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Tam BMC Neuroscience 2010, 11 (Suppl 1):P96
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2202/11/S1 /P96BMC
NeuroscienceVariables governing emotion and decision-
making: human objectivity underlying its
subjective perceptionDavid Tam
From Nineteenth Annual Computational Neuroscience
San Antonio, TX, USA. 24-30 July 2010
Although decision-making is a logical reasoning process, it
is often influenced by the underlying emotions at the
moment of decision. The ability to recognize one's emo-
tion and assess one's judgment in order to make a prudent
decision is called "emotional intelligence." Yet, the defini-
tion and role of emotion played in these cognitive pro-
cesses are often controversial in the psychological field.
We have derived an objective model of emotion [1,2]
based on biological evolutionary principles and engineer-
ing principles that uses a computational approach to
address the role of emotions played in animals. This objec-
tive approach avoids the introspection and retrospection
of emotions by human, which created most of the contro-
versies in the field. Our emotion model describes emotion
as an internal measure of congruency (or discrepancy)
between the internally modeled world and the external
reality. Thus, emotion is essentially an error measure
between the prediction of the modeled system and the real
world. Yet these error measures also are tinted (biased) by
the perceptual assessment of the real world model.
In order to address the objectivity and subjectivity of the
perceptual biases in decision-making that is influenced by
emotion, we designed an experiment using the "ultimatum
game" as the experimental paradigm to delineate these
variables. Ultimatum game has been used extensively to
assess the irrational decision-making behavior in human
both experimentally using fMRI localizing the brain
regions for such decision task [3,4] and computationally in
behavioral economics in the past half-century [5]. It is a
simple, yet powerful paradigm, which elicits emotional
response and decision-making for conflict resolution. It is
essentially a split-the-money game, in which an
Correspondence: dtam@unt.edu
Department of Biological Sciences, University of North Texas, Denton, TX
76203, USA
O Bio ed Central 2010Tamlicensee BioMed Central LtdMeeting: CNS*2010
experimenter offers the subject a sum of money to share.
The subject can either accept or reject the offer. If the sub-
ject accepts the offer, both keep the money; if the subject
rejects the offer, both lose the money. Most often, the sub-
ject rejects the offer when he/she sees the offer as unfair.
We extend this experimental paradigm to address the
objectivity of the task compared with the subjective of the
decision-making in relation to the emotional assessment
in human subjects. The results showed that human sub-
jects are cognitive of their objectivity and consciously
report their objectivity even though their decision is based
on subjective assessment of the offer, which results in the
emotional response. The interactions of the underlying
variables in which such decisions were made under the
influence of emotions were revealed in these experiments.
Published: 20 July 2010
References
1. Tam D: EMOTION-I Model: A Biologically-Based Theoretical Framework
for Deriving Emotional Context of Sensation in Autonomous Control
Systems. The Open Cybernetics & Systemics Journal 2007, 1:28-46.
2. Tam D: EMOTION-II Model: A Theoretical Framework for Happy Emotion
as a Self-Assessment Measure Indicating the Degree-of-Fit (Congruency)
between the Expectancy in Subjective and Objective Realities in
Autonomous Control Systems. The Open Cybernetics & Systemics Journal
2007, 1:47-60.
3. Rilling JK, Sanfey AG, Aronson JA, Nystrom LE, Cohen JD: The neural
correlates of theory of mind within interpersonal interactions.
Neuroimage 2004, 22(4):1694-1703.
4. Sanfey AG, Rilling JK, Aronson JA, Nystrom LE, Cohen JD: The neural basis
of economic decision-making in the Ultimatum Game. Science 2003,
300(5626):1755-1758.
5. VonNeumann J, Morgenstern O: Theory of games and economic
behavior. Princeton University Press 1953.
doi:10.1186/1471-2202-11 -S1-P96
Cite this article as: Tam: Variables governing emotion and decision-
making: human objectivity underlying its subjective perception. BMC
Neuroscience 2010 11(Suppl 1):P96.
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Tam, Nicoladie D. Variables governing emotion and decision-making: human objectivity underlying its subjective perception, article, July 2010; [London, United Kingdom]. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc122151/m1/1/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT College of Arts and Sciences.