Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, I'm Emily Falk and I'm in your feed
Speaker 2: today to bring you an excerpt from my audiobook What
Speaker 2: We Value. In this book, I'll teach you how the
Speaker 2: brain makes decisions, and we'll explore the hidden calculations that
Speaker 2: can lead to more purposeful, fulfilling choices. We're constantly pulled
Speaker 2: in different directions, from making decisions about family, to work
Speaker 2: and our health.
Speaker 1: But by better understanding.
Speaker 2: Why we do what we do, we can make decisions
Speaker 2: that actually align with what we care about most, whether
Speaker 2: we want to embrace new activities or become more effective
Speaker 2: leaders in our communities. I'm excited to share my findings
Speaker 2: with you. If you enjoy this excerpt, find What We
Speaker 2: Value at Pushkin, dot FM, Slash Audiobooks, or wherever you
Speaker 2: get your audiobooks.
Speaker 1: Part one, Choice, Chapter one, The Value Calculation. Jenny Radcliffe
Speaker 1: is known online as the people Hacker. There are many
Speaker 1: ways she describes her job a burglar for hire, a
Speaker 1: professional con artist, a social engineer, but officially, she's a
Speaker 1: penetration tester, a security consultant whom companies hire to break
Speaker 1: into their buildings and computer systems to help identify weaknesses
Speaker 1: in their security infrastructure. Although Jenny sometimes uses physical force,
Speaker 1: lock picks, or computer code, her main tools come from psychology.
Speaker 1: She can read a person or a situation and predict
Speaker 1: how someone or a group of people will respond to
Speaker 1: her depending on what she does. Then she can create
Speaker 1: a situation that moves her toward particular goals and outcomes.
Speaker 1: This is just what she did when she was hired
Speaker 1: to break into a bank in Germany. Her mission was
Speaker 1: to enter the bank during business hours, get past security,
Speaker 1: and locate a particular office where she was to plug
Speaker 1: a USB drive the company had given her into a computer.
Speaker 1: A program preloaded on the drive would then install itself
Speaker 1: on the computer, letting the company know that Jenny had
Speaker 1: successfully penetrated their security. The morning of the big job,
Speaker 1: Jenny ready to costume in props. She wrapped her hand
Speaker 1: and wrist in a bandage, figuring that people might be
Speaker 1: more likely to hold doors open for her if she
Speaker 1: appeared to be injured. She brought a big file box
Speaker 1: full of papers to occupy her hands, further increasing the
Speaker 1: odds that people might hold doors for her. Thus prepared,
Speaker 1: she went into the bank, walked into the grand lobby
Speaker 1: furnished with leather sofas and approached huge doors blocking access
Speaker 1: to the employee's only portion of the bank. Those doors
Speaker 1: presented Jenny's first of many obstacles. They were operated by
Speaker 1: fingerprint scanners, and of course, Jenny's fingerprint wasn't in the
Speaker 1: bank system. She wasn't an employee. She was pretending to
Speaker 1: be one. But she walked over to the fingerprint scanner
Speaker 1: and put her finger on the pad. Anyway, it beaped
Speaker 1: no luck. She hadn't expected the censors to let her in,
Speaker 1: but as a penetration tester performing a security audit, it
Speaker 1: was still part of her job to check. At this point,
Speaker 1: Jenny had choices. She could ask the security guard on
Speaker 1: duty in the lobby to let her in, but what
Speaker 1: incentive would he have to do that. It was his
Speaker 1: job to keep strangers out. So instead she did the
Speaker 1: obvious thing. She swore really, really loudly. Just as Jenny
Speaker 1: had planned, the security guard came over to see what
Speaker 1: was happening. You don't have to work on the lock,
Speaker 1: Jenny leader explained, work on the person behind the security.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what they put in place. If someone's
Speaker 1: got access, then I can access them. And then were
Speaker 1: down to me versus the person. When the guard approached,
Speaker 1: Jenny said, impatiently, this isn't working. It was working yesterday.
Speaker 1: The secure part guards suggested she tried the fingerprint censor again.
Speaker 1: She made a big show of being annoyed, cursing once
Speaker 1: more and awkwardly balancing her big box of papers on
Speaker 1: her bandaged hand. She tried again. The machine beeped again.
Speaker 1: Maybe she wasn't pressing hard enough, the guard ventured. She
Speaker 1: grudgingly placed her finger on the sensor again, at which
Speaker 1: point the guard took her hand and tried to help
Speaker 1: her press her finger onto the machine. Jenny yelped in
Speaker 1: apparent pain and swore loudly. Once again. She made a
Speaker 1: point of dropping the filebox, which scattered papers everywhere, and
Speaker 1: made a big show of trying to pick them up,
Speaker 1: all while swearing away. Now she had drawn attention to herself.
Speaker 1: People in the lobby were looking, for God's sake. Go in,
Speaker 1: the guard said, and beeped her through the doors. Thank you, Dunkashane,
Speaker 1: Jenny replied, and she was on her way down the
Speaker 1: hallway to the designated office, where she inserted the USB
Speaker 1: key she had been given. What happened here? Making a
Speaker 1: big commotion like Jenny did might not work for every
Speaker 1: person in every situation. For one thing, some people might
Speaker 1: be more influenced by being buttered up or feeling like
Speaker 1: they're doing someone a favor. For another, the same actions
Speaker 1: can be interpreted as more or less threatening depending on
Speaker 1: the characteristics of the person doing them in the environment therein.
Speaker 1: But in this case, Jenny felt confident that causing a
Speaker 1: scene would help her break into the bank because she
Speaker 1: knew that in Germany people generally feel highly embarrassed by
Speaker 1: a scene, and based on her gender and the way
Speaker 1: she looks, she wasn't likely to be perceived as a
Speaker 1: physical threat or a computer hacker. Under these conditions, making
Speaker 1: the commotion the most prominent thing in the guard's mind
Speaker 1: would tip the scales of his decision making. She figured
Speaker 1: that the guard would perceive her as low risk and
Speaker 1: would rather buzz her in than deal with the discomfort
Speaker 1: and disturbance of a spectacle, and she was right. Maybe
Speaker 1: you feel tempted to harshly judge the guard for letting
Speaker 1: Jenny in. The bank's rules no doubt emphasized that he
Speaker 1: should not let strangers through the door. If Jenny had
Speaker 1: been a malicious hacker. The USB drive she plugged in
Speaker 1: could have uploaded a computer virus that stole customer's personal
Speaker 1: information in life savings, or taken down important parts of
Speaker 1: the bank's infrastructure. But the truth is that many of
Speaker 1: us would do the same thing in that situation. We
Speaker 1: want to see ourselves as helpful, kind people, and much
Speaker 1: of the time other people aren't trying to deceive us.
Speaker 1: If Jenny had been an injured employee simply trying to
Speaker 1: get into her office to do her job, the guard's
Speaker 1: actions would have been helpful to the bank, not harmful,
Speaker 1: for better or worse. Jenny's understanding of these decisions making mechanics,
Speaker 1: the sometimes unconscious, near instant calculus we perform when choosing
Speaker 1: between options and how they can be influenced, enabled her
Speaker 1: to break into the bank. Recent advances in neuroscience allow
Speaker 1: us to understand more about the underlying systems in the
Speaker 1: brain that allowed her to do this and that might
Speaker 1: allow others to resist, including one that scientists call the
Speaker 1: value system. As we begin to explore the value system,
Speaker 1: which brings together many different types of information to guide
Speaker 1: our decisions, it may be helpful to imagine the thought
Speaker 1: process of the security guard when he was confronted with Jenny.
Speaker 1: His brain's value system would compute the value of different
Speaker 1: possible choices, allow the swearing woman to continue making a
Speaker 1: scene or buzz her in, select the one with the
Speaker 1: highest value, buzz Jenny in, and then track how rewarding
Speaker 1: the choice is. Now the scene is quiet, and I
Speaker 1: feel good that I helped an injured person. Much of
Speaker 1: the time, this value calculation happens quickly and seamlessly. Importantly,
Speaker 1: as Jenny understood so well, its outcome depends on what
Speaker 1: our brains pay attention to in the moment. In that
Speaker 1: split second, The value calculation can be shaped by any
Speaker 1: number of factors, our own goals, how we feel, our identities,
Speaker 1: what we think others will think and feel, other people's actions,
Speaker 1: cultural norms and expectations, are social status, and much more.
Speaker 1: Jenny used her implicit understanding of the value calculation to
Speaker 1: gain access to the bank, as she had been hired
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Alert to this vulnerability, the bank, in turn, might take
Speaker 1: steps to ensure a different outcome to guard's value calculations
Speaker 1: in similar situations in the future. Making the guards aware
Speaker 1: of how Jenny broke in could empower them to exert
Speaker 1: more agency over their decision making in such a moment
Speaker 1: and resist future attempts to hijack it. In that way,
Speaker 1: where the bank might provide more opportunities for security guards
Speaker 1: to get to know the other bank employees so that
Speaker 1: it would be clear when a new employee joined, as
Speaker 1: well as who was a stranger. Of course, to think
Speaker 1: of all these options requires thinking along a number of
Speaker 1: different dimensions, checking in with the bank's bigger picture goals,
Speaker 1: the security guard's goals, and where there might be room
Speaker 1: for greater possibility in the overlap. So what options or
Speaker 1: combinations of options would make it more likely that the
Speaker 1: security guard chooses differently next time. How might we become
Speaker 1: more aware of when our value calculations are being shaped
Speaker 1: by people who don't have our best interests at heart.
Speaker 1: To figure this out, it's helpful to know what's going
Speaker 1: on in our brains when we're confronted with choices kool
Speaker 1: aid or peppermint tea. One remarkable power of the value
Speaker 1: system is that it allows our brains to take complicated, messy,
Speaker 1: real world decisions and boil them down into comparable quantities.
Speaker 1: Thus simplified, our brains are able to choose between options,
Speaker 1: often almost instantaneously, and with a fair amount of internal consistency.
Speaker 1: I find it useful to think of the value calculation
Speaker 1: as a hidden game of would you rather? You're probably
Speaker 1: familiar with this common icebreaker, in which one player offers
Speaker 1: two ideally silly choices and other players say which they
Speaker 1: would prefer. Would you rather have a cat's tongue or
Speaker 1: roller skates for hands? Would you rather be able to
Speaker 1: speak every language or have the most beautiful singing voice
Speaker 1: on earth? Would you rather live alone on a desert
Speaker 1: island with all the movies and books ever made, or
Speaker 1: with one other person you choose but no media. When
Speaker 1: you think about it, it is borderline magical that you
Speaker 1: can answer would you rather questions comparing alternatives that differ
Speaker 1: in so many ways from low stake situations like playing
Speaker 1: the game? Would you rather at a party? To the
Speaker 1: decisions that determine our actual behaviors each day. Our value
Speaker 1: systems help guide us to our choices. But how does
Speaker 1: the brain do this? For a long time, no one
Speaker 1: knew the answer. Did the brain have different systems that
Speaker 1: each monitored different dimensions of a choice? How much sugar
Speaker 1: or salt is in each food we're choosing between how
Speaker 1: hot or cold is each food, how green is each food?
Speaker 1: Or were there different brain systems that would handle choices
Speaker 1: in different domains, a brain system that decides what kind
Speaker 1: of foods we want to eat, a different brain system
Speaker 1: that keeps track of how much fun each of our
Speaker 1: potential dinner companions is, and a third that handles the
Speaker 1: financial decision about whether we can afford to eat out
Speaker 1: the foundations of how we currently think about the neural
Speaker 1: underpinnings of this kind of decision making were laid in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties by researchers who mapped a set of
Speaker 1: brain regions that tracked simpler types of rewards and that
Speaker 1: guided animals behavior to maximize those rewards, even if choosing
Speaker 1: the reward was objectively bad for the animal's well being
Speaker 1: in the longer term. James Olds and Peter Milner, scientists
Speaker 1: at McGill University in Canada, discovered that when given the chance,
Speaker 1: rats repeatedly pressed a lever that triggered electrodes that stimulated
Speaker 1: particular parts of their tiny rat brains that made them
Speaker 1: feel good. In other words, the rats found it rewards
Speaker 1: to stimulate these parts of their brains, and scientists at
Speaker 1: the time began to think of the regions being stimulated
Speaker 1: as the reward system. It turned out that stimulating this
Speaker 1: reward system had powerful consequences for the rats behavior. For example,
Speaker 1: when rats were given the chance to press a lever
Speaker 1: that stimulated these reward regions, they would even forego food
Speaker 1: they needed to stay alive. And it wasn't just rats.
Speaker 1: Scientists soon found parallel reward systems in rhesus monkeys and
Speaker 1: eventually came to learn that all mammals had similar infrastructure
Speaker 1: in their brains across species. When scientists stimulated neurons, the
Speaker 1: cells that transmit messages through the nervous system, deep in
Speaker 1: the brain in a region called the straatum and in
Speaker 1: certain regions in the front of the brain frontal cortex,
Speaker 1: the animals seemed to experience reward, as evinced by their
Speaker 1: tendency to seek out the stimulus over and over. Like humans.
Speaker 1: Some animals also displayed facial expression or made sounds showing
Speaker 1: their pleasure. But although it was clear early on that
Speaker 1: stimulating specific reward regions caused animals to want things, it
Speaker 1: took several decades for scientists to understand how this translated
Speaker 1: into more complex decision making in humans. Why would a
Speaker 1: system that tracks how much food you want or how
Speaker 1: much you want to press a lever have anything to
Speaker 1: do with whom you want to be president or which
Speaker 1: movie you want to see? Could a single brain system
Speaker 1: really handle comparing choices that take place at various points
Speaker 1: in time now versus later, concrete rewards like which snack
Speaker 1: to eat, and abstract questions about society and morality. A
Speaker 1: series of important insights about how brain systems make more
Speaker 1: complicated calculations about the relative values of a wider range
Speaker 1: of goods and ideas came in the mid two thousands,
Speaker 1: one of them through offering kool aid to monkeys. Camillo
Speaker 1: Padua Sciopa and John Hasad were researchers at Harvard Meadow
Speaker 1: School studying decision making and economic choices when they wondered
Speaker 1: whether the reward system discovered in rats and other animals
Speaker 1: could also help monkeys make somewhat more complicated decisions, and
Speaker 1: if so, how, On the one hand, they reasoned, it
Speaker 1: was possible that regions of the reward system might respond
Speaker 1: to objective properties of different potential rewards, like the amount
Speaker 1: of sugar in a juice. This might be the case
Speaker 1: if a particular nutrient like sugar or fiber had been
Speaker 1: important to the survival of the species in the evolutionary past,
Speaker 1: and a physical feature of the food like color or firmness,
Speaker 1: was a good indicator of how much this nutrient was
Speaker 1: present in it. If so, there should be a tight
Speaker 1: correspondence between certain biological or chemical properties of foods and
Speaker 1: the response of the reward system. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: what if the reward system could take a wider range
Speaker 1: of things into account to make more subjective calculations. Did
Speaker 1: it explain why a monkey might have different food preferences
Speaker 1: at different times, or even predict what a monkey was
Speaker 1: in the mood for. In their experiments, Camillo and John
Speaker 1: would present a monkey, let's call him Gizmo, with a
Speaker 1: series of choices while recording the activity from neurons in
Speaker 1: his brain. Would Gizmo like one drop of lemon cool
Speaker 1: aid or two drops of peppermint tea, five drops of
Speaker 1: milk or one drop of grape juice. Gizmo would look
Speaker 1: left or right to indicate his decision. After many of
Speaker 1: these choices, the researchers could calculate how much value Gizmo
Speaker 1: assigned to each drink relative to the other drinks what
Speaker 1: neuroscientists now call its subjective value. We say the value
Speaker 1: is subjective because it turned out not to be fixed
Speaker 1: to some objective quality like the density or overall amount
Speaker 1: of sugar present in each liquid, the exact temperature, the
Speaker 1: quantity of liquid, and so on. The scientists found that
Speaker 1: Gizmo and other monkeys generally preferred to have more to
Speaker 1: drink if possible, but like humans, they liked some drinks,
Speaker 1: specifically lemon, kool aid and grape juice, more than others.
Speaker 1: Depending on the offer, the monkeys would sometimes choose a
Speaker 1: smaller amount of their preferred drink over more of one
Speaker 1: they liked less. By offering the monkeys the drinks in
Speaker 1: different ratios, Camillo and John could arrive at a mathematical
Speaker 1: description of the monkey's preferences in each session. For example,
Speaker 1: if Gizmo was really in the mood for grape juice
Speaker 1: in one session and chose one drop of it over
Speaker 1: up to three drops of water, then Camillo and John
Speaker 1: could say that one drop of grape juice was worth
Speaker 1: three points, while one drop of water was worth one.
Speaker 1: While hanging out with the monkeys. Camillo and John also
Speaker 1: found that subjective value was influenced by the context within
Speaker 1: which the decisions were made. The monkey's drink preferences, that is,
Speaker 1: the relative value of one drink to another, varied from
Speaker 1: day to day, even for the same monkey. Imagine that
Speaker 1: you yourself are at someone's house and they offer you
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee or a cup of lemon ginger
Speaker 1: herbal tea. Your decision depends partly on stable preferences you have.
Speaker 1: You typically like coffee more than lemon ginger tea, but
Speaker 1: also on the situation it's late and you worry that
Speaker 1: caffeine might make it harder to sleep. Similarly, on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: Gizmo might prefer grape juice to water three to one,
Speaker 1: but on Friday he might feel less strongly because he's
Speaker 1: already had plenty of fruit and may prefer the grape
Speaker 1: juice to the water only two to one. This is
Speaker 1: what subjective value means. Different aspects of a situation change
Speaker 1: how much something is worth to someone at a given
Speaker 1: time in a given situation. When Camillo and John looked
Speaker 1: at the data from the monkey's brains, they discovered that
Speaker 1: neurons in the front and center. Specifically, a region called
Speaker 1: the orbit offrontal cortex fired in response to each monkey's
Speaker 1: overall subjective preferences for the juices. The activity in these
Speaker 1: neurons correlated with the overall ratios Camillo and John had
Speaker 1: calculated based on the monkey's decisions. When the monkey preferred
Speaker 1: one option three times as much, these neurons fired correspondingly.
Speaker 1: More interestingly, the firing didn't seem to depend on objective
Speaker 1: aspects of the choice, such as the specific ingredients of
Speaker 1: the drink. If, as you might think, there were neurons
Speaker 1: tracking the amount of sugar, which side of the screen
Speaker 1: showed the offer if neurons here kept track of what
Speaker 1: motion the monkey needed to perform to get the juice,
Speaker 1: or how many drops of juice were offered in total,
Speaker 1: if more is always better. Instead, the neurons tracked the
Speaker 1: overall subjective value, and this subjective value was tied to
Speaker 1: the choices the monkeys made. Just by seeing what was
Speaker 1: happening within Gizmo's orbitofrontal cortex when he was shown the
Speaker 1: different options, Camillo and John could predict which choice Gizmo
Speaker 1: might make with re markable accuracy. In other words, the
Speaker 1: monkey's brains were computing subjective values for each option on
Speaker 1: a common scale that allowed them to make decisions and
Speaker 1: compare apple juice and orange juice. But what about humans.
Speaker 1: Around the same time that studies on monkeys revealed that
Speaker 1: their brains responded to subjective rather than objective value, scientists
Speaker 1: began to find similar responses in the human brain. In
Speaker 1: the span of a decade or so in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands, scientists ran hundreds of experiments mapping what happened
Speaker 1: in people's brains when they made choices based on these
Speaker 1: subjective preferences. In one early study, the neuroscientist Hilca Plasmin
Speaker 1: and her colleagues at Caltech found that when they measured
Speaker 1: how much human volunteers were willing to pay to eat
Speaker 1: different snacks, they showed similar activity in brain regions analogous
Speaker 1: to those the monkeys used to choose between lemonade and
Speaker 1: grape juice. The team showed pictures of salty and sweet
Speaker 1: junk foods like chips and candy bars to hungry humans
Speaker 1: while scanning their brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI.
Speaker 1: This type of brain scan let scientists see when different
Speaker 1: parts of the brain are active, and then connect this
Speaker 1: activation to different psychological processes and behaviors. The volunteers in
Speaker 1: Hilka study were told they had a specific budget and
Speaker 1: were asked how much they would be willing to pay
Speaker 1: for different food items shown as images on a screen
Speaker 1: in the fMRI scanner. As in the case of Camillo
Speaker 1: and John's monkeys, brain activity increased the most within a
Speaker 1: similar region in humans, the venturemedial prefrontal cortex for the
Speaker 1: items they rated as most valuable. In other words, there
Speaker 1: was more activity in response to snacks they were willing
Speaker 1: to pay three dollars for than snacks they were willing
Speaker 1: to pay one dollar for or didn't want to buy
Speaker 1: at all. People's brains kept track of the subjective value
Speaker 1: to them personally of different foods and chose accordingly. This
Speaker 1: was a breakthrough, but in daily life we often have
Speaker 1: to choose between options that are harder to compare than
Speaker 1: two kinds of snack foods. Could the same brain regions
Speaker 1: that decide if you'd rather drink coffee or tea also
Speaker 1: compare things that are rewarding in very different ways. For example,
Speaker 1: would you rather drink grape juice or go see a movie?
Speaker 1: Or did such choices go beyond their role in decision making.
Speaker 1: To probe this question, a team of scientists at Caltech
Speaker 1: and Trinity College Dublin designed an experiment that was, in essence,
Speaker 1: a variant of the would you rather dilemma. The research
Speaker 1: team gave volunteers in an fMRI scanner a twelve dollars
Speaker 1: budget that they could use to bid on different types
Speaker 1: of goods, from sweet and salty snacks to DVDs, Caltech memorabilia,
Speaker 1: and monetary gambles. They found that an overlapping area of
Speaker 1: the venturemedial prefrontal cortex tracked how much people were willing
Speaker 1: to pay not only for different foods, but also for
Speaker 1: products like college memorabilia and DVDs. Around the same time,
Speaker 1: other groups of scientists were also finding that activity in
Speaker 1: the human medial prefrontal cortex and other regions like the
Speaker 1: ventral stratum tracked people's willingness to pay different prices for
Speaker 1: a range of consumer goods. These findings suggested that a
Speaker 1: common system was keeping track of the value of a
Speaker 1: wide range of different kinds of choices. As this body
Speaker 1: of research grew, this group of brain regions, including the
Speaker 1: ventral stratum and venturemedial prefrontal cortex came to be known
Speaker 1: as the value system. By twenty ten, activity in the
Speaker 1: value system had been shown to track not only people's
Speaker 1: decisions about how much money they would pay for different goods,
Speaker 1: but other kinds of financial choices as well. For example,
Speaker 1: would you prefer to take one hundred percent chance of
Speaker 1: winning ten dollars or a fifty percent chance of winning
Speaker 1: twenty dollars. Would you rather have ten dollars now or
Speaker 1: twenty dollars in six months? All of these types of
Speaker 1: choices seemed to work through a similar mechanism in which
Speaker 1: the value system identified and assessed the subjective valuevalue of
Speaker 1: different choices, compared them, and then acted. By twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: researchers could even predict, based on activity observed in volunteers
Speaker 1: value systems while they were looking at different goods what
Speaker 1: they would later choose, even when they weren't asked to
Speaker 1: make any choices during the initial scan. In other words,
Speaker 1: the value system seems to track the subjective value of
Speaker 1: different things regardless of whether the person is consciously trying
Speaker 1: to make a decision about them. When we're in line
Speaker 1: at the grocery store, our value systems are weighing the
Speaker 1: value of the candy bars by the register and absorbing
Speaker 1: information from the news headlines and magazine covers. When we're
Speaker 1: scrolling through social media passively consuming ads, our value systems
Speaker 1: are still registering the inputs, even if we aren't actively
Speaker 1: paying attention to them. A decade later, it is now
Speaker 1: more widely accepted that our brains can make calculations using
Speaker 1: a common value scale that allows us to compare things
Speaker 1: that aren't inherently comparable. Could probably easily decide if you'd
Speaker 1: rather snuggle a puppy or have five dollars right now.
Speaker 1: This is because your value system converts each option onto
Speaker 1: a common scale and makes the comparison. Likewise, when Jenny
Speaker 1: yelled for the security guard, he quickly made the decision
Speaker 1: to try to help her use the fingerprint scanner rather
Speaker 1: than demand ID, and eventually to let her through the doors,
Speaker 1: rather than calling for backup, asking her to leave, or
Speaker 1: asking her on a date. Predicting and learning, it's tempting
Speaker 1: to think there are good choices and bad choices, but
Speaker 1: the truth is that these are moving targets, and the
Speaker 1: value system is dynamic, constantly weighing competing interests, and the context.
Speaker 1: This means that the choices we make depend on what
Speaker 1: options we imagine we are choosing between and what dimensions
Speaker 1: of the choice we focus on. If your kid has
Speaker 1: never met a male nurse, it might constrain the career
Speaker 1: options he imagines choosing to suit his empathic personality. Moreover,
Speaker 1: the subjective value we assigned to a given choice option
Speaker 1: can change depending on a variety of factors related to
Speaker 1: our past experiences, our current situation, and our future goals.
Speaker 1: If your kid believes you'd like him to get a
Speaker 1: job that helps a lot of people, that dimension might
Speaker 1: weigh heavily as he considers career options. Likewise, if his
Speaker 1: crush gushes about Austin, Texas, that might cause your son
Speaker 1: to give weight to the geographical flexibility of different job options.
Speaker 1: This is one neural foundation of what social psychologists call
Speaker 1: the power of the situation. Our decisions depend on our
Speaker 1: current context, which gives certain inputs to the calculation more weight.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're deciding whether you'd rather eat a salad
Speaker 1: or chocolate cake. If your brain only followed objective rules,
Speaker 1: you might only care about how much the food filled
Speaker 1: your stomach, or how many calories it offered, which could
Speaker 1: translate directly to keeping you alive in earlier moments of
Speaker 1: human evolution. But that's not how it works, as you
Speaker 1: have no doubt experienced. When you decide what to eat,
Speaker 1: you might focus on any number of things. How does
Speaker 1: the food taste, how will you feel after eating it?
Speaker 1: What is your date eating? Did you just get a
Speaker 1: bad doctor's report? Do you have a great metabolism? Is
Speaker 1: it someone's birthday? How much does each cost? Did you
Speaker 1: just run a marathon? Are you in a bad mood.
Speaker 1: Your brain does this quickly and may not even take
Speaker 1: into consideration all of these dimensions, limiting what it weighs
Speaker 1: in any given choice. Based on what factors it does weigh,
Speaker 1: your brain can compute subjective values for salad and cake
Speaker 1: on a common scale, then choose the higher value alternative.
Speaker 1: Once you've made the choice, your value system transmits it
Speaker 1: to the parts of your brain that help you act
Speaker 1: on the decision, like reaching out and grabbing your chosen
Speaker 1: food and eating it. Importantly, your brain's value system then
Speaker 1: keeps track of how good the decision's outcome was relative
Speaker 1: to what you thought would happen. In other words, how
Speaker 1: accurately it guessed how rewarding the choice would be at tracks.
Speaker 1: Not only your prediction that cake looks delicious, I remember
Speaker 1: how much fun I had at birthday parties as a kid,
Speaker 1: but the prediction error, or the discrepancy between your prediction
Speaker 1: and the actual outcome. If the choice ends up being
Speaker 1: more rewarding than you expected, that cake was delicious, totally
Speaker 1: worth it, your brain generates what neuroscientists call a positive
Speaker 1: prediction error, seen as an increase in activation within the
Speaker 1: value system after the choice. Conversely, if the choice ends
Speaker 1: up being worse than you thought that cake made me
Speaker 1: feel gross, your brain generates a negative prediction error, seen
Speaker 1: as a decrease in activation within the value system after
Speaker 1: the choice. These prediction errors help you learn for the future,
Speaker 1: updating how your brain makes the value calculation over time.
Speaker 1: In some there are three basic stages to what neuroscientists
Speaker 1: call value based decision making. First, our brains determine what
Speaker 1: options they are choosing between, assign a subjective value to
Speaker 1: each one, and identify the option with the highest value.
Speaker 2: In that moment.
Speaker 1: This means that from the start, our choices are shaped
Speaker 1: by what we consider the possible options in the first place. Next,
Speaker 1: our brains move forward with what is perceived as the
Speaker 1: highest value choice, which may or may not be the
Speaker 1: best choice in the context of our larger goals or
Speaker 1: longer term well being. This means that there isn't one
Speaker 1: single right answer, and what our brains perceive to be
Speaker 1: the highest value option right now might change if considered
Speaker 1: from other perspectives, for example, when thinking about career goals
Speaker 1: versus wanting to be a good friend. Finally, when we've
Speaker 1: made the choice, our brains track how rewarding it turns
Speaker 1: out to be so they can update how they make
Speaker 1: the calculation next time. This means that we often overweight
Speaker 1: the outcomes of our choices rather than improving our process.
Speaker 1: This highlight it's at least three places where we can intervene.
Speaker 1: We can imagine more or different possibilities, consider the existing
Speaker 1: possibilities from different angles, or pay attention to different aspects
Speaker 1: of the outcome. We can think again of our security guard.
Speaker 1: If as the guard, you buzz in a bumbling person
Speaker 1: making a scene and it yields a better social reward
Speaker 1: than you had expected, the person gives you a big,
Speaker 1: grateful smile and tells you how much she appreciates you.
Speaker 1: Your brain will generate a positive prediction error. That data
Speaker 1: will be stored, and in the future you will be
Speaker 1: more likely to let in the next bumbling stranger. But
Speaker 1: if something bad happens and the outcome is worse than
Speaker 1: you anticipated, the bumbling person turns out to be a
Speaker 1: security tester, and your colleagues are annoyed with you because
Speaker 1: now you all have to sit through extra training sessions.
Speaker 1: Your value system stores that too. Next time, you might
Speaker 1: think twice before letting in a stranger. But of course,
Speaker 1: no one scanned the brain of the security guard. Most
Speaker 1: of the studies we've explored so far have taken place
Speaker 1: in highly controlled lab settings, So what actually happens outside
Speaker 1: the lab in the real world. Can we link activity
Speaker 1: in the value system to what people do in their
Speaker 1: day to day lives outside the brain scanner? A great
Speaker 1: day for science. I was a budding neuroscientist in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands when our understanding of the value system
Speaker 1: first started to take shape, and I was interested in
Speaker 1: whether brain imaging could give us insight into health decision making.
Speaker 1: I wanted to help people make choices that would help
Speaker 1: them live healthier, happier lives. But I also knew that
Speaker 1: these choices could be very difficult to make. It's hard
Speaker 1: to change, and even when we are motivated to change,
Speaker 1: we don't always take time to figure out why we
Speaker 1: do what we do in the first place, or know why.
Speaker 1: Some ways of thinking are helpful in achieving our goals
Speaker 1: and some aren't. I was thinking about how to make
Speaker 1: better health coaching and messaging campaigns. I was also thinking
Speaker 1: about how we might talk with our family members and friends, roommates,
Speaker 1: and colleagues to help motivate them to make healthy changes,
Speaker 1: and even how we might talk to ourselves to make
Speaker 1: decisions that are more in line with our goals. I
Speaker 1: wondered if brain imaging could give us a new window
Speaker 1: into this decision making. Maybe looking at brain responses to
Speaker 1: health campaigns and health coaching messages could help us understand
Speaker 1: what made people change and what would make it easier
Speaker 1: to work with rather than against our desires. If that
Speaker 1: were true, maybe it could help us design and select
Speaker 1: better messaging. I decided to apply to graduate school to
Speaker 1: work with Matt Lieberman at UCLA. Matt's lab was full
Speaker 1: of scientists studying how people understood themselves and others and
Speaker 1: how they made important decisions. Along with a group of
Speaker 1: other young faculty, Matt had recently ignited a new field
Speaker 1: of study that combined social psychology with cognitive neuroscience. Whereas
Speaker 1: neuroscientists before had focused on topics ranging from vision and
Speaker 1: memory to reward and motor actions, many fewer had delved
Speaker 1: into topics that were more at the core of being human,
Speaker 1: like where our sense of self comes from, how we
Speaker 1: understand what others think and feel, and how imagination works.
Speaker 1: At the time, it felt like a long shot to
Speaker 1: connect what happened in a neuroimaging lab to real world
Speaker 1: behavior changes outside the lab, But it also felt fundamental.
Speaker 1: What good was all this research if it couldn't help
Speaker 1: us in real life. Luckily, during the years I was
Speaker 1: in graduate school, we did start to see a connection,
Speaker 1: a pattern indicating that activity in the brain's value system
Speaker 1: could reveal who is more likely to change their behaviors
Speaker 1: in response to messaging and what kinds of messages were
Speaker 1: most likely to elicit this kind of activity. The first
Speaker 1: work we did in this space focused on sunscreen use
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, where to sunny almost every day. I
Speaker 1: had a daily reminder that despite how great the sun
Speaker 1: feels warming your skin. Sunburns and other invisible damage from
Speaker 1: UV rays can cause skin cancer. Matt and I designed
Speaker 1: an fMRI experiment scanning the brains of volunteers while exposing
Speaker 1: them to messages about the importance of wearing sunscreen every day.
Speaker 1: The finding was simple. The more activation we saw in
Speaker 1: a person's value system, specifically the venturemedial prefrontal cortex, in
Speaker 1: response to the messages, the more likely they were to
Speaker 1: increase their sunscreen use in the next week. It suggested
Speaker 1: that the value system helps guide not only simple choices
Speaker 1: that people make in the lab, but also real world,
Speaker 1: consequential behavior change outside the lab. When I saw the data,
Speaker 1: I started jumping up and down on the lab couch.
Speaker 1: My friend and then officemate, Sylvia, claims that I screamed,
Speaker 1: this is a great day for science. I deny it.
Speaker 1: While I don't know if non scientists would be this
Speaker 1: excited about a data plot, it felt like a big moment.
Speaker 1: And although this initial study relied on what people told
Speaker 1: us about their sunscreen use, later studies in the lab
Speaker 1: I now run at the University of Pennsylvania and others
Speaker 1: have shown similar results. In people being coached on other
Speaker 1: health habits where behavior change has been measured more objectively.
Speaker 1: When sedentary adults were exposed to messages encouraging them to
Speaker 1: get more exercise, the activity in their value system corresponded
Speaker 1: with how much exercise they got, later measured objectively using
Speaker 1: wrist worn activity trackers. Similarly, smokers whose value systems responded
Speaker 1: more strongly to messages encouraging them to quit smoking were
Speaker 1: significantly more likely to reduce their smoking over the following month,
Speaker 1: which we confirmed using a device that measures how much
Speaker 1: carbon monoxide smokers have in their lungs. In fact, our
Speaker 1: ability to predict how much people would reduce their smoking
Speaker 1: was twice as good when we included information from both
Speaker 1: brain responses and self report surveys as when we included
Speaker 1: only information from the surveys. This suggests that there was
Speaker 1: useful information that the value system captured that was not
Speaker 1: fully captured by surveys alone. Figuring out why this is
Speaker 1: the case and how far in the future we can
Speaker 1: predict is a current frontier. Another current frontier involves understanding
Speaker 1: when and how people make the kind of deliberate decisions
Speaker 1: that will mostly focus on in this book, compared with
Speaker 1: other kinds of decisions. For example, it is increasingly clear
Speaker 1: that a lot of what humans do is guided by
Speaker 1: habitual routines, which is not the kind of choice we'll
Speaker 1: be discussing. But some of these habits start with deliberate choices,
Speaker 1: which is our focus. To illustrate this distinction, let's consider
Speaker 1: my walk to work. When I first moved to Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: I wanted to walk to work rather than drive or
Speaker 1: take the subway, so i'd get outside more. That was
Speaker 1: an active choice. I used my phone's map to find
Speaker 1: the shortest route, and following my phone's map was also
Speaker 1: an active choice. Over time, as I repeated this walking
Speaker 1: route over and over, it became a habit, something I
Speaker 1: could do and did on autopilot, whereas other options like driving,
Speaker 1: taking the trolley, or even walking a different route require
Speaker 1: more conscious thought. In other words, when repeated over and over,
Speaker 1: what start as goal directed, value based decisions become routine
Speaker 1: and get handed over to another brain system that supports
Speaker 1: the kind of automatic pilot I was on. This book
Speaker 1: explores what happens in the first type of decisions, when
Speaker 1: we are more deliberately choosing and setting in motion paths
Speaker 1: that may or may not eventually become habits. Find what
Speaker 1: we value at Pushkin, dot Fm, Slash Audiobooks, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your audiobooks,