Automatic decision-making prevents us harming others

Date:
October 15, 2020
Source:
University of Birmingham
Summary:
The processes our brains use to avoid harming other people are
automatic and reflexive - and quite different from those used when
avoiding harm to ourselves, according to new research.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
The processes our brains use to avoid harming other people are automatic
and reflexive -- and quite different from those used when avoiding harm
to ourselves, according to new research.


==========================================================================
A team based in the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford in the UK
and Yale University in the US investigated the different approaches to
avoiding pain for the first time. They found that when learning to avoid harming ourselves, our decision-making tends to be more forward-looking
and deliberative.

The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, could shed light on disorders such as psychopathy where
individuals experience problems learning or making choices to avoid
harming others.

"The ability to learn which of our actions help to avoid harming others
is fundamental for our well-being -- and for societal cohesion," said
Dr Patricia Lockwood, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Human
Brain Health at the University of Birmingham. "Many of our decisions
have an impact on other people, and we are often faced with choices
where we need to learn and decide what will help others and stop them
from being harmed." The experiment carried out by the team involved
scanning the brains of a cohort of 36 participants (18 men and 16 women),
while they were asked to make a series of decisions. Participants had
to learn which decisions would lead to a painful electric shock being
delivered either to themselves or to another individual.

Researchers found a striking difference between the two decision-making processes. They found that individuals made automatic, efficient choices
when learning to avoid harming others. However, when learning to avoid
harming themselves, choices were more deliberative. People were willing
to repeat choices that had previously led to harm if they thought it
would produce better results in the future.

The team was also able to identify specific areas of the brain that
are involved in these different decision-making processes. They found
the thalamus -- a small, structure located just above the brain stem
that has a role in pain processing -- was more active when people were successfully avoiding harm to others. In contrast connections elsewhere
in the brain, that are important for learning, became stronger when people choose to repeat an action that harmed someone else. The same connections
were not present when people repeated an action that harmed themselves, suggesting different brain systems.

Senior author Dr Molly Crockett, Assistant Professor of Psychology at
Yale University, added: "Our findings suggest that the brain's learning
systems are primed to avoid directly harming others. In the modern world,
of course, many social harms are indirect: our choices might support
the manufacture of unethical products or accelerate climate change. How
people learn about the more distant moral consequences of their actions
is an important question for future study."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Birmingham. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Patricia L. Lockwood, Miriam C. Klein-Flu"gge, Ayat Abdurahman,
Molly J.

Crockett. Model-free decision making is prioritized when learning
to avoid harming others. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 2020; 202010890 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2010890117 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201015101811.htm

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