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This explains almost everything…

  
  Education
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Are we addicted to being right? Is being thought of as being right more important to us than actually being right?

You tell me…

From the Harvard Business Review:

In situations of high stress, fear or distrust, the hormone and neurotransmitter cortisol floods the brain. Executive functions that help us with advanced thought processes like strategy, trust building, and compassion shut down. And the amygdala, our instinctive brain, takes over. The body makes a chemical choice about how best to protect itself — in this case from the shame and loss of power associated with being wrong — and as a result is unable to regulate its emotions or handle the gaps between expectations and reality. So we default to one of four responses: fight (keep arguing the point), flight (revert to, and hide behind, group consensus), freeze (disengage from the argument by shutting up) or appease (make nice with your adversary by simply agreeing with him).

All are harmful because they prevent the honest and productive sharing of information and opinion. But, as a consultant who has spent decades working with executives on their communication skills, I can tell you that the fight response is by far the most damaging to work relationships. It is also, unfortunately, the most common.

Decision-Making and Emotional Arousal

  
  Education
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For years, behavioral finance researchers have been aware that people’s decision making is greatly affected by how choices are framed. For instance, the same monetary bet framed as a choice between a certain vs. risky gain and a certain vs. risky loss elicits very different choices. (We tend to take certain gains, but will seek risky losses to avoid certain loss). Studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) find that we expend less cognitive effort in taking a sure gain than in choosing risky gains, sure losses, or risky losses. It may well be that traders don’t let their profits run simply because they take the easy way out cognitively. Conversely, traders may be reluctant to set and follow stops because of the greater cognitive effort required. 

It turns out, however, that this taking the easy way out and avoiding difficult decisions may not be a function of laziness. A very interesting investigation coming out of the Institute of Neurology at University College London finds that the framing effect on decision making is mediated by an emotional center within the brain: the amygdala. This is the same brain center that cognitive neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux has linked to our response to stress and trauma. 

The implications are significant. When blood flow is directed away from the brain’s executive center, the frontal cortex, and the amygdala and associated emotional centers are activated, we are likely to underutilize those executive functions–reasoning, judgment, planning–and respond to our (emotional) framing of choices with a lack of effort. Going with our feelings might just be the reason we don’t think through our choices.  (more…)

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