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Unreliable Gut Feelings Can Lead to Correct Decisions: The Somatic Marker Hypothesis in Non-Linear Decision Chains
Dual-process approaches of decision-making examine the interaction between affective/intuitive and deliberative processes underlying value judgment. From this perspective, decisions are supported by a combination of relatively explicit capabilities for abstract reasoning and relatively implicit evol...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2012
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466990/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23087655 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00384 |
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author | Bedia, Manuel G. Di Paolo, Ezequiel |
author_facet | Bedia, Manuel G. Di Paolo, Ezequiel |
author_sort | Bedia, Manuel G. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Dual-process approaches of decision-making examine the interaction between affective/intuitive and deliberative processes underlying value judgment. From this perspective, decisions are supported by a combination of relatively explicit capabilities for abstract reasoning and relatively implicit evolved domain-general as well as learned domain-specific affective responses. One such approach, the somatic markers hypothesis (SMH), expresses these implicit processes as a system of evolved primary emotions supplemented by associations between affect and experience that accrue over lifetime, or somatic markers. In this view, somatic markers are useful only if their local capability to predict the value of an action is above a baseline equal to the predictive capability of the combined rational and primary emotional subsystems. We argue that decision-making has often been conceived of as a linear process: the effect of decision sequences is additive, local utility is cumulative, and there is no strong environmental feedback. This widespread assumption can have consequences for answering questions regarding the relative weight between the systems and their interaction within a cognitive architecture. We introduce a mathematical formalization of the SMH and study it in situations of dynamic, non-linear decision chains using a discrete-time stochastic model. We find, contrary to expectations, that decision-making events can interact non-additively with the environment in apparently paradoxical ways. We find that in non-lethal situations, primary emotions are represented globally over and above their local weight, showing a tendency for overcautiousness in situated decision chains. We also show that because they tend to counteract this trend, poorly attuned somatic markers that by themselves do not locally enhance decision-making, can still produce an overall positive effect. This result has developmental and evolutionary implications since, by promoting exploratory behavior, somatic markers would seem to be beneficial even at early stages when experiential attunement is poor. Although the model is formulated in terms of the SMH, the implications apply to dual systems theories in general since it makes minimal assumptions about the nature of the processes involved. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3466990 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2012 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-34669902012-10-19 Unreliable Gut Feelings Can Lead to Correct Decisions: The Somatic Marker Hypothesis in Non-Linear Decision Chains Bedia, Manuel G. Di Paolo, Ezequiel Front Psychol Psychology Dual-process approaches of decision-making examine the interaction between affective/intuitive and deliberative processes underlying value judgment. From this perspective, decisions are supported by a combination of relatively explicit capabilities for abstract reasoning and relatively implicit evolved domain-general as well as learned domain-specific affective responses. One such approach, the somatic markers hypothesis (SMH), expresses these implicit processes as a system of evolved primary emotions supplemented by associations between affect and experience that accrue over lifetime, or somatic markers. In this view, somatic markers are useful only if their local capability to predict the value of an action is above a baseline equal to the predictive capability of the combined rational and primary emotional subsystems. We argue that decision-making has often been conceived of as a linear process: the effect of decision sequences is additive, local utility is cumulative, and there is no strong environmental feedback. This widespread assumption can have consequences for answering questions regarding the relative weight between the systems and their interaction within a cognitive architecture. We introduce a mathematical formalization of the SMH and study it in situations of dynamic, non-linear decision chains using a discrete-time stochastic model. We find, contrary to expectations, that decision-making events can interact non-additively with the environment in apparently paradoxical ways. We find that in non-lethal situations, primary emotions are represented globally over and above their local weight, showing a tendency for overcautiousness in situated decision chains. We also show that because they tend to counteract this trend, poorly attuned somatic markers that by themselves do not locally enhance decision-making, can still produce an overall positive effect. This result has developmental and evolutionary implications since, by promoting exploratory behavior, somatic markers would seem to be beneficial even at early stages when experiential attunement is poor. Although the model is formulated in terms of the SMH, the implications apply to dual systems theories in general since it makes minimal assumptions about the nature of the processes involved. Frontiers Media S.A. 2012-10-09 /pmc/articles/PMC3466990/ /pubmed/23087655 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00384 Text en Copyright © 2012 Bedia and Di Paolo. http://www.frontiersin.org/licenseagreement This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and subject to any copyright notices concerning any third-party graphics etc. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Bedia, Manuel G. Di Paolo, Ezequiel Unreliable Gut Feelings Can Lead to Correct Decisions: The Somatic Marker Hypothesis in Non-Linear Decision Chains |
title | Unreliable Gut Feelings Can Lead to Correct Decisions: The Somatic Marker Hypothesis in Non-Linear Decision Chains |
title_full | Unreliable Gut Feelings Can Lead to Correct Decisions: The Somatic Marker Hypothesis in Non-Linear Decision Chains |
title_fullStr | Unreliable Gut Feelings Can Lead to Correct Decisions: The Somatic Marker Hypothesis in Non-Linear Decision Chains |
title_full_unstemmed | Unreliable Gut Feelings Can Lead to Correct Decisions: The Somatic Marker Hypothesis in Non-Linear Decision Chains |
title_short | Unreliable Gut Feelings Can Lead to Correct Decisions: The Somatic Marker Hypothesis in Non-Linear Decision Chains |
title_sort | unreliable gut feelings can lead to correct decisions: the somatic marker hypothesis in non-linear decision chains |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466990/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23087655 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00384 |
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