Transcriber: Annika Bidner Reviewer: Mile Živković
Thank you very much!
(Applause)
Hello everyone.
My name is Katarina Gospic, and I have a PhD in neuroscience,
and today I'm going to talk about the cautious brain.
Why we are so afraid of exploring these uncharted waters sometimes.
And I will also give you an advice [on] how you can become a bit more brave.
Let's get started.
We are going to start with an experiment.
The scenario is like this:
There's a horrible disease that has broken out in this building,
and if you don't do anything, 600 people will die.
But you are the responsible doctor in this building.
And you can make the choice, one out of two medical programs,
that you can choose in order to save some people.
And you have the following information:
So, with program number 1, you will save 200 people.
If you choose program number 2, you have the information
that the probability to save 600 people is 1/3, and to save no one is 2/3.
So everyone who prefers alternative 1, raise your hand now.
OK. And everyone who prefers alternative 2, raise your hand.
OK, great.
Now I want you to imagine the same scenario,
but you will have two new alternatives.
So, again, you are the responsible doctor,
600 people will die if you don't do anything.
And you get the following information.
With program 1, 400 people will die.
And if you choose program 2, you get the information
that the probability that no one will die is 1/3,
and the probability that 600 people will die is 2/3.
So how many of you prefer program 1? Raise your hand.
And how many of you prefer program 2? Raise your hand.
OK. That's great.
Because when I prepared this lecture, I tried to predict your behavior.
And I predicted that you would choose program 1 in the first slide
and program 2 in the second slide.
And that's [what] it looked like as a group, the way you behaved.
I didn't know this because of my psychic abilities.
The reason why I knew this,
was because I know how your amygdala works.
An amygdala is your primitive emotional brain structure,
and it tells you to choose program 1 in the first slide
and to choose program 2 in the second slide.
This means that you are steered by your emotions.
There is an emotional bias in your decision making.
According to economic theory,
our behavior in this experiment is totally irrational.
Because the thing is, that if you look at these two alternatives,
and you calculated what's called the expected value,
you will find that the expected value
is the same for both programs.
So, If you put these figures here in this formula,
you see that the expected value for the first alternative
that I call "a sure win", is 200,
and the expected value for "the gambling option" is also 200.
But still, we have an emotional bias,
because most of us feel that the first option is a bit better.
And that is because we are programmed by our brains to choose safe wins.
On the other slide, we observed the opposite behavior.
And again, both these alternatives,
the sure loss and the gambling option,
have the same expected value.
But this time, we feel like we don't want to be responsible
for sure, for some people's death.
It means that we are prepared to gamble
when it comes to this kind of framing.
So, taking this all together,
it means that there is an emotional bias in our decision making,
and we are wired to choose sure wins, and wired to avoid sure losses.
This is where the cautious brain comes in.
We are wired to be cautious.
Or a bit coward, if you want to... say that.
This takes us to the principles of decision making.
And that is that when we are choosing something,
we always try to choose the alternative that's associated with the [highest] award
and the least punishment or unpleasantness.
And this means that most of you
would prefer to eat chocolate cake, rather than being eaten by a lion.
(Laughter)
And I think you can see this emotional bias
from a functional versus a non-functional aspect.
Because if you are on the savannah, and you encounter a lion,
it feels quite good to follow your emotional bias,
which is kind of running away from it,
because that will increase your [chance] of survival.
However, if you imagine your everyday problems,
and for example, if you get a job offer where they ask you
if you want to move to India for example, for a year,
you might think that this is a bit scary.
Because India is a very different country
compared to Sweden, and lots of things are different.
And when things are unknown, or uncertain to us,
our amygdala tells us to run away from it.
But in this context, it might not be the most functional way of acting.
Because by running away from such a great offer,
we will actually miss out on some great opportunities,
really exploring these uncharted waters.
So, we need to learn when our emotions are functional for us,
and we also need to identify when they are a bit non-functional,
when they actually hinder us from discovering new things.
So, after talking about these fears and uncertainties and stuff,
the question is, how do we fix this fear issue?
The answer to that question is: with lots of brain power.
And in order to illustrate this statement,
we are now going to do a little quick experiment,
where you will kind of feel the brain power that you also need
to regulate your fears.
So before we start, I want you to tell me
with which color these words are written.
Any suggestions?
Audience: Black.
Yeah, you're sure?
OK, that's really really good.
Because on my next slide, I will show you some words,
one by one, and I want you to tell me with which colour they are written.
So I want you to name the ink colour.
Do you understand? Yeah?
And I want you to do this as fast and as accurate as possible.
So I say: Ready, set, and now, go.
Audience: Blue. Yellow. Green.
(Laughter)
That was amazing, guys. Yeah.
Just by listening to you, I could actually tell that some of you
had a little bit of a problem with this task.
(Laughter)
And the reason why this is so hard
is because I created a conflict in your brain.
So what happened was that when I ask you to name the colour of the ink,
you actually have a default priority for reading out the word.
So this is prioritized in your brain,
but then I gave you an instruction, telling you: "Name the colour of the ink."
And this is not prioritized by default, by your brain.
So it means that you need to mitigate the priority
for reading out the word, and you actually need to enhance
the priority for naming the colour of the ink.
And all this occurs in your frontal lobe,
in a specific area, that you see here,
called the anterior singular cortex.
And this takes a second.
But once you have thought about it a bit
and used your brain power to change this priority in your brain,
you can actually handle this task perfectly.
And as some of you might have noticed,
it became a bit easier in the end,
because then you were actually prepared for this task.
And what I want to say with this is
that the same kind of brain power
that you used in this little experiment,
this is the same kind of brain power
that you need to use when you are afraid of something,
when you are kind of sailing these [uncharted] waters.
Because then your brain might prioritize
that you should stay away from everything that is scary
and frightens you and such.
That has the highest priority.
But then there's this small little part of your brain saying that,
"No, I want to explore, you know there can be something exciting."
And then again, you need to do this kind of operation,
and mitigate your fear response,
in order to [increase] priority for your exploration mode.
So this is what I want you to remember from this little talk,
that whenever you feel scared, remember this exercise,
and be brave,
use your brain power in order to explore these uncharted waters.
Thank you very much!
(Applause)