The Neuroscience of Better Decision-Making

How Dopamine Affects Every Decision You Make and How to Use It To Your Advantage

From deciding whether to hit the snooze button or get up and work out to choosing how we spend our free time after work, our daily lives abound with decisions. We have countless choices that often affect the direction of our days, weeks, months — and often even our very lives.

While some decisions affect our lives more than others, we are often unaware of the processes that happen behind the scenes of these decisions as we choose certain actions out of habit rather than conscious awareness.

The science of decision-making can help us understand how exactly our brain chooses one action over another — often on autopilot. We can then use that knowledge to make more optimal decisions that bring us close to our goals.

RISK-AVERSION AT THE ROOT

All decisions could really be boiled down to one thing: choosing the action that will yield the greatest chance of reward while minimizing risk or mental/physical energy expenditure. Whether it relates to our daily choices or the financial markets, as humans we are naturally risk-averse. Our brains will do anything to help us avoid threats, even if that is at the cost of pursuing opportunities that could help us grow.

The neurotransmitter dopamine has been shown to play a large role in decision-making.

A brand new study from the University of Tsukuba in Japan just revealed further evidence of dopamine’s effect on our decision-making. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that has over time been shown to play a large role in rewards and making decisions. Here we explore some of the ways that dopamine affects whether we make decisions that are optimal and help move us forward or whether we allow our brains to hold us back.

VALUES ARE STILL THE DRIVING CAUSE

It has often been said that we are not rational beings. This latest study by the University of Tsukuba seems to underscore the importance that our learned values play in decision making. The study found that making choices involves dopamine neurons in the brain. When separating out the decision-making process into evaluation and decision-making, researchers found that dopamine neurons transitioned from discriminating values first to indicating the ultimate decision last.

Dopamine first appears in the value-related part of our brain. Many of our values are linked to emotion, often bypassing the logical part of our brain. This could indicate that our conditioning influences our actions even before we consciously start engaging the higher-thinking centers of our brain.

Dopamine also plays a role in helping us make associations between cause and effect. It reinforces behavior by acting as a signal for the prediction of a reward. If you received praise (or even an allowance) for cleaning your room when you were little, it became much easier to start tidying up than if you never received any praise for this behavior.

Receiving a reward brings a rush of dopamine which then further enhances motivation. We are then more likely to decide to perform that action again in hopes of getting the same — or better — reward!

UNEXPECTED REWARDS BRING A RUSH OF EXCITEMENT

We are less likely to put forth effort after we get used to any given outcome rather than when there’s an element of surprise. According to the University of Tsukuba study mentioned above, dopamine neurons become less active as we start learning the association between an action and a known outcome.

An unknown outcome increases the potential for an unexpected reward, thus boosting the activity of dopamine in the brain.

Why do we get excited about unwrapping presents? Our brains love the idea of an unexpected surprise! Think back to how the excitement of Christmas presents faded as you got older — your dopamine levels dropped because the element of surprise started fading. You thus chose to put forth a lot less effort into opening a present as an adult than as a child getting up at 5am to rush towards the Christmas tree.

When we have the choice of expending extra energy, time, or money in order to gain a higher reward, we are more likely to choose to take the risk if we can’t quite imagine what the positive reward will be. Once we know the kind of reward that we can expect, our brain isn’t quite as excited as when it has the chance to uncover something brand new.

KEEP THE MOMENTUM GOING WITH DOPAMINE

Once a decision is made, dopamine helps signal the motor parts of our brain to take action. This is what gets us to actually pick up the phone to call the family member we’ve been meaning to call or to get off the couch and start that workout video.

If we get distracted while we are working on our intended action, dopamine helps us re-engage with our project. I believe that this is also linked to intrinsic motivation. When our decision to take a certain action stems from a deeper place within rather than as a result of society’s expectations, we have a much higher likelihood of following through with our actions.

When we follow our hearts, our brain rewards us with a spike of dopamine that keeps our momentum going.

Truly caring about an outcome matters. If we don’t have a close emotional tie to a particular outcome or decision, we then lack the motivation to execute on the action. An earlier study showed that patients with apathy exhibited “lack of drive to execute potentially valuable actions” as the network between two decision-making parts of the brain was disrupted. The more we care, the more likely we are to execute on our goals.

3 WAYS TO USE DOPAMINE TO MAKE BETTER DECISIONS

1.Celebrate the small wins That hit of dopamine you feel when you check something off your list — no matter how small — reinforces the link between the small steps you take and your potentially larger goal. You are then more likely to make decisions that will ultimately benefit you in the long-run based on what’s in your heart.

2. Call on logic to analyze a situation fully Weighing the pros and cons of a situation increases your willingness to expend extra effort in order to achieve your desired goal. Don’t just look at the cons of a situation, but take the time to also consider the pros. Think about the probabilities of each possible scenario actually happening. Then make your decision from that more balanced standpoint.

3. Follow Your Bliss to find the “Why behind your Why “ You are much more likely to make a beneficial decision if the associated outcome is something you truly desire. If you are externally motivated — doing something because someone else/society says you should — then you won’t have the motivation needed to keep choosing the right action consistently. The same goes for establishing habits. The more you delve into your innermost values, the more you can link your actions to them and thus create the dopamine-fueled association between value and action.

SOURCES:

Dopamine Neurons Mull Over Your Options, July 2020 http://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/research-list/p202007060910

Dopamine and effort-based decision making, June 2011 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2011.00081/full