[SOUND] So today we will discuss neurobiological mechanisms of decision making, and we will focus on emotional aspects of decision making. To start this lecture, I would like to present you, few interesting studies with quite surprising results. So imagine that you have to hold a pencil in your teeth. Do you think that this manipulation can change your evaluation of funny cartoons? An interesting study shows that indeed, this manipulation can effect your emotional relation of cartoons. In this study, participants, participated in three different conditions, in one condition, they had to keep a pen in their teeth, and in another condition, they had to keep a pen in their lips, and in a third condition thy simply kept the pen in their hand. Surprisingly, the, this simple manipulation, changed the ratings of funniness of cartoons. As you see here in this table, they found cartoons to be the funniest, when they kept their pen in their teeth. And they found the cartoons as least funny, when they kept the pencil or the pen in their lips. So, how can we explain this strange result? Perhaps because when we keep this pen in our teeth it evokes an artificial smile on our face. And this smile, changes our ratings of funniness of objects. So let's make a look to another example. Imagine that you are exposed to different photos of neutral faces, faces with neutral expressions, but shortly before these faces. Another face is presented, it is presented only for 16 milliseconds, very briefly, so this presentation is so fast that you are unable to see this first face. Some of these faces that are presented for the very short period of time, they have angry expression. Some are neutral, and some are actually have happy expressions. So, this procedures called masking procedure. So, these faces with emotional expressions, are presented so fast, and they are masked by the next neutral mask. That you are unable to recognize these faces, so we present these emotional expressions subliminally, subconsciously. Do you think that this brief very fast presentation, of emotional expressions, can modulate your consumption behavior? So in this study, subjects, after the exposure, after their subliminal exposure to emotional expressions, were asked to put as much drink as they wish to a glass. And next to cosu, consume as much as they wish. Offers us a drink. So, result shows that people put to the glass, more of this drink. After the subliminal, subconscious exposure to happy faces, than to neutral faces, and they put the least amount of drink, if they were subliminally, subconsciously exposed to angry faces. And, they also consumed more of this drink, if they were exposed to happy faces subliminally, subconsciously. So, this interesting result shows that our consumption can be modulated by unconscious presentation of emotional stimuli. Let's move to more economic situations. So, for example, our economic decisions, are effected by the so called temporal discounting. Temporal discounting is our feature that basically indicates that we prefer immediate rewards to the delayed rewards. We like to get money immediately. We do not like when money are delayed in time. So, for example, this, our preference for immediate rewards, is used by lottery. When people win substantial amount of money in lotteries, they quite often get an offer. They can select between the half of the total sum immediately, but get it next day. Or, they actually can get the total sum they win but this sum will be presented them in portions, and quite often, these portions will be distributed along different period of time. So, maybe people prefer to get money immediately. And only half of the money in this situation. And they actually do not like to get the total sum, but delayed in time. This our aspect of decision making, can be characterized by the individual discount parameter, called k. So normally, we can test this parameter by offering people different choices. They can, for example, select between a smaller sum but tomorrow, and a larger sum, but in a long period of time, for example, in a few days. So with this procedure we can test temporal discounting parameter of each subject. Do you think that our temporal discounting parameter, can be modulated by the photos of [COUGH] sexy females? And this interesting study shows. That pretty women photos of pretty females can substantially modulate our preference for immediate rewards. As you see here the presentation of photos of opposite sex faces, increase temporal discounting parameter. So people start to be more impatient. Especially you see that this effect, is pronounce for males. So, even the fundamental aspects of our financial decision making, the temporal discounting parameter, is modulated by the presentation of pretty opposite sex faces. And let's now move to even more relevant example relevant for economics. Do you thinks that, the stock market return, can be effected by the weather? This interesting study, shows that sunshine is highly correlated, with the daily stock returns. So, this study investigated 26 leading stock exchanges, and it found that stock return, is affected by the weather. How can we explain this strange result? Perhaps because investors and brokers are affected by the weather, their mood is affected by weather. So, and mood, emotional status, can change financial decisions. So, to understand all of these strange results, we have to perhaps assume that emotions contribute to our decision making. So let's try to understand the neuronal mechanism for emotions, and also how emotions can sometimes promote maybe official decisions, and sometimes perhaps leads to quite disadvantaged of decisions. So, you already know this photo. And in this photo, you can easily recognize a dog at the center of the screen. So, cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, spend a little time to understand how this very strange noisy pattern, is decoded by our brain and how the image internal representation of the dog is produced by our neuronal populations. But here we face a kind of an abstract shape. An abstract dog. But there is no abstract dog in real life. There is a real dog, and evoke emotions. For example, if this is dog of our son or this is a dog of our daughter, it can trigger strong positive emotions. Sometimes the dog can trigger also extreme sadness, so in addition to the cognitive processing of information, we also extract certain emotional information. So, there are two sorts of information encoded in the visual objects or in other objects the cognitive and information regarding the shape, for example, of the object, and emotional information, are related to the attached emotional values of this object. So let's try to understand, how do we process, how do we extract emotional information from the outside world. Some, of course, stimuli have innate emotional meanings. So we shouldn't learn that this stimulus is emotional. Of course when we're attacked by an aggressive animal. So we automatically react to this situation. So, we an innate mechanism, to extract emotional meanings of certain situation. In addition of course we have to learn quite often, which situations, which objects have emotional meanings. So in our brain we have two basically systems or two emotional interacting system. One system is dedicated to the automatic reaction to innate emotional stimuli. And second one is dedicated to learning of emotional meanings. And we will see today that especially the second system, is important for financial decisions. So, why do we react automatically to some sort of emotional stimuli? I think it is quite useful to engage now an interesting concept from [UNKNOWN] Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz, suggested long time ago that our cognitive perceptual categories also adaptations to the specific environment, is the same way as the fin of a fish is adapted to water. So, our cognitive systems, the way we perceive this world, is an also adaptation for our specific environment, we see this world in a specific way. Because we are adaptive to this environment. So, I will just illustrate it by a couple of examples. So, the shape of animal is an adaptation for the environment. As you see here, the shape of the dolphin, and the shape of the shark, as well as the shape of a bird, or even the shape of a airplane, is in an adaptation to certain environment. We can tell a lot about the environment just by analyzing the shape of the animal, for example. So, the shape of the animal depicts environment. In the same way when we process external information, our cognitive structures are also adapted to the specific environment. And as you see, for example, in this graph, I will present to you the same photo but the photo is rotated here. So you see these two copies. And interestingly, the upper version is perceived as a depression of the surface, as a [UNKNOWN] and the lower version of the same photo basically is perceived as a hill. So, why do you think we interpret the same photo ,very differently, if the same photo is rotated? So, upper version is clearly perceived as a [UNKNOWN] as a depression of the surface. And the lower one as a hill. As an extension of the surface. Perhaps we interpret it differently because of the different light distribution on the surface of this photo. So, our environment is a very specific environment. So, normally white comes from above, so our visual system automatically recognize the distribution of, the specific distribution of white on the surface, and interpret these two versions of the same photo differently, simply because of the distribution of the light. In our environment, in our planet, light goes from above. If you would imagine another environment, another hypothetical planet, where light goes from different location. These people on this planet would interpret this picture quite differently. Now, the same adaptations present in our brain for more complex stimuli. For example, make a look to this photo. Do you see anything unusual with this face? So perhaps. Yeah, this is a face, this is a sculpture, this is a mask. And there is nothing really special about this face. But I will slightly rotate this object. And you will realize, that this is the opposite side of the mask. So if I will move this mask back. You do not see, that, you do not perceive this object, as a, opposite side of the mask. This face clearly, pop out of the surface. You do not perceive this face,as a depression of the surface. So, we have a clear illusion that face is normal, so I will bring automatically, a reconstructed normal face and to we never see in our life an inverted face, so our brain automatically reconstructs the normal face, and simply because we leave for thousands, millions of years in social groups and we are surrounded by faces. So our brain is adapted for faces, and our brain can take specific face-related theories, that are automatically reconstructed objects, into normal faces. So, we do not see an inverted face, we see a normal face. And that's why we do have an innate mechanism to process certain information. And the same idea can be applied for emotional stimuli. So now would mention another theory suggested by ethologists. By Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen, suggested that specific reactions, can be triggered by specific stimuli. So, they call it, this hypothesis, Innate releasing mechanisms. So, particularly behavior, can be stimulated or released by specific stimuli. So, they suggested that our neural system works as a filter, that filter important, relevant information, that can trigger or release specific behavioral patterns. So, innate releasing mechanisms suggest that specific beca, behavior, can be elicited by specific stimuli. And surprisingly, many emotional stimuli are releasers. They automatically release our reactions, and they also automatically release also emotional reactions. So here you see an example. So here, etologists try to select a particular sound that is attractive for female insect. So, he check different versions of the sound, and finally, he detected the releaser, the emotional stimulus that triggers sexual behavior. So, with this sound the researcher was able to attract female insects. So this is an example of the releasing mechanism. The specific stimulus can trigger specific behavioral reaction. And in this case, this specific emotional stimulus, that triggers the specific emotional reaction of sexual behaviour. So, there are famous examples illustrating that our nervous system, is tuned to some objects. So here, a bird is offered by different versions of eggs. So, one of this egg, is a natural egg for this bird. Others are various versions of the egg. So, scientists can investigate how specific is a releaser. Can we cheat people by modulation of the releasers. By modulation of different stimuli and different objects. So here you see a famous example, a gull is offered by the, a normal egg, and hyper egg. This egg is much larger than the normal egg, so here scientists try to create a hyper releaser, hyper emotional stimulus, that kind of imitates the releaser, imitates the natural emotional signal, and hyper emphasizes some of the features. So what do you think would be the decision of the gull? Whether it will select the normal, smaller egg, or it will sit on the larger version, or the hyper version of the egg. So in reality, it selected the hyper-stimulus. Why? Because this hyper-stimulus imitates an hyper-emphasize emotional features of the object and it triggers very effectively, an automatic, emotional parental behavior of this bird. So, we actually phase the same, hyper releasers in our life. So, for example, here you see on the top of the picture, a normal shape of the baby's head. And this shape is quite pleasant to many of us. But artificially, you can create a hyper releaser. You can hyper emphasize some of the aspect, aspects of this face. You can create a, a larger head. And this hyper releaser will trigger our positive emotions, much more effectively. So we can create hyper releaser, hyper-emotional stimuli also for us. And this idea is used by, for example, toy manufacturers. As they produce toys, we perceive them as very pleasant, very emotional. Simply because toys, they imitate natural emotional stimuli, and some of the aspects of this natural emotional stimuli, are hyper-emphasized in order to create the hyper releaser, in order to stimulate certain behavioral patterns. So here, you see in the illustration that we normally react quite positively to babies, to young animals, and also to toys. And toys, simply, are imitating natural emotion stimuli, creating hyper releasers, hyper-emotional stimuli. So interestingly, if we will make a look to cartoons, we will find, different, very successful characters, that actually have very childish appearance. They imitate children. They have specific shape that triggers positive emotions. If we will make you look to the evolution of Mickey Mouse, over the few decades, we will find that Mickey Mouse became more and more child in appearance. So he has, his head became larger and larger. More and more successful in triggering our emotions. So now, Mickey Mouse is a, kind of a hyper releaser, evoking our emotions. So, what do we see here, is that our specific emotions, and our specific reactions, can be triggered by very specific stimuli. So some stimuli surrounding us, have innate emotional meaning. [SOUND] [BLANK_AUDIO]
