Framing, Biases and Decision making in the Brain

S.A.M. · Jun 16, 2007

This weeks sticky.

An offshoot on this thread here:

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=1440475#post1440475

Human choices are remarkably susceptible to the manner in which options are presented. This so-called "framing effect" represents a striking violation of standard economic accounts of human rationality, although its underlying neurobiology is not understood. We found that the framing effect was specifically associated with amygdala activity, suggesting a key role for an emotional system in mediating decision biases. Moreover, across individuals, orbital and medial prefrontal cortex activity predicted a reduced susceptibility to the framing effect. This finding highlights the importance of incorporating emotional processes within models of human choice and suggests how the brain may modulate the effect of these biasing influences to approximate rationality.
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http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/313/5787/684

In short, the brain is wired to use emotion rather than reason for decision making.

Also,

People typically exhibit greater sensitivity to losses than to equivalent gains when making decisions. A broad set of areas (including midbrain dopaminergic regions and their targets) showed increasing activity as potential gains increased. Potential losses were represented by decreasing activity in several of these same gain-sensitive areas. Finally, individual differences in behavioral loss aversion were predicted by a measure of neural loss aversion in several regions
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http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/315/5811/515

Losses have a greater impact than gains.

This has provided a neural basis for the framing effect

Now a team of cognitive neuroscientists reports findings on page 684 that link the framing effect to neural activity in a key emotion center in the human brain, the amygdala. They also identify another region, the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex (OMPFC), that may moderate the influence of emotion on decisions: The more activity subjects had in this area, the less susceptible they were to the framing effect. "The results could hardly be more elegant," says Daniel Kahneman, an economist at Princeton University who pioneered research on the framing effect 25 years ago (Science, 30 January 1981, p. 453).
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http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5787/600b

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(Q) · Jun 17, 2007

S.A.M. said: ↑

In short, the brain is wired to use emotion rather than reason for decision making.
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No, what it means is that decisions made in the orbital frontal cortex can be influenced by framing, reducing the individual to remain in a 'prison' of habitually reverting to their emotions, further solidifying the frames and not accepting the rational decision.

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S.A.M. · Jun 17, 2007

(Q) said: ↑

No, what it means is that decisions made in the orbital frontal cortex can be influenced by framing, reducing the individual to remain in a 'prison' of habitually reverting to their emotions, further solidifying the frames and not accepting the rational decision.
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Now how in the name of heaven do you reach that conclusion from this?
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We found that the framing effect was specifically associated with amygdala activity, suggesting a key role for an emotional system in mediating decision biases. Moreover, across individuals, orbital and medial prefrontal cortex activity predicted a reduced susceptibility to the framing effect.
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And this?

They also identify another region, the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex (OMPFC), that may moderate the influence of emotion on decisions: The more activity subjects had in this area, the less susceptible they were to the framing effect.
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invert_nexus · Jun 17, 2007

Emotion gives reason motivation and direction.

"....we pretend to be constucting edifices of impartial thought, when actually we are selecting only such acts and agreements as will give dignity to some personal or patriotic wish."
Will Durant, Mansions of Philosophy

§outh§tar · Jun 17, 2007

Hume was ahead of Durant on the offices of reason and the passions. I don't know if anyone was chronologically ahead of Hume (as far as unequivocally going against the Socratic arithmetic reason + virtue = happiness (or, if you like, defining the formula away into nonsensehood)).

This isn't surprising though. I could have sworn there's been some other science work reaching the same conclusions. Might just have been Nietzsche rambling about the History of an error though. I'll take some time and see if I'm confabulating.

(Q) · Jun 17, 2007

S.A.M. said: ↑

Now how in the name of heaven do you reach that conclusion from this?
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I don't make conclusions based entirely on what YOU show me.

S.A.M. · Jun 17, 2007

(Q) said: ↑

I don't make conclusions based entirely on what YOU show me.
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This is the Biology forum, perhaps you might be considerate enough to indicate how you reached your conclusions? Or shall we take you on faith?
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(Q) · Jun 17, 2007

Studies conducted by Michela Gallagher, professor of psychological and brain sciences with the department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins' University.

The article, "Rapid Associative Encoding in Basolateral Amygdala," appeared in Volume 46, Issue 2 of the journal Neuron, published April 21, 2005.

S.A.M. · Jun 18, 2007

(Q) said: ↑

Studies conducted by Michela Gallagher, professor of psychological and brain sciences with the department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins' University.

The article, "Rapid Associative Encoding in Basolateral Amygdala," appeared in Volume 46, Issue 2 of the journal Neuron, published April 21, 2005.
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So you believe that choosing the sure option over the risky option is an advancement in rationality?

Why do you suppose lesions in the OFC have no discernible influence on the activation of outcome representation here:

Furthermore, the current results provide evidence of the importance of projections from OFC to ABL in supporting outcome-related encoding; rats with OFC lesions failed to exhibit the rapid associative encoding during cue sampling that characterizes neural activity in ABL in a variety of settings and also failed to generate outcome-expectant neural activity during responding.

These findings, together with those in an earlier report (Schoenbaum et al., 2003b), demonstrate that the ability to represent information about expected outcomes in neural encoding depends on the cooperative function of the orbitofrontal-amygdalar circuit. This cooperative function is apparent in a comparison of the current findings, concerning the role of ABL input to OFC, and the earlier report, concerning the role of OFC input to ABL. In the current report, we found that OFC lesions impaired outcome-expectant encoding in ABL during the delay interval after a response was made. By contrast, using the same task and methods, our earlier study showed that similar numbers of OFC neurons developed outcome-expectant encoding during the delay in intact rats and rats with an ABL lesion. Thus, connections with OFC appear to play a role in activating an expectancy of an impending outcome in ABL neural activity. Yet to provide a guide for action, outcome information is needed prior to responding; such information can be provided by predictive cues that activate outcome-related representations during learning. Here the roles of OFC and ABL are reversed; OFC lesions did not affect the proportion of outcome-expectant cells that became activated by the relevant predictive cue, whereas in our prior report, ABL damage virtually eliminated the emergence of such encoding in OFC.
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Framing, Biases and Decision making in the Brain

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