Emotions and Decisions

Somatic marker hypothesis

Emotions play a crucial role in guiding decisions/feelings in the body linked to emotions, such as rapid heartbeat for fear or nausea for disgust

Bechara et al

A: effects of vmPRC damage on decision making

P: two groups/5 people with vmPRC damage/13 healthy control participants/played online gambling game/select one of four decks of cards labelled A,B,C,D/told they either won or lost money/A and B would give higher and higher losses as the game went on/participants were expected to realise A and B were bad decks and avoid them/test of skin conductive response was used to measure emotional reaction to game

F: controls quickly learned to avoid A and B/after 10 trials they exhibited a stress reaction when hovering over these decks/people with brain damage continued choosing bad decks with no stress reaction

C: participants with vmPRC damage do not experience somatic markers/leads to poor decisions/emotional feelings are necessary for good decision making

Evaluate Bechara et al

• Supports somatic marker hypothesis​

• Small sample size

• Correlational results: may be other differences between the two groups that could explain the findings

Evaluate somatic marker hypothesis

• Explains how emotions guide decision making

• Identifies the specific region of the brain (vmPRC) which is involved in processing emotional feeling s

• Explains why people might engage in risky behaviour