That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Indecision

Episode Date: April 3, 2022

Pizza or Sushi? Buy or sell? Stay or go? For some of us, indecision is a serious crutch in our daily life. But why are we so indecisive, and can we change that? In today's episode of That Neuroscience guy, we discuss the neuroscience behind indecision. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. What should I do today? Should I go downtown and go shopping? Or should I go for a hike? You know, I don't know what degree I should choose. Should I study law or should I study medicine?

I don't even know what I should have for dinner. Should I have pizza? Should I have sushi? I don't know how I feel about this relationship. Should I break up with my partner or should I stay with them? You know, we've all been indecisive. I know I certainly have. On today's podcast, the neuroscience of indecisiveness and possibly what you can do about it. So let's start with a quick review of decision-making. We talked about it

back in season one, but let's just recap quickly for this episode. Decision making at the simplest level boils down to the concept of expected value. Basically, when you have a bunch of choices in front of you, each of them has an expected value and you simply choose the highest one. Seems simple, right? So think of pizza. You're trying to decide to order from pizza place A versus pizza place B, or maybe even pizza place C. Each of those choices will have an expected value to them, and you choose the highest expected value. And that's your decision.

You know, another example. Imagine you're looking for a car to buy. You know, you can't decide whether you want a Ford or you want a Hyundai or you want a Porsche. So what car do you buy? Well, each of those cards, again, has an expected value and you simply choose the car that has the highest expected value to you. Okay, that's great. But what is expected value? Well, expected value is the product of the actual value of an object times the probability of attaining that value. So expected value is the value of the object

times the probability of getting that expected value. So what is value then? Well, it'd be simple to think that value is just the literal cost of an object. Like, what's the financial worth of it? But it's not really that. It's more than that. You know, that could contribute to the value of an object to you, but the value is also tied to its inherent worth to you. Think of your favorite sweater.

Your favorite sweater probably doesn't have a lot of financial value to it, but it's your favorite sweater. So it has a high value. And probability. Well, what's probability? Well, probability is just the odds you get something. So when you go to pick up your favorite sweater, the odds are a hundred percent. All right. But when you buy a pizza, there's not a hundred percent probability you're going to be happy with it. So the expected value of the pizza is the value of the pizza times by the probability. You know, the best way to think about expected value is this is why you should never play the lottery. If you play the lottery, the expected value of keeping the $5 for the ticket is 5 times 100% or 5, all right? Because if you don't play the lottery, you keep your $5 and it's 100% chance you keep your money.

But the expected value of playing the lottery is less than $5. Sure, the prize might be $100 million, but if you work out the actual probability of winning the lottery, it's incredibly small. And when you multiply that by the value, you probably have an expected value of a few cents or less. And that's why you should never play the lottery, because your expected value for choosing not to play is higher than the expected value of playing. Okay, that's a great quick review of decision-making, but what about being indecisive? Why are we indecisive? And what's going on in your brain?

Well, the first key concept is a decision value threshold. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, when your brain is computing expected values and it's computing values, they're not a constant thing. So the value doesn't have a set value, if that makes sense, but it changes over time. All right. So what I mean by that is think about thinking about what pizza to get tonight. All right. You first sort of think, okay, I like pizza place A. And you start thinking, oh yeah, their salami is so, so, so good. But then you start thinking about pizza place B and you think,

well, you know, their sauce is a little bit better and I prefer the crust. And as you go through the deliberation, the values for these choices change over time. All right, so the value isn't a constant thing. And the probability might change as well. As you gain more information, the probability might change. So these expected values aren't constant. They're changing as you think about the decision you're going to make. Let's go back to the car example we started with. You're thinking about getting a Honda versus a Ford. Well, as you learn more about Honda, the value might creep up a little bit higher. But then you go and start thinking about Fords and you go to the dealership and drive a Ford and that value will change as well.

And then you go home and you read a magazine about cars and you hear that Fords might have a higher breakdown rate than Hondas. So the value of Ford goes down a little bit and Honda goes up a little bit more. But then you read a little bit more and you find out that the Ford Service Center is better than the Honda Service Center. So the values change again. So when is a decision made? Well, there's a decision threshold. So your brain, especially the prefrontal cortex, basically has a threshold. And when one of the values exceeds that threshold, that's your decision. Now you've probably guessed then why you're indecisive. For some people, that threshold's just too high. The values that

you're assessing constantly hover below that threshold, and so you never make a decision. And conversely, for people that make really quick decisions, they're just like, yeah, I thought about it for two seconds, let's do this. Well, that decision threshold is low. So they're constantly crossing it. They don't need a lot of information to make a decision. So indecisiveness comes from this exact thing. decision. So indecisiveness comes from this exact thing. The reason that you're indecisive is as you deliberate these values and they change, you just can't quite reach the threshold and thus you're indecisive. Now there's another reason you can be indecisive as well. There's problems assessing

value. So as you're deliberating the value of a choice, it's not an easy thing to do. All right, for example, what's the value of getting a law degree versus getting a medical degree? What is each choice actually worth? This is a hard problem to assess. The value of these choices is hard to ascertain. So another reason you're indecisive is because literally you can't assess the value. So you're having a hard time reaching the threshold because you can't do the underlying math. So there's your prefrontal cortex and all of this is happening in the prefrontal cortex for the most part. Although information you're processing obviously comes from the sensory systems and from memory, but the prefrontal cortex is trying to compute these

values and it's just struggling with this. One of my favorite ones with this is what we call the hamburger example. You know, what's a McDonald's hamburger worth? 99 cents. So if I told you you had to pay $5 for a McDonald's hamburger, you might go, I don't think so. That's a bad deal. But imagine you're on a deserted island and all you have is a bag of money. And I offer you a McDonald's hamburger for $5. You'd probably say, well, I'll take three, right? And happily hand over $20. So it just shows that value is relative and it can be hard to assess. And probability is even worse. And this is why people gamble. People are horrible at assessing probabilities. You know, what's the probability if you go swimming, you'll get eaten by a shark? You know, what's the probability that, you know, if you choose to date person A, that if you choose to date person A, that you'll be happy. And this puts us to a good point to work through a full example about this. Well, imagine you are thinking about dating somebody.

You're going to ask out person A or person B, or maybe it's just person A. Well, you might be thinking, should I do it or shouldn't I do it? Well, you're going to have problems assessing value, like I've just said. You know, what's this person really worth and what's it worth to stay single? That's a hard problem to solve. And that's one of the reasons you're indecisive. Now, let's say you write it all down and you figure that out. Well, what's the probability you're going to be happy?

You know, to be honest, if you could solve that problem with 100% certainty, you'd be the one giving the podcast and writing books and things because you would be far smarter than I am. That's for sure. And then, of course, there's this threshold idea, decision thresholds. As you're thinking about dating person A versus person B, you know, if you're indecisive about this, it's because you literally haven't reached that decision threshold. The value hasn't creeped high enough for you to make the choice. And for some of us, you might just go, hey, I'll date her. And that's because your decision threshold in this particular case is low. So you just quickly leap into the relationship without really thinking about it. Now, you might be wondering, you know, why are

some people indecisive and some are not? Well, it goes back to just this. It's just the way, you know, nature versus nurture. It could be the way you're hardwired in terms of how your prefrontal cortex works. It could also be, you know, the way you were raised. But some people have lower decision threshold values and some people have lower decision threshold values and some people have higher decision threshold values. So the people with lower values make very quick decisions and the people with extremely high thresholds are indecisive. And this also goes back to this assessment of value and probability. Some people have a hard time ascertaining value and some people have a hard time ascertaining probability. And of course, there's a role of

experience here. You know, think of a medical doctor diagnosing a case. He has two choices. Well, experience allows them to have a better assessment of value and a better assessment of probability. And their confidence because of successful decisions allows them to have a decision threshold that's appropriate. Now, the last thing I'll talk about is what can you do about it? Well, there's a couple of things. One, you could self-assess your thresholds. Try to think to yourself, you know, am I overthinking my options?

Like, am I going through this process for too long? And a really strong way to do this is to give yourself a timeframe. So if you think about the way decision thresholds work, you've got these values that are going up and down and they might crisscross. You know, option A might seem better than option B. And a little bit later, as you process more information, option B is better than option A. Well, when you reach a time point and you're forced to make a decision, then your brain just simply goes back to taking the highest expected value. So you could imagine saying to yourself, well, I'm going to think about this for two weeks.

At the end of two weeks, that's the decision I'm going to go with. And then in terms of assessing value and probability, well, write it out. All right. Give your brain something it can come back to. The prefrontal cortex can quickly review the reasons you've written out why you think the value is what it is. And then you don't have to go through that whole deliberation process again. And the same is true of probability. So there's a bit on the neuroscience of indecisiveness. If you're indecisive, it's probably because your decision thresholds are set a bit too high. And if you make spontaneous rapid decisions all the time without really thinking it through, it's because your thresholds are too low. And of course,

don't forget, you have to factor in this idea about assessing value and assessing probability. Because if you have trouble assessing value and probability, you have trouble computing expected values, which also leads to you being indecisive. And in terms of the brain, pretty much all of this is going on in the prefrontal cortex, unless you bring in emotion or things like that. All right, that's all I have on the neuroscience of indecisiveness. Remember, you can always email us ideas, thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com. We're always looking for new show ideas. We're already thinking about season four, and we might even switch up some of the stuff we planned for season three, if we see something great. So thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com. Or follow me on Twitter,

at thatneuroscienceguy, and feel free to DM me. On Twitter, I post stuff that I see that I think is really cool from my lab and other things. It's just a great way to reach out and say, hey, what about this for a show idea? And make sure you check out the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com. There's a link to my blog that I don't update as frequently as I should, but I'm going to put out some new content soon. There's links to our merch. Thanks to all of you that have already bought a shirt.

We got two new shirts dropping this week. We're going to put out That Neuroscience Girl, we've got a really fun one about the amygdala that I hope you enjoy. If nothing else, it's a pretty good joke, so feel free to screenshot it and share it. But buy the shirt. All the money's going to the grad students that help support the podcast. And there's also links to Patreon where you can directly support us with cash. If you've never used Patreon, basically you're signing up and you're pledging, I'm going to give $1 a month to that neuroscience guy. And all the money is going to Matt, our sound producer,

and Elle, our social media coordinator, both graduate students in the Kregolson Lab. My name is Olof Kregolson, and I'm that neuroscience guy. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you on Wednesday for another neuroscience bite.