Brains and lawmakers: instinct and instruction

Bill Knight column for Mon., Tues. or Wed., Feb. 18, 19 or 20

There may be an actual problem with lawmakers’ brains, as this column implied a couple of weeks ago, when a 19th century Senate chaplain was quoted praying for “more brains” on Capitol Hill, and an Illinois legislator may have a solution to part of the problem.

Another part, however, may just be instinctive.

First, legislators can be ignorant – not stupid, but without knowledge or information. So State Sen. Dave Syverson (R-Rockford) said before lawmakers make decisions on issues that affect the economy – from raising the minimum wage to dealing with tax policy – they should learn more.

Next, however, University of Iowa neuroscientist William Hedgcock says many lawmakers simply behave like a dental patient facing a root canal or a tooth extraction. For most people, the decision is emotionally intense because either choice will cause pain. Often, then, many people engage in “tradeoff avoidance” and just skip the decision – which only makes the tooth worse, of course.

The part of the brain that responds when dealing with tradeoff avoidance is the amygdala, an almond-shape set of neurons deep in the brain’s medial temporal lobe. It’s involved with negative emotions and fear conditioning, and research has shown that people feel more negative emotions after making such decisions, as opposed to doing nothing.

“When you have two or more choices, choosing between them can cause negative emotions. This can lead people to put it off, even though not making a decision could be the worst decision you can make,” said Hedgcock, an Iowa professor who studies tradeoff avoidance as part of his research into humans’ decision-making.

Decision-making can be difficult enough, but in government it’s complicated by uncertainty and ambiguity, Hedgcock said.

“If they’re forced to make a tradeoff, they feel horrible about it,” he said. “But if they don’t make any decision at all, they feel OK.”

That realization helps explain the lack of action when facing daunting challenges, such as cutting spending on popular programs such as Medicare, or raising taxes, always unpopular.

In Springfield, Syverson is concerned less about avoidance behavior than simple preparation. After all, legislators have to vote on many subjects about which they may know little or nothing, Syverson conceded, mentioning representatives from Chicago voting on agriculture issues and lawmakers from rural districts voting on urban mass-transit measures.

If members of the General Assembly aren’t fully ready to pass judgment on a complicated issue, education might help, said Syverson, who’s thinking about proposing a specific remedy to start: an economics course every two years for lawmakers.

Business trade groups and others could work with community colleges to develop the course, said Syverson, who thinks many legislators may respond since even when they think they’ve something good, they later are stunned by the “horrendous results” of their decisions.

“It’s because I think those decisions are made on how that legislation affects one particular group in that one particular period of time,” Syverson told Illinois Public Radio.

Syverson hasn’t yet filed such a bill, according to the Illinois General Assembly’s web site.

Hedgecock also has suggested lessons, if not instruction, to the avoidance dilemma.

Besides uncertainty and ambiguity, avoidance – doing nothing – is made worse by politics, especially the uncooperative atmosphere now, but citizens nevertheless expect their representatives to overcome the basic human instinct of decision avoidance. Lawmakers should note that others have, Hedgcock said.

Re-interpreting a negative decision as a positive can help – “it could have been worse” – although that’s difficult in an atmosphere where political foes wait to criticize any decision. However, training has helped military, business, medical and other leaders make painful and difficult decisions.

Another often-successful method is to put in place a default choice so awful that nobody wants it to happen, and that can force them to act – like Congress’s “sequestration” scheme.

“They did that, and, clearly, it didn’t work,” Hedgcock conceded. “It might have been better if the default wasn’t so awful. In that case, tradeoff aversion might have been greater than the relatively smaller negative aspects of the default. This would make it more palatable to stick with the sequester if they hadn’t made it so painful.”