Contents
You are standing in the store and painfully trying to decide which of the two (three) gifts to choose after all. What is going on in your brain right now?
Avinash Vaidya and Lesley Fellows of the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (Canada) conducted a study to learn more about the processes that govern the decision-making process in these situations.
“Most of all, we were interested in how and where information related to assessment is stored and processed in the brain. Our research confirmed the truth that marketers know that the longer a person looks at one of the two objects of choice, the higher the likelihood that he will eventually choose it, even if he was more attracted to the other option at the beginning. We were also able to find out which area in the frontal lobe of the brain plays a key role in these processes,” says Dr. Leslie Fellows, who researches the neuroscience of decision making.
Read more:
- Make a choice: why is it so difficult
The study involved 60 volunteers, half of whom had damage in the frontal lobe of the brain as a result of a stroke or tumor.
Participants viewed hundreds of different works of art and for each of them assessed their desire to possess this object. Thus, scientists received a rating of the subjective value of these objects for the subjects. Participants were then given two objects to choose from. In most cases, they chose the piece of art that they had been looking at for the longest time, even if they initially gave a higher rating to the alternative. The value of the object for the subjects seemed to increase during the time they studied it.
At the same time, subjects with damage to the area of the frontal lobe (the medical name is the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex) were especially strongly attracted to the object that they were currently observing or holding in their hands. Researchers believe that this area plays a key role in maintaining a balance between previous ratings and the attractiveness of the object on which attention is focused at the moment.
Read more:
- Are we free in our choice?
It is noteworthy that in the past neuroscientists who studied decision-making processes had little interest in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.
“Researchers of decision-making were mainly interested in areas such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the orbitofrontal cortex of the brain. Our results show that in healthy people, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex also plays an important role in this process, helping to remember the value of objects that are not currently in view, thereby expanding the range of choices,” says Leslie Fellows.
“Many people believe that their preferences and evaluation criteria are quite stable and rational, although in fact they are influenced by many factors that we are not even aware of,” the scientist concludes.
Подробнее см. A. Vaidya, L. Fellows «Testing necessary regional frontal contributions to value assessment and fixation-based updating», Nature Communications, December 2015.