I’m often accused (although I take it as a back-handed compliment) by my wife and others of being like Sheldon, the fictional character from “Big Bang Theory” who exhibits highly idiosyncratic behaviour and a general lack of humility, empathy, and tolerance [1]. Sheldon displays high intelligence, but is critical and dismissive of emotion in his or others’ decision making.
This disrespect for emotion has a long history. From Plato’s charioteer controlling the horse of passion, to Freud’s instinctual id suppressed by the ego, there’s a long tradition of seeing reason and emotion as being in opposition to one another [2].
And that tradition persists to this day where in most business settings we have a negative perception of people who bring emotions into the workplace. Many people believe that emotions undermine decision making and lead to irrationality.
So, if we were to remove emotions from decision making, would we make better decisions?
Antonio Damasio, one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, reports on the case of “Elliott”. Elliott had brain surgery to remove a tumour. The tumour and the surgery damaged a part of Elliot’s brain that connected the frontal lobes (responsible for rational thought) to the limbic system (responsible for emotions). Prior to illness and surgery Elliot was a successful businessman with a high IQ and was he was a model father and husband. After the surgery Damasio writes [3]: “He was always controlled. […] I never saw a tinge of emotion in my many hours of conversation with him: no sadness, no impatience, no frustration. […] Elliott emerged as a man with a normal intellect who was unable to decide properly, especially when the decision involved personal or social matters.”
In summary, Elliott became a real-life Mr. Spock (or Sheldon), devoid of emotion.
But rather than this making him perfectly rational, he became paralyzed by every decision in life [2].
George Loewenstein has explored the role of emotion in decision making [4]. His model shows that we experience two types of emotion when making decisions:
1. Expected affect (“affect” is the term used by academics). Predictions about how one will feel if certain decision outcomes occur.
2. Immediate affect. Emotions experienced at the time of making the decision.
Loewenstein goes on to explain that there are benefits and pitfalls of both types. For the expected emotions, the benefits are that this provides a guide to choices with long term consequences. The drawback is that people are prone to systematic errors in predicting how they will feel in the future. Dan Gilbert elaborates: “From field studies to laboratory studies, we see that winning or losing an election, gaining or losing a romantic partner, getting or not getting a promotion, passing or not passing a college test, on and on, have far less impact, less intensity and much less duration than people expect them to have. [5]”
For the immediate emotions, the clear drawback is loss of control, i.e. taking actions counter to our self-interest (e.g. that second slice of cake). The benefits are that immediate emotions provide us with information about intangible considerations. We have conscious awareness of only 50 bits per second of incoming information, yet our brain’s process 10 million bits per second [6]. What’s happening to the other 99.9995%? It seems that at least some of this information is being transformed into an emotion that tells us something about the stimuli that we have encountered. Over time, emotions and their corresponding bodily changes, which are called "somatic markers", become associated with particular situations and their past outcomes. This is Damasio’s “somatic marker hypothesis” [7]. It is these somatic markers that provide us with that intangible sense of knowing that we call ‘gut’ feelings.
Another lens on the topic is Pfister and Böhm's framework that says that emotions play an integral role in decision making in four respects: providing information (e.g. 'gut' feeling), improving speed, assessing relevance and enhancing commitment [8].
In summary:
Insight: emotions are a necessary and valuable part of decision making.
Imperative: don’t be like Sheldon. Bazinga!
References:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Cooper
[2] https://www.wired.com/2014/03/neuroscience-decision-making-explained-30-seconds/
[3] “Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain”, Antonio Damasio
[4] “Handbook of Affective Sciences, ch 31: The Role of Affect in Decision Making”, George Loewenstein and Jennifer Lerner
[5] “The surprising science of happiness”, Dan Gilbert’s TED Talk (with an incredible 13.5 million views)
[6] “The Power of Fifty Bits”, Bob Nease.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotions_in_decision-making