Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708.
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708.
J Neurosci. 2022 Oct 5;42(40):7624-7633. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2434-21.2022. Epub 2022 Sep 5.
Efforts to explain complex human decisions have focused on competing theories emphasizing utility and narrative mechanisms. These are difficult to distinguish using behavior alone. Both narrative and utility theories have been proposed to explain juror decisions, which are among the most consequential complex decisions made in a modern society. Here, we asked jury-eligible male and female subjects to rate the strength of a series of criminal cases while recording the resulting patterns of brain activation. We compared patterns of brain activation associated with evidence accumulation to patterns of brain activation derived from a large neuroimaging database to look for signatures of the cognitive processes associated with different models of juror decision-making. Evidence accumulation correlated with multiple narrative processes, including reading and recall. Of the cognitive processes traditionally viewed as components of utility, activation patterns associated with uncertainty, but not value, were more active with stronger evidence. Independent of utility and narrative, activations linked to reasoning and relational logic also correlated with increasing evidence. Hierarchical modeling of cognitive processes associated with evidence accumulation supported a more prominent role for narrative in weighing evidence in complex decisions. However, utility processes were also associated with evidence accumulation. These complementary findings support an emerging view that integrates utility and narrative processes in complex decisions. The last decade has seen a sharply increased interest in narrative as a central cognitive process in human decision-making and as an important factor in the evolution of human societies. However, the roles of narrative versus utility models of decision-making remain hotly debated. While available models frequently produce similar behavioral predictions, they rely on different cognitive processes and so their roles can be separated using the right neural tests. Here, we use brain imaging during mock juror decisions to show that cognitive processes associated with narrative, and to a lesser extent utility, were engaged while subjects evaluated evidence. These results are consistent with interactions between narrative and utility processes during complex decision-making.
为了解释复杂的人类决策，人们一直致力于研究竞争理论，这些理论强调效用和叙事机制。仅通过行为很难区分这两种理论。叙事理论和效用理论都被提出用于解释陪审员的决策，这些决策是现代社会中做出的最具影响力的复杂决策之一。在这里，我们要求有陪审团资格的男性和女性受试者在记录由此产生的大脑激活模式的同时，对一系列刑事案件的强度进行评分。我们将与证据积累相关的大脑激活模式与来自大型神经影像学数据库的大脑激活模式进行了比较，以寻找与不同陪审员决策模型相关的认知过程的特征。证据积累与多种叙事过程相关，包括阅读和回忆。在传统上被视为效用组成部分的认知过程中，与不确定性相关的激活模式比与价值相关的激活模式更活跃。与效用和叙事无关，与推理和关系逻辑相关的激活也与证据的增加相关。与证据积累相关的认知过程的分层模型支持在复杂决策中叙事在权衡证据方面发挥更重要作用的观点。然而，效用过程也与证据积累有关。这些互补的发现支持了一种新兴的观点，即效用和叙事过程在复杂决策中是相互结合的。过去十年，人们对叙事作为人类决策的核心认知过程以及在人类社会进化中的重要因素的兴趣急剧增加。然而，叙事与效用决策模型的作用仍然存在激烈的争论。虽然现有的模型经常产生相似的行为预测，但它们依赖于不同的认知过程，因此可以使用正确的神经测试来分离它们的作用。在这里，我们使用模拟陪审员决策期间的大脑成像来表明，在受试者评估证据时，与叙事相关的认知过程（在一定程度上与效用相关）被激活。这些结果与复杂决策过程中叙事和效用过程之间的相互作用一致。
