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How Do Decisions Affect Your Choices?

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choice snooze

Moment-to-moment, the vast majority of the choices you seem to be making are being made for you by the unconscious part of your brain. You do have both the ability and the opportunity to affect your choices, but you may not be making the best use of either.

The terms choice and decision are often used interchangeably, which muddies our understanding of the process of taking one action instead of another. So let’s make a distinction.

A decision is a conclusion you reach after some consideration of a significant issue. It involves thinking or deliberation. That means a decision is a result of a conscious (System 2) process. Some examples are: moving to a new city or staying where you are; keeping your current job or looking for a new one; trying to iron out the problems in your relationship or separating from your partner.

A choice, on the other hand, is more immediate and—at least in the short term—usually less consequential. Choices are generally the result of unconscious (System 1) predictions and responses. Some examples are: selecting from a restaurant menu; determining which movie to see; getting up with the alarm or hitting the snooze button.

Over time, the choices you make add up: to an outcome you want or to an outcome you don’t want. If you hit the snooze button every morning instead of getting up when you need to, you could end up getting to work late often enough that your employer notices. That’s probably not a desirable outcome. If you regularly select healthy meals in restaurants, you could end up maintaining a healthy weight or improving your sense of well-being, either of which is a desirable outcome.

If you don’t have much influence over your moment-to-moment choices, how can you influence them to add up to outcomes you want instead of outcomes you don’t want?

If you want your choices to add up to positive outcomes, you need to clearly identify what those positive outcomes are. Not only do you need to know what outcomes you want, you also need to be clear about why you want those outcomes. Identifying the what and the why requires conscious deliberation, and anything that requires conscious deliberation is energy intensive for your brain.

The decision-making process is sometimes protracted and even painful. For many people, it involves making a list of pros and cons, which is not a particularly effective strategy. Trying to imagine how you will feel if you achieve a specific outcome is also ineffective. There’s plenty of research to indicate that humans are notoriously poor at affective forecasting (being able to predict how we will feel in the future). No matter how much time you invest or how carefully you consider your options, you still can’t guarantee you’ll be happy with the outcome.

That’s why the default response is to throw up one’s hands and give in to following the path of least resistance. It means letting your brain continue choosing for you because it’s just so much easier. Learning how to use your brain to regulate your behavior (choices) definitely does not come naturally or easily.

Given that the unconscious part of your brain is completely capable of making the majority of your choices for you—with no input from you—why bother expending energy and mental effort on decision-making or trying to change your behavior?

The short answer is because you have consciousness. You’re driven to try to change your behavior because you can imagine outcomes other than the ones you have gotten or are likely to get if you continue along the path you’re on. Simply following the path of least resistance may be easy, but it isn’t satisfying and it doesn’t provide you with a sense of meaning.

In order to have a meaningful and satisfying life you need to master the process of changing the status quo.

So…what do you want to change? And why do you want to change it? If you can’t answer those two questions, the how is irrelevant.

Note: This is the third in a series of posts. To follow the thread, select the category Making Different Choices in the box under Explore.

Can You Muscle Your Way to Change?

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choice muscle3

Changing the status quo isn’t easy. The unconscious part of your brain, which might be said to be allergic to change, is way ahead of the conscious part, especially in familiar situations. It’s built to predict what’s likely to happen next, construct multiple response scenarios, and initiate the response it considers the most effective—not the response you consider most effective.

That’s why habits seem to have so much power over us. They are very familiar to your unconscious, which bases its predictions and responses on previous experience. You may want to have a salad for lunch, but if you’ve been having burgers and fries on a regular basis, your brain is going to “choose” the burgers and fries. You may want to take a walk in the morning before going to work, but if you’re in the habit of spending that time with an extra cup of coffee and the newspaper, that’s what your brain is programmed to “choose” for you.

The part of your brain that can image you making—or having made—a different choice is not the part of your brain that makes choices.

The unconscious part of your brain is only interested in making a different choice if your immediate survival appears to be threatened. Your unconscious doesn’t engage in long-term planning or prediction. So even though both replacing burgers and fries with a salad and replacing sitting and reading the newspaper with half an hour of walking might increase your long-term health and well-being, those changes have no impact on your immediate survival.

Besides, you might not enjoy the salad as much as you enjoy the burger and fries—at least at first—and you might not enjoy trading the extra cup of coffee for going outside to take a walk—especially if the weather isn’t all that great, you’re tired, or you woke up late. The unconscious part of your brain wants to pacify you. And if you start paying attention, you’ll discover that you’re often all too willing to be pacified.

It requires very little energy on the part of your brain to get you to do what you’ve done before. But it does require energy for your brain to get you to do something different. So if you do indeed want to change your behavior, you need to persuade the unconscious part of your brain to get with your program instead of continuing with its program.

You might think strengthening your willpower or self-control would be a good strategy for changing your behavior. Perhaps you can muscle your way through. It’s true that willpower might be effective when your motivation is high when you’re first trying to start or change a habit. Motivation is often higher, for example, at the beginning of a new year when we attempt to implement resolutions. But willpower is a fickle and easily exhausted resource, as is self-control. They both draw from the same well—conscious attention.

The Will Is Capricious and Temperamental*

You can’t count on having enough willpower or self-control available when you want or need it. If you’re anxious or stressed, tired, ill, distracted, in an unfamiliar environment, have been trying to solve a difficult problem, or are in love, your conscious attention is likely to be depleted to a greater or lesser extent.

And when you repeatedly try to start or change a habit (make a different choice) and fail, you end up worse off than you were before. That’s because you’re likely to use your lack of success as evidence that there’s something wrong with you. Perhaps you have less willpower or self-control than other people. Or maybe you’re sabotaging yourself. Or you don’t really want to change.

The bottom line is that you think the problem is you rather than the method you’re employing. Maybe you keep trying or maybe you give up. In either case, over time you persuade your brain not to take you seriously when you set out to change your behavior. And so the status quo becomes even more entrenched.

If you want to master the art and science of change, you need to learn how to use your brain to change the status quo instead of going with the flow and allowing your brain to maintain it.

*Cordelia Fine

Note: This is the second in a series of posts. To follow the thread, select the category Making Different Choices in the box in the sidebar under Explore.

Do You “Just” Need to Make Different Choices?

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choice doors

A comment I often hear from people who are dissatisfied with some aspect of their lives is that they just need to make different choices. On the one hand, it seems like a no-brainer, right? And at least it acknowledges we have a degree of responsibility for the situations we find ourselves in.

It also sounds relatively straightforward: if you want a different outcome, make a different choice. But since making a different choice is anything but simple or straightforward, this isn’t an effective strategy. Unfortunately, the fact that it’s ineffective doesn’t stop people from believing it’s true.

Having choices—or believing that we do—gives us the illusion of having freedom.

But the illusion of freedom is not the same as actual freedom.

Would you rather have something that really matters to you or would you rather have the freedom to not have it? If you equate choice with freedom, you’re likely to opt for holding onto the freedom to not have what you really want. This is an even more obviously ineffective strategy, but it’s a seductive one and our culture is deeply mired in it.

Let’s break it down. Imagine there’s something you want: a highly desirable outcome that really matters to you.

  • Would you rather have the highly desirable outcome that really matters to you?
  • Or would you rather have the option to not do what you need to do to create that outcome (in other words, the freedom to not have it)?

Why would anyone in their right mind “choose” to not do the things they need to do in order to achieve an outcome that is highly desirable to them? That would seem counterproductive at the very least.

You Are Certainly Not the Boss of Your Brain*

The unconscious part of your brain, which has no interest in your highly desirable outcome, is invested in maintaining the status quo. When you “choose” not to do whatever you need to do to achieve that outcome, you end up reinforcing the status quo instead of getting closer to what you want. In fact, no actual choice is involved in maintaining the status quo.

It takes no effort or awareness or intention on your part to continue doing what you’ve always done. The unconscious part of your brain can have you continue doing what you’ve been doing ad infinitum, while you preserve the fiction that you’re consciously choosing to continue doing those things.

That’s how you end up with the illusion of freedom rather than actual freedom. Actual freedom involves learning how to change the status quo, not giving in to it.

Certainly you have reasons and explanations for why you might “choose” to not do what you intended to do to help you achieve that highly desirable outcome. You didn’t have enough time. You were tired. Something came up that you had to respond to. You just didn’t feel like it. You really wanted to do whatever it was you ended up doing. You’ll make a different choice tomorrow or the next day.

No matter how many times you run through this type of scenario, chances are excellent that you’ll prefer to believe you are actually making choices, even if those choices are clearly not in your own best interest or are the opposite of what you intended to do.

And, counterintuitive as it may seem, believing you have a choice about taking a particular action that would disrupt the status quo decreases the odds you will take it.

When you give up the freedom to not have what you really want—when you allow yourself no choice in regard to taking that action—you begin to change your own status quo. That’s far more powerful, far more freeing, than simply giving in.

Why settle for the illusion of freedom when you can have the real thing?

*Michael Gazzaniga

Note: This is the first in a series of posts. To follow the thread, select the category Making Different Choices in the box in the sidebar under Explore.

Why Aren’t You Constantly Surprised?

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cat surprised

You’ve probably never asked yourself that question, but it’s not as silly as it sounds. Think about it for a minute. How do you explain the fact that you aren’t constantly surprised by the wide variety of events, situations, and reactions you encounter?

The answer to that question also explains why it can’t possibly be true that “you always have a choice.”

Your brain is predictive, rather than reactive.

Until fairly recently, the commonly held belief was that the brain merely reacted to sensations it picked up, primarily from the outside world. The idea was that many of the brain’s neurons were dormant most of the time until they were stimulated by a sight or a sound.

But that is not the case. Neurons are constantly firing, interacting and stimulating each other at various rates. According to Lisa Feldman Barrett, University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University:

This brain activity represents millions of predictions of what you will encounter next in the world, based on your lifetime of past experience.

Your reactions are your body adjusting to the predictions your brain makes based on the state your body was in the last time it was in a similar situation.

Your brain is trying to put together thoughts, feelings, and perceptions so they arrive as needed, not a second afterward.

This activity does not take place at the conscious (System 2) level, but at the unconscious (System 1) level, which processes 11 million bits of information at a time. What you become aware of (thoughts, feelings, impulses, etc.) are the results of this unconscious processing. And you’re only aware of what your brain thinks you need to know, when you need to know it.

Furthermore, according to an article by a trio of neuroscientists published in Frontiers in Psychology:

Your brain generates multiple possible representations of what to expect in the environment. The representation with the smallest prediction error is selected.

However the generation of representations is constrained by what is stored in memory and by the sampling of the environment.

Another way to think about it is that these representations of what to expect are constrained by your mental model (see: Are You Thinking Outside the Box Yet?). Your brain constantly updates your mental model based on the accuracy of its predictions—as well as on its own agenda. Again, this occurs outside your conscious awareness.

Barrett provides this example:

You’re interacting with a friend and, based on context, your brain predicts that she will smile. This prediction drives your motor neurons to move your mouth in advance to smile back, and your movement causes your friend’s brain to issue new predictions and actions, back and forth, in a dance of prediction and action. If predictions are wrong, your brain has mechanisms to correct them and issue new ones.

The unconscious part of the brain is always several steps ahead of the conscious part. As both Barrett and neuroscientist David Eagleman have pointed out, this is what makes activities such as sports possible. If the brain was reactive, rather than predictive, it wouldn’t operate fast enough to enable you to hit a baseball or block a goal.

A merely reactive brain wouldn’t have helped Michael Phelps win his 10th gold medal while swimming blind as a result of his goggles filling with water. All of his previous practice, experience, and knowledge gave his brain a solid basis for predicting what he needed to do in order to win. Pretty amazing.

Because your brain is predictive:

  • You are not constantly surprised.
  • You don’t always have a choice.
  • You are able to engage in activities that require quick and accurate responses.
  • You are capable of learning from your experiences.
  • You don’t have to think about every little thing you do in the course of a day.
  • You find it difficult to change undesirable habits.
  • You may be tricked by various types of illusions.
  • You are unaware of your visual blind spot.

Our primary contact with the world, all this suggests, is via our expectations about what we are about to see or experience. —Andy Clark, philosopher and cognitive scientist, University of Edinburgh

When you are surprised, it’s because your brain encounters unpredictable stimuli: something other than what it expected. Unpredictable stimuli require conscious (System 2) processing. To get a sense of this in action, take note of the occasions when you experience surprise and try to compare your actual experience to the experience your brain might have been expecting.

The fact that you are not, in fact, constantly surprised means that your brain is pretty darn good at making predictions the vast majority of the time.

To Improve Your Brain, Exercise Your Body

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exercise

Sitting in front of a computer screen to play brain games is not the best way to enhance or maintain your cognitive abilities. First of all it doesn’t really work. And second, it involves sitting. Standing is only marginally better. (And playing brain games on a portable electronic device while walking is just an accident waiting to happen.)

As John Medina writes in Brain Rules:

The brain appears to be designed to (1) solve problems (2) related to surviving (3) in an unstable outdoor environment, and (4) to do so in nearly constant motion.

The links between physical exercise and brain health have been getting a lot of attention lately. Here are summaries of some of the research with links to the articles (click on the titles). The last two of these studies were included in my post last fall on Five Ways to Improve Your Brain; the first three are more recent.

Get Moving

A neuroscientist (Wendy A. Suzuki) says there are powerful benefits to exercise that are rarely discussed.

When I was about to turn 40, I started working out regularly after years of inactivity. As I sweated my way through cardio, weights, and dance classes, I noticed that exercise wasn’t just changing my body. It was also profoundly transforming my brain—for the better.

The immediate effects of exercise on my mood and thought process proved to be a powerful motivational tool. And as a neuroscientist and workout devotee, I’ve come to believe that these neurological benefits could have profound implications for how we live, learn and age as a society.

  • Exercise combats stress.
  • Increased levels of physical exercise can result in improved memory
  • Exercise improves our ability to shift and focus attention.
  • Exercise could help students better absorb everything from history lessons to chemistry experiments–and they’d be happier too.
  • Exercise could make students more imaginative at school and adults more creative at work.
  • The longer and more regularly you exercise through your life, the lower your chances are of suffering from cognitive decline and dementia as you age.
Do… build your body

We often make a distinction between brains and brawn. In fact, getting in shape is one of the surest ways to build your mind. Physical activity not only establishes a better blood flow to the brain; it also triggers a surge of proteins such as “nerve growth factor” that can help stimulate the growth and maintenance of neural connections in the brain.

The benefits seem to stretch from cradle to grave: children who walk to school get better grades, while taking a leisurely stroll seemed to boost pensioner’s concentration and memory. What’s more, a wide variety of exercises can help, from gentle aerobic exercise to weight training and body building; just choose a training regime that suits your current fitness.

Study suggests physical activity makes it easier for the brain to change

Learning, memory, and brain repair depend on the ability of our neurons to change with experience. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 7 have evidence from a small study in people that exercise may enhance this essential plasticity of the adult brain.

The findings focused on the visual cortex come as hopeful news for people with conditions including amblyopia (sometimes called lazy eye), traumatic brain injury, and more, the researchers say.

“We provide the first demonstration that moderate levels of physical activity enhance neuroplasticity in the visual cortex of adult humans,” says Claudia Lunghi of the University of Pisa in Italy.

“By showing that moderate levels of physical activity can boost the plastic potential of the adult visual cortex, our results pave the way to the development of non-invasive therapeutic strategies exploiting the intrinsic brain plasticity in adult subjects,” she adds.

While further study is needed, the researchers think that this effect may result from a decrease with exercise in an inhibitory neurotransmitter called GABA. As concentrations of this inhibitory nerve messenger decline, the brain becomes more responsive.

Regardless of the mechanism, the findings suggest that exercise plays an important role in brain health and recovery. They come as especially good news for people with amblyopia, which is generally considered to be untreatable in adults.

“Our study suggests that physical activity, which is also beneficial for the general health of the patient, could be used to increase the efficiency of the treatment in adult patients,” Lunghi says.

Lifting weights, twice a week, may aid the brain

Most studies of exercise and brain health have focused on the effects of running, walking or other aerobic activities. A few encouraging past studies have suggested that regular, moderate aerobic exercise such as walking may slow the progression of white matter lesions in older people.

But Teresa Liu-Ambrose, a professor of physical therapy and director of the Aging, Mobility, and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, wondered whether other types of exercise would likewise be beneficial for white matter. In particular, she was interested in weight training, because weight training strengthens and builds muscles.

After a year-long study, women aged 65-75 who had lifted weights twice per week displayed significantly less shrinkage and tattering of their white matter than the other women. Their lesions had grown and multiplied somewhat, but not nearly as much. They also walked more quickly and smoothly than the women in the other two groups.

Note that the result was only achieved in the group who lifted weights twice per week, not in a group who lifted only once a week.

Regular exercise changes the brain to improve memory, thinking skills

In a study done at the University of British Columbia, researchers found that regular aerobic exercise, the kind that gets your heart and your sweat glands pumping, appears to boost the size of the hippocampus, the brain area involved in verbal memory and learning. Resistance training, balance and muscle toning exercises did not have the same results.

Many studies have suggested that the parts of the brain that control thinking and memory (the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal cortex) have greater volume in people who exercise versus people who don’t. “Even more exciting is the finding that engaging in a program of regular exercise of moderate intensity over six months or a year is associated with an increase in the volume of selected brain regions,” says Dr. Scott McGinnis, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School.

How much exercise is required? The study participants walked briskly for one hour, twice a week. That’s 120 minutes of moderate intensity exercise a week. Standard recommendations advise half an hour of moderate physical activity most days of the week, or 150 minutes a week. If that seems daunting, start with a few minutes a day, and increase the amount you exercise by five or 10 minutes every week until you reach your goal.

If you don’t want to walk, consider other moderate-intensity exercises, such as swimming, stair climbing, tennis, squash, or dancing. Don’t forget that household activities can count as well, such as intense floor mopping, raking leaves, or anything that gets your heart pumping so much that you break out in a light sweat.

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