Bodies and Brains
One of the more convoluted and, to the majority of the world, boring arguments among psychologists is around the extent to which we use our brains to learn. Of course a commonsense view has it that brains are fairly essential things for learning type activities but there’s also a view that bodies have a part to play as well.
Through a series of convoluted jumps this takes us from William James' research on phantom limbs, through the Somatic Marker Hypothesis and onto the odd findings of the Soochow Gambling Task. On the other, less invisible, hand it might be better for all of us if I simply skip to the nub of the problem: investors are addicted to gains, so much so that they’ll happily make overall losses just as long as they make lots and lots of small wins along the way.
One of the more convoluted and, to the majority of the world, boring arguments among psychologists is around the extent to which we use our brains to learn. Of course a commonsense view has it that brains are fairly essential things for learning type activities but there’s also a view that bodies have a part to play as well.
Through a series of convoluted jumps this takes us from William James' research on phantom limbs, through the Somatic Marker Hypothesis and onto the odd findings of the Soochow Gambling Task. On the other, less invisible, hand it might be better for all of us if I simply skip to the nub of the problem: investors are addicted to gains, so much so that they’ll happily make overall losses just as long as they make lots and lots of small wins along the way.
