Somatic-Marker Hypothesis

The somatic-marker hypothesis is a hypothesis Damasio offers concerning the role of emotion in decision-making. Before this proposal is outlined, however, the way in which Damasio uses the labels “good” and “bad” should be explained. Damasio believes that qualities of goodness and badness can be ascribed to a situation or object based on whether it (the situation or

object) is helpful or harmful to an organism’s survival or well-being. So for example, in normal cases, being hungry is bad, and the action of eating when hungry is advantageous in that it leads to a good result (namely, the body being more homeostatically balanced). Damasio emphasizes though that this does not mean that we, or other organisms, always decide to produce reactions that lead to good results. For instance, many of the homeostatic regulatory processes occurring in our bodies that lead to good results are in fact outside of our conscious control. An example Damasio gives is the maintenance of a certain pH level in our body. Damasio further suggests that some reactions we produce in response to a good or bad situation may not be felt by us (DE 116-117; LS 49-51).

A “somatic marker” is an emotion/feeling that is associated with (i.e., marks) a certain image in the mind.132 Damasio’s somatic-marker hypoth- esis says that somatic markers influence our decision-making process in the following way: As we decide what course of action to take, we process images of possible outcomes of different actions. These outcomes can be viewed as good or bad, in the sense given above, and “positive” somatic markers will be associated with images of good outcomes, while “negative” somatic markers will be associated with images of bad outcomes. In other words, pleasant emotions/feelings will be associated with images of good results, whereas un- pleasant emotions/feelings will be associated with images of bad results.133

132_{It is unclear as to whether Damasio takes a somatic marker to be an emotion or a}

feeling of an emotion. In discussing the somatic-marker hypothesis, he specifically says, for example, “somatic markers are a special instance of feelings generated from secondary

[i.e., not completely innate]emotions” (DE 174); he also explicitly refers to our experience of a “gut feeling” (DE 173). But he says too that “. . . a somatic state, positive or nega- tive, caused by the appearance of a given representation, operates not only as amarker for the value of what is represented, but also as a booster for continued working memory and attention” (DE 197-198), where presumably a somatic state is a body state (e.g., an emotion), not a mental image (e.g., a feeling) of a body state. The situation is compli- cated further in that he also uses the terms “emotions and feelings,” “emotional-feeling response,” “emotions/feelings,” and “emotions and their ensuing feelings” in discussion of the somatic-marker hypothesis, and he refers to somatic markers as “emotional signals” (LS 140-152). Moreover, only in his two most recent books,The Feeling of What Hap- pens and Looking for Spinoza, is the explicit distinction made between feelings that are conscious and those that are not; hence, it is unclear whether the nonconscious somatic markers Damasio mentions (e.g., DE 184-185; LS 148) are emotions that we do not feel at all (i.e., body states that may or may not be neurally mapped, and which are not the content of any mental images), or are what he later calls “nonconscious feelings.” His empirical studies (see, for example, comments in FWH 41-42 and§3.2 below) do not seem to help resolve the matter. For if they show impaired reasoning to be correlated with lack of emotion, then they have (by default, based on Damasio’s definition of “feeling”) also shown impaired reasoning to be correlated with lack of feeling of emotion. Based on the texts, it also seems plausible that in Damasio’s thought, some somatic markers are emotions and some are feelings of emotions. In what follows, this latter perspective is adopted, and the term “emotion/feeling” is used to encompass both emotions and feelings of emotions.

Based on the characteristics of the accompanying emotion/feeling, we may thus be prompted during our decision-making process to attend more to one action (one accompanied by a positive emotion/feeling, for instance) than another. Or we might immediately stop considering an option because very negative emotions/feelings (e.g., a sinking feeling in the pit of one’s stom- ach) mark a possible outcome of that option, thereby reducing the number of options to consider. Or we might consider an option with more scrutiny because attention has been drawn to a bad possible outcome of that option. In these ways, somatic markers can facilitate decision-making (although, Damasio maintains, they are unlikely to often be the sole basis of a deci- sion) and can increase our chances of choosing a beneficial response (DE 170-175; LS 147-149).

Damasio suggests that somatic markers can arise from “as if” body maps as well as from maps of how the body actually is. Also, somatic markers can be conscious or nonconscious. In the latter case, the outcome is somatically marked, and changes in attention, reasoning, etc. may subsequently result, but the marker is not known to us as a feeling (DE 184-185; LS 148-149).

Damasio proposes that some somatic markers act as such due to innate dispositions (e.g., innate dispositions regarding whether a given stimulus is good or bad with respect to survival). Other somatic markers develop due to experiences we have wherein a certain type of stimulus is paired with a certain type (positive or negative) of somatic state. This latter class of somatic markers arises from a combination of innate preferences and our exposure to social conventions (DE 177-180; LS 145-147). Damasio says that, through this type of learning, “different options for action and different future outcomes become associated with different emotions/feelings. By virtue of these associations, when a situation that fits the profile of a certain category is revisited in our experience, we rapidly and automatically deploy the appropriate emotions” (LS 146-147). These emotions (or perhaps the feelings of them) thus can act as somatic markers.