Choice

I was just listening to the latest Radio Lab podcast -- which is a great show, by the way -- about choice. There was an interesting section about a man, call him Elliot, who had a section of his brain removed during a procedure to remove a tumor. After the surgery, Elliot could not make a decision, even about the most inconsequential things -- like which color pen to write with. After performing some tests, psychologists determined that Elliot had lost the ability to have emotion. They would show him pictures of scenes that would cause normal people to have an emotional reaction -- severed limbs, etc. He had no emotional, or even physiological reaction.

What psychologists learned from this case is that, contrary to what conventional wisdom says about using logic to make better decisions, logic alone does not allow us to make decisions that will make us happier. Even more controversially, maybe we should not make decisions at all using logic. We need emotion to make choices. Which is why some people say your gut reaction is usually the best one.

One of the Radio Lab hosts, Jad Abumrad said something that seemed very profound and accurate. He said that our emotions are a sort of shorthand for the average of our past experiences and wisdom. I guess when you think of it in terms of the evolution of our species, it makes some sense. How could we have survived this long if we didn't have these "gut" reactions. You need a kind of quick warning mechanism based on your past experiences to perform instinctual actions. You wouldn't have time to think about your possible choices in a life-or-death scenario. You would just need to react.

All of this is not to say that your emotional brain makes the best choices, though. In an earlier part of the show, they discuss the results of an experiement that showed how when experimental subjects had their reasoning center distracted with another action, like memorizing a 7 digit number, they made bad choices concerning unhealthy vs. healthy food.

Like everything else in life, you can't go to extremes when it comes to making choices either. You should use a balance of emotion and logic to make your like decisions.