During the past two decades, brain research has affected the balance between competing approaches within economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology. If empirically further endorsed, then the arguments presented in Pessoa's The Cognitive-Emotional Brain (Reference Pessoa2013) deserve to have a similar influence on theorizing in these fields, as well as on the efforts to merge neuroscience with the social sciences. To explain why and how, we start by providing an overview of the impact that brain research has had on social theories.
In the 1990s, it became increasingly apparent that the tenets of rational choice theory (Becker Reference Becker1976) are contradicted by the growing body of neuroscientific insights into how human decision making is influenced by emotions (e.g., Damasio Reference Damasio1994; LeDoux Reference LeDoux2000). At the time, rational choice analysis had become the predominant approach in political science and in economics (where it is often called “expected utility theory”) and had also become quite influential in sociology. Its impact on anthropology had been less significant but not negligible. Rational choice analysis presumes that agents (be they individuals, households, or organizations) are able to calculate and choose the one option, from all those available, that gives themselves the highest satisfaction or utility. It thus depicts decision makers as highly informed, self-centered, and calculative. Emotions and feelings are conspicuously absent from the decision-making processes postulated by rational choice analysis. Neuroscientists (Koenigs et al. Reference Koenigs, Young, Adolphs, Tranel, Cushman, Hauser and Damasio2007; Krajbich et al. Reference Krajbich, Adolphs, Tranel, Denburg and Camerer2009), however, provided evidence suggesting that human decision making is to a significant extent dependent on emotions. This neuroscientific critique of rational choice theory's premises coincided with accumulating empirical evidence from the social sciences that its predictions were frequently inaccurate as well (e.g., Henrich et al. Reference Henrich, Boyd, Bowles, Camerer, Fehr, Gintis and Mcelreath2001). Later these growing doubts were joined by the widespread conviction that the outbreak of the 2008–2009 financial crisis had been caused by “human foibles” not captured by rational choice theory (Leiser et al. Reference Leiser, Bourgeois and Benita2010).
This confluence of scientific developments and social forces induced social scientists to reconsider the roles that emotions play in social life. Many social scientists have done so by building on dual-systems (or dual-process) models developed in psychology. These models distinguish between two modes of thinking and deciding (Chaiken & Trope Reference Chaiken and Trope1999; Kahneman Reference Kahneman2003b; Stanovich & West Reference Stanovich and West2000). In the first of these two modes, often dubbed System 1, thinking and deciding are fast, automatic, intuitive, effortless, slow-learning, and emotional. By contrast, in System 2, thinking and deciding are slow, deliberate, effortful, rule-governed, emotionally neutral, as well as relatively adaptable. Often, it is assumed that these modes form distinct neural networks in the brain, one of which (System 1) is evolutionary older than the other. According to dual-systems models, human cognition and decision making are routinely processed in System 1. Although less precise, this mode allows people to choose satisfactory courses of action more often than not. It is occasionally overridden and corrected by System 2, which is slower and demands more effort, but is also more accurate. The consequence of people's preponderant reliance on System 1 is that although human decision making is often adequate for life's purposes, it still displays systematic biases and fallacies. These errors explain how and why humans fail to display the behavior predicted by rational choice analysis and sometimes embark on courses of action that are against their own interests.
Beyond psychology, dual-systems models have been used in other disciplines to develop such approaches as behavioral economics (Smith Reference Smith2005; Thaler Reference Thaler1993), behavioral law (Sunstein Reference Sunstein2000), and behavioral public policy (Shafir Reference Shafir2012). These approaches employ the biases and fallacies highlighted by dual-systems models to explain a set of seemingly irrational behaviors in finance, consumption, voting, law abidance, and so forth. Their academic popularity should not be underrated. During the past 20 years, chairs, graduate programs, academic societies, annual conferences, and handbooks have sprung up, thus institutionalizing these approaches. In 2002, Kahneman and Smith shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for their contributions to them. Yet, these are not merely academic debates. The alternative assumptions concerning human cognition and decision making that underlie rational choice analysis and behavioral approaches have rivaling implications for governance (Dow Schüll & Zaloom Reference Dow Schüll and Zaloom2011). If humans are viewed as well informed and rational, then it becomes easier to justify limiting state involvement in people's lives. If, however, individuals are seen as “predictably irrational” (Ariely Reference Ariely2008) and “unreasonably short-sighted” (Kahneman Reference Kahneman2011, p. 286), then benign state intervention appears prudent. Indeed, in recent years, both the United Kingdom and United States governments have established behavioral insight teams to inform future policy making. Finally, behavioral economics has had a significant influence on the development of neuroeconomics (Camerer et al. Reference Camerer, Loewenstein and Prelec2004). Not all neuroeconomists are behavioral economists, but most of them are. Much effort in neuroeconomics has therefore gone into attempts to uncover the distinct neural networks subserving the emotional/intuitive and cognitive/deliberative modes of decision making (e.g., Albrecht et al. Reference Albrecht, Volz, Sutter, Laibson and von Cramon2010).
As Pessoa acknowledges (p. 250), his book provides a welter of arguments against the dual-systems models that have underpinned the recent behavioral turn in the social sciences. He concludes that labels such as perception, cognition, and emotion may be of use for some descriptive purposes, but such labels do not map onto behavior or the brain. Herein lies the importance of The Cognitive-Emotional Brain for the social sciences in general, and for the ongoing efforts to bridge the social sciences and brain research in particular. If Pessoa's arguments are empirically valid, then the attempts to create more realistic models of human decision making by adding a category of apparently irrational emotions to supposedly more rational cognition are deeply flawed and doomed to fail. This is significant in view of the large impact that behavioral approaches have had on the social sciences, neuroeconomics, and policy making during the last two decades.
Pessoa's rejection (Reference Pessoa2013) of the main premise on which dual-systems models and the new behavioral approaches in economics, law, and political science are built – namely, that emotion and cognition can be treated as separate – is conjoined by other critiques. Volz and Gigerenzer (Reference Volz, Gigerenzer, Papageorgiou, Christopoulos and Smirnakis2014) have noted that the results of neuroeconomic experiments have been contradictory, in that specific brain regions have been associated with intuitive judgments in some studies and with deliberate judgments in others. Keren and Schul (Reference Keren and Schul2009) have argued that lack of conceptual precision has rendered dual-systems models, behavioral economics, and neuroeconomics hard to falsify. Last, scholars have criticized the psychological experiments that have purportedly shown the existence of biases and errors in human decision making. For example, Stein (Reference Stein2013) has argued that the choices made in these experiments can easily be interpreted as rational rather than fallacious – for example, by judging them against the standard of Baconian (as opposed to Bayesian) probability. Pessoa's book, in conjunction with these other critiques, puts into doubt whether the attempts to link neuroscience with economics, political science, and other social sciences have started from the right conceptual place.
If so, then this would be a regrettable false start, as brain research and the social sciences can, in principle, support each other. Neuroscience can help ensure that social theories are grounded in empirically valid assumptions regarding cognition, emotions, and decision making. Less often recognized is that brain research itself can also be improved with the help of social theories. The latter can offer conceptually precise, and cross-culturally valid formulations of the social phenomena that neuroscientists have started to investigate, such as ethical behavior, social interaction, beauty, or crime prevention (Turner Reference Turner2012). In addition, social theories can help neuroscientists become more aware of the political and social biases that they may implicitly display in their research on some of these topics (Whitehead Reference Whitehead2012). It is therefore important to continue to build bridges between neuroscience and the social sciences – but henceforth with the help of social theories that are compatible with the latest understandings of the cognitive-emotional brain.
What might these social theories look like? If Pessoa's analysis is empirically valid, then this has two implications for theorizing within economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology. First, theories in these fields should be based on the recognition that emotion, perception, and cognition are highly intertwined. This is the central message of The Cognitive-Emotional Brain. Second, Pessoa can be read as supporting the notion that although there may be a rich interlocking of human cognition, emotion, and decision making, this occurs against a background of functional and anatomical constraints. Even though the embedding of older brain regions (such as the amygdala and hypothalamus) into new neural networks can generate novel functions (pp. 34–36), they still serve an organism's ability to respond to relevant stimuli in its environment, thereby promoting organism survival, maintenance of well-being, and social cohesion. Thus, an elaboration of older functional systems integral to core homeostatic needs has likely emerged over the course of human evolution to support richer patterns of interaction between an organism and its physical and social environment. In this process, each prior form of neural organization would constrain and shape the emergence of new capabilities; a perspective that has been widely explored within neuroscience (e.g., Dehaene & Cohen Reference Dehaene and Cohen2007; Damasio Reference Damasio2010, pp. 251–79). At this point in its development, it would be hard for neuroscience to specify which precise neural constraints might apply to higher-order decision making and social interaction. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that such constraints operate.
Fortunately, there are social theories that meet these two criteria. A prominent example is the cultural theory developed by anthropologists Douglas and Thompson and political scientists Ellis and Wildavsky (Douglas Reference Douglas1982; Thompson et al. Reference Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky1990). This approach distinguishes among four fundamental ways of organizing, perceiving, justifying, and emotionally experiencing social relations – namely, individualism, egalitarianism, hierarchy, and fatalism. It posits that every social domain (from the family unit to the international level) is characterized by the waxing and waning, and merging and splitting, of these four “ways of life.” As such, cultural theory does not distinguish between perception, cognition, and emotion. Each of its ways of life includes perceptions (of human nature, time, risk, time, space, etc.), cognition (such as information-processing styles), as well as emotional likes and dislikes (Douglas & Ney Reference Douglas and Ney1998). Furthermore, the approach recognizes that human behavior and decision making are constrained. Cultural theory argues that any social domain is forever being constructed by the interplay between a limited set of elementary ways of perceiving, knowing, behaving, and experiencing. Hence, it reconciles the wide variety and change of social life with clear constraints on cognition, emotions, decision making, and social interaction.
Douglas's cultural theory is not the only social science approach that meets the criteria outlined above. Others include the relational models theory developed by Fiske (Reference Fiske1991) and the heuristics program established by Gigerenzer and colleagues (Hertwig et al. Reference Hertwig and Hoffrage2013). Such social science frameworks appear to be compatible with, or are at least not contradicted by, the overall arguments laid out in The Cognitive-Emotional Brain. As a result, these approaches seem much more suitable pillars on which to build bridges between neuroscience and the social sciences than the “behavioral” social theories that are currently used for this purpose and that are so powerfully undermined by Pessoa's book.
During the past two decades, brain research has affected the balance between competing approaches within economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology. If empirically further endorsed, then the arguments presented in Pessoa's The Cognitive-Emotional Brain (Reference Pessoa2013) deserve to have a similar influence on theorizing in these fields, as well as on the efforts to merge neuroscience with the social sciences. To explain why and how, we start by providing an overview of the impact that brain research has had on social theories.
In the 1990s, it became increasingly apparent that the tenets of rational choice theory (Becker Reference Becker1976) are contradicted by the growing body of neuroscientific insights into how human decision making is influenced by emotions (e.g., Damasio Reference Damasio1994; LeDoux Reference LeDoux2000). At the time, rational choice analysis had become the predominant approach in political science and in economics (where it is often called “expected utility theory”) and had also become quite influential in sociology. Its impact on anthropology had been less significant but not negligible. Rational choice analysis presumes that agents (be they individuals, households, or organizations) are able to calculate and choose the one option, from all those available, that gives themselves the highest satisfaction or utility. It thus depicts decision makers as highly informed, self-centered, and calculative. Emotions and feelings are conspicuously absent from the decision-making processes postulated by rational choice analysis. Neuroscientists (Koenigs et al. Reference Koenigs, Young, Adolphs, Tranel, Cushman, Hauser and Damasio2007; Krajbich et al. Reference Krajbich, Adolphs, Tranel, Denburg and Camerer2009), however, provided evidence suggesting that human decision making is to a significant extent dependent on emotions. This neuroscientific critique of rational choice theory's premises coincided with accumulating empirical evidence from the social sciences that its predictions were frequently inaccurate as well (e.g., Henrich et al. Reference Henrich, Boyd, Bowles, Camerer, Fehr, Gintis and Mcelreath2001). Later these growing doubts were joined by the widespread conviction that the outbreak of the 2008–2009 financial crisis had been caused by “human foibles” not captured by rational choice theory (Leiser et al. Reference Leiser, Bourgeois and Benita2010).
This confluence of scientific developments and social forces induced social scientists to reconsider the roles that emotions play in social life. Many social scientists have done so by building on dual-systems (or dual-process) models developed in psychology. These models distinguish between two modes of thinking and deciding (Chaiken & Trope Reference Chaiken and Trope1999; Kahneman Reference Kahneman2003b; Stanovich & West Reference Stanovich and West2000). In the first of these two modes, often dubbed System 1, thinking and deciding are fast, automatic, intuitive, effortless, slow-learning, and emotional. By contrast, in System 2, thinking and deciding are slow, deliberate, effortful, rule-governed, emotionally neutral, as well as relatively adaptable. Often, it is assumed that these modes form distinct neural networks in the brain, one of which (System 1) is evolutionary older than the other. According to dual-systems models, human cognition and decision making are routinely processed in System 1. Although less precise, this mode allows people to choose satisfactory courses of action more often than not. It is occasionally overridden and corrected by System 2, which is slower and demands more effort, but is also more accurate. The consequence of people's preponderant reliance on System 1 is that although human decision making is often adequate for life's purposes, it still displays systematic biases and fallacies. These errors explain how and why humans fail to display the behavior predicted by rational choice analysis and sometimes embark on courses of action that are against their own interests.
Beyond psychology, dual-systems models have been used in other disciplines to develop such approaches as behavioral economics (Smith Reference Smith2005; Thaler Reference Thaler1993), behavioral law (Sunstein Reference Sunstein2000), and behavioral public policy (Shafir Reference Shafir2012). These approaches employ the biases and fallacies highlighted by dual-systems models to explain a set of seemingly irrational behaviors in finance, consumption, voting, law abidance, and so forth. Their academic popularity should not be underrated. During the past 20 years, chairs, graduate programs, academic societies, annual conferences, and handbooks have sprung up, thus institutionalizing these approaches. In 2002, Kahneman and Smith shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for their contributions to them. Yet, these are not merely academic debates. The alternative assumptions concerning human cognition and decision making that underlie rational choice analysis and behavioral approaches have rivaling implications for governance (Dow Schüll & Zaloom Reference Dow Schüll and Zaloom2011). If humans are viewed as well informed and rational, then it becomes easier to justify limiting state involvement in people's lives. If, however, individuals are seen as “predictably irrational” (Ariely Reference Ariely2008) and “unreasonably short-sighted” (Kahneman Reference Kahneman2011, p. 286), then benign state intervention appears prudent. Indeed, in recent years, both the United Kingdom and United States governments have established behavioral insight teams to inform future policy making. Finally, behavioral economics has had a significant influence on the development of neuroeconomics (Camerer et al. Reference Camerer, Loewenstein and Prelec2004). Not all neuroeconomists are behavioral economists, but most of them are. Much effort in neuroeconomics has therefore gone into attempts to uncover the distinct neural networks subserving the emotional/intuitive and cognitive/deliberative modes of decision making (e.g., Albrecht et al. Reference Albrecht, Volz, Sutter, Laibson and von Cramon2010).
As Pessoa acknowledges (p. 250), his book provides a welter of arguments against the dual-systems models that have underpinned the recent behavioral turn in the social sciences. He concludes that labels such as perception, cognition, and emotion may be of use for some descriptive purposes, but such labels do not map onto behavior or the brain. Herein lies the importance of The Cognitive-Emotional Brain for the social sciences in general, and for the ongoing efforts to bridge the social sciences and brain research in particular. If Pessoa's arguments are empirically valid, then the attempts to create more realistic models of human decision making by adding a category of apparently irrational emotions to supposedly more rational cognition are deeply flawed and doomed to fail. This is significant in view of the large impact that behavioral approaches have had on the social sciences, neuroeconomics, and policy making during the last two decades.
Pessoa's rejection (Reference Pessoa2013) of the main premise on which dual-systems models and the new behavioral approaches in economics, law, and political science are built – namely, that emotion and cognition can be treated as separate – is conjoined by other critiques. Volz and Gigerenzer (Reference Volz, Gigerenzer, Papageorgiou, Christopoulos and Smirnakis2014) have noted that the results of neuroeconomic experiments have been contradictory, in that specific brain regions have been associated with intuitive judgments in some studies and with deliberate judgments in others. Keren and Schul (Reference Keren and Schul2009) have argued that lack of conceptual precision has rendered dual-systems models, behavioral economics, and neuroeconomics hard to falsify. Last, scholars have criticized the psychological experiments that have purportedly shown the existence of biases and errors in human decision making. For example, Stein (Reference Stein2013) has argued that the choices made in these experiments can easily be interpreted as rational rather than fallacious – for example, by judging them against the standard of Baconian (as opposed to Bayesian) probability. Pessoa's book, in conjunction with these other critiques, puts into doubt whether the attempts to link neuroscience with economics, political science, and other social sciences have started from the right conceptual place.
If so, then this would be a regrettable false start, as brain research and the social sciences can, in principle, support each other. Neuroscience can help ensure that social theories are grounded in empirically valid assumptions regarding cognition, emotions, and decision making. Less often recognized is that brain research itself can also be improved with the help of social theories. The latter can offer conceptually precise, and cross-culturally valid formulations of the social phenomena that neuroscientists have started to investigate, such as ethical behavior, social interaction, beauty, or crime prevention (Turner Reference Turner2012). In addition, social theories can help neuroscientists become more aware of the political and social biases that they may implicitly display in their research on some of these topics (Whitehead Reference Whitehead2012). It is therefore important to continue to build bridges between neuroscience and the social sciences – but henceforth with the help of social theories that are compatible with the latest understandings of the cognitive-emotional brain.
What might these social theories look like? If Pessoa's analysis is empirically valid, then this has two implications for theorizing within economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology. First, theories in these fields should be based on the recognition that emotion, perception, and cognition are highly intertwined. This is the central message of The Cognitive-Emotional Brain. Second, Pessoa can be read as supporting the notion that although there may be a rich interlocking of human cognition, emotion, and decision making, this occurs against a background of functional and anatomical constraints. Even though the embedding of older brain regions (such as the amygdala and hypothalamus) into new neural networks can generate novel functions (pp. 34–36), they still serve an organism's ability to respond to relevant stimuli in its environment, thereby promoting organism survival, maintenance of well-being, and social cohesion. Thus, an elaboration of older functional systems integral to core homeostatic needs has likely emerged over the course of human evolution to support richer patterns of interaction between an organism and its physical and social environment. In this process, each prior form of neural organization would constrain and shape the emergence of new capabilities; a perspective that has been widely explored within neuroscience (e.g., Dehaene & Cohen Reference Dehaene and Cohen2007; Damasio Reference Damasio2010, pp. 251–79). At this point in its development, it would be hard for neuroscience to specify which precise neural constraints might apply to higher-order decision making and social interaction. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that such constraints operate.
Fortunately, there are social theories that meet these two criteria. A prominent example is the cultural theory developed by anthropologists Douglas and Thompson and political scientists Ellis and Wildavsky (Douglas Reference Douglas1982; Thompson et al. Reference Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky1990). This approach distinguishes among four fundamental ways of organizing, perceiving, justifying, and emotionally experiencing social relations – namely, individualism, egalitarianism, hierarchy, and fatalism. It posits that every social domain (from the family unit to the international level) is characterized by the waxing and waning, and merging and splitting, of these four “ways of life.” As such, cultural theory does not distinguish between perception, cognition, and emotion. Each of its ways of life includes perceptions (of human nature, time, risk, time, space, etc.), cognition (such as information-processing styles), as well as emotional likes and dislikes (Douglas & Ney Reference Douglas and Ney1998). Furthermore, the approach recognizes that human behavior and decision making are constrained. Cultural theory argues that any social domain is forever being constructed by the interplay between a limited set of elementary ways of perceiving, knowing, behaving, and experiencing. Hence, it reconciles the wide variety and change of social life with clear constraints on cognition, emotions, decision making, and social interaction.
Douglas's cultural theory is not the only social science approach that meets the criteria outlined above. Others include the relational models theory developed by Fiske (Reference Fiske1991) and the heuristics program established by Gigerenzer and colleagues (Hertwig et al. Reference Hertwig and Hoffrage2013). Such social science frameworks appear to be compatible with, or are at least not contradicted by, the overall arguments laid out in The Cognitive-Emotional Brain. As a result, these approaches seem much more suitable pillars on which to build bridges between neuroscience and the social sciences than the “behavioral” social theories that are currently used for this purpose and that are so powerfully undermined by Pessoa's book.