original/file-20200728-25-1mvlqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349805/original/file-20200728-25-1mvlqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349805/original/file-20200728-25-1mvlqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349805/original/file-20200728-25-1mvlqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349805/original/file-20200728-25-1mvlqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349805/original/file-20200728-25-1mvlqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349805/original/file-20200728-25-1mvlqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People tend to think of AI as not having free will and therefore not having the ability to explain why something is important to humans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Does AI have free will?</h2>
<p>Most of us believe humans have free will. We compliment someone who helps others because we think they do it freely, and we penalise those who harm others. What’s more, we are willing to lessen the criminal penalty if the person was deprived of free will, for instance if they were in the grip of a schizophrenic delusion.</p>
<p>But do people think AI has free will? We did an experiment to find out. </p>
<p>Someone is given $100 and offers to split it with you. They’ll get $80 and you’ll get $20. If you reject this offer, both you and the proposer end up with nothing. Gaining $20 is better than nothing, but <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51993135_Foundations_of_Human_Sociality_Economic_Experiments_and_Ethnographic_Evidence_From_Fifteen_Small-Scale_Societies">previous research</a> suggests the $20 offer is likely to be rejected because we perceive it as unfair. Surely we should get $50, right?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/do-social-media-algorithms-erode-our-ability-to-make-decisions-freely-the-jury-is-out-140729">Do social media algorithms erode our ability to make decisions freely? The jury is out</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But what if the proposer is an AI? In a research project yet to be published, my colleagues and I found the rejection ratio drops significantly. In other words, people are much more likely to accept this “unfair” offer if proposed by an AI.</p>
<p>This is because we don’t think an AI developed to serve humans has a malicious intent to exploit us — it’s just an algorithm, it doesn’t have free will, so we might as well just accept the $20.</p>
<p>The fact people could accept unfair offers from AI concerns me, because it might mean this phenomenon <em>could</em> be used maliciously. For example, a mortgage loan company might try to charge unfairly high interest rates by framing the decision as being calculated by an algorithm. Or a manufacturing company might manipulate workers into accepting unfair wages by saying it was a decision made by a computer.</p>
<p>To protect consumers, we need to understand when people are vulnerable to manipulation by AI. Governments should take this into account when considering regulation of AI.</p>
<h2>We’re surprisingly willing to divulge to AI</h2>
<p>In other work yet to be published, my colleagues and I found people tend to disclose their personal information and embarrassing experiences more willingly to an AI than a human.</p>
<p>We told participants to imagine they’re at the doctor for a urinary tract infection. We split the participants, so half spoke to a human doctor, and half to an AI doctor. We told them the doctor is going to ask a few questions to find the best treatment and it’s up to you how much personal information you provide.</p>
<p>Participants disclosed more personal information to the AI doctor than the human one, regarding potentially embarrassing questions about use of sex toys, condoms, or other sexual activities. We found this was because people don’t think AI judges our behaviour, whereas humans do. Indeed, we asked participants how concerned they were for being negatively judged, and found the concern of being judged was the underlying mechanism determining how much they divulged.</p>
<p>It seems we feel less embarrassed when talking to AI. This is interesting because many people have grave concerns about AI and privacy, and yet we may be more willing to share our personal details with AI.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A phone featuring Google Assistant" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349781/original/file-20200728-23-1xoq6cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=32%2C0%2C5431%2C3645&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349781/original/file-20200728-23-1xoq6cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349781/original/file-20200728-23-1xoq6cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349781/original/file-20200728-23-1xoq6cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349781/original/file-20200728-23-1xoq6cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349781/original/file-20200728-23-1xoq6cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349781/original/file-20200728-23-1xoq6cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As AI develops further, we need to understand how it affects human decision-making.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>But what if AI does have free will?</h2>
<p>We also studied the flipside: what happens when people start to believe AI <em>does</em> have free will? We found giving <a href="http://abotdatabase.info/">AI human-like features</a> or a human name could mean people are more likely to believe an AI has free will.</p>
<p>This has several implications:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>AI can then better persuade people on questions of “why”, because people think the human-like AI may be able to understand human goals and motivations</p></li>
<li><p>AI’s unfair offer is less likely to be accepted because the human-looking AI may be seen as having its own intentions, which could be exploitative</p></li>
<li><p>people start feeling judged by the human-like AI and feel embarrassed, and disclose less personal information</p></li>
<li><p>people start feeling guilty when harming a human-looking AI, and so act more benignly to the AI.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>We are likely to see more and different types of AI and robots in future. They might cook, serve, sell us cars, tend to us at the hospital and even sit on a dining table <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Robot-Sex-Social-Ethical-Implications/dp/0262036681">as a dating partner</a>. It’s important to understand how AI influences our decisions, so we can regulate AI to protect ourselves from possible harms.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141783/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>TaeWoo Kim does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Leading tech companies are increasingly using AI to influence our behaviour. But how persuasive do we find virtual assistants?TaeWoo Kim, Lecturer, UTS Business School, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1476662020-10-12T18:46:14Z2020-10-12T18:46:14ZWhy do some people struggle to make ‘healthy’ decisions, day after day?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362874/original/file-20201012-21-1ahvfj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=88%2C50%2C8299%2C3684&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>To navigate our way through the world, we constantly make choices. While we’ve all made our fair share of regrettable ones, most of us eventually learn from these – and we generally take this ability for granted.</p>
<p>For some people suffering from illnesses such as schizophrenia and substance use disorder – previously referred to as “<a href="https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/appi.ajp.2013.12060782">substance abuse</a>” – making the right choices can be extremely difficult.</p>
<p>In fact, many mental illnesses feature problems with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2020.12">cognition</a> (thinking and comprehension), including depression and bipolar disorder. Decision-making ability varies in healthy people, too, sometimes as a consequence of differences in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2013.08.030">genetics</a>.</p>
<p>What’s happening in the brains of these people that puts them on unequal footing to the rest of us?</p>
<h2>Even simple decisions are complex</h2>
<p>It’s important to note in day-to-day situations, there’s often no distinctly “right” or “wrong” choice to be made. However, some choices do result in healthier or more productive outcomes for us and those around us. </p>
<p>Our brains carry out a suite of complex processes when making decisions. And there are four important factors in each decision we make: value, motivation, action and strategy. </p>
<p>When choosing between two options, say A and B, we first need to understand which choice will be more rewarding, or provide more <em>value</em>. Our personal <em>motivation</em> to attain this reward then acts to bias which option we choose, or whether we make a choice at all. </p>
<p>Understanding what <em>action</em> is required to obtain A, or B, is also important. Combining all this information, we try to understand which <em>strategy</em> will maximise our rewards. And this lets us improve our decision-making ability over time.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362815/original/file-20201011-17-1te41u5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362815/original/file-20201011-17-1te41u5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362815/original/file-20201011-17-1te41u5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362815/original/file-20201011-17-1te41u5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362815/original/file-20201011-17-1te41u5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362815/original/file-20201011-17-1te41u5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362815/original/file-20201011-17-1te41u5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There are multiple decision-making processes in the brain that help determine the choices we make.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James P. Kesby</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Interrupted connections</h2>
<p>We refer to our personal history and past experiences to guide our future choices. But mental disorders often cause problems in the decision-making process. </p>
<p>Research shows people with schizophrenia can have trouble understanding the relationship between their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-017-0071-9">actions and the outcomes</a>. This means they might keep selecting A, even if they know it’s no longer as valuable as B. </p>
<p>They’re also more willing to adopt strategies based on less information, in other words “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S003329171900357X">jump to conclusions</a>”, about outcomes. </p>
<p>Substance use disorder, particularly with stimulants such as methamphetamine or cocaine, often leads to people getting stuck when <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.06.033">certain outcomes change</a>. </p>
<p>For example, if we reversed all the street lights so red meant “go” and green meant “stop” without telling anyone, most people would get an initial shock but would eventually alter their behaviour. </p>
<p>People with stimulant dependence, however, would take longer to learn to stop on the green light – even if they kept getting into car accidents. This is because excessive stimulant use impacts regions in the brain that are crucial to adapting to changing environments.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-parents-and-teachers-can-identify-and-help-young-people-self-medicating-trauma-with-drugs-and-alcohol-104482">How parents and teachers can identify and help young people self-medicating trauma with drugs and alcohol</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>How the brain decodes each decision</h2>
<p>The human brain contains multiple circuits (like pathways) and chemical messengers called “neurotransmitters”. These are responsible for guiding the processes discussed above.</p>
<p>The decision-making circuits commonly associated with schizophrenia and substance use disorder include areas of the “cortex” – the outer part of our brain important for complex thought (especially the frontal lobe) – that “talk” to hub areas such as the “striatum”. The striatum lets us select and then initiate an action to achieve a specific goal.</p>
<p>Different cortical areas are used to compute different <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.07.010">processes</a> in the brain. The prefrontal cortex helps us understand when a strategy needed for success changes. So, if we replaced all the traffic lights with sirens, the prefrontal cortex would help us realise this and adjust. </p>
<p>When the anticipated outcome of a choice changes (such as if A was better, but then suddenly B became better), the orbitofrontal cortex helps us identify this. Similarly, the striatum is key for anticipating what an outcome will be and when we will get the reward.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362888/original/file-20201012-17-l6gj2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A basic anatomy diagram of the human brain." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362888/original/file-20201012-17-l6gj2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362888/original/file-20201012-17-l6gj2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362888/original/file-20201012-17-l6gj2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362888/original/file-20201012-17-l6gj2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362888/original/file-20201012-17-l6gj2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362888/original/file-20201012-17-l6gj2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362888/original/file-20201012-17-l6gj2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cortex is the wrinkly layer that covers our brain. The striatum sits underneath the cortex, in the forebrain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dopamine helps make your choices a reality</h2>
<p>Extensive research efforts have found the brains of people experiencing schizophrenia function differently in multiple areas. It’s believed this could contribute to decision-making problems.</p>
<p>For the psychotic symptoms observed in schizophrenia (such as hallucinations and delusions), alterations in the neurotransmitter dopamine are important. <a href="https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.24.1.1">Dopamine</a> is a chemical in the brain that’s key for anticipating rewards, making decisions and controlling the physical actions necessary to act on our choices.</p>
<p>In our <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2020.00542">research</a>, we’ve argued increases in dopamine in the striatum may cause problems with how the brain integrates information from the cortex, resulting in decision-making difficulties. However, this may only be the case in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.06.011">some individuals</a>.</p>
<p>Stimulants also cause excessive dopamine release. They can alter the balance between goal-directed behaviours, which are flexible and respond to environmental changes – and habits, which are automatic and hard to break.</p>
<p>Usually, when we learn something new our brain keeps adapting and incorporating new information. But this is slow and cognitively demanding. Substance dependence can accelerate a person’s progression to habitual behaviour, wherein a set strategy or response become ingrained. </p>
<p>This then makes it hard to stop seeking drugs, even if the individual no longer finds them <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2013.02.010">enjoyable</a>. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-that-cigarette-chocolate-bar-or-new-handbag-feels-so-good-how-pleasure-affects-our-brain-91773">Why that cigarette, chocolate bar, or new handbag feels so good: how pleasure affects our brain</a>
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<hr>
<h2>How we can we help people make better decisions</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, problems with cognitive ability are hard to treat. There are no medications for schizophrenia or stimulant dependence shown to reliably improve <a href="https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2008.59.5.500">cognition</a>. This is a consequence of the human brain’s complexity. </p>
<p>That said, there are ways we can all improve our memory and decision-making, which may also help those with mental illnesses causing cognition problems. </p>
<p>For instance, <a href="https://www.psychologytools.com/professional/techniques/cognitive-remediation/">cognitive remediation therapy</a> is a behavioural approach that trains the brain to respond to certain situations better. For people with schizophrenia, it may improve <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291717001234">visual memory</a> and perhaps more complex decision-making. </p>
<p>Not being able to navigate decisions day-to-day is one of the most debilitating aspects of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2019.10.011">disorders</a> that impact cognition. This leads to difficulties in maintaining work, keeping friends and leading a fulfilling life. </p>
<p>We need more research to understand how different brains make different decisions. Hopefully then we can improve the lives of those living with mental illness.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/five-things-you-need-to-know-about-mental-health-32581">Five Things You Need To Know About Mental Health</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147666/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Kesby receives funding fromthe National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) and Philanthroic Funding through the Queensland Brain Insititute (QBI). He is affiliated with QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shuichi Suetani has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Metro South Health Research Support, Brisbane Diamantina Health Partners Brain and Mental Health Theme, Princess Alexandra Hospital Research Foundation, Society of Mental Health Research, AVANT and Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. Shuichi Suetani works for Queensland Health. He has received honoraria for advisory work from Seqirus and is affiliated with Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) and Griffith University.
</span></em></p>During Mental Health Week, let’s look at why some people, such as those experiencing depression or substance dependency, struggle to make decisions like everyone else.James Kesby, UQ Amplify Researcher, The University of QueenslandShuichi Suetani, Psychiatrist, Queensland Brain Institute, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1369652020-05-01T05:05:29Z2020-05-01T05:05:29ZNo wonder isolation’s so tiring. All those extra, tiny decisions are taxing our brains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331907/original/file-20200501-42903-1hjriy6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C1%2C995%2C559&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-tired-unhealthy-mixed-race-woman-1477334066">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anxiety, depression, loneliness and stress are <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-28/coronavirus-data-feelings-opinions-covid-survey-numbers/12188608">affecting</a> our sleep patterns and <a href="https://theconversation.com/here-is-why-you-might-be-feeling-tired-while-on-lockdown-135502">how tired we feel</a>. </p>
<p>But we may be getting tired for another reason. All those tiny decisions we make every day are multiplying and taking their toll. </p>
<p>Is it safe to nip out for milk? Should I download the COVIDSafe app? Is it OK to wear my pyjamas in a Zoom meeting?</p>
<p>All of these kinds of decisions are in addition to the familiar, everyday ones. What shall I have for breakfast? What shall I wear? Do I hassle the kids to brush their teeth? </p>
<p>So what’s going on?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/here-is-why-you-might-be-feeling-tired-while-on-lockdown-135502">Here is why you might be feeling tired while on lockdown</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>We’re increasing our cognitive load</h2>
<p>One way to think about these extra decisions we’re making in isolation is in terms of “cognitive load”. We are trying to think about too many things at once, and our brains can only cope with a finite amount of information.</p>
<p>Researchers have been looking into our limited capacity for cognition or attention for decades.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.elsevier.com/books/perception-and-communication/broadbent/978-1-4832-0079-8">Early research</a> described a “bottleneck” through which information passes. We are forced to attend selectively to a portion of all the information available to our senses at a given time. </p>
<p>These ideas grew into research on “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079742108604521">working memory</a>”: there are limits on the number of mental actions or operations we can carry out. Think of remembering a phone or bank account number. Most people find it very hard to remember more than a few at once.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/say-what-how-to-improve-virtual-catch-ups-book-groups-and-wine-nights-134655">Say what? How to improve virtual catch-ups, book groups and wine nights</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>And it can affect how we make decisions</h2>
<p>To measure the effects of cognitive load on decision-making, researchers vary the amount of information people are given, then look at the effects. </p>
<p>In one <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30617746">study</a>, we asked participants to predict a sequence of simple events (whether a green or red square would appear at the top or bottom of a screen) while keeping track of a stream of numbers between the squares. </p>
<p>Think of this increase in cognitive load as a bit like trying to remember a phone number while compiling your shopping list.</p>
<p>When the cognitive load is not too great, people can successfully “divide and conquer” (by paying attention to one task first).</p>
<p>In our study, participants who had to learn the sequence and monitor the numbers made just as many successful predictions, on average, as those who only had to learn the sequence. </p>
<p>Presumably they divided their attention between keeping track of the simple sequence, and rehearsing the numbers.</p>
<h2>More and more decisions take their toll</h2>
<p>But when tasks become more taxing, decision making can start to deteriorate. </p>
<p>In another <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324804535_Taxing_Cognitive_Capacities_Reduces_Choice_Consistency_Rather_Than_Preference_A_Model-Based_Test">study</a>, Swiss researchers used the monitoring task to examine the impact of cognitive load on risky choices. They asked participants to choose between pairs of gambles, such as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A) 42% chance of $14 and 58% chance of $85, or </p>
<p>B) 8% chance of $24 or 92% chance of $44. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Participants made these choices both with their attention focused solely on the gambles, and, in another part of the experiment, while also keeping track of sequences of letters played to them via headphones.</p>
<p>The key finding was not that increasing cognitive load made people inherently more risk-seeking (tending to choose A) or risk-averse (B), but that it simply made them more inconsistent in their choices. Increased cognitive load made them switch.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331896/original/file-20200501-42908-b7sk9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331896/original/file-20200501-42908-b7sk9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331896/original/file-20200501-42908-b7sk9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331896/original/file-20200501-42908-b7sk9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331896/original/file-20200501-42908-b7sk9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331896/original/file-20200501-42908-b7sk9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331896/original/file-20200501-42908-b7sk9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331896/original/file-20200501-42908-b7sk9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The fruit salad or the cake? Well, it depends partly on your cognitive load.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/chocolate-cake-fruit-salad-on-white-224509534">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is a bit like choosing the fruit salad over the cake under normal circumstances, but switching to the cake when you are <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1999-15817-004">cognitively overloaded</a>. </p>
<p>It is not because a higher cognitive load causes a genuine change in your preference for unhealthy food. Your decisions just get “noisier” or inconsistent when you have more on your mind.</p>
<h2>‘To do two things at once is to do neither’</h2>
<p>This proverbial wisdom (attributed to the Roman slave <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publilius_Syrus">Publilius Syrus</a>) rings true – with the caveat that we sometimes can do more than one thing if they are familiar, well-practised decisions. </p>
<p>But in the current business-not-as-usual context there are many new decisions we never thought we’d need to make (is it safe to walk in the park when it is busy?). </p>
<p>This unfamiliar territory means we need to take the time to adapt and recognise our cognitive limitations.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/personalities-that-thrive-in-isolation-and-what-we-can-all-learn-from-time-alone-135307">Personalities that thrive in isolation and what we can all learn from time alone</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Although it might seem as though all those tiny decisions are mounting up, it perhaps isn’t just their number. The root cause of this additional cognitive load could be the undercurrent of additional uncertainty surrounding these novel decisions. </p>
<p>For some of us, the pandemic has displaced a bunch of decisions (do I have time to get to the bus stop?). But the ones that have replaced them are tinged with the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699930903132496?casa_token=0FsQX-LdyogAAAAA%3AxR7f9J7x2rmG6NjO5IoONJwfzi2cfQGBUKne6yqgWaZ4llppqGI0ZkseMnmAlrJlACD4PSN5_wLy">anxiety</a> surrounding the ultimate cost that we, or family members, might pay if we make the wrong decision.</p>
<p>So, it is no wonder these new decisions are taking their toll.</p>
<h2>So what can I do?</h2>
<p>Unless you have had ample experience with the situation, or the tasks you are trying to do are simple, then adding load is likely to leader to poorer, inconsistent or “noisier” decisions.</p>
<p>The pandemic has thrown us into highly unfamiliar territory, with a raft of new, emotionally tinged decisions to face. </p>
<p>The simple advice is to recognise this new complexity, and not feel you have to do everything at once. And “divide and conquer” by separating your decisions and giving each one the attention it – and you – deserve.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136965/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Newell receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Is it safe to nip out for milk? Should I download the COVIDSafe app? Is it OK to wear my pyjamas in a Zoom meeting? All these extra decisions are taking their toll.Ben Newell, Professor of Cognitive Psychology, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1262492019-11-06T12:36:02Z2019-11-06T12:36:02ZMaking life-or-death decisions is very hard – here’s how we’ve taught people to do it better<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300334/original/file-20191105-88372-q0u0de.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C0%2C1751%2C1166&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When faced with a wildfire, responders must act quickly and decisively to save lives.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/California-Wildfires-Blackout/aca553473f4a4e43a0b14c9dd8fa7711/9/0">AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When faced with a rapidly advancing fire threatening a community, it can be hard to know how best to save lives. </p>
<p>Is a rapid evacuation better, or is it safer for residents to stay where they are? The whole situation can change in an instant, and delays and indecision can be fatal. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article236722528.html">wildfires spread across California</a>, a report about a massive fire in London in 2017 can offer useful lessons for emergency managers and residents.</p>
<h2>Inside the Grenfell Tower fire</h2>
<p>On June 14, 2017, a <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/28/grenfell-tower-report-section-section-1000-pages-damning-criticism/#">refrigerator in a London apartment had an electrical malfunction</a> that started a fire. For the first two hours after the fire was reported, officials <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/28/grenfell-tower-report-section-section-1000-pages-damning-criticism/#">told the apartment building’s residents not to evacuate</a>. Rather, they recommended people stay in their apartments and trust the building’s design to contain the fire to the unit where it started.</p>
<p>The city’s fire officials were faced with two types of potential tragedy: people dying in their apartments or getting injured or killed trying to evacuate. </p>
<p>In hindsight, they <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/28/grenfell-tower-report-section-section-1000-pages-damning-criticism/">took too long</a> to realize the fire was out of control, and to change their instructions, telling people to get out. Less than four hours after it started, the fire had engulfed the 24-story Grenfell Tower, home to just under 300 people, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/28/grenfell-tower-report-section-section-1000-pages-damning-criticism/">of whom 72 died</a>.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/28/fires-rage-california-refines-an-important-skill-evacuating/">similar problem has arisen in California wildfires</a> – including in 2018, when <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-paradise-fire-evacuations-20181114-story.html">delays in the order to evacuate the town of Paradise, California</a>, led to the deaths of 56 people. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300335/original/file-20191105-88414-yaq02k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300335/original/file-20191105-88414-yaq02k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300335/original/file-20191105-88414-yaq02k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300335/original/file-20191105-88414-yaq02k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300335/original/file-20191105-88414-yaq02k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300335/original/file-20191105-88414-yaq02k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300335/original/file-20191105-88414-yaq02k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300335/original/file-20191105-88414-yaq02k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A rapidly growing fire at the Grenfell Tower in London challenged city officials’ decision-making skills.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grenfell_Tower_fire_(wider_view).jpg">Natalie Oxford/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Choosing the ‘least worst’ option</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1J07riAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">scholars</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=N2wxtlUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">who</a> study human decision-making in potentially fatal circumstances, we’ve learned that many people, even trained military personnel and emergency responders, find it hard to make decisions in extreme situations, such as large fires. </p>
<p>The resulting delay, which we’ve called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2019.1589572">redundant deliberation</a>,” happens when people take too long to make a choice between difficult options.</p>
<p>We’ve found indecision is the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/bdm.723">most dangerous aspect</a> of a high-stakes situation. We have also proposed theories about the origins of this delay, and how it can be overcome, in our recent book, “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/conflict-9780190623449?cc=us&lang=en&">Conflict: How Soldiers Make Impossible Decisions</a>.”</p>
<p><a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-03597-001">Our research</a> has found that redundant deliberation is more likely to occur when there is no standard policy to guide decision-makers, or, as in the Grenfell fire, when the normal practice doesn’t fit the actual circumstances.</p>
<p>Many apartment buildings’ fire plans involve telling residents to stay put, because fireproof walls, floors and ceilings are designed to contain flames to the apartment where they started. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/28/grenfell-tower-report-section-section-1000-pages-damning-criticism/">That was the plan</a> at the Grenfell Tower. London fire officials stuck to that advice even as the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/28/grenfell-tower-report-section-section-1000-pages-damning-criticism/">fire spread into dozens of neighboring apartments</a>.</p>
<p>Their error was in relying too much on fixed rules and written policies, rather than understanding how best to protect human life in a rapidly changing fire that defied the expectations those policies relied on. The London fire chiefs’ years of accumulated firefighting experience had not prepared them to handle what happened at the Grenfell Tower. It was simply too rare an event, with much more at stake than in other fires.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300341/original/file-20191105-88403-1h2828v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300341/original/file-20191105-88403-1h2828v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300341/original/file-20191105-88403-1h2828v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300341/original/file-20191105-88403-1h2828v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300341/original/file-20191105-88403-1h2828v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300341/original/file-20191105-88403-1h2828v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300341/original/file-20191105-88403-1h2828v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When soldiers can talk through scenarios, they get better at dealing with unexpected challenges.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.army.mil/article/211802/multinational_disaster_response_exercise_wraps_up_in_nepal">Sgt. 1st Class Corey Ray</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Telling grim stories</h2>
<p>Our research has developed a better way to train people to act decisively in urgent situations. Instead of being slowed into indecision by rules and experience, quick-thinking leaders need to be creative, adaptive and imaginative. </p>
<p>We have developed a way to teach people to transcend their past training through a method of guided imagination we call “grim storytelling.” It’s based on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2015.07.001">scenario-centered discussions</a> in which the participants create situations (often from their own experiences) for their colleagues to work through, in the military and aviation communities.</p>
<p>In sessions we conducted, we had three groups of four people. Each group developed a scenario that was based on a real situation they had dealt with in the past, but far more complicated and challenging. Each group then presented the others with the scenario and asked them to choose a course of action from several options, all of which looked quite bad. </p>
<p>For example, one group presented a scenario of lone shooters attacking civilians around the city. The event became a hostage situation at a local hospital, then got more complicated when a group of armed civilians arrived, saying they would “storm the hospital” if local police weren’t going to.</p>
<p>The most helpful grim stories are those where the group members coming up with the scenario disagree about what option they would choose, or where circumstances require decision-makers to question the standard existing policy or practice. </p>
<p>Some grim stories even have built-in ambushes, like the hospital standoff, where the scenario looks to be unfolding in one way but something happens to change it completely, and responders must deal with the new event. </p>
<p>We’ve found that as military and law enforcement personnel work through these hypothetical situations, they learn a lot about their own values and those of others. They find opportunities to test different policies and flexible problem-solving approaches. Our method is inexpensive and efficient, too, because people can talk about situations without having to physically create or re-enact them. Even when, as happened with the hospital standoff, participants find themselves unable to decide in time, they can gain a real appreciation for how hard some decisions can be and how easy it can be to fall victim to redundant deliberation.</p>
<p>Grim storytelling is also incredibly flexible. In our training with law enforcement and other agencies, we have conducted grim storytelling exercises that last several hours and involve multiple phases, actors, roles and decision makers. But we have also conducted grim storytelling in short bursts, stripped down to simpler, yet no less horrible, decisions. </p>
<p>Whichever method is used, grim storytelling – a skill informed by storytelling and even <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060391683/story/">creative writing</a> – forces people to think in new and unfamiliar ways that can improve their decision-making in real situations that unfold unexpectedly. </p>
<p>[ <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=expertise">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126249/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil Shortland receives funding from the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI), Foundational Science Research Unit, Fort Belvoir, Virginia.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurence Alison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Emergency responders and military personnel need to think creatively – even imaginatively – to save lives under pressure. Analyzing the Grenfell Tower Fire in London reveals useful lessons.Laurence Alison, Director of the Centre for Critical and Major Incident Psychology, University of LiverpoolNeil Shortland, Director, Center for Terrorism and Security Studies; Assistant Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1081902018-12-19T17:51:58Z2018-12-19T17:51:58ZHow the brain makes choices: the sinuous path from decision to action<p>Imagine you have just flicked a lighter. If you don’t see the flame, you will naturally try a second time. If after the second attempt it does not strike a flame, you will repeat your action again and again until it does. Eventually, you’ll see the flame and you’ll know that your lighter works. But what if it doesn’t? How long are you going to flick the lighter until you decide to give up?</p>
<p>Our everyday life is full of such decision dilemmas and uncertainty. We constantly have to choose between options, whether we make the most ordinary decisions – should I continue flicking this lighter? – or life-changing choices – should I leave this relationship? We can either keep on doing what we are already used to do, or risk unexplored options that could turn out much more valuable.</p>
<p>Some people are naturally inclined to take more chances, while others prefer to hold on to what they know best. Yet being curious and explorative is fundamental for humans and animals to find out how best to harvest resources such as water, food or money. While looking at the <a href="http://www.torrebelem.gov.pt/en/index.php?s=white&pid=168">Belém Tower</a> – a symbol of Portugal’s great maritime discoveries – from my office window, I often wonder what drives people to explore the unknown and what goes on in their brains when weighing pros and cons for trying something new. To answer these questions, together with Dr. Zachary Mainen and his team of neuroscientists, we investigate how the brain deals with uncertainty when making decisions.</p>
<h2>From decision to action</h2>
<p>Although the decisions we make greatly affect our everyday life, how we deliberate and commit is a complex process that we only partially understand. This topic has been largely studied from ethological and theoretical perspectives (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20345247">Cisek and Kalaska, 2010</a>) and neuroscientists are beginning to uncover several brain areas that contribute to solving dilemmas and act upon them (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17600525">Gold and Shadlen, 2007</a>). Yet, we are still far from being able to comprehend the sinuous path from decision to action, because even the most mundane decisions involve many brain areas and cooperative interactions between many cells (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18182129">Montague, 2008</a>).</p>
<p>Take the example of the lighter. To decide whether to continue flicking, you must first gather information: is there a flame or not? This will activate the regions inside your brain that are responsible for processing sensory information such as sight or touch. Then, you may be satisfied if you see the flame, or surprised if you don’t. This is because such sensory information is communicated to your reward system. In turn, the reward circuitry, which releases the molecule <a href="http://lecerveau.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_03/d_03_m/d_03_m_que/d_03_m_que.html">dopamine</a>, will help motivate the choice of your next action (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18708140">Dayan and Niv, 2008</a>).</p>
<p>So, what should you do next? Well, if you see the flame, you can just continue pressing the button to keep it burning. But in the absence of a flame, you may start wondering whether the motion of your finger on the sparkwheel was decisive enough, or whether the lighter ran out of gas. The frontal areas of the brain, which are thought to control cognitive skills such as judgement and problem solving, may help you take into account this uncertainty. If you believe that the lighter still contains gas, you will flick one more time. Once again, this is your frontal cortex that will control the selection of such a voluntary action (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11252769">Miller, 2000</a>).</p>
<p>Finally, you have to decide how much time you are willing to spend flicking the lighter. This will likely depend on whether you have another one handy. How stubborn you are may be regulated by serotonin, a neuromodulator that has been linked to patience (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25601545">Fonseca et al., 2015</a>) and persistence (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29520000">Lottem et al. 2018</a>) even when facing uncertain rewards.</p>
<h2>Reconstructing the neural puzzle</h2>
<p>At <a href="http://first.fchampalimaud.org/en/the-foundation/champalimaud-centre-unknown/">Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown</a> in Lisbon, we have developed a simple task that re-creates the lighter-flicking experience. Here, mice naturally forage for water but drops are delivered sparsely and sometimes, at random, the water resource becomes depleted. This is just like a capricious lighter that produces flames inconsistently, until the reserve of gas suddenly runs low.</p>
<p>In our experiment, we carefully monitor the behaviour of the mice during this task to understand how persistent they are in searching for water, and when they give up to explore somewhere else. Using computational models, we can explain the main aspects of this decision-making process. According to Pietro Vertechi, my colleague who developed the model: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“By translating a difficult decision process (e.g. ‘After how many failures should I give up and change strategy?’) in a naturalistic setting (foraging for food or water), we can study cognition in parallel in mice and humans. Just like in the equivalent naturalistic scenario, the animal receives many different stimuli (from the colour of the box to the smell of the experimenter or the taste of the water), most of which are irrelevant to solving the task. Mathematical modelling tells us what are the important variables that the subject should be tracking (such as the number of consecutive failed attempts). We can then test what brain regions encode that information and how.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thus, to reconstruct piece by piece the neural puzzle of decision, we search for these interactive mechanisms in the mouse brain. To scrutinize the activity of different areas of the nervous system and uncover their role as decision-maker, we use state-of-the-art technologies. For instance, a recent technique called <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/npp2014206/figures/1">fibre photometry</a>, allows us to detect very small signals in the reward system, such as dopamine release, while mice sample the water rewards. </p>
<p>Likewise, to listen at the conversation between neurons in multiple frontal areas, we use a novel technology that records the electrical activity of hundreds of neurons simultaneously while animals perform the task. Because this approach offers a fine spatiotemporal resolution, it has the potential to help us track how information travels within the brain while the decision is formed. Finally, genetically encoded optical switches, which are light-sensitive proteins called <a href="https://lejournal.cnrs.fr/nos-blogs/aux-frontieres-du-cerveau/loptogenetique-quand-la-lumiere-prend-les-commandes-du-cerveau">opsins</a>, are used to remote-control neural activity using light flashes. This powerful tool allows us to directly control selected groups of cells, such as the neurons that release serotonin, and probe their effects on the behaviour. This could tell us why some animals hesitate while other jump to action.</p>
<h2>Beyond the laboratory</h2>
<p>A better view on the neural mechanisms that govern our choices could reveal what causes a person to persist in doing something regardless of the risk. Such propensity can lead to cognitive dysfunctions linked to addiction and other compulsive disorders. Thus, understanding the neural processes that control behavioural adaptations could have immense implications for society.</p>
<p>On the other hand, lack of persistence in the face of adversity is one of the trademarks of depressive disorders. Interestingly, although serotonin is the main target of antidepressant drugs, its exact function remains enigmatic. By testing the mechanistic role of this molecule on the modulation of decisions and voluntary actions, we hope to uncover a new fundamental role for this molecule that could potentially lead to innovative therapeutic strategies.</p>
<p>Although our work is far from a complete picture, it is paving the way, one stone at a time, to unravel one of neuroscience’s greatest mystery. The scientific answers that we are gaining about self-initiated actions and decisions may also contribute to philosophical debates such as the question of “free will” (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25746063">Rigato et al, 2014</a>): Who is the decision-maker? Your brain?</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202296/original/file-20180117-53314-hzk3rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202296/original/file-20180117-53314-hzk3rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=121&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202296/original/file-20180117-53314-hzk3rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=121&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202296/original/file-20180117-53314-hzk3rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=121&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202296/original/file-20180117-53314-hzk3rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=152&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202296/original/file-20180117-53314-hzk3rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=152&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202296/original/file-20180117-53314-hzk3rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=152&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Created in 2007 to help accelerate and share scientific knowledge on key societal issues, the AXA Research Fund has been supporting nearly 600 projects around the world conducted by researchers from 54 countries. To learn more about this author’s research, visit her <a href="https://www.axa-research.org/en/project/fanny-cazettes">dedicated page</a> on the AXA Research Fund website.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108190/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fanny Cazettes received funds by the Axa Research Fund.</span></em></p>Our everyday lives are full of decision dilemmas. To understand why we make particular choices, scientists investigate how our brain deals with uncertainty.Fanny Cazettes, Postdoctoral fellow - Champalimaud Foundation, Fundación ChampalimaudLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1084602018-12-10T20:54:05Z2018-12-10T20:54:05ZYou make decisions quicker and based on less information than you think<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249790/original/file-20181210-76962-1khvv3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">You're probably wrong about how long it would take you to know they're 'the one.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/3AWGSf9xEmc">rawpixel/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We live in an age of information. In theory, we can learn everything about anyone or anything at the touch of a button. All this information should allow us to make super-informed, data-driven decisions all the time.</p>
<p>But the widespread availability of information does not mean that you actually use it even if you have it. In fact, decades of research in psychology and behavioral science find that people readily make data-poor snap judgments in a variety of instances. People form <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01750.x">lasting impressions of others</a> in the span of milliseconds, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.3.431">evaluators judge teachers in less than a minute</a> and <a href="http://www.acrwebsite.org/search/view-conference-proceedings.aspx?Id=9550">consumers make shopping decisions</a> based on little deliberation. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1110589">Even voting decisions</a> can seemingly be predicted from preliminary impressions formed during incredibly brief time periods. </p>
<p>If these findings seem remarkable to you, recent research by <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dy1B5DIAAAAJ&hl=en">my colleague</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3-dF9hEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">and me</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1805327115">suggests that you are not alone</a>. The immediacy of human judgment generally surprises people. Individuals fail to anticipate how little information they and others use when making decisions.</p>
<p>And this disconnect can have implications in daily life: After all, recognizing how much – or little – information people actually use to make judgments and decisions could influence how much you try to share with others. A job candidate should have a sense of how much of her resume prospective employers will actually read so she can prioritize her efforts accordingly.</p>
<p>And it would help when you’re deciding how much information to acquire when making your own decisions. How long should you try out a subscription service before deciding whether you like it enough to pay? How much time should you date a love interest before deciding to tie the knot?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249810/original/file-20181210-76965-4sqgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249810/original/file-20181210-76965-4sqgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249810/original/file-20181210-76965-4sqgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249810/original/file-20181210-76965-4sqgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249810/original/file-20181210-76965-4sqgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249810/original/file-20181210-76965-4sqgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249810/original/file-20181210-76965-4sqgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249810/original/file-20181210-76965-4sqgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">You probably believe you take a ton of research into account before you make a big choice … but you probably don’t.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/vintage-glasses-on-books-stack-home-1162709212">Akira Kaelyn/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Comparing predictions and reality</h2>
<p>In our research, my co-author <a href="http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/eob/">Ed O’Brien</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3-dF9hEAAAAJ&hl=en">I</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1805327115">tested whether people can correctly anticipate</a> how much information they and others use when making varied judgments. We consistently found that people were surprised by how quickly they make judgments and how little information they use doing so.</p>
<p>In one study, we asked participants to imagine having pleasant or unpleasant interactions with another person. In comparison, we asked another group of participants to predict how many of those interactions they would need to experience to determine someone’s character. We found that people believed they would need many interactions to make this judgment, when in fact the first group needed few.</p>
<p>In another study, we asked MBA students to write applications for hypothetical management positions, and then asked actual HR people to read their materials. Our applicants wrote and shared much more material than the hiring professionals cared to read.</p>
<p>We also asked people who have never been married to predict how long, after meeting their future spouse, it would take them to decide that this person is “the one.” Fully 39 percent of these never-marrieds thought they would need to date this person more than year before they’d feel ready to spend the rest of their lives with him or her. In contrast, married people reported having made this judgment much more quickly, with only 18 percent stating that it took them more than a year to do so.</p>
<p>Similar mispredictions occur when evaluating subscription services based on trial periods, tasting novel beverages, and evaluating streaks of luck, athletic performances and academic grades. In all cases, people believed they would use more information than they actually did. </p>
<h2>Misunderstanding this human tendency</h2>
<p>There are several reasons why people might have the wrong impression about how quickly they and others make judgments.</p>
<p>One possibility is a belief that the human mind processes information incrementally. A naive perspective might imagine that new information stacks on top of old information until some mental threshold is reached for making a decision. In reality, however, preliminary research suggests that information aggregation is much closer to an exponential function; the first few pieces of information are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.185.4157.1124">weighted much more heavily</a> than later information.</p>
<p>Another possibility is that people fail to realize how rich and engrossing each separate piece of information is. In psychology, this is called an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.24.4.S49">empathy gap</a>. Consider the question of how many interactions are necessary for you to decide whether you like and trust someone. It may be tempting to believe you’ll rationally evaluate each interaction as you would a dry statistic. But social encounters are vivid and engaging, and the first experience may simply be so absorbing as to tilt your judgment irrevocably, making future interactions unnecessary.</p>
<h2>Recognizing the rush to judgment</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249792/original/file-20181210-76971-xdzhwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249792/original/file-20181210-76971-xdzhwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249792/original/file-20181210-76971-xdzhwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249792/original/file-20181210-76971-xdzhwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249792/original/file-20181210-76971-xdzhwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249792/original/file-20181210-76971-xdzhwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249792/original/file-20181210-76971-xdzhwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249792/original/file-20181210-76971-xdzhwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In plenty of cases, a quick decision is just fine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/SQM0sS0htzw">Raquel Martínez/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s not clear that quick decisions are always bad. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1110589">Sometimes snap judgments are remarkably accurate</a> and they can save time. It would be crippling to comb through all the available information on a topic every time a decision must be made. However, misunderstanding how much information we actually use to make our judgments has important implications beyond making good or bad decisions.</p>
<p>Take the problem of self-fulfilling prophesies. Imagine a situation in which a manager forms a tentative opinion of an employee that then cascades into a series of decisions that affect that employee’s entire career trajectory. A manager who sees an underling make a small misstep in an insignificant project may avoid assigning challenging projects in the future, which in turn would hamstring this employee’s career prospects. If managers are unaware how willing they are to make quick and data-poor initial judgments, they’ll be less likely to nip these self-fulfilling destructive cycles in the bud.</p>
<p>Another example might be the human tendency to rely on stereotypes when judging other people. Although you may believe that you’ll consider all the information available about another person, people in fact are more likely to consider very little information and let <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1164951">stereotypes</a> <a href="http://web.comhem.se/u52239948/08/devine89.pdf">creep in</a>. It may be a failure to understand how quickly judgments get made that make it so hard to exclude the influence of stereotyping.</p>
<p>Modern technology allows virtually any decision made today to be more informed than the same decision made a few decades ago. But the human reliance on quick judgments may forestall this promise. In the quest for more informed decision-making, researchers will need to explore ways to encourage people to slow down the speed of judgment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108460/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nadav Klein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research confirms that people tend to rush to judgment, in spite of believing their own decisions and those of others are carefully based on lots of evidence and data. And that can be good or bad.Nadav Klein, Postdoctoral Researcher at Harris Public Policy, University of ChicagoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1057502018-11-02T15:39:12Z2018-11-02T15:39:12ZChelsea is using our AI research for smarter football coaching<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243637/original/file-20181102-83648-mh57hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/football-player-kicking-ball-against-futuristic-254016304">Wavebreak Media/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The best footballers aren’t necessarily the ones with the best physical skills. The difference between success and failure in football often lies in the ability to make the right split-second decisions on the field about where to run and when to tackle, pass or shoot. So how can clubs help players train their brains as well as their bodies?</p>
<p>My colleagues and I <a href="http://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2017/june/joining-forces-with-chelsea-football-club">are working</a> with Chelsea FC academy to <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4663/6/4/130">develop a system</a> to measure these decision-making skills using artificial intelligence (AI). We’re doing this by analysing several seasons of data that tracks players and the ball throughout each game, and developing a computer model of different playing positions. The computer model provides a benchmark to compare the performance of different players. This way we can measure the performance of individual players independent of the actions of other players.</p>
<p>We can then visualise what might have happened if the players had made a different decision in any case. TV commentators are always criticising player actions, saying they should have done something else without any real way of testing the theory. But our computer model can show just how realistic these suggestions might be.</p>
<p>If a critic says a player should have dribbled instead of passing, our system can look at the alternative outcome, taking into account factors such as how tired the player was at that point in the game. Our hope is that coaches and support staff will use the system to help players reflect on their actions after a match and, over time, improve their decision-making skills. </p>
<h2>Modelling decision-making</h2>
<p>Measuring these skills is extremely difficult for several reasons. First, a human can’t keep track of all the events that take place during a match. Second, it’s difficult to isolate one player’s actions from that of another. For example, if one player passes the ball and a few seconds later the team loses possession, did the player pass at the wrong time to the wrong person, or was it someone else’s fault?</p>
<p>To tackle this problem, we’re using a specific branch of AI known as <a href="https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3054912">imitation learning</a>. This technology can learn computer models of behaviour, such as footballers’ actions on the field, by analysing massive amounts of historical data. In simple terms, the computer model learns to imitate human experts.</p>
<p>Most decision-making systems in AI, such as those used to play <a href="https://theconversation.com/googles-latest-go-victory-shows-machines-are-no-longer-just-learning-theyre-teaching-78410">board games like Go</a>, are based on reinforcement learning. This is where a computer learns to make decisions by repeatedly trialling moves until it receives feedback that it has done the correct thing, much like we train a dog to do something by giving it rewards. But most real-world scenarios don’t have a specific reward like victory in a board game.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243638/original/file-20181102-83629-644k4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243638/original/file-20181102-83629-644k4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243638/original/file-20181102-83629-644k4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243638/original/file-20181102-83629-644k4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243638/original/file-20181102-83629-644k4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243638/original/file-20181102-83629-644k4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243638/original/file-20181102-83629-644k4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The system models players’ positions, poses and tiredness.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/football-player-against-blue-dots-on-254383279">Wavebreak Media/Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Imitation learning, on the other hand, tries to understand the underlying decision-making policy by looking at how an expert performs a task, and then tries to mimic the expert. Modelling football experts (players) is very difficult because they make decisions with advanced skills that are hard to program in to a computer, such as choosing what to pay attention to, selecting the right response and anticipating what other players are going to do.</p>
<p>So for the computer model to be realistic, the historical data it’s based on needs to reflect the real world as much as possible. It shouldn’t just show how players move in relation to each other and the ball, but also capture how tired they are and the game situation. For example, do players want to attack or are they trying to defend, or even if they want to win or lose. (In some tournaments, a team might <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-cup/2018/06/28/england-should-want-lose-against-belgium/">want to lose</a> a match so their position in the next round gives them an easier opponent.) </p>
<h2>Changing post-match analysis</h2>
<p>We’ve already built a system that can create a model of players’ movements relative to each other and the ball that can be used to study performance. We now plan to make the model more realistic by adding details of players’ body poses, heart rate (to represent tiredness) and game conditions. We will then develop the system to measure current players’ skills and hope to have a fully functional system within two years. </p>
<p>We expect it will be a step change in the way players and coaches analyse games, especially post-match analysis. This will aid players to be more reflective by being able to see how their actions could have made a difference. Scouts and clubs would be able to select players and identify talent using data about these vital decision-making skills.</p>
<p>Extending AI from controlled, board game-style environments to complex real-world applications remains a monumental challenge. But humans are very good at adapting to and making decisions in complex, changing environments. So by learning to imitate human decision-making, AI will be able to tackle all sorts of unfamiliar environments where people don’t always follow the rules.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105750/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Varuna De Silva does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Commentators always like to imagine what players could have done better – we’re using AI to prove it.Varuna De Silva, Lecturer, Institute for Digital Technologies, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/966072018-05-29T22:58:50Z2018-05-29T22:58:50ZManagement wisdom from the NBA: sometimes the best move is the one you don’t make<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220564/original/file-20180528-90281-xhm6xd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Houston Rockets head coach Mike D'Antoni, during Game 2 of the NBA basketball Western Conference finals against the Golden State Warriors in Houston. D'Antoni successfully resisted calls to change his team's offensive strategy after losing Game 1.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/David J. Phillip)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/23525823/houston-rockets-blocking-noise-sticking-their-season-long-plan-golden-state-warriors">“Defiant Rockets rewarded for ignoring calls for change.”</a> That was one of the top headlines on ESPN following the recovery by the Houston Rockets in Game 2 of the NBA Western Conference finals. Despite a barrage of criticism directed at the team’s offensive strategy after a lopsided loss in Game 1, the Rockets stayed the course. And it paid off. </p>
<p>After a tough 119-106 loss to the Golden State Warriors two nights before, Houston coach Mike D’Antoni could have gone back to the drawing board and changed the offensive game plan. After all, that is what critics expected he would do to put the team in a more competitive position in Game 2.</p>
<p>But D’Antoni, like many basketball coaches, knows that sometimes the best move is no move at all. </p>
<p>D’Antoni’s decision not to change the isolation-heavy offence that led his team to the top of the Western Conference during the regular season is what I call “<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291367325_Competitive_Forbearance_The_Content_the_Process_and_the_Outcomes_of_Purposefully_Not_Acting">competitive forbearance,”</a> a purposeful decision not to act when key decision-makers have opportunity and capability to do so. </p>
<p>Competitive forbearance is also an important strategic decision in the business world.</p>
<h2>Competitive forbearance in business</h2>
<p>Competitive dynamics, a stream of strategic management research, addresses fundamental questions in strategy: How firms behave and why firms perform differently.</p>
<p>Studies in this area have mainly focused on how competitive aggressiveness — the propensity to carry out a large number of competitive actions — increases a firm’s performance. <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0149206316673718">Firms that fail to act frequently appear unenterprising or “passive,” which can diminish performance.</a></p>
<p>Little attention has been paid to the possible benefits of purposeful decisions not to act.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149206300000805">Mutual forbearance theory</a> suggests multimarket rivals choose competitive forbearance to prevent unnecessary losses associated with escalating rivalry across several markets.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hoping-for-a-bullish-stock-market-cheer-for-the-washington-capitals-97230">Hoping for a bullish stock market? Cheer for the Washington Capitals</a>
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<p>However, multimarket contact is just one situation in which forbearance is preferable to action. Savvy firms use forbearance to outmanoeuvre rivals in a variety of competitive situations.</p>
<p>For example, Apple decided not to integrate Adobe’s Flash Player into the iPhone and the iPad. As a result, <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20120815/gone-in-a-flash-adobe-pulls-player-from-google-store/?KEYWORDS=Apple+flash+player.">Adobe withdrew its Flash Player from the Android mobile operating system</a> of Apple’s arch enemy, Google, and chose to refocus its efforts around the emerging HTML5 standard. This suggests that Apple’s forbearance was the right choice despite being heavily <a href="http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/">criticized at the time</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220575/original/file-20180528-80645-1wwih1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220575/original/file-20180528-80645-1wwih1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220575/original/file-20180528-80645-1wwih1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220575/original/file-20180528-80645-1wwih1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220575/original/file-20180528-80645-1wwih1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220575/original/file-20180528-80645-1wwih1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220575/original/file-20180528-80645-1wwih1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone in 2007, Apple made a conscious decision not to allow it to work with Adobe’s Flash Player.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)</span></span>
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<p>I was part of a research project that explored the antecedents and consequences of competitive forbearance in the basketball coaching setting. Our research findings show that it has a significant impact on competitive rivalry. </p>
<h2>How forbearance improves performance</h2>
<p>In basketball, coaches make a wide range of forbearance decisions — not replacing players who are in foul trouble, not calling timeouts when teams are underperforming and not responding to opponents’ changes in offensive or defensive strategies.</p>
<p>In fact, 30 post-game interviews with nine coaches regarding their strategic decisions in 15 basketball games in the division one men’s basketball league of the FIBA–Europe revealed 673 competitive acts and 143 competitive forbearances. In other words, 17 per cent of all considered competitive moves were purposefully not executed. Competitive forbearance varied systematically across coaches.</p>
<p>The reasons basketball coaches choose to forbear can vary, from waiting for the full benefits of previous decisions to materialize to increasing players’ confidence — or in the case of D’Antoni, avoiding moves inconsistent with the team’s existing strategy and providing an opportunity for players to learn from experience. It was the right call — the Rockets went on to win 127-105 in Game 2. </p>
<p>Although competitive forbearance can improve team performance by expanding the range of strategic maneuvers and by making competitive behaviours less predictable, coaches are more prone to act than to forbear. Why is that? Two key factors are stakeholder pressure and coaching confidence. </p>
<h2>Not acting attracts criticism</h2>
<p>Owners, journalists, analysts, fans and players often assume that not taking action indicates incompetence and a lack of coaching skills. Thus, the norm is to act and forbearance is a violation of the norm.</p>
<p>The negative outcomes associated with forbearance are judged more harshly than the negative outcomes of actions. The effects of this pressure are especially evident in the last two minutes of the game, where our study revealed competitive forbearance was 62 per cent less likely to occur.</p>
<p>Not all coaches succumb to stakeholder pressure. More accomplished coaches had 42 per cent higher odds of forbearing. We also found the coaches who were confident about winning the game were over two and half times more likely to forbear. D’Antoni’s regular-season record with the Rockets — 65 wins in 82 games — would indicate a certain amount of confidence in the team’s odds of success. </p>
<p>When key decision-makers actively use forbearance, they consider a wide range of plots to outcompete rivals. They are also less predictable to rivals because they forbear when rivals expect action.</p>
<p>Despite its unique advantages, competitive forbearance is not in the toolkit of many basketball coaches. Only more accomplished and confident coaches are more likely to use competitive forbearance, which in turn, increases team performance. </p>
<p>And how did it work out for the Houston Rockets? D’Antoni kept firm to his forbearance decision throughout the Western final — he did not change the team’s offensive strategy. But a collapse in the second half of Game 7 led to a Golden State victory. <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/23636649/eric-gordon-believes-houston-rockets-playing-title-chris-paul-had-played">If the Rockets did not lose Chris Paul when they were up 3-2 after five games</a>, they might have been in the finals.</p>
<p>Indeed, it is not one decision, but a series of decisions that can increase or decrease performance. Forbearances increased the chances of success, but it is a combination of actions and forbearances that is critical for winning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96607/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Goce Andrevski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research has shown that the most successful basketball coaches resist pressure to make changes during games. Choosing not to make a move is sometimes also the right call for business leaders.Goce Andrevski, Associate Professor, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/850662017-12-05T04:07:42Z2017-12-05T04:07:42ZA new collaborative approach to investigate what happens in the brain when it makes a decision<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197377/original/file-20171202-5392-1edrpfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1319%2C238%2C2973%2C2330&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What's going on in there when you decide?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/businesswoman-making-decision-360687236">Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Decisions span a vast range of complexity. There are really simple ones: Do I want an apple or a piece of cake with my lunch? Then there are much more complicated ones: Which car should I buy, or which career should I choose?</p>
<p>Neuroscientists like me have identified some of the individual parts of the brain that contribute to making decisions like these. Different areas <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12077">process sounds</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0105-17.2017">sights</a> or pertinent <a href="https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05457">prior knowledge</a>. But understanding how these individual players work together as a team is still a challenge, not only in understanding decision-making, but for the whole field of neuroscience.</p>
<p>Part of the reason is that until now, neuroscience has operated in a traditional science research model: Individual labs work on their own, usually focusing on one or a few brain areas. That makes it challenging for any researcher to interpret data collected by another lab, because we all have slight differences in how we run experiments.</p>
<p>Neuroscientists who study decision-making set up all kinds of different games for animals to play, for example, and we collect data on what goes on in the brain when the animal makes a move. When everyone has a different experimental setup and methodology, we can’t determine whether the results from another lab are a clue about something interesting that’s actually going on in the brain or merely a byproduct of equipment differences.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.braininitiative.nih.gov/">The BRAIN Initiative</a>, which the Obama administration launched in 2013, started to encourage the kind of collaboration that neuroscience needs. I just think it hasn’t gone far enough. So I co-founded a project called the <a href="https://www.internationalbrainlab.com/">International Brain Laboratory</a> – a virtual mega-laboratory composed of many labs at different institutions – to show that the proverb “alone we go fast, together we go far” holds true for neuroscience. The first question the collaboration is tackling focuses on decision-making by the brain.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193460/original/file-20171106-1046-ehjqn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193460/original/file-20171106-1046-ehjqn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193460/original/file-20171106-1046-ehjqn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193460/original/file-20171106-1046-ehjqn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193460/original/file-20171106-1046-ehjqn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193460/original/file-20171106-1046-ehjqn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193460/original/file-20171106-1046-ehjqn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193460/original/file-20171106-1046-ehjqn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">We know a lot, but not enough, about how the cogs all fit together.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/p_revagar/28777007826">Piyushgiri Revagar</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<h2>The brain’s decision team</h2>
<p>Individual neuroscience labs have already uncovered a lot about how particular brain areas contribute to decision-making.</p>
<p>Say you’re choosing between an apple or a piece of cake to go with lunch. First, you need to know that apples and cake are the two options. That requires action from brain areas that process sensory information – your eyes see the apple’s bright red skin, while your nose takes in the sweet smell of cake.</p>
<p>Those sensory areas often connect to what we call association areas. Researchers have traditionally thought they play a role in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3865">putting different pieces of information</a> together. By collating information from the eyes, the ears and so on, the association areas may give a more coherent, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14066">big-picture view</a> of what’s happening in the world. </p>
<p>And why choose one action over another? That’s a question for the brain’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2008.08.003">reward circuitry</a>, which is critical in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2357">weighing the value of different options</a>. You know that the cake will taste sweetly delicious now, but you might regret it when you’re heading to the gym later.</p>
<p>Then, there’s the frontal cortex, which is believed to play a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/35036228">role in controlling voluntary action</a>. Research suggests it’s involved in committing to a particular action once enough incoming information has arrived. It’s the part of the brain that might tell you the piece of cake smells so good that it’s worth all of the calories.</p>
<p>Understanding how these different brain areas typically work together to make decisions could help with understanding what happens in diseased brains. Patients with disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease often use sensory information in an unusual way, especially if it’s complex and uncertain. Research on decision-making may also inform treatment of patients with other disorders, such as substance abuse and addiction. Indeed, <a href="https://archives.drugabuse.gov/NIDA_Notes/NNVol18N4/DirRepVol18N4.html">addiction is perhaps a prime example</a> of how decision-making can go very wrong.</p>
<h2>A lab collaborative spread around the world</h2>
<p>Right now, neuroscientists are taking lots of closeup snapshots of what happens in particular areas of the brain when it makes a decision. But they aren’t coordinating with each other much, so these closeup pieces don’t fit together to give us the big picture of decision-making that we need. </p>
<p>That’s why a team of us joined up to form the International Brain Laboratory. With support from the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility, the Wellcome Trust, and the Simons Foundation (also a funder of The Conversation US), we aim to create that big picture by designing one large-scale experiment that uses the exact same approach to study many different brain areas. Because the brain is so complex, we need the expertise of many different labs that each specialize in particular brain areas. But we need them to coordinate and use the same approach so that we can put all of their different pieces of the picture together. </p>
<p>We’re bringing together a team of 21 scientists who will work very closely to understand how billions of neurons work together in a single brain to make decisions. About a dozen different labs will each do part of one big experiment by measuring neuron activity in animals engaged in exactly the same game. Our team members will record activity from hundreds of neurons in each animal’s brain. We’ll collect tens of thousands of neuronal recordings that we can analyze together.</p>
<h2>Keep it simple</h2>
<p>In real-world decisions, you’re combining lots of different pieces of information – your sensory signals, your internal knowledge about what’s rewarding, what’s risky. But implementing that in a laboratory context is pretty hard.</p>
<p>We’re hoping to recreate a mouse’s natural foraging experience. In real life, there are many different paths an animal can take as it navigates the world looking for something to eat. It wants to find food, because food is rewarding. It uses incoming sensory cues, like, “Oh, I see a cricket over there!” An animal might combine that with a memory of reward, like, “I know this area has lush berry bushes, I remember that from yesterday, so I’ll go there.” Or, “I know over here there was a cat last time, so I’d better avoid that area.”</p>
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<span class="caption">Imagining the world from a mouse’s perspective is essential for International Brain Laboratory scientists when picking a lab task that mimics a real-world decision.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Elena Nikanorovna</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>At first pass, the setup we’re using for the International Brain Laboratory doesn’t look very natural at all. The mouse has a little device that it uses to report decisions – it’s actually a wheel from a Lego set. For example, it might learn that when it sees an image of a vertical grating and turns the wheel until the image is centered, it gets a reward. If you think about what foraging is – exploring the environment, trying to find rewards, making use of sensory signals and prior knowledge – this simple Lego wheel activity does capture its essence.</p>
<p>We really had to think about the trade-off between having a behavior that was complex enough to give us insight into interesting neural computations, and one that was simple enough that it could be implemented in the same way in many different experimental laboratories. The balance we struck was a decision-making task that starts simple and becomes more and more complex as an individual animal achieves different stages of training. </p>
<p>Even in the simplest, very earliest stage we’re looking at, where the animals are just making voluntary movements, they’re deciding when to make a movement to harvest a reward. I’m sure we can go much further, but even if that’s as far as we get, having neural measurements from all over the brain during a simple behavior like this will be very interesting. We don’t know how it happens in the brain that you decide when to take a particular action and how to execute that action. Having neural measurements from all over the brain of what happened just before the animal spontaneously decided to go and get a reward will be a huge step forward.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85066/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Churchland receives funding from NIH, Simons Foundation, The Office of Naval Research, the Pew Trusts and the Klingenstein-SImons Foundation. </span></em></p>A new initiative called the International Brain Laboratory is tackling this fundamental mystery of neuroscience in an unusual way.Anne Churchland, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Cold Spring Harbor LaboratoryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/817212017-07-28T10:33:41Z2017-07-28T10:33:41ZRegret helps children to make better decisions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180171/original/file-20170728-18243-1himhd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Do I want the bigger one?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/funny-little-asian-boy-looking-two-538300021?src=_7t_byxp4CMBBM4oggS-Kw-1-43">from www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Regret gets a bad press. It is a painful emotion experienced upon realising that a different decision would have led to a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7740094">better outcome</a>. And it is something that <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057740807700037">we strive to avoid</a>. In sharp contrast, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.12253/epdf">our recent research</a> on children’s decision making emphasises that the ability to experience regret is a developmental achievement associated with learning to make better choices. The results of this research suggest a different, more functional relationship between regret and decision making.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180183/original/file-20170728-18243-evmcet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180183/original/file-20170728-18243-evmcet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180183/original/file-20170728-18243-evmcet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180183/original/file-20170728-18243-evmcet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180183/original/file-20170728-18243-evmcet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180183/original/file-20170728-18243-evmcet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180183/original/file-20170728-18243-evmcet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Making a choice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/566824531?src=_7t_byxp4CMBBM4oggS-Kw-1-0&size=huge_jpg">from www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<p>How does one go about studying regret in children, given that they may not have the term “regret” in their vocabularies? Developmental psychologists ask children to make simple <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002209651000038X">choices between two options</a>. Outcomes are engineered so that once they have received a small prize associated with their choice, they see that they could have obtained a better prize had they chosen the other option. Using this task, the ability to experience regret can be tested for by asking children to express how they feel about the outcome of their decision on a child-friendly rating scale before and then after they see what they could have won instead. Feeling worse in the light of information about what they would have won had they decided differently is interpreted as evidence of regret. This goes beyond the child merely feeling sad or frustrated that they haven’t won the best prize.</p>
<h2>Age and regret</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022096511001792">Studies using this method</a> show that regret doesn’t emerge until about six years of age and most samples of six-year-olds will contain children who are able to experience regret and children who are not yet able to experience the emotion. This means that we can examine the consequences of experiencing regret for decision making in a sample of these children. If regret is involved with learning how to make better decisions then we should see more adaptive decision making in children who experience regret than in those who do not. Adaptive decision making requires decisions that are sensible in the light of the child’s earlier experience.</p>
<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.12253/epdf">To test this hypothesis</a>, we ran a two-day procedure. On the first day, children completed the regret task described above. On the second day, we presented children with exactly the same decision that they made the day before. We found that those children who experienced regret over their decision the previous day were significantly more likely to make a different choice on day two. They were more likely to choose the box that contained the better prize on day one than children who did not experience regret. This effect holds when we controlled for age and for cognitive ability. </p>
<p>Interestingly, the association between experiencing regret and switching choices doesn’t seem to be a consequence of whether children can remember the contents of the boxes: we found that almost every child, when prompted, could tell us what was in the boxes at the start of the day two procedure and having remembered, most of them decided to switch the choice they made on day one. This suggests that the role of regret is to help children spontaneously remember bad choices so that they can be avoided in the future.</p>
<p>We have <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022096516000436">extended these findings</a> to more complex tasks and to tasks which assess children’s ability to defer reward. For example, as yet unpublished experiments show that children who experience regret upon learning they would have received a larger prize if they had selected an option that required a longer wait, are more likely to choose to wait when faced with the same decision the next day. The ability to defer reward in childhood has been <a href="https://academic.oup.com/scan/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/scan/nsq081">linked to a variety of important outcomes in adulthood</a>, and this finding may help us understand how children learn how to decide to wait and how we might help them to learn how to defer reward.</p>
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<h2>The upside of regret</h2>
<p>Regret is a particularly perplexing emotion; it is painful and often seems to serve no purpose, particularly as we get <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-13440-012">older</a>. Our research suggests that there may be very important functions of the ability to experience regret in childhood. It also suggests that emotion and thinking may be intertwined in different ways at different points in development. For example, adolescents are <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661304003171">sometimes thought to make risky decisions</a> because there is a gap between their emotional and cognitive development. However, our research demonstrates that in younger children, the developing ability to experience an emotion such as regret leads to better decisions. Not only do our findings suggest an upside to regret, they prompt questions about the <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jora.12092/abstract">role played by regret in adolescent decision making</a> and the broader role played by emotion in decisions made by <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02699931.2017.1326373">children, adolescents and adults</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aidan Feeney receives funding from ESRC. </span></em></p>Going through the experience of regret can have a positive outcome.Aidan Feeney, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.