Value Judgments: Testing the Somatic-Marker Hypothesis Using False Physiological Feedback

Damasio’s somatic-marker hypothesis claims that people rely on somatic markers—physiological responses to situations of gain or loss—to make value-relevant decisions, not simply on cool reason. To test this hypothesis, undergraduates were presented with false physiological feedback as they listened to audiotapes describing situations threatening two values, freedom and equality. They were then asked to make decisions that implicated these values. Decisions favored whichever value had received stronger feedback while listening to the value-threatening situations. Feedback did not, however, affect judgments about the relative importance of the values in general; these judgments were apparently based on cognitive retrieval from memory of a stored value hierarchy, which also—and independently— affected the value-related decisions. These results supported the somatic-marker hypothesis.