Memory and decision-making

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The memory system plays a key role in the decision-making process because individuals constantly choose among alternative options. Due to the volume of decisions made, much of the decision-making process is unconscious and automatic. Information about how a decision is made is remembered and used for future decisions. Memory is susceptible to biases, but it is integral to the formation of preferences and to differentiation between choices.

Contents

Preferences-as-memory approach

The preferences-as-memory (PAM) framework [1] is a model that maps the role of memory in decision-making. It suggests that decisions are chosen based on the retrieval of relevant knowledge from memory. This knowledge includes information from both previous identical and similar situations. The model assumes that there never is one precise optimal choice due to the complexity of the memory system.

Classical Models

Classic models of judgment and decision-making assume that all individuals abide to a given set of assumptions when making a decision. [2] Humans are believed to have stable preferences that follow the rules of continuity and precision, and so we will make consistent choices regardless of the influence of any internal or external factors. These assumptions have been challenged. A growing body of evidence suggests that our preferences are constructed for each novel occurrence of a situation and thus are not as stringent as previously thought. [3] The PAM framework diverges from classical models and views our preferences as volatile and subject to change.

Impact of Memory on Decisions

Memory Integration

Memory integration dictates one's preferences for a given alternative. The PAM model suggests that preferences are formed when individuals retrieve from memory a set of queries regarding the attributes of the alternative choices. These queries are believed to be an automatic, unconscious process. Many individuals think largely in terms of emotions when asked to make a decision, and so the way in which a question is posed as well as the manner in which it is asked impacts the decision-making process. If asked to choose where to go for dinner, one will select a series of possible restaurants, consider each option, and determine the positive attributes of each. The restaurant chosen will be the one with the greatest number of positive attributes.

This choice depends on the order in which one evaluates the benefits of each option and whether one considers the negative rather than the positive possibilities. The phrasing of a question also affects this query process. For example, "the car tapped the pole" versus "the car crashed into the pole." The framing of a question primes different components of the memory system and has the ability to reconstruct our memories. [4] Memory is not an event that occurs in isolation, but is integrated and thus influenced by the goals of the decision-maker, the questions posed, and an infinite amount of internal and external factors.

Inhibition and Memory Reactivity

Memory for events is constantly changing in both its short-term accessibility and how the content is stored long-term. [5] A question posed before giving one's preference can influence the short-term accessibility of memory, [6] as can anchoring effects. [7] Questions posed also can have significant long-term effects, can reconstruct memory, and can predict or influence behavior. For example, students who answered affirmative to the question of whether they would vote in the upcoming election increased their voting behavior even though the question was asked months beforehand. [8]

The memory system suffers from inhibition. This is why it is difficult to hold two different phone numbers in working memory at the same time. Although it may seem that inhibition impedes our memory system, it allows humans to focus on the relevant details and ignore irrelevant ones when required to make quick decisions. [9] Earlier queries can establish preferences that inhibit responses to later queries. A person who is presented with two items and asked to choose between the two is more likely to be choose the item that was presented first. [10] Order matters because inhibition influences both our memory and preferences so that new information competes with older information in regards to memory space and memory associations.

Hierarchical Structure of Memory

The hierarchical structure of the memory system is a construct of elaborate categories that people create to classify objects. Instead of memory connections between all knowledge, we have connections between various concept nodes. [11] According to Sherman's study, it shows that when given B object, people can form A object as B object provides relevant sample space that leads people to make judgement. For example, a person who is asked to retrieve a bird from memory thinks first of the concept node of all animals, then of all animals that can fly, and finally of a bird that is the most stereotypical of the class; for example, a robin. A penguin would be less likely to be retrieved because a penguin is less typical of the class. This is the reason why it is more difficult to make decisions about abstract and non-hierarchical concepts like time and money. It is easy to envision a pencil but more difficult to decide what to do with a sum of money or how to spend the next three hours of free time.

Implicit Memory and Decision-making

Implicit memory is a form of long-term memory not involved in conscious awareness. A process stored in implicit memory may be easy to carry out but difficult to verbalize. For example, although we can ride a bicycle even after a decade-long hiatus, it is difficult to explain to another individual how to do so. Evidence suggests that implicit memory, especially in the realm of advertising, may impact decision-making. [12]

People, as consumers, are surrounded by advertisements that promote businesses' products and services with the goal that we choose theirs over that of another competing brand. These advertisements are believed to become an internalized form of implicit memory in which, with no conscious awareness, people favor one brand over the others. Advertisements may create perceived biases that allows us to choose that the product in our memory system and with which we are familiar, whether consciously or implicitly. The reasons for our preferences may reside in implicit memory and thus be unknown to us. [13]

Priming

The priming effect is another key aspect of how memory influences decisions. Priming activates a certain memory node that results in easier accessibility later on. [14] A recent study examined the impact of playing certain types of music in a store that sells wine. German wines were sold at a higher rate when German music was played, and French wines sold better when French music was played. [15] This effect resulted in a quarter of the variance in wine sales. Priming increases the accessibility of a memory and may be the reason we chose one alternative over the other.

Classical Conditioning

Classical Conditioning involves three stages. First, it happens when people naturally respond (unconditioned response) to a stimulus (unconditioned stimulus). For example, a dog starts salivation when food is presented. [16] Second, it is the stage of acquisition in which an object is presented as a neutral stimulus, a stimulus like a ringtone that does not naturally elicit the unconditioned response, and the object will associate them together after a few repetitions. [17] The unconditioned stimulus still elicits the unconditioned response, but now the neutral stimulus can elicit the same response. Thus, we now have a conditioned stimulus and conditioned response. Following acquisition, the third stage is when the unconditioned stimulus will not elicit the unconditioned response, but the neutral stimulus now will become a conditioned stimulus that can elicit the unconditioned response. [18] Take dog as an example to explain the effect of the third stage. A dog is trained to eat (unconditioned response) after the bell rings (conditioned stimulus). Then, that dog will continue to get up and start eating when the bell rings because his memory is being revoked when hearing the bell rings.

Memory, Environment, and Decision-making

The event of a person having placed an item into memory implies that the person has had at least one encounter with that item. The memory system behaves optimally when memories that are more likely to be used are more easily retrievable than less-likely memories. Memory is influenced by practice effects, the concept that greater practice with an item results in easier retrieval; retention effects, which means that memories grow less likely to be retrieved as a longer period of time passes, and spacing effects, in which memories are more easily recalled if they are encoded into memory over a longer time interval. [19]

It is plausible that the environmental structure, which influences our memory structure, impacts how we create preferences and make decisions. Evidence suggests that the memory system is organized in a way that is adapted to the structure of the environment. We are thus able to predict when we will need a certain memory even after controlling for practice, retention, and spacing effects. [20]

Affect and memory

Memory and emotion, or "affect", are closely related and impact each other simultaneously. One's mood determines the thoughts he or she experiences as well as the memories that are recalled. An experiment by Rimmele shows that people are more likely to remember negative pictures than neutral pictures, and they have more confidence in emotional pictures than neutral pictures. [21] Emotion triggers memories which in turn triggers reactions. [22] According to Ledoux in 1996, those with phobias automatically react to threatening stimuli and situations even though that fear can be controlled by using psychotherapy, a psychological technique that rely on verbal communication such as Systematic desensitization. [23] It is also possible for phobias to return when a strong threatening stimulus shows up again in which shows that fear rekindles the memory from the past experience which cause natural reaction. [24]

Another common example is that sufferers of depression find it difficult to recall happy memories because they are overwhelmed with negative thoughts. According to Reevy et al., (2010)“The patients have poorer memory overall and selectively recall more negative than positive information (known as emotional memory bias)”(p. 371). [25] We recall from memory the information that reflects our current state. [26] When a memory is tied with emotion, people have a tendency to remember more compared to memories of daily events. [27] Emotional memory can trigger behaviors. As an example, when couples break up, they may cry over their love song when played on the radio. It is because there is a strong emotional memory connected to the song; tears may automatically run down on the face, and some even choose to refuse to listen to the song as a result then. Memory has been shown to influence decision-making behavior and, considering the reciprocal connection between the two, affect can as well.

Related Research Articles

Classical conditioning is a behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent physiological stimulus is paired with a neutral stimulus. The term classical conditioning refers to the process of an automatic, conditioned response that is paired with a specific stimulus.

Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental events.

The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop liking or disliking for things merely because they are familiar with them. In social psychology, this effect is sometimes called the familiarity principle. The effect has been demonstrated with many kinds of things, including words, Chinese characters, paintings, pictures of faces, geometric figures, and sounds. In studies of interpersonal attraction, the more often people see a person, the more pleasing and likeable they find that person.

Self-control is an aspect of inhibitory control, one of the core executive functions. Executive functions are cognitive processes that are necessary for regulating one's behavior in order to achieve specific goals. Defined more independently, self-control is the ability to regulate one's emotions, thoughts, and behavior in the face of temptations and impulses. Thought to be like a muscle, acts of self control expend a limited resource. In the short term, overuse of self-control leads to the depletion of that resource. However, in the long term, the use of self-control can strengthen and improve the ability to control oneself over time.

The interstimulus interval is the temporal interval between the offset of one stimulus to the onset of another. For instance, Max Wertheimer did experiments with two stationary, flashing lights that at some interstimulus intervals appeared to the subject as moving instead of stationary. In these experiments, the interstimulus interval is simply the time between the two flashes. The ISI plays a large role in the phi phenomenon (Wertheimer) since the illusion of motion is directly due to the length of the interval between stimuli. When the ISI is shorter, for example between two flashing lines alternating back and forth, we perceive the change in stimuli to be movement. Wertheimer discovered that the space between the two lines is filled in by our brains and that the faster the lines alternate, the more likely we are to perceive it as one line moving back and forth. When the stimuli move fast enough, this creates the illusion of a moving picture like a movie or cartoon. Phi phenomenon is very similar to beta movement.

Choice-supportive bias or post-purchase rationalization is the tendency to retroactively ascribe positive attributes to an option one has selected and/or to demote the forgone options. It is part of cognitive science, and is a distinct cognitive bias that occurs once a decision is made. For example, if a person chooses option A instead of option B, they are likely to ignore or downplay the faults of option A while amplifying or ascribing new negative faults to option B. Conversely, they are also likely to notice and amplify the advantages of option A and not notice or de-emphasize those of option B.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Affect (psychology)</span> Experience of feeling or emotion

Affect, in psychology, refers to the underlying experience of feeling, emotion, attachment, or mood. In psychology, "affect" refers to the experience of feeling or emotion. It encompasses a wide range of emotional states and can be positive or negative. Affect is a fundamental aspect of human experience and plays a central role in many psychological theories and studies. It can be understood as a combination of three components: emotion, mood, and affectivity. In psychology, the term "affect" is often used interchangeably with several related terms and concepts, though each term may have slightly different nuances. These terms encompass: emotion, feeling, mood, emotional state, sentiment, affective state, emotional response, affective reactivity, disposition. Researchers and psychologists may employ specific terms based on their focus and the context of their work.

In psychology, a dual process theory provides an account of how thought can arise in two different ways, or as a result of two different processes. Often, the two processes consist of an implicit (automatic), unconscious process and an explicit (controlled), conscious process. Verbalized explicit processes or attitudes and actions may change with persuasion or education; though implicit process or attitudes usually take a long amount of time to change with the forming of new habits. Dual process theories can be found in social, personality, cognitive, and clinical psychology. It has also been linked with economics via prospect theory and behavioral economics, and increasingly in sociology through cultural analysis.

Implicit attitudes are evaluations that occur without conscious awareness towards an attitude object or the self. These evaluations are generally either favorable or unfavorable and come about from various influences in the individual experience. The commonly used definition of implicit attitude within cognitive and social psychology comes from Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji's template for definitions of terms related to implicit cognition: "Implicit attitudes are introspectively unidentified traces of past experience that mediate favorable or unfavorable feeling, thought, or action toward social objects". These thoughts, feelings or actions have an influence on behavior that the individual may not be aware of.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conditioned place preference</span> Pavlovian conditioning

Conditioned place preference (CPP) is a form of Pavlovian conditioning used to measure the motivational effects of objects or experiences. This motivation comes from the pleasurable aspect of the experience, so that the brain can be reminded of the context that surrounded the "encounter". By measuring the amount of time an animal spends in an area that has been associated with a stimulus, researchers can infer the animal's liking for the stimulus. This paradigm can also be used to measure conditioned place aversion with an identical procedure involving aversive stimuli instead. Both procedures usually involve mice or rats as subjects. This procedure can be used to measure extinction and reinstatement of the conditioned stimulus. Certain drugs are used in this paradigm to measure their reinforcing properties. Two different methods are used to choose the compartments to be conditioned, and these are biased vs. unbiased. The biased method allows the animal to explore the apparatus, and the compartment they least prefer is the one that the drug is administered in and the one they most prefer is the one where the vehicle is injected. This method allows the animal to choose the compartment they get the drug and vehicle. In comparison, the unbiased method does not allow the animal to choose what compartment they get the drug and vehicle in. Instead, the researcher chooses the compartments.

Priming is the idea that exposure to one stimulus may influence a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. The priming effect refers to the positive or negative effect of a rapidly presented stimulus on the processing of a second stimulus that appears shortly after. Generally speaking, the generation of priming effect depends on the existence of some positive or negative relationship between priming and target stimuli. For example, the word nurse might be recognized more quickly following the word doctor than following the word bread. Priming can be perceptual, associative, repetitive, positive, negative, affective, semantic, or conceptual. Priming effects involve word recognition, semantic processing, attention, unconscious processing, and many other issues, and are related to differences in various writing systems. Research, however, has yet to firmly establish the duration of priming effects, yet their onset can be almost instantaneous.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Introspection illusion</span> Cognitive bias of people thinking they understand their own mental states but others are inaccurate

The introspection illusion is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others' introspections as unreliable. The illusion has been examined in psychological experiments, and suggested as a basis for biases in how people compare themselves to others. These experiments have been interpreted as suggesting that, rather than offering direct access to the processes underlying mental states, introspection is a process of construction and inference, much as people indirectly infer others' mental states from their behaviour.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music and emotion</span> Psychological relationship between human affect and music

Research into music and emotion seeks to understand the psychological relationship between human affect and music. The field, a branch of music psychology, covers numerous areas of study, including the nature of emotional reactions to music, how characteristics of the listener may determine which emotions are felt, and which components of a musical composition or performance may elicit certain reactions.

Subliminal stimuli are any sensory stimuli below an individual's threshold for conscious perception, in contrast to supraliminal stimuli.

Unconscious cognition is the processing of perception, memory, learning, thought, and language without being aware of it.

Many experiments have been done to find out how the brain interprets stimuli and how animals develop fear responses. The emotion, fear, has been hard-wired into almost every individual, due to its vital role in the survival of the individual. Researchers have found that fear is established unconsciously and that the amygdala is involved with fear conditioning.

A context effect is an aspect of cognitive psychology that describes the influence of environmental factors on one's perception of a stimulus. The impact of context effects is considered to be part of top-down design. The concept is supported by the theoretical approach to perception known as constructive perception. Context effects can impact our daily lives in many ways such as word recognition, learning abilities, memory, and object recognition. It can have an extensive effect on marketing and consumer decisions. For example, research has shown that the comfort level of the floor that shoppers are standing on while reviewing products can affect their assessments of product's quality, leading to higher assessments if the floor is comfortable and lower ratings if it is uncomfortable. Because of effects such as this, context effects are currently studied predominantly in marketing.

The Perruchet effect is a psychological phenomenon in which a dissociation is shown between conscious expectation of an event and the strength or speed of a response to the event. This can be demonstrated by sequential analyses of consecutive trials such as eye blinking conditioning, electrodermal shocks and cued go/no-go task. The dissociation design differentiates the automatic associative strength and propositional expectation's effects on associative learning and conditioning, i.e., the cognitive learning process with relationship between events.

In cognitive psychology, the affect-as-information hypothesis, or 'approach', is a model of evaluative processing, postulating that affective feelings provide a source of information about objects, tasks, and decision alternatives. A goal of this approach is to understand the extent of influence that affect has on cognitive functioning. It has been proposed that affect has two major dimensions, namely affective valence and affective arousal, and in this way is an embodied source of information. Affect is thought to impact three main cognitive functions: judgement, thought processing and memory. In a variety of scenarios, the influence of affect on these processes is thought to be mediated by its effects on attention. The approach is thought to account for a wide variety of behavioural phenomena in psychology.

Association in psychology refers to a mental connection between concepts, events, or mental states that usually stems from specific experiences. Associations are seen throughout several schools of thought in psychology including behaviorism, associationism, psychoanalysis, social psychology, and structuralism. The idea stems from Plato and Aristotle, especially with regard to the succession of memories, and it was carried on by philosophers such as John Locke, David Hume, David Hartley, and James Mill. It finds its place in modern psychology in such areas as memory, learning, and the study of neural pathways.

References

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