Antonio Damasio Gambling Experiment

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  1. Intuition and gut feelings have a firm biological basis, said Dr. Antonio Damasio, the lead author of a paper describing the experiment in the current issue of the journal Science. Damasio, a neuroscientist at the University of Iowa College of Medicine in Iowa City, carried out the research with his wife, Dr. Hanna Damasio and two colleagues.
  2. Intuition and gut feelings have a firm biological basis, said Dr. Antonio Damasio, the lead author of a paper describing the experiment in the current issue of the journal Science.

Antonio Damasio Gambling Experiment Stories

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Antonio Damasio Gambling Experiment Definition

In 1994, neuroscientists Antonio Damasio and Hannah Damasio, suffering from a lingering curiosity about the Gage accident and the reports of associated behavioral changes, rebuilt Gage’s brain with 3-D software.

Antonio Damasio Gambling Experiment Theory

This quote came from the book Descartes’ Error written by Antonio Damasio (2005).

Antonio Damasio Gambling Experiments

It is referring to a study published by Damasio and others in Cognition, 50:7-12.

Basically the participants have to choose between 4 different decks of cards that lead to either a reward or punishment depending on what card they choose.

In this quote he is discussing the results of normal, healthy individuals.

“There is no way for players to carry out a precise calculation of gains and loss. Rather, bit by bit, they develop a hunch that some decks—namely, A and B—are more “dangerous” than others. One might say they intuit that the lower penalties in decks C and D will make them come out ahead in the long run, despite the smaller initial gain. I suspect that before and beneath the conscious hunch there is a nonconscious process gradually formulating a prediction for the outcome of each move, and gradually telling the mindful player, at first softly but then ever louder, that punishment or reward is about to strike if a certain move is indeed carried out. In short, I doubt that it is a matter of only fully conscious process, or only fully nonconscious process. It seems to take both types of processing for the well-tempered decision-making brain to operate. (p.214)”

I think this study makes it pretty clear that at least sometimes one’s intuition is better than one’s rational mind at answering a particular problem. What I think is more interesting is how much the non-conscious is processing even when you are not fully aware of it.