By the time you hit A4 on a vending machine, your brain has already decided you don’t want the chocolate bar in A3—or the chips above, or the protein bar at the bottom—and mapped the action it’d take to purchase any snack option available between $1.50 and $2.25.
This is the research of a University of Alberta student who says we could learn about decision making by studying human movement, and that one influences the other.
No matter how intuitive or obvious its seems you want the milky, bubbly Aero in A4, Nathan Wispinski said “we actually plan actions for all of the items—so chips, or chocolate bars, or even running away from the vending machine. We choose between those movements.”
And sometimes, the planning of movement influences our decision of one thing over another.
In a study that borrowed inspiration from the vending machine scenario, Wispinski presented 30 participants with a series of decisions to make: chips or chocolate? Doritos or Lays?
Their brain activity was recorded using motion tracking and neuro imaging. When individuals were confident in their decision, their response was quick. When they were more indecisive, Wispinski described their actions as curvier or slower.
The PhD student said his research could have a couple of applications.
The first is to teach machines or artificial intelligence how humans make choices, with the goal of improving computers’ decision-making skills.
The second is to apply the research to that of decision-making disorders.
“If how we move shows how we think, we can potentially look at how other people move,” Wispinski said. “People with issues of gambling, if we can look at their movements to infer their decision made, we could target treatments for their decision making.”
Wispinski’s research—co-supervised by Anthony Singhal of the department of psychology and Craig Chapman of the faculty of kinesiology, sport and recreation—was recently published in The Year in Cognitive Neuroscience.
