Decisions Are Emotional, not Logical: The Neuroscience behind Decision Making

Jim Camp on June 11, 2012, 2:52 PM

Going Mental

Think of a situation where you had bulletproof facts, reason, and logic on your side, and believed there was absolutely no way the other person could say no to your perfectly constructed argument and proposal. To do so would be impossible, you figured, because there was no other logical solution or answer.

And then the other person dug in his heels and refused to budge. He wasn’t swayed by your logic. Were you flabbergasted? 

This is similar to what many negotiators do when they sit down at the table to hammer out a deal. They come armed with facts, and they attempt to use logic to sway the other party. They figure that by piling on the data and using reason to explain their side of the situation, they can construct a solution that is simply irrefutable—and get the other party to say yes.

They’re doomed to fail, however, because decision-making isn’t logical, it’s emotional, according to the latest findings in neuroscience.

A few years ago, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio made a groundbreaking discovery. He studied people with damage in the part of the brain where emotions are generated. He found that they seemed normal, except that they were not able to feel emotions. But they all had something peculiar in common: they couldn’t make decisions. They could describe what they should be doing in logical terms, yet they found it very difficult to make even simple decisions, such as what to eat. Many decisions have pros and cons on both sides—shall I have the chicken or the turkey? With no rational way to decide, these test subjects were unable to arrive at a decision.

So at the point of decision, emotions are very important for choosing. In fact even with what we believe are logical decisions, the very point of choice is arguably always based on emotion.

This finding has enormous implications for negotiation professionals. People who believe they can build a case for their side using reason are doomed to be poor negotiators, because they don’t understand the real factors that are driving the other party to come to a decision. Those who base their negotiation strategy on logic end up relying on assumptions, guesses, and opinions. If my side of the argument is logical, they figure, then the other side can’t argue with it and is bound to come around to my way of thinking. The problem is, you can’t assume that the other party will see things your way. 

What the negotiator can and must do, however, is create a vision for the other side to bring about discovery and decision on their part. In the end, your opponent will make the decision because he wants to. Getting him to want to, using the step-by-step methodology that is part of the Camp System, is the job of the negotiator—not trying to convince him with reason. 

You don’t tell your opponent what to think or what’s best. You help them discover for themselves what feels right and best and most advantageous to them. Their ultimate decision is based on self-interest. That’s emotional. I want this. This is good for me and my side.

There’s a detailed and systematic way to go about building vision the right way. But in general, if you can get the other party to reveal their problems, pain, and unmet objectives, then you can build a vision for them of their problem, with you and your proposal as the solution. They won’t make their decision because it is logical. They’ll make their decision because you have helped them feel that it’s to their advantage to do so.

* * * * * Jim Camp is founder and CEO of The Camp Negotiation Institute, with more than 400 students from 24 countries enrolled in its Team Member courses. He is author of two bestselling books published by Crown, Start with No and NO: The Only System of Negotiation You Need for Work or Home, which have been translated into 12 languages, and a new 6-CD audio program "The Power of No," produced by Nightingale-Conant. He was recently a featured panelist at Harvard's 2012 Negotiation & Leadership Conference

Click HERE for source information.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS COMMON IN SELF-INJURERS (I have not validated the content of this post, and I can only speak as a layperson, but it sounds very accurate... That's the beauty of this being MY blog, and having already completed College - I don't have to validate anything!)... :).

Psychological characteristics common in self-injurers The...

comablood:

Psychological characteristics common in self-injurers

The overall picture seems to be of people who:

• strongly dislike/invalidate themselves
• are hypersensitive to rejection
• are chronically angry, usually at themselves
• tend to suppress their anger
• have high levels of aggressive feelings, which they disapprove of strongly and often suppress or direct inward
• are more impulsive and more lacking in impulse control
• tend to act in accordance with their mood of the moment
• tend not to plan for the future
• are depressed and suicidal/self-destructive
• suffer chronic anxiety
• tend toward irritability
• do not see themselves as skilled at coping
• do not have a flexible repertoire of coping skills
• do not think they have much control over how/whether they cope with life
• tend to be avoidant
• do not see themselves as empowered

People who self-injure tend not to be able to regulate their emotions well, and there seems to be a biologically-based impulsivity. They tend to be somewhat aggressive and their mood at the time of the injurious acts is likely to be a greatly intensified version of a longstanding underlying mood, according to Herpertz. Similar findings appear in Simeon et al.; they found that two major emotional states most commonly present in self-injurers at the time of injury — anger and anxiety — also appeared as longstanding personality traits. Linehan found that most self-injurers exhibit mood-dependent behavior, acting in accordance with the demands of their current feeling state rather than considering long-term desires and goals.

In another study, Herpertz et al. found, in addition to the poor affect regulation, impulsivity, and aggression noted earlier, disordered affect, a great deal of suppressed anger, high levels of self-directed hostility, and a lack of planning among self-injurers:

We may surmise that self-mutilators usually disapprove of aggressive feelings and impulses. If they fail to suppress these, our findings indicate that they direct them inwardly… . This is in agreement with patients’ reports, where they often regard their self-mutilative acts as ways of relieving intolerable tension resulting from interpersonal stressors.

And Dulit et al. found several common characteristics in self-injuring subjects with borderline personality disorder (as opposed to non-SI BPD subjects):

• more likely to be in psychotherapy or on medications
• more likely to have additional diagnoses of depression or bulimia
• more acute and chronic suicidality
• more lifetime suicide attempts
• less sexual interest and activity

In a study of bulimics who self-injure, subjects whose SIB was partially or mostly impulsive had higher scores on measures of obsession-compulsion, somatization, depression, anxiety, and hostility.

Simeon et al. found that the tendency to self-injure increased as levels of impulsivity, chronic anger, and somatic anxiety increased. The higher the level of chronic inappropriate anger, the more severe the degree of self-injury. They also found a combination of high aggression and poor impulse control. Haines and Williams found that people engaging in SIB tended to use problem avoidance as a coping mechanism and perceived themselves as having less control over their coping. In addition, they had low self-esteem and low optimism about life.

Source:  Anonymous Recovery on http://www.TUMBLR.com

*The "Cat Scream" Photo was found on Google... Source not known.

DEFINE "INSANE.". (*Please note that the proceeding material was taken directly from wikipedia; a peer reviewed site. To the best of my knowledge, the info gathered here is accurate...)*

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


St. Elizabeth's psychiatric hospital, Washington, D.C., one of the sites of the Rosenhan experiment.
The Rosenhan experiment was a famous experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan in 1973. It was published in the journal Science under the title "On being sane in insane places."[1] The study is considered an important and influential criticism of psychiatric diagnosis.[2]
Rosenhan's study was done in two parts. The first part involved the use of healthy associates or "pseudopatients" who briefly simulated auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 different psychiatric hospitals in five different states in various locations in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. After admission, the pseudopatients acted normally and told staff that they felt fine and had not experienced any more hallucinations. Hospital staff failed to detect a single pseudopatient, and instead believed that all of the pseudopatients exhibited symptoms of ongoing mental illness. Several were confined for months. All were forced to admit to having a mental illness and agree to take antipsychotic drugs as a condition of their release.
The second part involved asking staff at a psychiatric hospital to detect non-existent "fake" patients. The staff falsely identified large numbers of ordinary patients as impostors.
The study concluded, "It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals" and also illustrated the dangers of dehumanization and labeling in psychiatric institutions. It suggested that the use of community mental health facilities which concentrated on specific problems and behaviors rather than psychiatric labels might be a solution and recommended education to make psychiatric workers more aware of the social psychology of their facilities.
Contents [hide]
1 The pseudopatient experiment
2 The non-existent impostor experiment
3 Impact and controversy
4 Related experiments
5 See also
6 External links
7 References
[edit]The pseudopatient experiment

Rosenhan himself and eight mentally healthy associates, called "pseudopatients", attempted to gain admission to psychiatric hospitals by calling for an appointment and feigning auditory hallucinations. The hospital staffs were not informed of the experiment. The pseudopatients included a psychology graduate student in his twenties, three psychologists, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, a painter and a homemaker. None had a history of mental illness. Pseudopatients used pseudonyms, and those who worked in the mental health field were given false jobs in a different sector to avoid invoking any special treatment or scrutiny. Apart from giving false names and employment details, further biographical details were truthfully reported.
During their initial psychiatric assessment, they claimed to be hearing voices of the same sex as the patient which were often unclear, but which seemed to pronounce the words "empty", "hollow", "thud" and nothing else. These words were chosen as they vaguely suggest some sort of existential crisis and for the lack of any published literature referencing them as psychotic symptoms. No other psychiatric symptoms were claimed. If admitted, the pseudopatients were instructed to "act normally," report that they felt fine and no longer heard voices. Hospital records obtained after the experiment indicate that all pseudopatients were characterized as friendly and cooperative by staff. All were admitted, to 12 different psychiatric hospitals across the United States, including rundown and underfunded public hospitals in rural areas, urban university-run hospitals with excellent reputations, and one expensive private hospital. Though presented with identical symptoms, 11 were diagnosed with schizophrenia at public hospitals, and one with manic-depressive psychosis, a more optimistic diagnosis with better clinical outcomes, at the private hospital. Their stays ranged from 7 to 52 days, and the average was 19 days. All were discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia "in remission," which Rosenhan takes as evidence that mental illness is perceived as an irreversible condition creating a lifelong stigma rather than a curable illness.
Despite constantly and openly taking extensive notes on the behavior of the staff and other patients, none of the pseudopatients were identified as imposters by the hospital staff, although many of the other psychiatric patients seemed to be able to correctly identify them as imposters. In the first three hospitalizations, 35 of the total of 118 patients expressed a suspicion that the pseudopatients were sane, with some suggesting that the patients were researchers or journalists investigating the hospital.
Hospital notes indicated that staff interpreted much of the pseudopatients' behavior in terms of mental illness. For example, one nurse labeled the note-taking of one pseudopatient as "writing behavior" and considered it pathological. The patients' normal biographies were recast in hospital records along the lines of what was expected of schizophrenics by the then-dominant theories of its etiology.
The pseudopatients were required to get out of the hospital on their own by getting the hospital to release them, though a lawyer was retained to be on call for emergencies when it became clear that the pseudopatients would not ever be voluntarily released on short notice. Once admitted and diagnosed, the pseudopatients were not able to obtain their release until they agreed with the psychiatrists that they were mentally ill and began taking antipsychotic medications, which they flushed down the toilet. No staff member noticed that the pseudopatients were flushing their medication down the toilets and did not report patients doing this.
Rosenhan and the other pseudopatients reported an overwhelming sense of dehumanization, severe invasion of privacy, and boredom while hospitalized. Their possessions were searched randomly, and they were sometimes observed while using the toilet. They reported that though the staff seemed to be well-meaning, they generally objectified and dehumanized the patients, often discussing patients at length in their presence as though they were not there, and avoiding direct interaction with patients except as strictly necessary to perform official duties. Some attendants were prone to verbal and physical abuse of patients when other staff were not present. A group of bored patients waiting outside the cafeteria for lunch early were said by a doctor to his students to be experiencing "oral-acquisitive" psychiatric symptoms. Contact with doctors averaged 6.8 minutes per day.
"I told friends, I told my family, 'I can get out when I can get out. That's all. I'll be there for a couple of days and I'll get out.' Nobody knew I'd be there for two months … The only way out was to point out that they're [the psychiatrists] correct. They had said I was insane, 'I am insane; but I am getting better.' That was an affirmation of their view of me." — David Rosenhan in the BBC program "The Trap."[3]
[edit]The non-existent impostor experiment

For this experiment, Rosenhan used a well-known research and teaching hospital, whose staff had heard of the results of the initial study but claimed that similar errors could not be made at their institution. Rosenhan arranged with them that during a three month period, one or more pseudopatients would attempt to gain admission and the staff would rate every incoming patient as to the likelihood they were an impostor. Out of 193 patients, 41 were considered to be impostors and a further 42 were considered suspect. In reality, Rosenhan had sent no pseudopatients and all patients suspected as impostors by the hospital staff were ordinary patients. This led to a conclusion that "any diagnostic process that lends itself too readily to massive errors of this sort cannot be a very reliable one". Studies by others found similarly problematic diagnostic results.[citation needed]
[edit]Impact and controversy

Rosenhan published his findings in Science, criticizing the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis and the disempowering and demeaning nature of patient care experienced by the associates in the study. His article generated an explosion of controversy.
Many defended psychiatry, arguing that as psychiatric diagnosis relies largely on the patient's report of their experiences, faking their presence no more demonstrates problems with psychiatric diagnosis than lying about other medical symptoms. In this vein psychiatrist Robert Spitzer quoted Kety in a 1975 criticism of Rosenhan's study:
If I were to drink a quart of blood and, concealing what I had done, come to the emergency room of any hospital vomiting blood, the behavior of the staff would be quite predictable. If they labeled and treated me as having a bleeding peptic ulcer, I doubt that I could argue convincingly that medical science does not know how to diagnose that condition.[4]
Whether the emergency room staff would change its diagnosis pending the lack of peptic ulcer symptoms of any kind, however, is another matter. And it was precisely this tendency to cling to a diagnosis — and interpreting all subsequent evidence in order to fit it — that lay at the heart of Rosenhan's criticism of psychiatric diagnosis. A peptic ulcer would be an appropriate initial hypothesis, but one that could readily be shown to be incorrect. If a hypothesis of schizophrenia could be maintained despite prolonged exposure to the apparent sanity of the patient then, under Rosenhan's reading, the diagnosis would be essentially meaningless.
[edit]Related experiments

Maurice K. Temerlin split 25 psychiatrists into two groups and had them listen to an actor portraying a character of normal mental health. One group was told that the actor "was a very interesting man because he looked neurotic, but actually was quite psychotic" while the other was told nothing. Sixty percent of the former group diagnosed psychoses, most often schizophrenia, while none of the control group did so.[5]
In 1988, Loring and Powell gave 290 psychiatrists a transcript of a patient interview and told half of them that the patient was black and the other half white; they concluded of the results that "Clinicians appear to ascribe violence, suspiciousness, and dangerousness to black clients even though the case studies are the same as the case studies for the white clients".[6]
The science writer Lauren Slater conducted a very similar experiment for her 2004 book Opening Skinner's Box.[2] She claims to have presented herself at 9 different psychiatric emergency rooms with auditory hallucinations, resulting in being diagnosed "almost every time" with psychotic depression. However, when challenged to provide evidence of actually conducting her experiment, she could not.[7]
In 2008, the BBC's Horizon science program performed a somewhat related experiment over two episodes entitled "How Mad Are You?". The experiment involved ten subjects, five living with previously-diagnosed mental health conditions, and five with no such diagnosis. They were observed by three experts in mental health diagnoses and their challenge was to identify the five with mental health problems.[8]
[edit]See also

Science portal
Anti-Psychiatry
Confirmation bias
Diagnosis
Involuntary commitment
Nellie Bly, author of Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887)
Norah Vincent, author of Voluntary Madness
Psychiatry
Schizophrenia
Shock Corridor
The Trap
Niall McLaren- psychiatrist & theoretician, author of Humanizing Madness and Humanizing Psychiatry.
[edit]External links

On being Sane in Insane Places
Rosenhan experiment summary
Clip from the BBC's The Trap, 11th March 2007
BBC Radio 4, "Mind Changers", Series 4 Episode 1: The Pseudo-Patient Study
[edit]References

Slater, Lauren (2004). Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century. W. W. Norton. pp. 64–94. ISBN 0-393-05095-5.
Notes
^ Rosenhan DL (January 1973). "On being sane in insane places". Science (New York, N.Y.) 179 (70): 250–8. doi:10.1126/science.179.4070.250. PMID 4683124.
^ a b Slater, Lauren (2004). Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century. W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-05095-5.
^ An excerpt from the BBC program with this statement by David Rosen can be viewed here.
^ Spitzer RL (October 1975). "On pseudoscience in science, logic in remission, and psychiatric diagnosis: a critique of Rosenhan's "On being sane in insane places"". Journal of abnormal psychology 84 (5): 442–52. doi:10.1037/h0077124. PMID 1194504.
^ Ruscio J. (Spring-Summer 2004). "Diagnoses and the Behaviors They Denote: A Critical Evaluation of the Labeling Theory of Mental Illness". The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice 3 (1).
^ Loring M, Powell B (March 1988). "Gender, race, and DSM-III: a study of the objectivity of psychiatric diagnostic behavior". Journal of health and social behavior 29 (1): 1–22. doi:10.2307/2137177. PMID 3367027.
^ Moran, Mark (April 7, 2006). "Writer Ignites Firestorm With Misdiagnosis Claims". Psychiatric News (American Psychiatric Association) 41 (7): 10–12. ISSN 1559-1255, Print 0033-2704 Online 1559-1255, Print 0033-2704. Retrieved 2009-12-30.,
^ BBC Headroom Horizon: How Mad Are You?
Categories: Experimental psychology | Academic scandals | Psychology experiments | 1972 in science | History of psychology | Anti-psychiatry