The Neuroscience of Decision-Making: Are We Foul or Fair? | Kimberly Papillon | TEDxNashvilleWomen

scientists theorized that in a single second the conscious components of the human brain can process 40 frames of information in one second the conscious components of the human brain can process 40 frames of information in that same second the unconscious components of the brain can process 1.2 million frames of information who's really running the show and there is a group of scientists who believe that it's part of that 1.2 million in the background that really drives our decision-making and the 40 some of them that are in the foreground we process them just to rationalize our decision making to make us feel comfortable about the conclusions we've already reached don't believe me yet be critical in your analysis doubt every word I say make me prove my case now the truth of the matter is that our brains have different reactions to different people I'm not talking about a different psychological reaction to be sure I'm talking about a different physiologic reaction a different physical reaction in our brains reactions that make us have negative versus positive assessments for say one name versus another one face versus another one voice versus another and this is regardless of how fair we believe we are to be clear we're not talking about ideas or processed information that aligns with our conscious value system these are ideas that do not match the way we see ourselves they do not comport with our goal set they are unconscious background noise the truth is that we believe that our value systems are what drive our decision-making and certainly they may but not completely in fact if the background noise is what's really driving our decision-making is it possible that we don't have control of our own brains and if we don't have control of our own brains that we don't have control of our own decision-making no matter how fair you are I'll tell you a secret the most difficult people to teach fairness to are people who value fairness the most the most difficult people to teach fairness to are people who value fairness the most because those people care about fairness those people will hurt the most when they find out that they have acted in a way that's unfair so we got to take control of our brains to be able to use our conscious value systems let me give you an example just based on a name see when we talk about what's in a name we start talking about the beginning of decision-making we see the name on the top of the resume on the top of an email and when we talk about the beginning of decision-making if we were speaking about computers we would call a data collection and data storage because what we need for any decision first is information but we're not talking about computers we're talking about the human brain so we're gonna call it memory and memory lives in the land of the hippocampus the part of the brain that is critical in collecting storing and outlet allowing us to access information in the hippocampus so why don't we do an experiment they took a group of Harvard undergrads and they put them in front of a computer one by one by one and they told them you are about to have an email conversation with a person in the room next door now the person in the room next door is an underpaid graduate student well they're a graduate student we're going to assume they're underpaid and they've been given a script and the college student the undergraduate student has a script - let's say about 10 or so questions they're gonna ask the person in the room next door including with your math and what's your verbal SAT scores and and the person in the room next door is going to give the same answers each and every time they get a certain question so each and every one of the conversations with a different college student is exactly the same we need a variable how about the email addresses some of the undergraduate students to reach the person in the room next door are given the email address a me a my at Harvard others are given chin chen2 reach the person in the room next door conversation ensues math and verbal SAT scores are shared conversation ins the proctor walks back into the room and says to the undergraduate student do you recall the math and verbal SAT scores that were shared with you so what happens the people with the email address chin for math remember the math score higher than what they were told and aimée they remember it lower what's gonna happen for verbal it switches the people with email address Amy remember it much higher than what they were told and for verbal those who use chin remembered it lower to be clear the people with the email address Amy remember her scoring higher and verbal those are the same people who downgraded her in math oh there's something I forgot to tell you about this particular study when each and every one of the undergraduate students walked in the room before they typed a single key on the computer they were all told the exact same thing they were all told you are about to have an email conversation with an asian-american woman by the name of Amy chin that's how insidious implicit bias is just at the beginning of decision-making just a data collection and data storage these unconscious thoughts can affect how we recall information but that's just what's in a name what about a face when we talk about what's in a face we tend to talk about the amygdala the amygdala is the part of the brain that lights up when we feel fear threat anxiety and distrust fear threat anxiety and distrust how did they isolate the amygdala they slid people into the machine while flashing pictures of spiders and snakes and you may get a little lit up now they can't just flash pictures of spiders and snakes they've got to publish some more so they decide they're gonna flash pictures of people's faces they decide they're gonna flash a picture of a man of African descent and a man of European descent will use the terms of black and white for short and they want to see if they're going to get a different level of a mental activation for one face versus the other what do they find yes they found they got a higher level of amygdala activation for the black man's face than for the white man's face to be clear this is not a worldwide phenomena in fact even inside of the United States there are some groups that are far more likely to have a spider snake-like reaction to a black man's face than other groups just what that's good news that means we weren't born this way that means this has learned behavior and that means it can be unlearned if we just take control of our brains but the scientists didn't stop there they decided to figure out if this matched with any other results and they found that the level of amygdala activation matched directly with people's scores on a test called the implicit association in tests the IAT which any of us can take online people with a little that showed a little bit of what we call unconscious bias on that test had a little bit of amygdala activation little more abayas little more activation we can't all get our brain scan but we can all take the implicit association test online so we can start to get control when we talk about what's in a name we talk about the hippocampus Allah Amie chin when we talk about what's in a face we talk about the amygdala but we can't just talk about it in the context of race what if we look at faces of two people who are of European descent in this particular study they were able to isolate the facial features that created the highest level of distrust that gentleman on the screen looks like Lex Luthor and the other gentlemen the highest level of trust there were many many facial features that they found that were different but the four that made the most difference in creating the highest level of trust was how large the forehead was how pronounced the cheekbones were the size and shape of the chin and the level of indentation at the top of the nose you see the nose has to end somewhere it ends here and it can end with a deep indentation like this or a more shallow indentation like this if it ends with a deep indentation you find that person to be less trustworthy a more shallow indentation you find that person to be more trustworthy do you know how much indentation you have at the top of your nose that's how insidious implicit bias is you see a feature that we see on our own faces every day we do not consciously record or consciously compare to others and yet it as a primary driver and as to whether or not we trust somebody at the moment that we meet them when we talk about this notion of face and we talk about name what about voice can a voice make a difference but when we start having a conversation about these associations with regard to voice we talk about two parts of the brain the caudate and the khatamun the caudate and the Potomac you see when we meet people we encode them in our brain as human as opposed to when we interact with a lion it's a different process that goes on in our brain and this different process manifests differently for us to see someone as human we have to have two things happen we have to have the caudate turn on we have to see them as smart or competent and we have to have the proton internal we have to see them as nice as as warm nice and smart warm and competent if we don't encode to a high level on both of those skills we're not actually seeing them as fully human we're engaging in what we call in dehumanization so now they're gonna give us voices to listen to how about four voices how about the Anglo American accent that's Nebraska folks and the next accent we'll be Harry Potter middle-income British not actually Harry Potter but that same general accent the next one will be a native Cantonese speaker and the fourth a native Spanish speaker from Mexico how do what they do on our human encoding skill first for nice we find that the the Nebraska accent comes in first place the Harry Potter like accent in second native Cantonese speaker far behind and dead last the native Spanish speaker for Mexico what about our human encoding and skill for smart uhto now hit Harry Potter and Nebraska are tied for first place native Cantonese speaker in third again and our native Spanish speaker from Mexico dead last two times in a row this should disturb us that there are groups of people who we are failing to encode as fully human on both skills we'll have different levels of empathy for them when there crisis will allocate resources differently for them we'll want to create more space between us and them draw a clear line of demarcation between us and then but how early does this begin let's take a group of 9 year olds and let's take 9 year olds from the north and 9 year olds from the south and let's let them listen to a children's story being read by somebody from the north and somebody from the south on our human encoding scale first for nice how do they do oh we find interesting your luck the nine year olds from the south decide that the person from the south is indeed nicer than the person from the north and the nine year olds from the north agree yes all things being equal they would rather playing but the person from the south right well what happens for smart Oh now our nine year olds from the south decide that the person from the more north is two times smarter than the person from the south and the only difference is that the nine year olds from the north decide that the person from the north is three times smarter than the person from the south that's how insidious and bias is it's what's in a name it's what's in a face it's what's in a voice and we have to get control of our brains to do something about it just as neuroscience gives us insight into the problem it also guides us on the solution you see there are lots of solutions that the neuroscience provides to us but I believe that the most profound one is based on a test called the weapons identification test and its sister test the shoot no shoot test you can take the weapons identification off as the test online at any time but here's how the shoot no shoot test works a person pops up on the screen and they're either holding a wallet a cell phone or a gun a wallet a cell phone or a gun if they're holding a wallet or a cellphone hüseyin oh shoot if they're holding a gun you say shoot it's called the shoot no shoot test right now the only thing that you have to pay attention to is that half of the people who pop up on the screen will be African American and the other half Anglo American and you're gonna hit the e or the IKEA on the computer to make your decision to shoot or not shoot and the computer is gonna Pro is going to pay attention to two things first it's gonna measure in milliseconds how much longer it takes you to categorize to one side or the other or say shoot versus no shoot and second it's gonna measure the number of mistakes that you make there's some interesting results for the United States data that we're able to take in we find that when the african-american man is holding the gun people say shoot quickly and accurately no problem and when the clock Asian man is holding the wallet or the cell phone people say no shoot as they should the problem comes in in the other two categories when the african-american man is holding the wallet or the cell phone people still say shoot and when the Caucasian man is holding the gun people say no shoot in fact in a series of trials they found that people were more likely to say shoot for the African American man holding the wallet or the cell phone than they were for the Caucasian man holding the gun this was disturbing to everyone who had that strong value system for fairness so the scientists got to work to use the neuroscience to solve the problem and they figured it out see there's a part of the brain called the rostral anterior singlet cortex the rostral anterior cingulate cortex the are ACC that turns on whenever you want to do a good job on a test like this if you can get that part of the brain to turn on you'll say shoot when you're supposed to say sheet and no shoot when you're supposed to say no shoot so they had to figure out how to activate the brain how to literally teach us to take control of our own brains to turn on the parts of our neuroanatomy that will help us use our value system with particular types of decisions and they figured it out they just told people while they were taking the test that they were gonna be monitored for race related bias no pressure no pressure and suddenly the RAC lit up the ICC was critical to the analysis and people were saying shoot when they were supposed to say shoot and no shoot when they were supposed to say no shoot so can we self monitor sure we can we can look at our own decision-making and track it one moment to another and indeed we should and we can also do it systemically where we try to see if there are patterns in our decision-making and of course we should you see because study after study shows for all of those leaders listening study after study shows that if we put out resumes and job applications with precisely the same qualifications on them but based on the name on top some people will get hired and someone precisely the same qualifications but Jane gets hired less frequently than John and Tyrone less frequently than Zachary but we can go outside of the context of employment and look to the area of medicine presenting the exact same analysis the same symptoms the same medical history to physicians time and time again but altering the race at the top we see different types of pain medication being prescribed different levels of aggressiveness of treatment and different labs being ordered and we don't have to stop there we can give educators different study after study we can give educators different assignments of showing the exact same number of mistakes and based on the race or ethnicity or gender of the individual who quote-unquote turned it in they'll find more mistakes versus less for some students versus others the most difficult people to teach fairness to are people who value fairness the most it's the fair people who must take control of our brains we're the ones that have the motivation and and now we're the ones that have the information to go and make the changes that need to be made it's what's in a name it's what's in a face it's what's in a voice it starts early and it ends late and it depends on you so thank you very much for coming here today you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 76,421

Rating: 4.8345418 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Science, Decision making, Individualism, Neuroscience

Id: aCWYkZ5i-gE

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2019