How We Decide (27 page)

One of the most coveted prizes in a presidential primary is the endorsement of the
Concord Monitor,
a small newspaper in central New Hampshire. During the first months of the 2008 presidential primary campaign, all of the major candidates, from Chris Dodd to Mike Huckabee, sat for interviews with the paper's editorial board. Some candidates, such as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain, were invited back for follow-up interviews. These sessions would often last for hours, with the politicians facing a barrage of uncomfortable questions. Hillary Clinton was asked about various White House scandals; Barack Obama was asked why he often seemed "bored and low-key" on the stump; McCain was asked about his medical history. "There were a few awkward moments," says Ralph Jimenez, the editorial-page editor. "You could tell they were thinking,
Did you just ask me that? Do you know who I am?
"

But the process wasn't limited to these interviews. Bill Clinton got in the habit of calling the editors, at home and on their cell phones, and launching into impassioned defenses of his wife. (Some of the editors had unlisted phone numbers, which made Clinton's calls even more impressive.) Obama had his own persistent advocates. The board was visited by former White House staff members, such as Madeleine Albright and Ted Sorensen, and lobbied by a bevy of local elected officials. For the five members of the editorial board, all the attention was flattering, if occasionally annoying. Felice Belman, the executive editor of the
Monitor,
was awakened by a surprise phone call from Hillary at seven thirty on a Saturday morning. "I was still half asleep," she says. "And I definitely wasn't in the mood to talk about healthcare mandates." (Ralph still has a phone message from Hillary Clinton on his cell phone.)

Twelve days before the primary, on a snowy Thursday afternoon, the editorial board gathered in a back office of the newsroom. They'd postponed the endorsement meeting long enough; it was time to make a decision. Things would be easy on the Republican side: all five members favored John McCain. The Democrat endorsement, however, was a different story. Although the editors had each tried to keep an open mind—"The candidates are here for a year and you don't want to settle on one candidate right away," said Mike Pride, a former editor of the paper—the room was starkly divided into two distinct camps. Ralph Jimenez and Ari Richter, the managing editor, were pushing for an Obama endorsement. Mike Pride and Geordie Wilson, the publisher, favored Clinton. And then there was Felice, the sole undecided vote. "I was waiting to be convinced until the last minute," she says. "I guess I was leaning toward Clinton, but I still felt like I could have been talked into switching sides."

Now came the hard part. The board began by talking about the issues, but there wasn't that much to talk about: Obama and Clinton had virtually identical policy positions. Both candidates were in favor of universal health care, repealing the Bush tax cuts, and withdrawing troops from Iraq as soon as possible. And yet, despite this broad level of agreement, the editors were fiercelyloyal to their chosen candidates, even if they couldn't explain
why
they were so loyal. "You just know who you prefer," Ralph says. "For most of the meeting, the level of discourse was pretty much 'My person is better. Period. End of story.'"

After a lengthy and intense discussion—"We'd really been having this discussion for months," says Ralph—the
Monitor
ended up endorsing Clinton by a 3–3 vote. The room was narrowly split, but it had become clear that no one was going to change his or her mind. Even Felice, the most uncertain of the editors, was now firmly in the Clinton camp. "There is always going to be disagreement," Mike says. "That's what happens when you get five opinionated people in the same room talking politics. But you also know that before you leave the room, you've got to endorse somebody. You've got to accept the fact that some people are bound to be wrong"—he jokingly looks over at Ralph—"and find a way to make a decision."

For readers of the
Monitor,
the commentary endorsing Clinton seemed like a well-reasoned brief, an unambiguous summary of the newspaper's position. (Kathleen Strand, the Clinton spokesperson in New Hampshire, credited the endorsement with helping Clinton win the primary.) The carefully chosen words in the editorial showed no trace of the debate that had plagued the closed-door meeting and all those heated conversations by the water cooler. If just one of the editors had changed his or her mind, then the
Monitor
would have chosen Obama. In other words, the clear-cut endorsement emerged from a very tentative majority.

In this sense, the editorial board is a metaphor for the brain. Its decisions often feel unanimous—you know which candidate you prefer—but the conclusions are actually reached only after a series of sharp internal disagreements. While the cortex struggles to make a decision, rival bits of tissue are contradicting one another. Different brain areas think different things for different reasons. Sometimes this fierce argument is largely emotional, and the distinct parts of the limbic system debate one another. Although people can't always rationally justify their feelings—these editorial board members preferred either Hillary or Obama for reasons they couldn't really articulate—these feelings still manage to powerfully affect behavior. Other arguments unfold largely between the emotional and rational systems of the brain as the prefrontal cortex tries to resist the impulses coming from below. Regardless of which areas are doing the arguing, however, it's clear that all those mental components stuffed inside the head are constantly fighting for influence and attention. Like an editorial board, the mind is an extended argument. And it is arguing with itself.

In recent years, scientists have been able to show that this "argument" isn't confined only to contentious issues such as presidential politics. Rather, it's a defining feature of the decision-making process. Even the most mundane choices emerge from a vigorous cortical debate. Let's say, for instance, that you're contemplating breakfast cereals in the supermarket. Each option will activate a unique subset of competing thoughts. Perhaps the organic granola is delicious but too expensive, or the whole-grain flakes are healthy but too unappetizing, or the Fruit Loops are an appealing brand (the advertisements worked) but too sugary. Each of these distinct claims will trigger a particular set of emotions and associations, all of which then compete for your conscious attention. Antoine Bechara, a neuroscientist at USC, compares this frantic neural competition to natural selection, with the stronger emotions ("I really want Honey Nut Cheerios!") and the more compelling thoughts ("I should eat more fiber") gaining a selective advantage over weaker ones ("I like the cartoon character on the box of Fruit Loops"). "The point is that most of the computation is done at an emotional, unconscious level, and not at a logical level," he says. The particular ensemble of brain cells that win the argument determine what you eat for breakfast.

Consider this clever experiment designed by Brian Knutson and George Loewenstein. The scientists wanted to investigate what happens inside the brain when a person makes typical consumer choices, such as buying an item in a retail store or choosing a cereal. A few dozen lucky undergraduates were recruited as experimental subjects and given a generous amount of spending money. Each subject was then offered the chance to buy dozens of different objects, from a digital voice recorder to gourmet chocolates to the latest Harry Potter book. After the student stared at each object for a few seconds, he was shown the price tag. If he chose to buy the item, its cost was deducted from the original pile of cash. The experiment was designed to realistically simulate the experience of a shopper.

While the student was deciding whether or not to buy the product on display, the scientists were imaging the subject's brain activity. They discovered that when a subject was first exposed to an object, his nucleus accumbens (NAcc) was turned on. The NAcc is a crucial part of the dopamine reward pathway, and the intensity of its activation was a reflection of desire for the item. If the person already owned the complete Harry Potter collection, then the NAcc didn't get too excited about the prospect of buying another copy. However, if he had been craving a George Foreman grill, the NAcc flooded the brain with dopamine when that item appeared.

But then came the price tag. When the experimental subject was exposed to the cost of the product, the insula and prefrontal cortex were activated. The insula produces aversive feelings and is triggered by things like nicotine withdrawal and pictures of people in pain. In general, we try to avoid anything that makes our insulas excited. This includes spending money. The prefrontal cortex was activated, scientists speculated, because this rational area was computing the numbers, trying to figure out if the product was actually a good deal. The prefrontal cortex got most excited during the experiment when the cost of the item on display was significantly lower than normal.

By measuring the relative amount of activity in each brain region, the scientists could accurately predict the subjects' shopping decisions. They knew which products people would buy before the people themselves did. If the insula's negativity exceeded the positive feelings generated by the NAcc, then the subject always chose not to buy the item. However, if the NAcc was more active than the insula, or if the prefrontal cortex was convinced that it had found a good deal, the object proved irresistible. The sting of spending money couldn't compete with the thrill of getting something new.

This data, of course, directly contradicts the rational models of microeconomics; consumers aren't always driven by careful considerations of price and expected utility. You don't look at the electric grill or box of chocolates and perform an explicit cost-benefit analysis. Instead, you outsource much of this calculation to your emotional brain and then rely on relative amounts of pleasure versus pain to tell you what to purchase. (During many of the decisions, the rational prefrontal cortex was largely a spectator, standing silently by while the NAcc and insula argued with each other.) Whichever emotion you feel most intensely tends to dictate your shopping decisions. It's like an emotional tug of war.

This research explains why consciously analyzing purchasing decisions can be so misleading. When Timothy Wilson asked people to analyze their strawberry-jam preferences, they made worse decisions because they had no idea what their NAccs really wanted. Instead of listening to their feelings, they tried to deliberately decipher their pleasure. But we can't ask our NAccs questions; we can only listen to what they have to say. Our desires exist behind locked doors.

Retail stores manipulate this cortical setup. They are designed to get us to open our wallets; the frivolous details of the shopping experience are really subtle acts of psychological manipulation. The store is tweaking our brains, trying to soothe the insulas and stoke the NAccs. Just look at the interior of a Costco warehouse. It's no accident that the most coveted items are put in the most prominent places. A row of high-definition televisions lines the entrance. The fancy jewelry, Rolex watches, iPods, and other luxury items are conspicuously placed along the corridors with the heaviest foot traffic. And then there are the free samples of food, liberally distributed throughout the store. The goal of Costco is to constantly prime the pleasure centers of the brain, to keep us lusting after things we don't need. Even though you probably won't buy the Rolex, just looking at the fancy watch makes you more likely to buy something else, since the desired item activates the NAcc. You have been conditioned to crave a reward.

But exciting the NAcc is not enough; retailers must also inhibit the insula. This brain area is responsible for making sure you don't get ripped off, and when it's repeatedly assured by retail stores that low prices are "guaranteed," or that a certain item is on sale, or that it's getting the "wholesale price," the insula stops worrying so much about the price tag. In fact, researchers have found that when a store puts a promotional sticker next to the price tag—something like "Bargain Buy!" or "Hot Deal!"—but doesn't actually reduce the price, sales of that item still dramatically increase. These retail tactics lull the brain into buying more things, since the insula is pacified. We go broke convinced that we are saving money.

This model of the shopping brain also helps explain why credit cards make us spend so irresponsibly. According to Knutson and Loewenstein, paying with plastic literally inhibits the insula, making a person less sensitive to the cost of an item. As a result, the activity of the NAcc—the pleasure pump of the cortex—becomes disproportionately important: it wins every shopping argument.

There's something unsettling about seeing the brain as one big argument. We like to believe that our decisions reflect a clear cortical consensus, that the entire mind agrees on what we should do. And yet, that serene self-image has little basis in reality. The NAcc might want the George Foreman grill, but the insula knows that you can't afford it, or the prefrontal cortex realizes that it's a bad deal. The amygdala might like Hillary Clinton's tough talk on foreign policy, but the ventral striatum is excited by Obama's uplifting rhetoric. These antagonistic reactions manifest themselves as a twinge of uncertainty. You don't know what you believe. And you certainly don't know what to do.

The dilemma, of course, is how to reconcile the argument. If the brain is always disagreeing with itself, then how can a person ever make a decision? At first glance, the answer seems obvious: force a settlement. The rational parts of the mind should intervene and put an end to all the emotional bickering.

While such a top-down solution might seem like a good idea—using the most evolutionarily advanced parts of the brain to end the cognitive contretemps—this approach must be used with great caution. The problem is that the urge to end the debate often leads to neglect of crucial pieces of information. A person is so eager to silence the amygdala, or quiet the OFC, or suppress some bit of the limbic system that he or she ends up making a bad decision. A brain that's intolerant of uncertainty—that can't stand the argument—often tricks itself into thinking the wrong thing. What Mike Pride says about editorial boards is also true of the cortex: "The most important thing is that everyone has their say, that you listen to the other side and try to understand their point of view. You can't short-circuit the process."