Rationally speaking, emotions win!

In the mid-70s, hundreds of supermarkets across America were busy serving two unmarked glasses of cola to unsuspecting customers. Unknown to them, one was Coke and other was Pepsi. People were asked to taste both, without knowing which one was which, and were to tell researchers which tasted better.

More than half the respondents preferred Pepsi. Even Pepsi was surprised. Researchers, academicians and practitioners were stunned. How can Coke that was beating Pepsi almost three to one in the market trail the very same brand in blind tests!

Many theories were proposed about what came to be known as ‘The Pepsi Challenge'. Every one of them had their share of critics. The reason remained a mystery like the Kennedy assassination or Area 51.

Twenty-eight years later, Dr. Read Montague, director of the Human Neuroimaging Lab at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, decided to do the test once again. Only this time he used fMRI to measure the brains of people who were made to taste Pepsi and Coke in another blind test.

Again, more than half the respondents preferred Pepsi. Not just their mouths, their brains voted for Pepsi too. There was activity in the ventral putamen region of the brain – the region that’s stimulated when it likes the taste!

In the experiment’ next stage, Dr. Read let everyone know what they were actually tasting. Put simply, the respondents were revealed the identity of the brand before they tasted it.

This time 75% said they preferred Coke. That was not the only funny activity that was noticed. fMRI noticed a marked change within respondents’ brains. In addition to the ventral putamen, there was activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, the region for higher thinking and discernment.

Do you see what’s happening here?

The two different areas of the brain – Rational and Emotional - were engaged in a fist fight. A rational thought – taste - was competing with emotional thoughts - Coke’s history, it being seen the original cola, childhood memories etc – and was winning!

Dr. Read’s verdict: Emotion trounces rationality.

Not to be left behind, psychologists at Princeton University did another experiment. Random students were asked if they would take an Amazon gift voucher for $15 right away or if would they would wait for two weeks to get a $20 Amazon gift voucher.

Brain scans done by the Princeton psychologists revealed that both gift options triggered activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex, the brain area that generates emotion. But the choice of getting a gift voucher right away caused stimulation in the limbic areas of the brains that’s primarily responsible for our emotions.

Simply put, rationality was on a warpath with emotions again, inside the brain. Guess what happened?

The more the person was excited, the more he or she chose the immediate gratification of opting for $15 gift voucher. The $20 voucher should have been the logical choice but emotions were trouncing rationality lock, stock and barrel.

Heart rules. Head bows!