Can, and should, behavioural neuroscience influence public policy?

Local Choices: Rationality and the Contextuality of Decision-Making

Rational explanation is ubiquitous in psychology and social sciences, ranging from rational analysis, expectancy-value theories, ideal observer models, mental logic to probabilistic frameworks, rational choice theory, and informal "folk psychological" explanation. However, rational explanation appears to be challenged by apparently systematic irrationality observed in psychological experiments, especially in the field of judgement and decision-making (JDM). Here, it is proposed that the experimental results require not that rational explanation should be rejected, but that rational explanation is local, i.e., within a context. Thus, rational models need to be supplemented with a theory of contextual shifts. We review evidence in JDM that patterns of choices are often consistent within contexts, but unstable between contexts. We also demonstrate that for a limited, though reasonably broad, class of decision-making domains, recent theoretical models can be viewed as providing theories of contextual shifts. It is argued that one particular significant source of global inconsistency arises from a cognitive inability to represent absolute magnitudes, whether for perceptual variables, utilities, payoffs, or probabilities. This overall argument provides a fresh perspective on the scope and limits of human rationality.

How has neuroscience affected lay understandings of personhood? A review of the evidence

The prominence of neuroscience in the public sphere has escalated in recent years, provoking questions about how the public engages with neuroscientific ideas. Commentaries on neuroscience's role in society often present it as having revolutionary implications, fundamentally overturning established beliefs about personhood. The purpose of this article is to collate and review the extant empirical evidence on the influence of neuroscience on commonsense understandings of personhood. The article evaluates the scope of neuroscience's presence in public consciousness and examines the empirical evidence for three frequently encountered claims about neuroscience's societal influence: that neuroscience fosters a conception of the self that is based in biology, that neuroscience promotes conceptions of individual fate as predetermined, and that neuroscience attenuates the stigma attached to particular social categories. It concludes that many neuroscientific ideas have assimilated in ways that perpetuate rather than challenge existing modes of understanding self, others and society.