How do you make decisions, with logic or your gut?
October 16, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
A new research study states (per the October 15th Science Daily):
People with autism-related disorders are less likely to make irrational decisions, and are less influenced by gut instincts.
The study is published in the Journal of Neuroscience, and was funded by the Wellcome Trust. Professor Ray Dolan’s group at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London looked at how the “framing effect”—according to which how we respond to a problem depends on how the problem is presented—affects decision-making in individuals with autism spectrum disorders:
Participants in the study performed a task involving deciding whether or not to gamble with a sum of money. For example, they would be given £50 and be presented with two options: option A was to keep £20; option B was to gamble, with a 40% chance of keeping the full £50 and a 60% chance of losing everything. This version was known as the “gain frame”.
At other times, the participants would be presented with the “loss frame”, the only difference being that option A was phrased in terms of losing money. In other words, when given £50, option A was to lose £30 of their initial amount; option B was the same as above.
Despite option A being essentially the same in both gain and loss frames, the researchers found that the “control” participants – those without ASD – were more likely to gamble if the first option was to “lose” rather than “keep” money. For participants with ASD, this effect was much smaller, suggesting that this latter group was less susceptible to the framing effect – in other words, they were less likely to be guided by their emotions into making inconsistent or irrational choices.
“People with autism tended to be more consistent in their pattern of choices, their greater attention to detail perhaps helping them avoid being swayed by their emotions,” says Dr Neil Harrison.
From Science Daily’s description of the study, it seems that the ASD participants focused on the number amounts of the money, while those without ASDs attended more to the frame, to whether they were said to be winning or losing. The participants without ASDs relied more on context and contextual details to make their decisions. It’s often the case that I’ve observed my son doing things that seem not to “make sense,” like putting these yogurt containers like this, based on the similarity of their shapes. I suspect he’s recalling the rules about matching and patterns that he’s learned and not attending to the words and pictures on the containers.
Go here to read an abstract of the study, which is entitled Explaining Enhanced Logical Consistency during Decision Making in Autism.
Very interesting. So if we grown up people want to make rational decisions we know who to consult!
Cheers
Check that first sentence:
a) People with autism-related disorders
b) are less likely to make irrational decisions, and are less influenced by gut instincts.
Would part b not actually lessen the validity of part a?
Since when has ‘being more logical’ been a criterion of a disorder?
…
Since when is reading quickly a characteristic of Hyperlexia DISORDER? Since when is high energy level a characteristic of Attention Deficit/Hyperactive DISORDER? Since when is it impossible for a positive trait to be attached to a disorder?
“‘People with autism tended to be more consistent in their pattern of choices, their greater attention to detail perhaps helping them avoid being swayed by their emotions,’ says Dr Neil Harrison.”
In other contexts, this is usually referred to as “rigidity.” It’s also one catalyst (or all-too-convenient pretext) for the rationale whereby we are described as “lacking empathy.”
Funny thing: There’s nothing more patently Normal™ than being motivated almost exclusively by classic cognitive biases — and yet, to openly acknowledge this usually amounts to the revoking of one’s own “license” to profit from it.
Wotta woild.