Thinking with the Emotional Brain

(From a press release) Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects' brains were monitored [with fMRI] while they pondered.

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."

The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.

Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward…

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making. The study has potentially wide implications, from politics to business, and demonstrates that emotional bias can play a strong role in decision-making, Westen says.
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Comments: Excellent research. Hyped publicity release. The fMRI results show that the people in this study did not activate the reasoning brain modules that I call the Vulcan. The comments in the last (red) paragraph show that researchers can also reach irrational conclusions when evaluating their own research for the benefit of a publicity release. I am confident that Dr. Westin would have called up his Vulcan and tempered his conclusions if he had been speaking to a professional group.

What I don’t like about these conclusions is their demonstration of the bias in psychology to put reports in the form of what’s wrong with people. (Pleas note that I said bias and meant to suggest that psychologists, like political partisans, sometimes “ignore information that cannot be rationally discounted.")

These conclusions convey the impression that the political partisans were so controlled by their biases that they were unable to think rationally. I don’t believe that impression is correct. As I look at the instructions, I don’t know that the instructions even asked them to think rationally.

If the investigators had wanted to frame a request to think rationally, they could have asked: “Put yourself in the place of a foreigner with no particular interest in this election. How would that foreigner evaluate these things from a logical viewpoint?”

The existence and management of bias has been studied extensively in psychology, particularly in the area of group processes. Collective bias is called “groupthink” and has been the subject of many books, such as this one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0395317045/103-1645611-1198237?v=glance&n=283155

The role of groupthink was widely discussed in connection with the Bay of Pigs incident: http://www.probe.org/content/view/1088/162/

The standard method for dealing with groupthink in group processes is the devil’s advocate: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3645/is_199610/ai_n8747359

The Thinkerer offers a similar method of dealing with individual bias in the form of the Canter. The Canter’s role is to raise objections to your initial thinking. Here, as an illustration, are things the researchers might have heard from their Canters, if they had listened. (And will hear from referees if they submit these conclusions for publication.)

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making. Canter: You can’t say that. You have no evidence that they were engaging in political decision-making. They were partisans, so their decision-making had already been done. You asked them to evaluate. They probably evaluated from the viewpoint of how the item would affect their presentation of their existing position. They were "spin-doctoring."

The study has potentially wide implications, from politics to business, and demonstrates that emotional bias can play a strong role in decision-making… Canter: You can’t claim important implications without saying what the implications are and why they are important. The results do demonstrate the role of bias, but there have been innumerable prior demonstrations of that. You need to cite novel implications to claim that they are important.