3: The New Paradigm
In 1995, neurologist Antonio Damasio introduced a new paradigm: that our initial reaction to stimuli is emotional, rather than rational - that we feel before we think. The reaction, which is not uncommon, was either immediate acceptance ("we knew this all along") or complete rejection ("this doesn't fit with what we know").
Naturally, the valid application of the theory has been overshadowed by sensationalism, of journalists and even marketers who want to make more of it than it is, and suggest that neuroscience is a mystical or magical new phenomenon that gives marketers the ability to exercise mind control. Per the author, "Noting can be further from the truth."
Even though it's not as dramatic as the hype, the application of neuroscience to marketing has significant potential in changing the way that we consider customer behavior, potentially in a dramatic way.
But it's important to keep it in perspective: it's a recent discovery and less is known than remains to be discovered. The author draws an analogy to the field of physics - how in 1900, Lord Kelvin confidently declared "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now." Much has been discovered since then, and some of the discoveries up to that point were later found to be wrong.
It's important to be mindful of this, and avoid being misled by the hype - and avoid contributing to it.
Descartes and Damasio
In discussion his theory, Damasio chose Descartes as his foil. Descartes was a French philosopher who was dubbed the "Father of Modern philosophy." His most famous statement was "cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am), which was a foundational concept in a philosophical perspective that man's perception of his existence is largely solipsistic, that the objects in existence around us are of less significance to the way we perceive and consider them, by means of the rational faculty.
(EN: This give Descartes a bit too much credit. He was, in fact, a central thinker in Modern philosophy - but that's capital-M "Modern," which pertains to the period after the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, the 1500s to the 1800s, and not "present day" - and while his contributions to the philosophy of the time were considerable, they were not original, but represented a return to Classical philosophy from a time of religious mysticism.)
Given the time in which he wrote, Descartes' intention was to separate rationality from mysticism, but his own theories were widely misapplied and misinterpreted to separate rationality from emotion. This is evident in the field of psychology: Sigmund Freud, himself, was a neurologist by training, but the founding principle of his approach to psychology was that rational behavior was normal and desirable, and human emotions are undesirable in that the interfere with the rational faculty. This premise has been accepted and perpetuated to the present day.
Antonio Damasio is a Portuguese-born neurologist, who has been a leading figure in neuroscience for the past few decades, working at the University of Iowa and University of Southern California, where he heads the Brain and Creativity Institute.
His discoveries in terms of thought and emotion are based on research into the function of the human brain that contradict the paradigm of the rational/emotional schism. The two are not separate, conflicting forces, but steps in the rational process. More importantly, emotion precedes logic - our initial reaction to environmental stimulus is emotional, and rationality follows.
The critical error that many seem to make in interpreting Damasio's work is in taking it to the extreme: Damasio did not assert that we are driven by emotion to the exclusion of rationality, merely that the two are linked, and the latter is optional.
In his later works, Damasio expresses great irritation at the distortion of his findings" "I did not suggest that emotions are a substitute for reason or that emotions decide for us."
That said, it remains true in some instances, but not in all instances, people do not engage their rational faculty but react purely on emotion, or that reason is used to justify an emotional response.
It is also considered that "good" decision making cannot dispense with either: to completely suppress and exclude emotion from the decision-making process is just as much an error as to completely suppress and exclude logic. Both must be considered in arriving at a sound decision.
What Is The Paradigm Shift?
Contrasting Descartes to Damasio, the fundamental shift in the paradigm is merely the insertion of a factor that was previously omitted. Descartes maintains that perception leads to logic. Damasio maintains that perception leads to emotion, and emotion leads to logic.
The author provides a handful of examples of seemingly irrational behavior that has a logical basis:
- We would consider a person who is not afraid of snakes to be irrational, but that person may have a fondness for reptiles and experience in handling them that lead him to be attracted to them and confident
- We would consider a person who refuses food when they are hungry to be irrational, but that person may be on a diet and pursuing the goal of being slimmer or healthier.
- We would consider a person who prevents their spouse from getting life-saving medical treatment to be irrational, but that person may be aware their spouse has an untreatable condition and is in constant pain
In each of these instances, the experience and memory of the subject in question causes them to have a different emotional reaction to stimulus than others. It does not mean their actions are devoid of emotion and based solely upon reason.
(EN: This touches on my own understanding of emotion, as the product of reason as well as its precursor. We respond with uninformed emotion to our first experiences, but thereafter, our experience causes us to have a different emotional reaction than others. Logic and emotion are therefore not in conflict, and I would go so far as to say that they are not different things at all - but are interdependent functions, such as short-term and long-term memory.)
Damasio's Somatic Marker Theorem
Damasio's concept of "somatic markers" applies to the way in which past experience leads us to interpret new situations. That is, we must react immediately to events in real time, and to do so, we rely on emotion to guide us to take action without having to pause to apply reason.
But this is not done in a raw and unguided manner. Each experience we have creates a label or "marker" on the things we perceive.
Consider the example of the way people feel about dogs. As children, we have an innate curiosity about all things, as we have no experience to guide us. But if a child's first encounter with a dog is unpleasant (he is bitten, or barked at), he forms a negative association: dog equals pain, dog equals danger, dog equals bad. This association is the marker.
At our next encounter with a dog, our mind references this marker, and we have an immediate reaction to be afraid and defensive, even before we consciously consider our past experience and apply reason. This is said to be a "gut" reaction, but different people experience it in different ways - for some, it feels intestinal, for others, it feels spinal - so Damasio terms in "somatic" (a general term meaning "of the body").
If this second encounter is pleasant, a friendly animal, then the somatic marker is less powerful - or if it is likewise unpleasant, it reinforces and strengthens to somatic marker. This is carried forward when we have yet a third encounter with a dog.
This process continues throughout our lives: we evaluate our experience against these somatic markers, then evaluate and revise the somatic markers as a result of our experience.
This notion is foundational in mitigating phobias (reducing the degree to which markers are negative), but it can also be applied to heightening desire (increasing the degree to which markers are positive). Both of these are of grate interest to brand marketing.
(EN: Ultimately, I think this afrees entirely with my own understanding of emotion, per my previous comment.)