People with autism make more logical decisions

According to the findings, low emotional awareness promotes more rational choices.

Decisions are based on a vicarious choice pathway. This is because people use emotions when making decisions, which leads to several options while feeling more advantageous than others. For example, imagine this situation: your friend offers you $50 on the condition that you gamble with it, otherwise you can only keep $20.

Although both options are mathematically equivalent, the thought of losing money evokes a powerful emotional response, and we are more likely to choose gambling in an attempt to avoid losing money. This cognitive bias, first described by psychologist Daniel Kahneman in the 1980s, is known as the framing effect. Despite this phenomenon, scientists are still trying to understand why our emotions have such a powerful influence on decision making.

Researchers at King’s College London explored how the perception of internal bodily sensations is linked to emotions and how this might relate to decision making. Participants in the experiment were asked to solve a gambling task to measure their susceptibility to the framing effect. They were later asked to close their eyes and measure their heart rate to determine how well they were monitoring their heartbeat. Their emotional awareness was also measured using a questionnaire. People who «followed their hearts» were found to be the most sensitive to emotions, especially the framing effect.

But what about people with poor emotional awareness and difficulty monitoring their heartbeat? Research has shown that these things are devalued in people with alexithymia, otherwise known as «emotional blindness.»Emotional blindness is more common in people with autism; we tested a group of adults diagnosed with this condition. According to research, people with autism showed a smaller framing effect. It was found that people with autism were able to control themselves just as well as people without autism, but without emotional awareness.

IGNORE YOUR HEART

This indicates that people with autism use different strategies when making decisions. Instead of using intuition and emotion, they considered various numerically equivalent options more rationally than average people, without relying on how the numbers made them feel.

This suggests that «following your heart» is associated with complex decision-making, and based on recent research, the ability to control your emotions is associated with survival in financial markets. It also suggests that listening to your heart and being in touch with your emotions, which are typically considered positive, can lead to irrational decision-making.

Our findings are supported by evidence showing that people with autism have different thinking patterns than typical people. While this is due to the difficulties they face in social situations, a different way of thinking can sometimes even be advantageous in situations where it’s better to think with your head rather than follow your heart.

Original article on Scientific American