Lehrer, Jonahan. How We Decided

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loyal to their chosen candidates, even if they couldn't explain why they were so loyal. "You just know who you prefer," Ralph says. "For most of the meeting, the level of discourse was pretty much 'My person is better. Period. End of story.'"

After a lengthy and intense discussion—"We'd really been having this discussion for months," says Ralph—the Monitor ended up endorsing Clinton by a 3 - 2 vote. The room was nar­ rowly split, but it had become clear that no one was going to change his or her mind. Even Felice, the most uncertain of the editors, was now firmly in the Clinton camp. "There is always going to be disagreement," Mike says. "That's what happens when you get five opinionated people in the same room talking politics. But you also know that before you leave the room, you've got to endorse somebody. You've got to accept the fact that some people are bound to be wrong"—he jokingly looks over at Ralph—"and find a way to make a decision."

For readers of the Monitor, the commentary endorsing Clin­ ton seemed like a well-reasoned brief, an unambiguous sum­ mary of the newspaper's position. (Kathleen Strand, the Clinton spokesperson in New Hampshire, credited the endorsement with helping Clinton win the primary.) The carefully chosen words in the editorial showed no trace of the debate that had plagued the closed-door meeting and all those heated conversations by the water cooler. If just one of the editors had changed his or her mind, then the Monitor would have chosen Obama. In other words, the clear-cut endorsement emerged from a very tentative majority.

In this sense, the editorial board is a metaphor for the brain. Its decisions often feel unanimous—you know which candidate you prefer—but the conclusions are actually reached only after a series of sharp internal disagreements. While the cortex strug­ gles to make a decision, rival bits of tissue are contradicting one another. Different brain areas think different things for different reasons. Sometimes this fierce argument is largely emotional, and

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the distinct parts of the limbic system debate one another. Al­ though people can't always rationally justify their feelings—these editorial board members preferred either Hillary or Obama for reasons they couldn't really articulate—these feelings still man­ age to powerfully affect behavior. Other arguments unfold largely between the emotional and rational systems of the brain as the prefrontal cortex tries to resist the impulses coming from below. Regardless of which areas are doing the arguing, how­ ever, it's clear that all those mental components stuffed inside the head are constantly fighting for influence and attention. Like an editorial board, the mind is an extended argument. And it is ar­ guing with itself.

In recent years, scientists have been able to show that this "argument" isn't confined only to contentious issues such as presidential politics. Rather, it's a defining feature of the deci­ sion-making process. Even the most mundane choices emerge from a vigorous cortical debate. Let's say, for instance, that you're contemplating breakfast cereals in the supermarket. Each option will activate a unique subset of competing thoughts. Per­ haps the organic granola is delicious but too expensive, or the whole-grain flakes are healthy but too unappetizing, or the Fruit Loops are an appealing brand (the advertisements worked) but too sugary. Each of these distinct claims will trigger a particu­ lar set of emotions and associations, all of which then compete for your conscious attention. Antoine Bechara, a neuroscientist at USC, compares this frantic neural competition to natural se­ lection, with the stronger emotions ("I really want Honey Nut Cheerios!") and the more compelling thoughts ("I should eat more fiber") gaining a selective advantage over weaker ones ("I like the cartoon character on the box of Fruit Loops"). "The point is that most of the computation is done at an emotional, unconscious level, and not at a logical level," he says. The par­ ticular ensemble of brain cells that win the argument determine what you eat for breakfast.

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Consider this clever experiment designed by Brian Knutson and George Loewenstein. The scientists wanted to investigate what happens inside the brain when a person makes typical con­ sumer choices, such as buying an item in a retail store or choos­ ing a cereal. A few dozen lucky undergraduates were recruited as experimental subjects and given a generous amount of spend­ ing money. Each subject was then offered the chance to buy doz­ ens of different objects, from a digital voice recorder to gourmet chocolates to the latest Harry Potter book. After the student stared at each object for a few seconds, he was shown the price tag. If he chose to buy the item, its cost was deducted from the original pile of cash. The experiment was designed to realisti­ cally simulate the experience of a shopper.

While the student was deciding whether or not to buy the product on display, the scientists were imaging the subject's brain activity. They discovered that when a subject was first exposed to an object, his nucleus accumbens (NAcc) was turned on. The NAcc is a crucial part of the dopamine reward pathway, and the intensity of its activation was a reflection of desire for the item. If the person already owned the complete Harry Potter collection, then the NAcc didn't get too excited about the prospect of buy­ ing another copy. However, if he had been craving a George Foreman grill, the NAcc flooded the brain with dopamine when that item appeared.

But then came the price tag. When the experimental subject was exposed to the cost of the product, the insula and prefrontal cortex were activated. The insula produces aversive feelings and is triggered by things like nicotine withdrawal and pictures of people in pain. In general, we try to avoid anything that makes our insulas excited. This includes spending money. The prefron­ tal cortex was activated, scientists speculated, because this ratio­ nal area was computing the numbers, trying to figure out if the product was actually a good deal. The prefrontal cortex got most

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excited during the experiment when the cost of the item on dis­ play was significantly lower than normal.

By measuring the relative amount of activity in each brain re­ gion, the scientists could accurately predict the subjects' shop­ ping decisions. They knew which products people would buy before the people themselves did. If the insula's negativity ex­ ceeded the positive feelings generated by the NAcc, then the sub­ ject always chose not to buy the item. However, if the NAcc was more active than the insula, or if the prefrontal cortex was con­ vinced that it had found a good deal, the object proved irresis­ tible. The sting of spending money couldn't compete with the thrill of getting something new.

This data, of course, directly contradicts the rational models of microeconomics; consumers aren't always driven by careful considerations of price and expected utility. You don't look at the electric grill or box of chocolates and perform an explicit cost-benefit analysis. Instead, you outsource much of this calcu­ lation to your emotional brain and then rely on relative amounts of pleasure versus pain to tell you what to purchase. (During many of the decisions, the rational prefrontal cortex was largely a spectator, standing silently by while the NAcc and insula ar­ gued with each other.) Whichever emotion you feel most in­ tensely tends to dictate your shopping decisions. It's like an emo­ tional tug of war.

This research explains why consciously analyzing purchas­ ing decisions can be so misleading. When Timothy Wilson asked people to analyze their strawberry-jam preferences, they made worse decisions because they had no idea what their NAccs re­ ally wanted. Instead of listening to their feelings, they tried to deliberately decipher their pleasure. But we can't ask our NAccs questions; we can only listen to what they have to say. Our de­ sires exist behind locked doors.

Retail stores manipulate this cortical setup. They are designed

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to get us to open our wallets; the frivolous details of the shop­ ping experience are really subtle acts of psychological manipula­ tion. The store is tweaking our brains, trying to soothe the insu­ las and stoke the NAccs. Just look at the interior of a Costco warehouse. It's no accident that the most coveted items are put in the most prominent places. A row of high-definition televi­ sions lines the entrance. The fancy jewelry, Rolex watches, iPods, and other luxury items are conspicuously placed along the corri­ dors with the heaviest foot traffic. And then there are the free samples of food, liberally distributed throughout the store. The goal of Costco is to constantly prime the pleasure centers of the brain, to keep us lusting after things we don't need. Even though you probably won't buy the Rolex, just looking at the fancy watch makes you more likely to buy something else, since the desired item activates the NAcc. You have been conditioned to crave a reward.

But exciting the NAcc is not enough; retailers must also in­ hibit the insula. This brain area is responsible for making sure you don't get ripped off, and when it's repeatedly assured by re­ tail stores that low prices are "guaranteed," or that a certain item is on sale, or that it's getting the "wholesale price," the in­ sula stops worrying so much about the price tag. In fact, re­ searchers have found that when a store puts a promotional sticker next to the price tag—something like "Bargain Buy!" or "Hot Deal!"—but doesn't actually reduce the price, sales of that item still dramatically increase. These retail tactics lull the brain into buying more things, since the insula is pacified. We go broke convinced that we are saving money.

This model of the shopping brain also helps explain why credit cards make us spend so irresponsibly. According to Knut­ son and Loewenstein, paying with plastic literally inhibits the insula, making a person less sensitive to the cost of an item. As a result, the activity of the NAcc—the pleasure pump of the

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cortex—becomes disproportionately important: it wins every shopping argument.

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There's something unsettling about seeing the brain as one big argument. We like to believe that our decisions reflect a clear cortical consensus, that the entire mind agrees on what we should do. And yet, that serene self-image has little basis in real­ ity. The NAcc might want the George Foreman grill, but the in­ sula knows that you can't afford it, or the prefrontal cortex real­ izes that it's a bad deal. The amygdala might like Hillary Clinton's tough talk on foreign policy, but the ventral striatum is excited by Obama's uplifting rhetoric. These antagonistic reactions man­ ifest themselves as a twinge of uncertainty. You don't know what you believe. And you certainly don't know what to do.

The dilemma, of course, is how to reconcile the argument. If the brain is always disagreeing with itself, then how can a person ever make a decision? At first glance, the answer seems obvious: force a settlement. The rational parts of the mind should inter­ vene and put an end to all the emotional bickering.

While such a top-down solution might seem like a good idea —using the most evolutionarily advanced parts of the brain to end the cognitive contretemps—this approach must be used with great caution. The problem is that the urge to end the debate of­ ten leads to neglect of crucial pieces of information. A person is so eager to silence the amygdala, or quiet the OFC, or suppress some bit of the limbic system that he or she ends up making a bad decision. A brain that's intolerant of uncertainty—that can't stand the argument—often tricks itself into thinking the wrong thing. What Mike Pride says about editorial boards is also true of the cortex: "The most important thing is that everyone has

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their say, that you listen to the other side and try to understand their point of view. You can't short-circuit the process."

Unfortunately, the mind often surrenders to the temptation of shoddy top-down thinking. Just look at politics. Voters with strong partisan affiliations are a case study in how not to form opinions: their brains are stubborn and impermeable, since they already know what they believe. No amount of persuasion or new information is going to change the outcome of their mental debates. For instance, an analysis of five hundred voters with "strong party allegiances" during the 1976 campaign found that during the heated last two months of the contest, only sixteen people were persuaded to vote for the other party. Another study tracked voters from 1965 to 1982, tracing the flux of party affili­ ation over time. Although it was an extremely tumultuous era in American politics—there was the Vietnam War, stagflation, the fall of Richard Nixon, oil shortages, and Jimmy Carter—nearly 90 percent of people who identified themselves as Republicans in 1965 ended up voting for Ronald Reagan in 1980. The happen­ ings of history didn't change many minds.

It's now possible to see why partisan identities are so persis­ tent. Drew Westen, a psychologist at Emory University, imaged the brains of ordinary voters with strong party allegiances dur­ ing the run-up to the 2004 election. He showed the voters multi­ ple, clearly contradictory statements made by each candidate, John Kerry and George Bush. For example, the experimental subject would read a quote from Bush praising the service of sol­ diers in the Iraq war and pledging "to provide the best care for all veterans." Then the subject would learn that on the same day Bush made this speech, his administration cut medical benefits for 164,000 veterans. Kerry, meanwhile, was quoted making con­ tradictory statements about his vote to authorize war in Iraq.

After being exposed to the political inconsistencies of both candidates, the subject was asked to rate the level of contradic­ tion on a scale of 1 to 4, with 4 signaling a strong level of contra-

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diction. Not surprisingly, the reactions of voters were largely de­ termined by their partisan allegiances. Democrats were troubled by Bush's inconsistent statements (they typically rated them a 4) but found Kerry's contradictions much less worrisome. Republi­ cans responded in a similar manner; they excused Bush's gaffes but almost always found Kerry's statements flagrantly incoherent.

By studying each of these voters in an fMRI machine, Westen was able to look at the partisan reasoning process from the per­ spective of the brain. He could watch as Democrats and Repub­ licans struggled to maintain their political opinions in the face of conflicting evidence. After being exposed to the inconsistencies of their preferred candidate, the party faithful automatically re­ cruited brain regions that are responsible for controlling emo­ tional reactions, such as the prefrontal cortex. While this data might suggest that voters are rational agents calmly assimilating the uncomfortable information, Westen already knew that wasn't happening, since the ratings of Kerry and Bush were entirely de­ pendent on the subjects' party affiliations. What, then, was the prefrontal cortex doing? Westen realized that voters weren't us­ ing their reasoning faculties to analyze the facts; they were using reason to preserve their partisan certainty. And then, once the subjects had arrived at favorable interpretations of the evidence, blithely excusing the contradictions of their chosen candidate, they activated the internal reward circuits in their brains and ex­ perienced a rush of pleasurable emotion. Self-delusion, in other words, felt really good. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want," Westen says, "and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and acti­ vation of positive ones."

This flawed thought process plays a crucial role in shaping the opinions of the electorate. Partisan voters are convinced that they're rational—it's the other side that's irrational—but ac­ tually, all of us are rationalizers. The Princeton political scientist

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Larry Bartels analyzed survey data from the 1990s to prove this point. During the first term of Bill Clinton's presidency, the bud­ get deficit declined by more than 90 percent. However, when Re­ publican voters were asked in 1996 what happened to the deficit under Clinton, more than 5 5 percent said that it had increased. What's interesting about this data is that so-called high-informa­ tion voters—these are the Republicans who read the newspaper, watch cable news, and can identify their representatives in Con­ gress—weren't better informed than low-information voters. (Many low-information voters struggled to name the vice presi­ dent.) According to Bartels, the reason knowing more about pol­ itics doesn't erase partisan bias is that voters tend to assimilate only those facts that confirm what they already believe. If a piece of information doesn't follow Republican talking points—and Clinton's deficit reduction didn't fit the tax-and-spend liberal ste­ reotype—then the information is conveniently ignored. "Voters think that they're thinking," Bartels says, "but what they're re­ ally doing is inventing facts or ignoring facts so that they can rationalize decisions they've already made." Once you identify with a political party, the world is edited to fit with your ideology.

At such moments, rationality actually becomes a liability, since it allows us to justify practically any belief. The prefrontal cortex is turned into an information filter, a way to block out disagreeable points of view. Let's look at an experiment done in the late 1960s by the cognitive psychologists Timothy Brock and Joe Balloun. Half of the subjects involved in the experiment were regular churchgoers, and half were committed atheists. Brock and Balloun played a tape-recorded message attacking Christi­ anity, and, to make the experiment more interesting, they added an annoying amount of static—a crackle of white noise—to the recording. However, the listener could reduce the static by press­ ing a button, at which point the message suddenly became easier to understand.

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The results were utterly predicable and rather depressing: the nonbelievers always tried to remove the static, while the religious subjects actually preferred the message that was harder to hear. Later experiments by Brock and Balloun that had smokers listen­ ing to a speech on the link between smoking and cancer demon­ strated a similar effect. We all silence the cognitive dissonance through self-imposed ignorance.

This sort of blinkered thinking isn't a problem for only parti­ san voters and devout believers. In fact, research suggests that the same flaw also afflicts those people who are supposed to be most immune to such cognitive errors: political pundits. Even though pundits are trained professionals, presumably able to evaluate the evidence and base their opinions on the cold, hard facts—that's why we listen to them—they are still vulnerable to cognitive mistakes. Like partisan voters, they selectively interpret the data so that it proves them right. They'll distort their thought process until it leads to the desired conclusion.

In 1984, the University of California at Berkeley psychologist Philip Tetlock began what he thought would be a brief research project. At the time, the Cold War was flaring up again—Rea­ gan was talking tough to the "evil empire"—and political pun­ dits were sharply divided on the wisdom of American foreign policy. The doves thought Reagan was needlessly antagonizing the Soviets, while the hawks were convinced that the USSR needed to be aggressively contained. Tetlock was curious which group of pundits would turn out to be right, and so he began monitoring their predictions.

A few years later, after Reagan left office, Tetlock revisited the opinions of the pundits. His conclusion was sobering: every­ one was wrong. The doves had assumed that Reagan's bellicose stance would exacerbate Cold War tensions and had predicted a breakdown in diplomacy as the USSR hardened its geopolitical stance. The reality, of course, was that the exact opposite hap-