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Brain scans link concern for justice with reason, not emotion

news.uchicago.edu

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Re: Brain scans link concern for justice with reason, not emotion

#11

Post by kolbe »

amirmc wrote: post #6
Ensorceled wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why it does not follow instead of just putting not in italics for all the non-psychology PhD's in the crowd?

I'll try breaking it down, along with the questions that came to mind as I read it. ... people with high justice sensitivity showed more activity than average participants in parts of the brain associated with higher-order cognition. What is the activity being measured relative to? One of the issues with any brain imaging study is the baseline condition you make comparisons with. To state that you saw more activity i…

Is this baseline you speak of a personal baseline for each participant in the study? Or is it like a canonical brain state that all other brains are compared to?

And pardon my leap of logic here (I'm not a neuroscientist), but why would a personal baseline affect the results? A personal baseline, intuitively, would not add to the goal of the study and could negate results that they're looking for. That is, a logical person will probably be more logical in his baseline, too. So, logical_observation - logical_baseline = 0. But what they're looking for is simply whether logic is being used in response to the experiment. And I wouldn't think the goal of the study is to find out whether people are more logical than their baseline, just whether they're more logical than other people who make different assessments.

Whereas, if we understand, based on previous work, that X things happen in an MRI when thinking logically and Y things happen when acting emotionally, why can't we simply correlate observations to these known states?

Re: Brain scans link concern for justice with reason, not emotion

#13

Post by chestnut-tree »

th0br0 wrote: post #12

Did anybody else think of fair people as pretty people and not just people as the article states?

Yes, I thought the title "Fair people are driven by reason, not emotion" refererred to pale-skinned or white people ("fair-minded" would have been a little bit clearer). The actual headline on the linked article is "Brain scans link concern for justice with reason, not emotion".

Re: Brain scans link concern for justice with reason, not emotion

#16

Post by zacinbusiness »

crusso wrote: post #7
spydum wrote: post #5

For some reason fMRI terrifies me in the sense that it will be misused to predict human behavior. The idea that we can effectively read your brain leads to the assumption that we can understand the behaviors, and I think that is false.

I understand your fears. Look at how lie detector (polygraph) tests are still used and how the public generally assumes that they're a reliable indication of veracity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Validity As with many technologies, though, you can't be a Luddite and slow progress because the general population might misunderstand it.

My grandfather, who was chief detective for the PD in the town in which I grew up, broke my childhood heart when he explained to me how unreliable polygraph tests are. I had seen so many thriller films and detective films that relied on polygraphs, and then one day he said something to the effect of "Those are all B.S., we see guys every day that can fake their way through a lie detector and smile while he's doing it. I don't trust them and I don't trust any man who does."

Re: Brain scans link concern for justice with reason, not emotion

#17

Post by zacinbusiness »

booruguru wrote: post #8

Fairness is inherently rational so I don't understand why this is some kind of revelation.

Is it? I wonder how one's sense of fairness is altered by their relative emotional state? For instance, someone who has been emotionally compromised by seeing scenes of brutality may well vote a harsher penalty on the perpetrator of a similar act than someone who has not (I'm thinking childhood abuse, rape, that sort of thing). Note that I am in no way saying that abuse or rape is justifiable or anything, or that there shouldn't be harsh penalties, I'm just saying that I wonder if someone who has experienced a brutal crime may have a stronger "justice response" to similar crimes than someone who has not. My reason for thinking this is to consider how rapes are handled in the U.S. where many (male) lawmakers treat it as a relatively minor situation while at the same time they have never, and likely will never, experience anything similar.

Re: Brain scans link concern for justice with reason, not emotion

#18

Post by judk »

amirmc wrote: post #3

"During the behavior-evaluation exercise, people with high justice sensitivity showed more activity than average participants in parts of the brain associated with higher-order cognition. Brain areas commonly linked with emotional processing were not affected. The conclusion was clear, Decety said: “Individuals who are sensitive to justice and fairness do not seem to be emotionally driven. Rather, they are cognitivel…

fMRI psych studies were debunked by the dead fish paper years ago. (In short: investigators misreport the measurement apparatus's random noise as significant results.) Why does the neuro community still publish fMRI psych papers? Is it is a case homeopahy where the quacks are the ones doing the peer rebiews and the entire specialty is a most cause?

Re: Brain scans link concern for justice with reason, not emotion

#19

Post by nealabq »

spydum wrote: post #5

For some reason fMRI terrifies me in the sense that it will be misused to predict human behavior. The idea that we can effectively read your brain leads to the assumption that we can understand the behaviors, and I think that is false.

The thought of law enforcement, or anyone with power, scanning your brain and passing judgement is indeed terrifying. Not only is it an invasion of the private sandbox of your mind, it seems unsubtle, error prone, and open to abuse.

Such judgement appears unfair, and so (to misapply the conclusions of the original paper) rational people should be uncomfortable with it.

Re: Brain scans link concern for justice with reason, not emotion

#20

Post by judk »

spydum wrote: post #5

For some reason fMRI terrifies me in the sense that it will be misused to predict human behavior. The idea that we can effectively read your brain leads to the assumption that we can understand the behaviors, and I think that is false.

Luckily, fMRI studies don't have predictive power in the real world.

Hm, that is unlucky I supposed fMRI is the modern lie detector, where the test administrator just makes up results that the authorities rely on.

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