Behaviour: power of the hunch

Synopsis: We assume that people decide to act only after they have a workable theory. But the emotional livewire may initiate action far sooner.

When exactly do people decide to act? Scientists at the University of Iowa experimented with a simple card game and a polygraph, and found some fascinating results.

The scientific tests

Researchers used two groups of people - “controls” (normal people), and “patients” (people with frontal brain damage).

…the players are given four decks of cards, a loan of $2000 facsimile U.S. bills, and asked to play so that they can lose the least amount of money and win the most. Turning each card carries an immediate reward ($100 in decks A and B and $50 in decks C and D). Unpredictably, however, the turning
of some cards also carries a penalty (which is large in decks A and B and small in decks C and D)...

By the process of turning the cards over, participants can build a concept about the decks, and adjust their play concomitantly.

Understanding

Researchers identified 4 stages in the game play:

1. Pre-punishment - Before encountering losses, both groups behave the same.
2. Pre-hunch – By card 10-20, after encountering losses, stress reaction occurs in ‘controls’. This causes a change in their behaviour.
3. Hunch - By card 50, all of the “controls” express ideas about the ‘wrong’ decks, but none of the “patients” can do so.
4. Conceptual period - By card 80, seven out of ten “controls”, and three out of six “patients” correctly explain the nature of the card game.
   

The two groups clearly show differences in behaviour responses. The controls could rapidly adapt to the game, but not so the patients.

The brain tracks

We use two routes in our brain while thinking –

• The rapid track is the intuitive route. It operates quickly to identify and understand patterns in new situations, which helps us quite unconsciously, to adapt to them.
• The rational route is slow track. Although comparatively delayed it allows a conscious, critical grasp of events through deliberate analysis of the data we receive.

From the findings, we might conclude that brain damage in the patients prevented activation of their unconscious reasoning, and hence their making adjustments to the game.

Change in behaviour

In any situation, our eventual decision-making is influenced by unconscious signals from memory of reward or punishment. This encourages us to change behaviour.

The researchers found that with their losses, all the controls showed stress reactions, like sweaty palms, to the riskier decks. Even before knowing exactly why they were reacting, they began to avoid those decks.

But none of the “patients” had such reactions. Even those who finally formed a correct concept of the game could only continue with their previous behaviour patterns.

Cont’d 2…acting for the future