Gregory Berns: Economics is all about decision making.
That’s neuroscientist Gregory Berns. He’s investigating how the human brain makes painful financial decisions. In his lab, he simulated financial risk by asking subjects to make decisions about receiving an electric shock.
Gregory Berns: Many types of pain – whether it’s physical or emotional – utilize the same parts of the brain.
Berns observed people in an MRI while they weighed their options about physical pain.
Gregory Berns: The choice was whether to take a bigger shock sooner, or a smaller shock later. Now I can tell you that rationally, it’s like, why would anyone want to take a bigger shock?
But about half of his subjects took the bigger shock. And in the real world, Berns said, investors sometimes do the same thing – by prematurely selling a stock that’s lost value, instead of waiting for the stock to rise again.
Gregory Berns: There are pretty much two types of people. People who put things off, and people who care so much about the pain that they would just rather get it over with as quickly as possible, even if it hurts more.
Berns suggested just knowing the ways people are wired to cope with pain – or the threat of it – could help governments create sounder economic policies.
Our thanks to:
Gregory Berns
Emory University
Atlanta, GA
The ecological and economic debt my not-so-great generation of elders is leaving for the children to pay off is as unconscionable as it is gigantic.
It appears many too many leaders in our time are not even willing to do what could be judged as sensible by choosing to merely treat symptoms of climate destabilization. They appear to have given up hope of ever acknowledging and addressing the human-driven root causes of what ails the Earth. Such abysmal failures to exercise intellectual honesty, moral courage, common decency and bold action in the face of looming, clear and present dangers to future human wellbeing and environmental health are beyond the pale. I suppose a catastrophic outcome of an unimaginable kind can be expected to occur on Earth soon, now that unbridled selfishness and rampant greediness are everywhere extolled as virtues and allowed to rule the world. What a shame it is to see such a sham foisted upon the human family by the most arrogant and avaricious, self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us. What else but a colossal global shambles can result from such overshadowing perversity?