Saturday, January 26, 2013

The utility of the coin flip?

Coin Flip

Recently Freakonomics guru Steven Levitt announced a new research project of his on strategic decision making.  He argues that when we really cannot make a definitive decision between two things then the only logical choice is to flip a coin.  With that he launched a new website that is dedicated to Freakonomics Experiments.  You send in your decision that you cannot make, flip a coin, let them know your outcome, and then they check in with you a couple of times in the future to find out how that decision turned out for you.  I am really curious what they find out.  I think this is fascinating, but perhaps not for the reason Levitt does.  I believe it's fascinating because it disregards the role of emotion in that decision, which reflects a problem with the role of emotion for decision making in modern society.

I have thought about this problem a bit in the past.  So often we end up facing a fairly consequential decision.  Do I break up with someone?  Do I take that job?  Do I quit my current job?  Do I buy that car?  So on and so forth.  The decision is not clear, no matter how many pro-con lists we make.  The logical decision then is just to flip a coin, right?  Deal with the consequences.  Try not to think about what might have been.

However, I think this leaves out a really important part of decision making: emotion.  Ultimately, I believe a more meaningful way of making a decision would be to just pretend you made a decision for a few days.  Then, see how you feel about that.  Frustration?  Happiness?  Then, do the same pretend sequence for the alternative decision.  More than likely, your emotions will tell you the right choice for you.


This actually sort of comes from cognitive psychology, not sociology.  Antonio Damasio, a neurologist, studied people who had strokes that damaged their opitofrontal cortex of their brains.  It turns out they become completely logical, losing their emotional capacity for decision making.  One might assume they just become clear thinking robots, much like the Observers depicted in the television series Fringe.  However, as they actually illustrate in Fringe, emotions are perhaps the most important component to rational decision making.  The subjects Damasio studied lost the ability to make simple decisions or set goals.  Their lives fell apart.  Jonathan Haidt suggests that this is the only time when equally good or bad options should be made by any of us (i.e. when we do not have emotion involved and can only use instrumentally rational logic).  He argues that all other decisions need emotion immensely, but not those that are equally good or bad.  Levitt, however, argues that you cannot make a rational decision at this point and must leave it to a coin flip.  I think that it is at these moments when emotional decision making is incredibly important, thus my suggestion above.  Regardless, this idea of the difficult decision- and, in my opinion, the need for emotion in making that decision- brings up some troubling sociological challenges , and thus the really fascinating discussion item I allude to above.

We live at a time of tremendous separation from one another as a consequence of modernity in its various capitalist, institutionalist, and solidarity forms.  We have more formal connections with one another.  The suffering of other people, animals, and ecosystems is divorced from our immediate decision making most of the time.  Very often we make decisions based off of formalized rules or to make money.  [In fact, that is where I would argue this "solution" to problems by Levitt emerges: the coin flip is what we have institutionalized everywhere to make "fair" decisions, like who receives the first kick-off of the game.  But at moments when there is consequence to your choice, the assumption that emotion should be separate seems to me to be more a reflection of a hyper-rationalized culture than necessarily the best way forward.]  Yet in the face of a hyper-rationalized lived experience we all still yearn for emotional connection to people and to our decisions.  The alienation and anomie produced within modern society push us to find emotional connections in ways that are not great.  We retreat to extremist spheres of rationalization- organizations like the NRA change to become narrow promoters of ideology rather than a group of people working to create reasonable legislation through compromise, simply because of the emotive pay-off of such narrow promotion.  Modernity redirects our yearning for a cathartic, communal emotional release and creates a tension within society that makes democracy ineffective (I humbly refer you to an earlier blog post of mine that discusses this issue) and hurts our ability to establish a sustainable and equitable system of living.


We need to continue to explore and establish mechanisms in our laws, organizations, and daily habits that push us more toward the emotional catharsis of cooperation, coordination, and compromise in ways that make our democracies work.  [Perhaps I will attempt to tease out those mechanisms in future posts.]  This is the only way we can productively integrate emotion into our decision making.  This is the only way we do not tear one another apart or, worse, create a system that benefits the few to the detriment of the many.  There has been solid scholarship indicating that this is what we are already doing, coming from people like Benjamin Barber and Joseph Stiglitz, among others.  In the end, the Freakonomics coin flip tells us two things.  First, we too often forget the importance of emotion to decision making in modern society.  Second, because of the divisive socio-economic forces of modernity, directing emotions in the the pursuit of cooperation and compromise is an important priority, in my opinion, for creating the kinds of real utopias we desire as a society.

7 comments:

  1. Have you noticed that you and I use the word "fascinating" about 5 times per post? :) I suspect our students are going to turn it into a drinking game at some point. I'm not ashamed to admit that the world fascinates me though, and I feel bad for people who aren't using that word 50 times a day.

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  2. I find it interesting that much of the post talks about logic and then the word, "fascinating," comes up. As you know, that was the logical Spock's commonly used word on the original "Star Trek."

    :)

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  3. (Chris, I laughed when I read your post. You, me and Spock seem to like that word, although I doubt Spock could "feel bad" for people that don't!)

    As I am a mere historian, hopelessly unqualified to know about the "correct" basis for decision making, much less how to research such things, it seems to me Nels makes a good point about the importance of emotion. There may be an objectively "correct" answer to minor questions (how long do to I need to microwave this frozen pizza?), but life usually gives us questions more complex.

    These questions cannot be answered in a "scientific" way because, unlike science, we cannot replicate the consequences of the answers in a laboratory. We cannot predict consequences, and how we feel about our decisions surely involve a consideration of consequences (Kennedy could not have know his decisions in the Cuban missile crisis would be the "right" ones until after we were, or were not, incinerated in a thermonuclear war. What he "learned" in that incident could not be applied to future decision making; too many variables are present to make generizations).

    It helps somewhat to make decisions based on our "values" but, since we cannot predict consequences, that's hard to do (Kennedy valued containing communism, he also valued life. He could not follow his values without knowing what the outcome of his actions would be).

    Fascinating....
    Alec

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  4. Hi!

    Thanks for the invite, Nels. I'm currently writing a chapter on ‘science and emotions’ for the Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions, and so have recently been thinking about these ideas.

    I can only post 4000 characters, so this is going to have to come in three posts.

    Here are a few thoughts: First, let’s start before the decision has to be made – the point at which the chooser recognizes that there are choice options. Research in the social psychology of emotions and knowledge (going way back to Durkheim’s (1912) Elementary Forms of Religious Life) indicates that emotions are essential for perception and observation. That is, even our ability to perceive and differentiate between even such seemingly universal categories as time and space derive from deeply emotional socialization processes. The fundamental categories into which we sort the world are socially constructed, and all social construction involves emotionally charged interactions. Emotions shape our ability to perceive and select among choice options. Here are two interesting perspectives:

    Australian sociologist Jack Barbalet has in a set of recent publications (2002; 2009; 2011) argued for the emotive nature of scientific perception and observation (and by extension, observation and perception allowing for more mundane everyday choices). Following the pioneering work of Ludwik Fleck (1935), Barbalet argues that there are a largely unacknowledged category of ‘self-transcending emotions.’ Unlike the primary emotions (e.g. satisfaction, anger, sadness, fear, etc), self-transcending emotions have no salient behavioral corollaries and so have gone mostly unnoticed by social scientists. He calls these ‘backgrounded emotions” and they are essential components of our consciousness. Where primary (or ‘foregrounded’) emotions are perceivable by the emoting subject, backgrounded emotions are largely unconscious and tacit. They are part of the “physical architecture, engineering, circuitry and hydraulics that underlie and facilitate the involvement constitutive of emotion” (2011). They are socially conditioned emotional filters permitting and shaping subjective consciousness. Where primary emotions allow for consciousness of emotions, backgrounded emotions allow for emotional consciousness. Emotions, perception and observation are fundamentally integral. It is the combined emotive and intellective lens that allows us to observe, perceive and select germane evidence and relationships from an almost unlimited array of sensory information and potential foci. Notice how this matches nicely with the work of Domasio while also profitably linking it to notions of tacit knowledge as relayed in the work of Michael Polanyi and Harry Collins. So, even perception of choice objects is fundamentally social and fundamentally emotional.

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  5. Renowned sociologist Randall Collins’s work also speaks directly to this issue. Collins (1975; 1988; 1998; 2004) maintains a similar position to Barbalet while also extending its implications. He argues that socialization via participation in emotionally loaded ‘interaction rituals’ produces our basic categories of thought (so dovetailing neatly with Barbalet and company) and build bonds of solidarity among participants. Within the interaction ritual ideas, objects and categories of knowledge become symbols of the group and are also charged with emotional salience. So, for instance, those participating in groups revolving around left-wing politics become deeply emotionally wed not only to those with whom they interact, but to the very ideas and symbols on which that group focuses (e.g. automatic weapon regulation, programs to help the indigent, pro-choice, etc). We are thus both consciously and unconsciously drawn to choices reflective of our past interactions and of the communities and groups with which we have the most intense emotional ties. In fact, Collins has gone so far as to claim that these emotional ties and significances (‘emotional energy,’ in the argot) are the common denominator underlying all choices, and should supplant the antiquated notion of the rational, perfectly knowledgeable, self-interested homo economicus all too often postulated by classical economics. Emotions thus allow for perception and distinction among physical and social objects, while also determining our selection among choice options via the emotional appeal of one option over the other as a result of participation in highly emotionally charged social interactions.

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  6. And so what does all of this say about the example Nels addresses? There are a few important implications. First, epistemologically, even the ability to simply perceive that there are objects or directions among which choices can be made is emotionally derived. Emotions are fundamental aspects of our particularizing consciousness and are socially derivative. Even to say that there are objects and a choice among them requires emotions. So far so good. Second, choice selection is also deeply emotive, influenced by our socialization. We will be drawn to choices most reflective of our social interactions and primary social group affiliations due to the charging of various choice options with emotional weight in highly intense face-to-face situations. What this means is that if we come across a tough decision it is not that we are deciding among options and doing some sort of purely intellectual calculus to choose among them. Rather, we are consciously and unconsciously gauging the emotional value of the various dimensions of the choice and moving in the most emotionally satisfying direction. This is why Domasio’s patient is unable to decide – with no emotional salience attached to choice options there is no basis for selection. We are certainly not purely rational actors and it is difficult to know what a truly rational decision would mean anyway. To give a prototypical intellectual dilemma: Should I take this job or not? How would you rationally choose between a teaching or research position? Is one inherently better than the other? On what rational basis? There is no ‘emotionally neutral’ manner in which to select between these options. To quote Fleck, “This concept of absolutely emotionless thinking is meaningless.”
    If we come to an impasse of the kind described in Nel’s example it is not because we have assiduously and emotionlessly tallied numbers and ticked boxes and came up with equivalent values or metrics (whatever those may be – classical economists are infamous for digging up the old specter of ‘utility’ as a dues ex machina to solve their woefully inadequate treatments of emotion), but rather because we have come to a decision wherein the emotional saliencies of the choice options are equivalent. The reason such decisions are so stressful and difficult is because we are emotionally divided and pulled in two directions with equivalent affective force. Emotions infuse all aspects of choice from perception of choice objects to the decision itself. In cases such as the one described, wherein emotional saliences are equivalent, Nel’s suggestion makes a lot of sense. Admit the emotional nature of decisions, pretend to select one, and live with it for a while. How does it make you feel? How much ‘buyers regret’ do you experience? Such a cooling-out period can increase our emotional sensibility to the choice and its emotional implications. This is surely better and more sociologically defensible than a simple coin toss.

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  7. Thanks for your comments, John!

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