What drives people to make wrong decisions?

2023-10-09 08:37:00, Blog CNA

What drives people to make wrong decisions?

Illustrative photo

From last-minute shopping at the supermarket, wrong orders at the restaurant, to choosing between two alternative driving routes. And who is that person who has never made hasty decisions, only to realize a little later that they were too superficial and thoughtless? According to science, all the blame for these types of decisions lies with
dopamine, a neurotransmitter produced by the brain that is able to regulate the timing and ways in which we perform these actions.

Artificial variations
In a study recently published in the journal Nature Communications, an international team of researchers from several European universities, including the Institute for Systems Neuroscience at the University of Hamburg in Germany, observed the behavior of 31 male volunteers.

There they were asked to connect abstract symbols in exchange for rewards. The participants were divided into 3 groups so that the levels of dopamine present in their bodies could be artificially modified. In the first two groups, the release of this hormone increased by giving specific drugs, while the third group received a placebo that kept its amount unchanged.

Speed ??vs. accuracy
With the help of computer models and based on the reaction time of the participants, the scientists then analyzed the decision-making processes and the learning process in relation to the presence of dopamine. And it was seen that in contrast to the control group, in all people who had taken drugs the relationship between speed and accuracy of actions was significantly modified, making them faster, but also more inclined to do more
mistakes.

So it was observed that the faster they acted, the more inaccurate they were. However, it is not clear whether this automaticity can also be found in decisions not directly related to rewards, a circumstance that still needs to be explored by future researchers.

Promising models
In addition to influencing, among many other aspects, the psychological state and the functions of different cognitive abilities (such as memory and concentration), by controlling the motor response to the stimuli offered to our organism, the dopamine hormone can be essential for maintaining of balances. It seems to be able to regulate two opposing tendencies: on the one hand the desire to react slowly by reducing the margin of error, and on the other hand the desire to save time
by performing actions quickly, but at the risk of being more slightly accurate. /Adapted into Albanian by CNA