Developmental Influences on Decision Making
Associative Architecture of the Brain
Before exploring why voters ultimately choose a particular candidate, it is necessary to first explore how the brain is structured and how the parts function together when a choice, or decision, is being made. The human brain is undeniably the most complex machine in the known universe, responsible for every action, thought and feeling ever had 9 Dean Buonomano, author of Brain Bugs: How the brain's flaws shape our lives, refers to the brain's construction as "associative architecture. 10 The brain, like a computer starts off with the same basic software (the neurons and synapses). It was designed to acquire, analyze and process data from the outside world (from experience) and then generate an output through action and behavior. 11 The brain is a product of natural selection – able to consistently change and adapt to its evolving environment. The modern brain is a patchwork of circuits, each one spliced onto the next. During each redesign phase, nature has added new structures onto the old within the brain. 12
All four major parts of the brain (the brain stem, cerebellum, diencephalon, and cerebrum) have their own role to play; their own function to perform. Higher level thinking skills such as reason, language, and creativity are part of the cerebrum 13 particularly the corticostriatal network. This is where decisions are made. When new information comes in, the striatum acts as a switchboard sending the message to the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex then makes the decision about where to catalog and store the new information as well as determine what action needs to be undertaken. 14
The computational power of the brain comes from its ability to link new information to old, catalog the new information and then store it for future use. 15 The manner in which the information is categorized, grouped, and stored reflects our experiences. 16 The brain's associative architecture ensures that not only are the experiences categorized, grouped, and stored but the meanings associated with the experiences are also forming an implicit association. 17 Buonomano asserts that the implicit–association is a consequence of both nature and nuture. Nature ensures that no matter the experience (big/small, monumental/forgettable), the information is stored in a neural file cabinet. Nuture determines in which drawer in the file cabinet the information will be stored. What does all of this have to do with voting in a presidential election? The very structure of the brain ensures that as we pick up the pen to mark our choice on the ballot, all of our previous experiences are with us and playing both a conscious and unconscious role in determining whose name we check.
Unconscious brain
As humans we believe we are in charge of our minds; we are telling the brain what to do. We (particularly Americans) pride ourselves on being deliberately rational–able to make a decision and provide justification for the decision. We would argue that our decision–making lies largely within the realm of conscious thought. 18 Recent brain research, however, asserts the unconscious brain actually leads the decision making. 19 In reality, most of our thoughts are unconscious. This is not meaning a repressed unconscious in the Freudian sense but rather a lack of being a consciously aware participant in the decision–making process. 20 In fact, often times the hidden part of the brain will simply address the new information without informing the conscious part that any action was necessary. 21 As Americans we are "innately suspicious of this type of rapid cognition. We live [and have been brought up] in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making the decision." 22 We inundate ourselves with idioms such as Look before you leap and Haste makes waste. We are raised to believe that a conscious effort to gather information will lead to a better outcome. However, brain research has shown that due to the sheer volume of information being processed the brain takes thin–slices of information in order to make quick decisions without extensive deliberation. 23 The brain finds patterns in the new experience; it uses this pattern to find old information in which to attach the new. When we have a 'hunch' about a situation, the brain is "thin–slicing" the new information to the old information and coming to a conclusion even if the person is not fully conscious of why. 24
The issue in regards to voting is that how the brain decides to catalog and store the information can create an unconscious bias influencing our decisions without the full awareness, recognition, and cooperation of our conscious mind. "The job of the hidden brain is to leap to conclusions. This is why people cannot tell you why one politician looks more competent than another, or why one job candidate seems more qualified than another. They just have a feeling, an intuition." 25 When you vote, are you consciously aware of the influence of your hidden brain? Me either.
Emotional Brain
Recent brain research has shown that the brain was not designed to lead with reason but rather by emotion 26 a fact the founding fathers instinctively knew. The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is responsible for assimilating emotions into the decision–making process. 27 In 1982, neurologist Antonio Damasio was the first to discover the emotion/reason connection. He had a patient named Elliot who had a small tumor removed from his prefrontal cortex. From his observations of Elliot, Damasio discovered that by removing the tumor from the prefrontal cortex region of the brain, Elliot's ability to feel emotion was permanently damaged and thus his reasoning capabilities were impaired. Antoine Buchara, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California found "that most of the [brain's] computation is done at an emotional, unconscious level, and not at a logical level" 28 The conscious brain is unaware of all the neural activity taking place. In other words, emotions force attention, generate meaning, control behaviors and help us to systematize the world in which we live. Emotions are the instinctive representations of all the information that is processed but not perceived. 29 Even when a person attempts to be reasonable, the emotional impulses will secretly manipulate judgment. 30
Cognitive Dissonance
The brain faces a dilemma between reason and emotion which creates a cognitive dissonance. 31 Cognition simply refers to the processing occurring within the brain. 32 Dissonance alludes to the inharmonious state of trying to match the new information with the old. When we find ourselves in this state of cognitive dissonance, when our brain determines that the new information is contradictory to information already processed, catalogued, and stored, our brains find ways to make the new evidence consistent with our previous schema. To exemplify this state of cognitive dissonance, let's look at a study conducted by Drew Westen, a psychologist at Emory University.
During the lead up to the 2004 election, Westen asked a group of ordinary voters, who had shown a strong party affiliation, to participate in a study. He showed each voter a serious of obviously contradictory statements made by each candidate (John Kerry – Democrat and George W. Bush – Republican). The voter was then asked to rate the contradictions on a scale of 1–4 with four being the highest level of contradiction. Those voters who claimed strong Democratic affiliation rated Bush's statements with a 4 but were markedly less troubled with Kerry's. Those who declared themselves Republican also rated Kerry's contradictory statements as basically unintelligible yet were less distressed with Bush's inconsistencies. 33 What Westen realized was that the voters, instead of using reason to evaluate the statements, used reason to perpetuate their partisan adherence. Then once the cognitive dissonance had been resolved, the voters left feeling the contradictory evidence with which they had been presented had provided a rationalization for their political beliefs. 34
In another example, Larry Bartels, a political scientist at Princeton University analyzed survey data from the 1990s. In 1996, he asked so–called high information Republication voters (ones who could name their representatives, consistently read the newspapers and watched the news programs on television) what happened to the deficit under President Clinton's first term. More than 55% said that the deficit had increased when it actuality the deficit had declined by more than 90%. Bartels concluded knowing more about politics did not erase partisan bias. He concluded that voters only tended to assimilate those facts that would confirm what they already believed. "Voters think that they're thinking," Bartels said, "but what they're really doing is inventing facts or ignoring facts so that they can rationalize decisions they've already made." 35 We tend to edit the world to fit with our unconscious schema and pacify the cognitive dissonance though a type of self–imposed ignorance. 36 Why? It feels good to be right. Certainty begets harmony to the inner cacophony. It lets us pretend that our entire brain agrees with our choices. Do you see the danger?
With adolescents (and quite frankly adults), if they are not taught to anticipate the dissonance and then how to address it so that all of the facets of the new experience are properly processed, catalogued, and stored, the resulting schema could be significantly skewed and thus skew further decisions. This is precisely what the Federalists charged the Anti–Federalists of doing, making their decision to be against the new Constitution before evaluating the evidence." 37 Our brain finds a way to justify what it believes it knows to be true so we have to be careful with the truths we create.
Adolescent Brain
How many times have you asked a student (or your own child), "Why did you do that? It does not make any sense?" I have had to calm myself with the mantra, "Their brains are not yet fully formed," when one of my students does something that does not appear rational. The mantra has become a sort of internal joke; unfortunately, it is literally true, an adolescent's brain is not yet complete which causes them to make all manner of ill–conceived decisions. Adolescence is the time period generally between the ages of 12 and 21. Most people attribute the beginning of adolescence to around the beginning of puberty. According to the Encyclopedia of Children's Health, adolescence, from the Latin verb adolescere, means "to grow into the maturity of adulthood." 38 It is the time period in which the child is supposed to be transitioning into adulthood, learning the rational decision–making skills necessary for a successful transition into adulthood. However, there is a significant impediment in this process. In each fully functioning adult person's brain, the cells in the back of the cortex register incoming sensory information and move the information to the front to be processed, catalogued and stored. The neurons in the front of the cortex then process the information in terms of emotions. The issue for adolescents is that their frontal cortex is not yet fully formed and therefore does not possess the capabilities to properly attend to their emotions. 39 Anyone who has taught adolescents can attest to the veracity of this research.
As if being incomplete is not difficult enough, at the start of puberty, the adolescent brain undergoes a chemical and biological transformation. A pruning process takes place in which the brain eliminates brain circuits that are no longer necessary. The pruning eventually helps the brain to operate more efficiently, but in the meantime, can have a negative effect on learning. The amygdala and the hippocampus (responsible for assimilating danger) have a tendency to respond more tensely exacerbating the difficulty with properly assimilating emotions. Dopamine, a brain chemical responsible for feeling good, is circulating at higher levels in the prefrontal cortex, but dopamine levels in the reward center of the brain are decreased. The decreasing levels of dopamine in the reward center indicate that the adolescent requires more excitement and stimulation to achieve the same level of pleasure required by an adult. 40 Lastly, Melatonin, a chemical which aids sleeping, is produced later in the day than in small children or adults which leads to the adolescents being unable to get a full night's sleep during the same time intervals as they did as younger children. All of this biological and chemical cacophony leads to decisions that often just do not make sense to parents, teachers, or even themselves. 41 In other words, in four short years, at 18 years of age, my eighth grade students will be allowed to vote for President of the United States with a brain that is still a biological and chemical construction site. However, all of these changes make adolescence the perfect time to train the brain. 42
Train your brain
Until recently (within the last 30 years) the brain's structure and function was thought to be a fixed, static quantity, unable to be changed. What you are born with is all you have to work with. In fact the first standardized IQ tests created by Lewis Terman were based on the notion of heritability and fixed intelligence. 43 Recent brain research, however, has completely disproved this belief. The brain is malleable, capable of growth and change; its wiring can actually be changed – much like opening the cover of your computer's CPU and changing the wires around. Neurologists refer to this malleability of the brain as plasticity. 44 Even more ground–breaking is that all thoughts and actions literally cause parts of the brain to expand or contract based upon their level of usage. The brain self–regulates its real estate, growing areas that have greater use and retarding or pruning areas of disuse. 45
A brain's plasticity does not just refer to physical changes but also to changes in function. The brain can literally reprogram itself in relation to its environment and experience. 46 In a study of patients with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Jeffrey Schwartz, a neuropsychiatrist at UCLA, found that "mental training, practice, and effort can bring about changes in the function of the brain. 47
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