Jackson Library

Lifelong Learning Faculty Seminars: Additional Reading

 

For centuries, philosophers and thinkers have debated whether emotions are beneficial or detrimental to human decision making. The general consensus viewpoint that pervaded was that emotions are like wild horses that need to be reined in, that good decisions are those that are made devoid of emotion. Our recent understanding of the working of the human brain points to a diametrically opposite viewpoint, that emotions not only exert important influences on decision making but also might actually be essential for and fundamental to making advantageous decisions.

In this presentation, Professor Shiv will (1) highlight some of the startling and counter-intuitive insights being unraveled on the workings of the human brain and then (2) get to the "so what?" of these findings for individual decision making.

Selected Articles

Additional reading material has been selected by Jackson Library Staff. Due to contractual arrangements, remote access is only available to the current Stanford community and the subscribers of the "Library Databases" offered through the GSB Alumni's Lifelong Learning Program. Other access is limited to onsite at Jackson Library. Inclusion below does not imply University endorsement of ideas expressed.

 

The Role of Emotion in Decision Making: A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective. Current Directions in Psychological Science, Oct 2006
Decision making often occurs in the face of uncertainty about whether one's choices will lead to benefit or harm. The somatic-marker hypothesis is a neurobiological theory of how decisions are made in the face of uncertain outcome. This theory holds that such decisions are aided by emotions, in the form of bodily states, that are elicited during the deliberation of future consequences and that mark different options for behavior as being advantageous or disadvantageous. This process involves an interplay between neural systems that elicit emotional/bodily states and neural systems that map these emotional/bodily states.
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Investing: Don't get emotional: It's bad for your funds. International Herald Tribune, April 20, 2006
One of the enduring mysteries of the finance world is also one of the simplest. How do seemingly intelligent, well-educated people make so many bad decisions?
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Lessons From The Brain-Damaged Investor. Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2005
People with certain kinds of brain damage may make better investment decisions. That is the conclusion of a new study offering some compelling evidence that mixing emotion with investing can lead to bad outcomes.
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Can dysfunction in neural systems subserving emotion lead, under certain circumstances, to more advantageous decisions?
Psychological Science, June 2005
To answer this question, we investigated how normal participants, patients with stable focal lesions in brain regions related to emotion (target patients), and patients with stable focal lesions in brain regions unrelated to emotion (control patients) made 20 rounds of investment decisions.
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Selected Books

The art of high stakes decision making : tough calls in a speed driven world by J. Keith Murnighan and John C. Mowen . Wiley, 2002 HD30.23 .M865 2002

 

 

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