The Moral Psychology of Conflict of Interest

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The Moral Psychology of Conflict of Interest

• Paul Thagard
• University of Waterloo

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The Moral Psychology of Conflict of Interest

• Conflicts of interest
• Moral psychology
• The GAGE model
• Applications to conflict of interest
• Other affective afflictions
• Normative advice.

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Conflicts of Interest

• Government official entertained.
• Business executive conceals information.
• Medical researcher motivated to show that a drug
  is effective.
• Physician omits procedure.
• Accountant pleases company.
• Professor supports student.

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Waterloo RIM Park Scandal

• 1999 Waterloo, Ontario decides to build large
  sports facility.
• 2000 City council signs what they think is a
  112 million lease.
• 2001 Discovery that true cost is 227mil.

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Waterloo Conflict of Interest

• 2003 Judicial inquiry finds that the city
  treasurer and the chief administrative officer
  had conflicts of interest resulting from social
  contacts with leasing company.

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Questions for Moral Psychology

• Why do conflicts of interest arise?
• Why are people often unaware of their unethical
  behavior arising from conflicts of interest?
• How can immoral decisions arising from conflicts
  of interest be avoided?

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Approaches to Moral Psychology

• Philosophical reflection Plato, Hume, etc.
• Psychological research Piaget, Kohlberg, etc.
• Psychologically informed philosophy Brandt,
  Flanagan, Johnson, etc.
• Affective neuroscience.

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Affective Neuroscience

• The study of emotional systems in the brain.
• Researchers include Damasio, Davidson, LeDoux,
  Panksepp, Rolls, Greene.
• Conjecture affective neuroscience is relevant
  to understanding conflicts of interest and other
  moral decisions.

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Neural Mechanism

• GAGE model Wagar Thagard,
• Psychological Review, 2004.

VMPFC
Amg
Somatic state
HC
VTA
NAc
To Action/ Overt
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Key Brain Areas

• Prefrontal cortex responsible for reasoning.
• Ventromedial PFC connects input from sensory
  cortices with amygdala etc.
• Amygdala processes emotional signals,
  especially fear. Somatic input.
• Nucleus accumbens processes emotional signals,
  especially reward.
• Hippocampus crucial for memory formation.

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How GAGE Explains Phineas

• Damasio Effective decision making depends on
  integration of cognitive information with somatic
  markers.
• Damage to VMPFC prevents this integration.
• GAGE shows a plausible mechanism for integration
  that is disrupted by VMPFC damage.

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GAGE Mechanism

• Mechanistic explanation Identify organized
  parts whose properties, relations and
  interactions produce regular changes.
• Parts
• Spiking neurons Spike trains, not just
  activations as in old connectionist and PDP
  models.
• Neurons organized into separate brain areas.

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GAGE Mechanism

• Processes
• Emotional valence requires coordination of VMPFC,
  amygdala, hippocampus and nucleus accumbens.
• Coordination occurs because of temporally
  coordinated spiking patterns. Analogy band.
  
• Output positive or negative attitude toward an
  action.

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Normal Functioning

• Decision making requires emotional evaluation of
  potential responses to a situation.
• Hippocampus (context) controls VMPFC and amygdala
  throughput in nucleus accumbens, which forms a
  gateway for somatic markers.
• VMPFC feeds an appropriate emotional signal into
  the nucleus accumbens.

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Malfunctioning in Phineas

• Damage to VMPFC means that there is no
  appropriate input to the nucleus accumbens
  summarizing the emotional value of the behavioral
  options.
• Hence Phineas Gage (and people with similar
  damage to VMPFC) make poor decisions. They
  simply cant judge value.

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Iowa Gambling Task

• Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, and Damasio, Science,
  1997.
• Participants make card selections from four
  decks, with rewards and punishments.
• Normal participants unconsciously learn to pick
  from good decks and avoid bad ones.
• VMPFC damaged ones dont learn.

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GAGE Simulation

• 700 spiking neurons with 670 connections,
  organized into VMPFC and other areas.
• Full network was able to learn to prefer good
  over bad decks.
• But when the VMPFC is lesioned, GAGE prefers bad
  decks, which offer immediate rewards.

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Schacter Singer, 1962

• Participants injected with epinephrine had
  different emotional experiences based on pleasant
  and unpleasant contexts.
• Hippocampal-determined context drove GAGEs
  behavior when the nucleus accumbens was presented
  with two different VMPFC representations
  simultaneously.
• Implication we dont know sources of our
  emotions.

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Lessons for Moral Reasoning

• Deciding what is right and wrong to do in a
  situation requires integrated processing in
  multiple brain areas VMPFC, etc.
• We have no conscious access to how this
  integration is carried out.
• Hence our emotional reactions to potential
  behaviors may have causes other than the ones we
  think are operating.

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Conflicts of Interest

• John Ford, Waterloo city treasurer.
• Thought he was doing the right thing based on his
  awareness of his concern for the city, his job,
  etc.
• But positive emotional evaluation of MFP option
  was based on positive associations with Robson as
  much as content.
• Trust was tied to the salesman.

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Cognitive/affective process

• What comes to consciousness (do X) is an
  emotional feeling that X is desirable.
• It is based on interactions among the VMPFC,
  amygdala, hippocampus, and nucleus accumbens.
• Somatic markers that arise may come from morally
  irrelevant sources, e.g. fun and personal
  motivations.
• But there is no way to know the source of the
  somatic markers that result.

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Allied psychological findings

• Wegener illusion of conscious will.
• Loewenstein et al risk as feeling.
• Slovic et al affect heuristic.

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Moral Consequences

• People are incapable of knowing whether they are
  acting appropriately or out of conflicts of
  interest.
• Conflicts are likely to lead to intrusion of
  morally objectionable factors.

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Related Affective Afflictions

• Self-deception
• Motivated inference, rationalization.
• Weakness of will
• Empathy gaps

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Self Deception

• Some philosophers have been puzzled about how
  self deception can be possible.
• The GAGE model shows that it is not only possible
  but likely.
• We do not know all the emotional causes of our
  actions, so reasoning naturally finds appealing
  rather than actual explanations.

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Example of Self Deception

• Preacher in Scarlet Letter Dimmesdale. See
  Sahdra Thagard, Minds and Machines, 2003.
• Evidence supports conclusion that he is a sinner
  and hypocrite.
• But he attaches value to believing otherwise, and
  so does, without knowing why.
• Beliefs accepted based on emotional coherence.

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Rationalization

• People find self-justifying explanations of why
  they acted as they did.
• Motivated inference goals such as maintaining
  self-esteem affect inference about ourselves and
  others.
• GAGE beliefs are affected by somatic markers
  and cognitive/affective integration.

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Weakness of Will

• Appetites and past experience may be source of
  strong somatic markers Sex, food, alcohol,
  gambling, etc.
• Rational calculation (prudential or moral) may
  not be able to override urges, especially in
  presence of strong stimuli nucleus accumbens.
• Cognitive/affective integration yields
  irrationality.

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Empathy Gaps

• Loewenstein Hot-cold empathy gap.
• People in one emotional state are poor at
  predicting their preferences and behavior in very
  different emotional states.
• E.g. sexual arousal, depression.
• GAGE explanation prediction requires
  simulation, which is deflected by current somatic
  markers.

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Review

• Conflict of interest is an affective affliction
  like weakness of will, self-deception, motivated
  inference, rationalization, and empathy gaps.
• All these affective afflictions are caused by
  strong emotional influences in cognitive/affective
  decision making.

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What is to be done?

• Conflicts of interest and other affective
  afflictions are ubiquitous and insidious.
• How can they be overcome?
• Avoid emotions and use analytic methods.
• Avoid conflicts.
• Disclose conflicts.
• Have social oversight.
• Informed intuition.

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Avoid emotions?
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Other solutions?

• 2. Avoid conflicts of interest altogether.
• usually not possible.
• Disclose conflicts of interest.
• does not overcome affective problem.
• may make things worth Cain et al.
• 4. Social oversight not always possible.

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Informed Intuition

1. Set up the problem.
2. Reflect on the importance of goals.
3. Examine basis of beliefs.
4. Make intuitive, emotional judgment based on full
   assessment.

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Conclusions

• Decisions are based on cognitive/affective
  integration.
• Integration requires interaction and coordination
  of multiple brain areas.
• Lack of access to this process inclines people
  toward conflicts of interest, self-deception,
  weakness of will, empathy gaps.
• Normative aids make decisions explicit and
  social. Informed intuition.

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Web site

• http//cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/