Expert Advice Shuts Your Brain Down - ABC News

[dracodraconis]

Expert Advice Shuts Your Brain Down - ABC News

Brains scans of people making financial decisions seems to indicate that  the decision-making parts of their brains shut down when the person is presented with the advice of experts.

Comments

[ms-danson.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... That puts and interesting spin on "appeal to authority".

[dracodraconis.livejournal.com]

Assuming, of course, the brain scans are worth much. There is considerable debate about the validity of a lot of these "brain scan" studies.

[siderea]

No, not particularly. The author -- and possibly the researcher -- uses very biased language to imply that this was an unconscious effect upon inert subjects, when nothing in the research as reported indicates that. This is my new favorite example of both How Behaviorism is Dumb and/or Deceitful and How Not to Report on Brain Studies.

Consider the experiment: subject is asked whether the sky over the research facility is clear or overcast, and he can't see directly for himself. He can only see out a window into some sort of air shaft. In the control condition, that's it. In the experimental, there's a meteorologist on the roof he can call and ask. Brain scans report that "the decision making part of the brain 'turns off' upon talking to the meteorologist". DUH. Why would you continue to try to figure out an answer when you were TOLD what it was, by someone you have every reason to think knows better than you. The subject's brain isn't "turning off", it's coming to a conclusion.

Unless the researchers are demonstrating a discrepancy between the self-reported behavior of the subjects and their scans, the rhetorical implication of "brain region turns off" is 100% Grade B Moral Panic-Enducing Bull Shit.

[ms-danson.livejournal.com]

I stand corrected. You're right... I should have read closer instead of skimming.