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Logic vs. Emotion in Decision-Making

Posted by michael on from the seeing-red dept.

deliasee writes "Researchers at Princeton have announced the results of a brain imaging study showing that a battle between different logical and emotional sectors of the brain results in a decision. The study used a game theory scenario to investigate why people often make irrational decisions that actually go against their most logical best interests - as in, I would like to get _some_ money as opposed to _no_ money."

4 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. Re:i'm confused.... by ceejayoz · · Score: 2, Informative

    Basically, one person has $10 and the other has $0. The person with $10 has to offer money to the other person.

    Now, if the person with $10 offers $1 to the other, both people "win" - person A is up $9, person B is up $1. So, it would be logical for person B to accept the offer.

    In most cases, though, person B will reject the offer - as it seems unfair for him to be only getting a small amount. S/He rejects the offer, even though it means BOTH people get nothing.

    So, it's a nice illustration of rational vs. irrational thought.

  2. Re:i'm confused.... by melete · · Score: 4, Informative

    You don't really need to understand game theory to get this application of it.

    Basically, two random individuals are put in a situation with a few ground rules (one being that this is the only time these two people will play this game together)

    Person A is then allowed to offer person B a portion of $10; if person B accepts, person A gets to keep the remainder of the $10; if person B rejects the offered money, neither of them get any of the money.

    The article is saying that people tend to reject low offers (like $1) since obviously, they want at least $5 of the money, and see less than that as unfair.

  3. David Hume on the helix of passion/reason. by Shwag · · Score: 2, Informative


    Hume

    figured that out more then 200 years ago.
    Why is science always the last to figure things out?

    1. Re:David Hume on the helix of passion/reason. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Why is science always the last to figure things out?

      Because saying "this is how things are" is a lot easier than telling yourself that and then actually constructing an experiment to prove/disprove it and then getting the funding to execute that experiment. Lets not even get into how you go about getting it published in a respectable journal. It's something like a patent search in that you've got to try to find all the references for the trivial things you proved in a day and forgot about even doubting in the first place. Sometimes your experiment is inconclusive which makes things more interesting, but also makes it harder to get funding even if you manage to publish the "I did this and it didn't work" paper. If you give up many others will probably repeat the failed experiment; usually this info gets passed around at conferences, so there is like a five year window where someone else may make progress but if the problem isn't popular it will languish for years until the answer is needed for something that is popular.

      There are also a lot of crackpots writing books compared with the number of scientists.