Natural Rationality

Are farmers and fishermen are more holistic than herders ?

2008-06-24T13:28:00.002-04:00

In previous work, Richard Nisbett and his collaborators suggested convincingly that Eastern and Western population have different cognitive styles (holistic vs. analytic). In a new study published in PNAS, he and his collaborators show how "ecocultural factors" (living in a farming, fishing, or herding community) influence cognitive processes.

It has been proposed that social interdependence fosters holisticcognition, that is, a tendency to attend to the broad perceptualand cognitive field, rather than to a focal object and its properties,and a tendency to reason in terms of relationships and similarities,rather than rules and categories. This hypothesis has been supportedmostly by demonstrations showing that East Asians, who are relativelyinterdependent, reason and perceive in a more holistic fashionthan do Westerners. We examined holistic cognitive tendenciesin attention, categorization, and reasoning in three types ofcommunities that belong to the same national, geographic, ethnic,and linguistic regions and yet vary in their degree of socialinterdependence: farming, fishing, and herding communities inTurkey's eastern Black Sea region. As predicted, members offarming and fishing communities, which emphasize harmonioussocial interdependence, exhibited greater holistic tendenciesthan members of herding communities, which emphasize individualdecision making and foster social independence. Our findingshave implications for how ecocultural factors may have lastingconsequences on important aspects of cognition.

Dennett in Montreal

2008-06-17T12:43:00.002-04:00

At the opening conference of the Summer Institute on Social Cognition, Daniel Dennett, Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University, will give a speech entitled "From Animal to Person: How Culture Makes Up our Minds".

This will be held on Friday 27th of June at 7pm in room JM-400. The address is UQAM, Pavillon Judith-Jasmin, studio théâtre Alfred-Laliberté, 405 rue Sainte-Catherine Est, (Berri-UQAM metro).

The poster of the event is available here.

Admission is free and the event is open to the general public. We highly recommend that you book your place in advance by sending an email to dennett.summer08.isc@gmail.com. Should places still be available on the event evening, places will be given on a first come first serve basis.

Daniel C. Dennett is one of today’s most important and productive philosophers of the mind. He is the author of over three hundred scholarly articles and 12 books, such as Consciousness Explained, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, and Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

textbook

2008-06-12T14:05:00.002-04:00

According to the Society for Neuroeconomics, a first handbook of neuroeconomics will be published this year: all the major researchers will be there. Can't wait !

The first handbook of Neuroeconomics is being published by Elsevier Academic Press in association with the Society for Neuroeconomics, to be released in September 2008
The first handbook of Neuroeconomics, entitled Neuroeconomics: Decision Making and the Brain, is being published by Elsevier Academic Press in association with the Society for Neuroeconomics for release in September 2008! Edited by Society for Neuroeconomics board members Paul Glimcher, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, and Russell Poldrack, the book represents the first comprehensive survey of this growing field and should serve as both a permanent reference work and a textbook appropriate for use at the graduate level. The volume begins with a brief history of the field written by the editors and then presents 33 chapters divided into 5 major sections. These five sections are: Neoclassical economic approaches to the brain, Behavioral economics and the brain, Social decision-making neuroeconomics and emotion, Understanding valuation - learning values, and The neural mechanisms of choice. Each section begins with an overview chapter authored by a major scholar, and the book concludes with a similarly authored conclusion. The Nobel laureate Vernon Smith provides the first of these overviews followed by overviews from Douglas Bernheim, Antonio Damasio, Wolfram Schultz and Randy Gallistel with a conclusion by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. The book provides a historically rich exposition in each of its chapters and places a strong emphasis on describing both the accomplishments and controversies in the field. A clear explanatory style characterizes all chapters which seek to make core issues in economics, psychology and neuroscience accessible to scholars from all disciples. This volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in Neuroeconomics in particular or Decision-Making in general.

Ultimatum, Serotonin and Fairness

2008-06-08T11:58:00.003-04:00

A new study links serotonin levels to Ultimatum decision: less serotonin is correlated with a higher rejection of unfair offers, suggesting that it "plays a critical role in regulating emotionduring social decision-making"

[From ScienceNOW]

Deal or No Deal?

By Constance Holden
ScienceNOW Daily News
05 June 2008
What if your friend had a large apple pie but gave you only a sliver? Would you throw the piece on the floor in protest? Maybe, depending on your brain chemistry. New research suggests that such emotional decisions can be influenced by a shortage of the neurotransmitter serotonin.
Researchers have linked low levels of serotonin in the brain to various mental states, including depression and impulsive, irrational behavior. A team headed by neuroscience Ph.D. student Molly Crockett of the University of Cambridge in the U.K. wondered whether the neurotransmitter would affect how people play the ultimatum game, an experiment used by economists that shows how people's economic decisions are sometimes irrational.
In the game, a "proposer" is given a sum of money, part of which he or she offers to share with a "responder." If a responder turns down the offer as too low, then neither player gets any money. What the ultimatum game reveals is that even though a responder would always gain by accepting the offered share, he will sometimes cut off his own nose to spite his face, as it were, punishing a proposer by rejecting an unfair offer.
In the current study, the researchers recruited 20 volunteers and asked them to fast the evening before the game. The next morning, some of the volunteers were given a drink chock-full of every amino acid the body needs to make protein, save tryptophan, an amino acid from which serotonin is manufactured. The result, says Crockett, is that the amino acids rush to the brain, "crowding out" any residual tryptophan and creating a temporary shortage of tryptophan and therefore serotonin. Control subjects were given drinks that contained tryptophan.
Both groups then played the ultimatum game as responders. The lack of tryptophan did not affect the subjects' general moods or their perceptions of the fairness of an offer, the team reports online today in Science. It did, however, appear to make people more likely to reject unfair offers. For example, when they knew that they were being offered only 20% of the pot, 82% of the acute tryptophan depletion group rejected the offer over multiple trials, whereas only 67% of the placebo group did.
The research bolsters the view that rejection of an unfair offer is "an emotionally driven impulse," says Crockett. To heed more rational monetary considerations in the face of an unfair offer, she says, requires that you "swallow your pride"--or the sliver of pie--which is a form of emotional control.
The new work is "a significant advance" in understanding the neural mechanisms of how emotions impact decision-making, says neuroscientist Michael Koenigs of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland. Psychologist Ernst Fehr of the University of Zürich, Switzerland, cautions, however, that the paper doesn't really address which behavior is rational or irrational. Rejecting low offers, he says, could be the result of a rational calculation about the value of fairness rather than an angry impulse.

Two new books on neuroeconomics:

2008-06-02T08:32:00.002-04:00

The Brainethics blogs discusses Two new books on neuroeconomics:

Peter Politser’s “Neuroecon omics” and Michael Shermer’s “The mind of the market“.

[You can find an excerpt of Shermer's book here]

On Being a Postdoc - tips and advices

2008-05-22T10:31:00.003-04:00

After two years of postdoc, I felt that my experience could be useful to others.

1. There's a good chance you're nobody.
Being a postdoc means that you're not really a student, and not really a professor (try to explain to your non-academic friends what exactly is a postdoc in one sentence). Don't be surprised if you miss a lot of parties: students see you as someone who can grade their work, i.e. a teacher, and professors see you as a trainee, an intern, or an advanced students. You're too old to be a student, and too young to be a professor. If you want to have a social life, you have to be pro-active and meet people, organize reading groups, attend to conferences, keep in touch with people. Another problem is your status in the university administration: you are not a regular employee, but you have access to most of the facilities. Sometimes it is tricky: for instance, you are probably spending a lot of time sending job applications or thinking about a career switch, yet in certain universities you cannot use the resources of the career centers (other than the library). So if you want to meet with a counsellor or need advice about your cover letter, you have to pay or forget it.

2. Finding a job is a part-time job.
If you want to work in academia, you need to devote a considerable amount of time to your job search. You need to:

Learn about the job market and academic jobhunting (the Chronicle of Higher Education is the best place to start; there are also plenty of books and blogs that can help you, see this and this), the selection process, the interview, etc. You need to acquire a lot of know-how, and you probably did not learn that during your thesis.
Seriously think about who you are, as a researcher and teacher, because in most job applications you have to write a research statement and a teaching statement.
Search for job applications (subscribe to mailing lists, browse the Chronicle of Higher Education career section, departmental websites, etc.)
Write a good cover letter that explain why you're the best candidate for the job you are applying to.
Have an up-to-date academic cv.
Ask 3 persons to write reference letters.
In many jobs application, you need to send a writing sample (choose your best peer-reviewed paper, or start writing one right now) a syllabus and student evaluations.
Network: you need to meet people and to be known by other researchers. Try contacting them, or put your papers online, start a blog, attend to conferences.
Learn about each of these steps
Be prepared to receive a lot of refusals. Departements often receive 200 hundred applicants. If you are lucky, you will have to give a job talk and go through an acaemic interview.
Think of a plan B: what will you do if you can't find a job in academia? Don't wait until the end of your postdoc, because non-academic jobs are not easier to find. See my post on What to do with a PhD outside academia?

3. Publish or perish.
Your main goal, research-wise, is to publish as many peer-reviewed articles as you can. So think, read, write, proofread and submit. Learn about the different journals, their status (certain publications are more prestigious than others), how to submit articles. Of course, you will need new ideas and knowledge, so try to find a good balance between learning and writing. You can't learn all the time (at one point you have to publish), you can't write all the time (at one point you have to browse the literature), so you have to do both (it's an example of the exploration-exploitation tradeoff). Use RSS feeds to be up-to-date in your field, and subscribe to journals and blogs feeds.

4. Mens sana in corpore sana.
There's a good chance you spent the last years sitting in front of a computer trying to finish your phd thesis 24/7. You are now about to be, or are already, a thirthysomething. You're last memories of doing sport go back to high school and somehow you always associate sport with those jocks who made you feel terrible during your teen years. Well, these days are over now: you're not getting any younger and you have no idea how physical activity can be good for you. It it good for relaxation, mental health, well-being, attention, etc. (I started karate last year and it's one of the best decision I ever made. I'm now purple belt and in a better shape, mentally and physically).

5. Adjust to pressure - be productive.
So you have to keep up with the literature in your field, publish papers, teach a class, speak in academic conferences and search for a job (and learn about all that). It's a lot. Multitasking, time-efficiency and productivity are important concepts in the academic world: you have to be organized, to allocate your time and energy to each of these tasks, to keep track of all your ongoing projects. A good start is to have a calendar and a to-do list, and to always have a pen and paper with you: any time you have a good idea or remember that you have to do someting, offload your brain on paper. It's also a good idea to have a work schedule: treat your postdoc as a job that begins at a certain time of the day and finishes at another one. Take week-ends off if you can. It's easier to have a social life when you work during business hours and it's rewarding to have some time off. Moreover, you might be more productive if you devote a definite amount of time per day to your work. You don't need to work all day and night to be productive (although sometimes you will be in a rush).

These tips are just the tip (if you'll forgive the pun!) of the iceberg: you have to learn about academic jobs, research, writing, teaching, public speaking, reviewing papers, making good powerpoint presentations, etc. Here is a couple of links to start with:

Blogs about academia and lifehacks

Journals:

Books:

Resources for Academic Jobs (a list of book)
Any book from the series "Survival Skills for Scholars" (SAGE pub)

Tips:

First tips for postdoc
About academic cv
Cover letters
Reference letters
Writing and publishing a research paper in a peer-reviewed journal (pdf)
Guidelines for Giving Good Paper
Presentation tips (on powerpoints and public speaking)

Finally, a good tips is to google anything you need about academic life followed by "tips".

Voting and low-information rationality

2008-05-21T09:08:00.003-04:00

In this year of American Presidential election, I noticed that many political analyst referred a book by political scientist Samuel L Popkin, The Reasoning Voter. One of his point is that voters are not completely irrational, but rather behave as decision-makers under certainty. They use "low-information signals" such as appearances, character traits or "whether you know how to roll a bowling ball or wear an American-flag pin" (from Time's Joe Klein column). In other words, political heuristics.

Here is a more detailed summary from Wikisummary.

Low information rationality

Popkin's analysis is based on one main premise: voters use low information rationality gained in their daily lives, through the media and through personal interactions, to evaluate candidates and facilitate electoral choices.

Political "Knowledge": Despite a more educated electorate, knowledge of civics has not increased significantly in forty years. According to Popkin, theorists who argue that political competence could be measured by knowledge of "civics book" knowledge and names of specific bills (i.e. the Michigan studies) have missed the larger point that voters do manage to gain an understanding of where candidates stand on important issues. He argues that education has not changed how people think, but it does allow us to better interpret and connect different cues.

Information as a By-Product: Popkin argues that most of the information voters learn about politics is picked up as a by-product of activities they pursue as a part of daily life (homeowners learn about interest rates, shoppers learn about prices and inflation etc.--thus, people know how the economy is doing). Media helps to explain what politicians are doing and the relevance of those actions for individuals, and campaigns help to clarify the issues. Voters develop affinity towards like-minded opinion leaders in media and in personal interactions.

Media and Friends: Interpersonal communication is seen as a way of developing assessments of parties and candidates. Information received from the media is discussed with friends and helps to create opinions. While voters do care about issue proximity, they also focus on candidate competency and sincerity and rely heavily on cues to make these evaluations.

Announcing the 34th annual meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology

2008-05-13T11:00:00.002-04:00

Announcing the 34th annual meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology
June 26-29, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Registration is now open; deadline Thursday, June 5 -- 12:00pm EST
Note that early registration is suggested, as the reserved hotel block is likely to fill quickly. http://www.ircs.upenn.edu/spp/

The 2008 conference will feature presentations by:

George Ainslie, Michael L. Anderson, Louise Antony
Peter Carruthers, Louis Charland, Anjan Chatterjee
David Danks, Felipe De Brigard, Michael Devitt
Marthah Farah, Evelina Fedorenko, Owen Flanagan,
Jerry Fodor, Kenneth R. Foster, Lila R. Gleitman (President of SPP)
George Graham, Bryce Huebner, Bertram F. Malle,
Barbara Malt, Christopher Meacham, Dominic P. Murphy
Thomas Nadelhoffer, Kenneth Norman, Mike Oaksford
Erik Parens, Nancy Petry, Jeffrey Poland
Zenon Pylyshyn, Sarah Robins, Paul Rozin,
Laurie R. Santos (the 2008 Stanton Prize winner)
Michael Strevens, Justin Sytsma, Kelly Trogdon
Charles Wallis, Deena Weisberg, Daniel Weiskopf
Fei Xu, Carlos Zednik. . . among many others

On topics including:

-Addiction and Responsibility
-Concepts and Categorization
-Consciousness
-Bayesian Inference and Rationality
-Foundational Issues in the Philosophy of Cognitive Science
-Language & Mental Representation
-Moral Psychology
-Neuroethics
-Theory of Mind

Note that this year the conference will be preceded June 25-26 by a workshop on experimental philosophy
http://www.socphilpsych.org/workshop.html

More information on both the 2008 SPP conference and the Experimental Philosophy Workshop can be found on the website http://www.ircs.upenn.edu/spp/

Dan Ariely on Understanding the Logic Behind Illogical Decisions

2008-04-28T16:38:00.001-04:00

Found on the American Association Management website: a podcast on behavioral economics

Dan Ariely on Understanding the Logic Behind Illogical Decisions

An MIT professor discovers that people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion.

April 18, 2008 / Podcast # 08-16

Dan Ariely

Irrational behavior is a part of human nature, but as MIT professor Dan Ariely has discovered in 20 years of researching behavioral economics, people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion. Drawing on psychology and economics, behavioral economics can show us why cautious people make poor decisions about sex when aroused, why patients get greater relief from a more expensive drug over its cheaper counterpart and why honest people may steal office supplies or communal food, but not money. According to Ariely’s new book Predictably Irrational, our understanding of economics, now based on the assumption of a rational subject, should, in fact, be based on our systematic, unsurprising irrationality. Ariely argues that greater understanding of previously ignored or misunderstood forces (emotions, relativity and social norms) that influence our economic behavior brings a variety of opportunities for reexamining individual motivation and consumer choice, as well as economic and educational policy.

The Philosophy of Social Cognition - X - Game Theory

2008-04-20T11:19:00.003-04:00

Here is the tenth and final chapter of "The Philosophy of Social Cognition", the free ebook-in-progress: Game Theory and Normative Social Cognition

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE: PHILOSOPHY AND THE OTHER MINDS

1. The Other Minds
2. Rationality and Interpretation

PART TWO: OUR EVERYDAY PSYCHOLOGY

3. Simulation and Theory-Theory
4. Embodied Phenomenology and Narratives
5.Experimental Approaches to Folk-Psychology: Moral Judgments and Pluralistic Accounts

PART THREE: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SOCIAL MIND

6. Neurons that Mirror
7. Social Primates and the Evolution of Social Cognition
8. The Modularity of The Social Mind
9. Social Intelligence

PART FOUR: RATIONALITY, GAME THEORY AND SOCIALITY
10. Game Theory and Normative Social Cognition

CONCLUSION

Bibliography on Philosophy and Social Cognition

[DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE BOOK]

I will revise it one day and make it more coherent, but in it's current form it should be useful as an introduction to the Philosophy of Social Cognition.

I would like to thank Patrick Parslow, (OdinLab, SSE, University of Reading) for his help with the proofreading.

a trader's morning testosterone level predicts his day's profitability

2008-04-20T09:46:00.001-04:00

according to a new study plublished this week in PNAS:

J. M. Coates and J. Herbert

Endogenous steroids and financial risk taking on a London trading floor
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0704025105

Little is known about the role of the endocrine system in financialrisk taking. Here, we report the findings of a study in whichwe sampled, under real working conditions, endogenous steroidsfrom a group of male traders in the City of London. We foundthat a trader's morning testosterone level predicts his day'sprofitability. We also found that a trader's cortisol riseswith both the variance of his trading results and the volatilityof the market. Our results suggest that higher testosteronemay contribute to economic return, whereas cortisol is increasedby risk. Our results point to a further possibility: testosteroneand cortisol are known to have cognitive and behavioral effects,so if the acutely elevated steroids we observed were to persistor increase as volatility rises, they may shift risk preferencesand even affect a trader's ability to engage in rational choice.

See a good summary in Science.

How to Play the Ultimatum Game

2008-04-16T12:07:00.001-04:00

I am very pleased to announce the publication of a new paper on mine (co-authored with Paul Thagard) in Philosophical Psychology:

Hardy-Vallée, B., & Thagard, P. (2008). How to Play the Ultimatum Game: An Engineering Approach to Metanormativity. Philosophical Psychology, 21(2), 173 - 192. [doi: 10.1080/09515080801976581]

Abstract

The ultimatum game is a simple bargaining situation where the behavior of people frequently contradicts the optimal strategy according to classical game theory. Thus, according to many scholars, the commonly observed behavior should be considered irrational. We argue that this putative irrationality stems from a wrong conception of metanormativity (the study of norms about the establishment of norms). After discussing different metanormative conceptions, we defend a Quinean, naturalistic approach to the evaluation of norms. After reviewing empirical literature on the ultimatum game, we argue that the common behavior in the ultimatum game is rational and justified. We therefore suggest that the norms of economic rationality should be amended.

On Fairness and Tax

2008-04-14T11:30:00.001-04:00

A colleague of mine send me this great blog post from The Economist's View, about fairness and tax. The bottom line: "the perception of fairness matters"

Utilitarianism and the Brain

2008-04-02T11:02:00.001-04:00

an interesting debate about the interpretation of neuroscientific results: (from the X-Phi Blog):

Guy Kahane and Nicholas Shackel have a new paper out in Nature that criticizes recent neuroscientific work on moral judgment and utilitarian bias. One of their stalking horses is a paper by Koenigs et al. that also appeared recently in Nature. The original Koenigs et al. paper can be found here and their reply to the Kahane and Shackel piece can be found here.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Realistic Standards for Decisions - conference

2008-04-01T09:31:00.001-04:00

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Columbia would like to announce a conference titled "Realistic Standards for Decisions." Here is a brief description:

Much of classical decision theory relies on idealizations about decision makers and their decision problems. For example, it is common to suppose that decision makers are cognitively unlimited and that precise probabilities and utilities attach to options' possible outcomes. Recent work removes some of the idealizations and extends decision principles to cases in which decision makers and decision problems are nonideal. This conference explores methods of adding realism to decision principles. Both empirical and normative studies of decision making contribute to this project. The conference is free and open to all. The website given below provides registration information.

Speakers:

   Cristina Bicchieri, University of Pennsylvania
   Raymond Dacey, University of Idaho
   Mark Kaplan, Indiana University
   Adam Morton, University of Alberta
   Paul Weirich, University of Missouri

The conference will be held at the University of Missouri on April 25th and 26th. Please register by April 18th. The conference is free and open to all. Further conference details, registration and travel information can be found at the following website:

http://philosophy.missouri.edu/activities/RSDconference.html

Please feel free to pass this announcement on to interested parties.

A Short Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Social Cognition

2008-03-27T10:33:00.004-04:00

One of the assignment for my course "The Social Mind" is a short encyclopedia entry. Students have to write a succinct, focused entry (about 500 words) on a topic relevant for the philosophy of social cognition (i.e. where philosophy of mind meets social philosophy ). All these entries will be available online there:

http://philosophyofsocialcognition.pbwiki.com/

All the listed entries on the front page are already attributed to students. If, however, you would like to contribute another entry, send me your suggestions.

EDITORIAL GUIDELINES

The goal is to create a concise but useful philosophical encyclopedia on folk-psychology, mind reading, interpretation, social cognition and other related subjects. You should contribute an entry that presents, in simple words, important concepts in the field. If you want to submit an entry:

Send me a brief email with an outline of the entry you would like to write; do NOT choose an entry listed on the Encyclopedia frontpage.
Once I accepted your project entry, send it as an attached .DOC, or .RTF file to benoithv@gmail.com.
The text should not be longer than 500 words. If you use a term in your entry that will appear elsewhere in the encyclopedia, CAPITALIZE it. End your entries by writing “See also . . .” and up to 5 (capitalized) related key terms that appear elsewhere in the encyclopedia. Do not use italics, footnotes or endnotes.

The Philosophy of Social Cognition - IX - Social Intelligence

2008-03-27T10:10:00.002-04:00

Here is the ninth chapter of "The Philosophy of Social Cognition", the free ebook-in-progress: Social Intelligence

Front Matter

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE: PHILOSOPHY AND THE OTHER MINDS

1. The Other Minds
2. Rationality and Interpretation

PART TWO: OUR EVERYDAY PSYCHOLOGY

3. Simulation and Theory-Theory
4. Embodied Phenomenology and Narratives
5.Experimental Approaches to Folk-Psychology: Moral Judgments and Pluralistic Accounts

PART THREE: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SOCIAL MIND

6. Neurons that Mirror
7. Social Primates and the Evolution of Social Cognition
8. The Modularity of The Social Mind
9. Social Intelligence

PART FOUR: RATIONALITY, GAME THEORY AND SOCIALITY
10...
11...

CONCLUSION

Bibliography on Philosophy and Social Cognition

[DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE BOOK]

The Philosophy of Social Cognition - VIII - The Modularity of The Social Mind

2008-03-27T10:02:00.004-04:00

Here is the eighth chapter of "The Philosophy of Social Cognition", the free ebook-in-progress: The Modularity of The Social Mind

Nature Neuroscience Special Issue about Decision Neuroscience

2008-03-26T14:02:00.002-04:00

The last issue of Nature Neuroscience features 4 great papers on the neuroscience of decision-making:

Choice, uncertainty and value in prefrontal and cingulate cortex
Matthew F S Rushworth and Timothy E J Behrens
Risky business: the neuroeconomics of decision making under uncertainty
Michael L Platt and Scott A Huettel
Game theory and neural basis of social decision making
Daeyeol Lee
Modulators of decision making
Kenji Doya

Enjoy!

Why Neuroeconomics Needs a Concept of (Natural) Rationality

2008-03-11T11:45:00.004-04:00

Neuroeconomists (more than “decision neuroscientists”) often report their finding as strong evidence against the rationality of decision-makers. In the case of cooperation it is often claimed that emotions motivate cooperation since neural activity elicited by cooperation overlaps with neural activity elicited by hedonic rewards (Fehr & Camerer, 2007). Also, when subjects have to choose whether or not they would purchase a product, desirable products cause activation in the nucleus accumbens (associated with anticipation of pleasure). However, if the price is seen as exaggerated, activity is detected in the insula (involved in disgust and fear; Knutson 2007).

The accumulation of evidence about the engagement of affective areas in decison-making is undisputable, and seems to make a strong case against a once pervasive “rationalist” vision of decision-making in cognitive science and economics. This is not, however, a definitive argument for emotivism (we choose with our "gut feelings") and irrationalism. For at least three reasons (methodological, empirical and conceptual), these findings should not be seen as supporting an emotivist account.

First, characterizing a brain area as “affective” or “emotional” is misleading. There is no clear distinction, in the brain, between affective and cognitive areas. For instance, the anterior insula is involved in disgust, but also in disbelief (Harris et al., 2007). A high-level task such as cognitive control (e.g. holding items in working memory in a goal-oriented task) requires both “affective” and “cognitive” areas (Pessoa, 2008). The affective/cognitive distinction is a folk-psychological one, not a reflection of brain anatomy and connectivity. There is a certain degree of specialization, but generally speaking any task recruits a wide arrays of areas, and each area is redeployed in many tasks. In complex being like us, so-called “affective” areas are never purely affective: they always contribute to higher-level cognition, such as logical reasoning (Houde & Tzourio-Mazoyer, 2003). Similarly, while the amygdala has been often described as a “fear center”, its function is much more complex, as it modulates emotional information, react to unexpected stimuli and is heavily recruited in visual attention, a “cognitive” function. It is therefore wrong to consider “affective” areas as small emotional agents that are happy or sad and make us happy of sad. Instead of employing folk-psychological categories, their functional contribution should be understood in computational terms: how they process signals, how information is routed between areas and how they affect behavior and thought.

Second, even if there are affective areas, they are always complemented or supplemented by “cognitive” ones: the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) for instance (involved in cognitive control and goal maintenance), is recruited in almost all decision-making task, and has been shown to be involved in norm-compliant behavior and purchasing decisions. In the ultimatum game, beside the anterior insula, two other areas are recruited: the DLPFC and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), involved in cognitive conflict and emotional modulation. Explainiations of ultimatum decisions spell out neural information-processing mechanisms, not “emotions”.

Check for instance the neural circuitry involved in cognitive control: you would think it is only prefrontal areas, but as it turns out, "cognitive" and "affective" area sare required for this competence:

[Legend: This extended control circuit contains traditional control areas, such as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), in addition to other areas commonly linked to affect (amygdala) and motivation (nucleus accumbens). Diffuse, modulatory effects are shown in green and originate from dopamine-rich neurons from the ventral tegmental area (VTA). The circuit highlights the cognitive–affective nature of executive control, in contrast to more purely cognitive-control proposals. Several connections are not shown to simplify the diagram. Line thickness indicates approximate connection strength. OFC, orbitofrontal cortex.From Pessoa, 2008]

As Michael Anderson pointed out in a series of papers (2007a and b, among others), there is many-to-many mapping between brain functions and cognitive functions. So the concept of "emotional areas" should be banned from neuroeconomics vocabulary before it is too late.

Third, a point that has been neglected by many research about decision-making neural activation of a particular brain area is always explanatory with regard to its contribution in understanding personal-level properties. If we learn that the anterior insula react to unfair offers, we are not singling out the function of this area, but explaining how the person’s decision is responsive to a particular type of valuation. The basic unit of analysis of decisions is not neurons, but judgments. We may study sub-judgmental (e.g. neural) mechanisms and how they contribute to judgment formation; or we may study supra-judgmental mechanisms (e.g. reasoning) and how they articulate judgments. Emotions, as long as they are understood as affective reactions, are not judgments: they either contribute to judgments or are construed as judgments. In both case, the category “emotions” seems superfluous for explaining the nature of the judgment itself. Thus, if judgments are the basic unit of analysis, brain areas are explanatory insofar as they make explicit how individuals arrive at a certain judgment, how it is implemented, etc: what kind of neural computations are carried out? Take, for example, cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma. Imaging studies show that when high-psychopathy and low-psychopathy subjects choose to cooperate, different neural activity is observed: the former use more prefrontal areas than the latter, indicating that cooperation is more efforful (see this post). This is instructive: we learn something about the information- processing not about "emotions" or "reason".

In the end, we want to know how these mechanisms fix beliefs, desires and intentions: neuroeconomics can be informative as long as it aims at deciphering human natural rationality.

References

Anderson, M. L. (2007a). Evolution of Cognitive Function Via Redeployment of Brain Areas. Neuroscientist, 13(1), 13-21.
Anderson, M. L. (2007b). The Massive Redeployment Hypothesis and the Functional Topography of the Brain. Philosophical Psychology, 20(2), 143 - 174.
Fehr, E., & Camerer, C. F. (2007). Social Neuroeconomics: The Neural Circuitry of Social Preferences. Trends Cogn Sci.
Harris, S., Sheth, S. A., & Cohen, M. S. (2007). Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty. Annals of Neurology,
Houde, O., & Tzourio-Mazoyer, N. (2003). Neural Foundations of Logical and Mathematical Cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4(6), 507-514.
Knutson, B., Rick, S., Wimmer, G. E., Prelec, D., & Loewenstein, G. (2007). Neural Predictors of Purchases. Neuron, 53(1), 147-156.
Spitzer, M., Fischbacher, U., Herrnberger, B., Gron, G., & Fehr, E. (2007). The Neural Signature of Social Norm Compliance. Neuron, 56(1), 185-196.

The bounded rationality of self-control

2008-03-11T10:44:00.002-04:00

Rogue traders such as Jérôme Kerviel or Nick Leeson engage in criminal, fraudulent and high-risk financial activities that often result in huge losses ($7 billion for Kerviel) or financial catastrophe (the bankruptcy of the 233 years-old bank who employed Leeson). Why would anyone do that?

A popular answer is that money is like a drug, and that Kerviel had behaved "like a financial drug addict" . And truly, it is. We crave money and feel its rewarding properties when our subcortical areas light up as if we were having sex or eating Port-Royal Cupcakes (just reading the list of ingredients of the latter is enough for me!). Money hits our sweet spot, and elicits activity in emotional and emotion-related areas. Thus rogue traders are like cocaine addicts, unable to stop the never-ending search for the ultimate buzz.

This is fine, but incomplete and partly misleading. We all have temptations, drives, desires, emotions, addictions, etc., and some of us experience them more vividly. The interesting question is not how intense the money thrill is, but how weak is self-control can be. By “self-control”, I mean the vetoing capacity we have: when we resist eating fat food, smoking (oh, just one, I swear) another cigarette, insulting that person that laugh at us, flirting with that cute colleague of yours, etc. Living in society requires that we regulate our behavior and—more often than not—doing what we should do instead of what we want to do. It seems that rogue traders, like addicts and criminals, lacks a certain capacity to implement self-control and normative regulation.

Traditional accounts of self-control construe this capacity as a cognitive, rational faculty. New developments in psychology suggest that it is more like a muscle than a cognitive process. If self-control is a cognitive process, activating it should speed up further self-control since it becomes highly accessible; priming, for instance, speeds up recognition. To the contrary, if self-control is a limited resource, using it should impair or slow down further self-control (since part of the resource will be spent the first time). Many experiments support the second options: self-control and inhibitory control are limited resources, a phenomenon Roy Baumeister and his colleagues called ego depletion: the

temporary reduction in the self's capacity or willingness to engage in volitional action (including controlling the environment, controlling the self, making choices, and initiating action) caused by prior exercise of volition. (Baumeister et al., 1998, p. 1253)

For instance, subjects who have to suppress their emotions while watching an upsetting movie perform worse on the Stroop task (Inzlicht & Gutsell, 2007). EEG indicates less activity in the ACC in subjects who had to inhibit their affective reactions. Subjects who had to reluctantly eat radishes abandon problem-solving earlier than subject who had chocolate willingly. Taking responsibility for and producing voluntarily a counterattitudinal speech (a speech that expresses an opinion contrary to its locutor’s) also reduced perseverance; producing the speech without taking responsibility did not) (Baumeister et al., 1998).

Self-control literally requires energy. Subjects asked to suppress facial reactions (e.g. smiles) when watching a movie have lower blood glucose levels, suggesting higher energy consumption. Control subjects (free to react how they want) had the same blood glucose levels before and after the movie, and performed better than control subjects on a Stroop Task. Restoring glucose levels with a sugar-sweetened lemonade (instead of artificially-sweetened beverages, without glucose) also increases performance. Self-control failures happen more often in situation where blood glucose levels is low. In a literature review, Gailliot et al show that lack of cognitive, behavioral and emotional control is systematically associated with hypoglycemia or hypoglycemic individuals. Thought suppression, emotional inhibition, attention control, and refraining from criminal behavior are impaired in individual with low-level blood glucose (Gailliot & Baumeister, 2007).

The bottom line is: self-control takes energy and is a limited resource; immoral actions happen not only because people are emotionally driven toward certain rewards, but because, for one reason or another, their “mental brakes” cannot stop their drives. Knowing that, as rational agents, we should allocate wisely our self-control resources: for example, by not putting ourselves in situations where we will have to spend our self-control without a good (in a utility-maximizing or moral sense) return on investment.

References

Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1252-1265.
Gailliot, M. T., & Baumeister, R. F. (2007). The Physiology of Willpower: Linking Blood Glucose to Self-Control. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(4), 303-327.
Harris, S., Sheth, S. A., & Cohen, M. S. (2007). Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty. Annals of Neurology, 9999(9999), NA.
Houde, O., & Tzourio-Mazoyer, N. (2003). Neural Foundations of Logical and Mathematical Cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4(6), 507-514.
Inzlicht, M., & Gutsell, J. N. (2007). Running on Empty: Neural Signals for Self-Control Failure. Psychological Science, 18(11), 933-937.
Pessoa, L. (2008). On the Relationship between Emotion and Cognition. Nat Rev Neurosci, 9(2), 148-158.

What to do with a PhD outside academia?

2008-03-10T22:41:00.006-04:00

That is the question every academic researcher faces one day or another . Having myself started to think about my career (that is, maybe finding one day a job, and not just a grant/postdoc/fellowship/adjunct/part-time/lecturer/etc.) I wanted to share with you, dear readers, a couple of links that might be useful.

First I shall recommend the book on this topic:

Basalla, Susan and Maggie Debelius "So What Are You Going to Do with That?": Finding Careers Outside Academia. [read an excerpt here]

Now the links (note that many valuable information comes from the Chronicle of Higher Education and University Affairs). Also, most of the tips you might need for resumes, cover letters, interviews, etc., can be easily found by using del.icio.us/ as a search engine (e.g. hit "resume writing tips" in del.icio.us, and you should have pretty much everything you need. For corporate careers, I suggest you look at Vault.com and Wefteet.com (they publish great career/job books)

Non-academic transition (for PhD in general)

Non-academic careers for Philosophers

The Philosophy of Social Cognition - VII - 7. Social Primates and the Evolution of Social Cognition

2008-03-09T03:12:00.003-04:00

Here is the seventh chapter of "The Philosophy of Social Cognition",the free ebook-in-progress: Social Primates and the Evolution of Social Cognition

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE: PHILOSOPHY AND THE OTHER MINDS

1. The Other Minds
2. Rationality and Interpretation

PART TWO: OUR EVERYDAY PSYCHOLOGY

3. Simulation and Theory-Theory
4. Embodied Phenomenology and Narratives
5.Experimental Approaches to Folk-Psychology: Moral Judgments and Pluralistic Accounts

PART THREE: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SOCIAL MIND

6. Neurons that Mirror
7. Social Primates and the Evolution of Social Cognition

Darwin's evolutionary social psychology

2008-03-08T21:35:00.002-05:00

While reading the chapter 5 of Darwin's The Descent of Man, I noticed that Darwin reconstruct Human evolutionary history as--forgive the anachronism--a gene-culture co-evolution. Of course, there was no concept of gene in Darwin's time, so the correct label would be "nature-culture co-evolution", but I was amazed to see how his intuitions are closed to current theories. Basically, he described our evolution as an evolutionary arms race (another anachronism) between social life and intelligence. The process goes trough 3 phases: social instinct, social intelligence, and social reasoning:

1. Social instincts: learning and sympathy

General intelligence

It deserves notice that, as soon as the progenitors of man became social (and this probably occurred at a very early period), the principle of imitation, and reason, and experience would have increased, and much modified the intellectual powers in a way, of which we see only traces in the lower animals.

Social instincts: sympathy, fidelity, and courage

In order that primeval men, or the apelike progenitors of man, should become social, they must have acquired the same instinctive feelings, which impel other animals to live in a body; and they no doubt exhibited the same general disposition. They would have felt uneasy when separated from their comrades, for whom they would have felt some degree of love; they would have warned each other of danger, and have given mutual aid in attack or defence. All this implies some degree of sympathy, fidelity, and courage.

2. Social intelligence--reciprocity and approbation

Reciprocity:

as the reasoning powers and foresight of the members became improved, each man would soon learn that if he aided his fellow-men, he would commonly receive aid in return. From this low motive he might acquire the habit of aiding his fellows; and the habit of performing benevolent actions certainly strengthens the feeling of sympathy which gives the first impulse to benevolent actions. Habits, moreover, followed during many generations probably tend to be inherited.

Approbation

[a] powerful stimulus to the development of the social virtues, is afforded by the praise and the blame of our fellow-men. primeval man, at a very remote period, was influenced by the praise and blame of his fellows. It is obvious, that the members of the same tribe would approve of conduct which appeared to them to be for the general good, and would reprobate that which appeared evil.

3. Social reasoning--norms, rules and morality

With increased experience and reason, man perceives the more remote consequences of his actions, and the self-regarding virtues, such as temperance, chastity, &c., which during early times are, as we have before seen, utterly disregarded, come to be highly esteemed or even held sacred.

The Philosophy of Social Cognition - VI - Neurons that Mirror

2008-03-05T16:48:00.003-05:00

Here is the sixth chapter of "The Philosophy of Social Cognition", the free-e-book-in-progress: Neurons that Mirror (note that all chapter have been slightly edited--I use another font that should be easier to read on-screen--and the book is now divided in sections)

PART ONE: PHILOSOPHY AND THE OTHER MINDS

1. The Other Minds
2. Rationality and Interpretation

PART TWO: OUR EVERYDAY PSYCHOLOGY

3. Simulation and Theory-Theory
4. Embodied Phenomenology and Narratives
5.Experimental Approaches to Folk-Psychology: Moral Judgments and Pluralistic Accounts

PART THREE: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SOCIAL MIND

6. Neurons that Mirror