How We Decide (4 page)

AFTER INTERVIEWING ELLIOT
, Damasio began studying other patients with similar patterns of brain damage. These patients all appeared intelligent and showed no deficits on any conventional cognitive tests. And yet they all suffered from the same profound flaw: because they didn't experience emotion, they had tremendous difficulty making any decisions. In
Descartes' Error,
Damasio described what it was like trying to set up an appointment with one of these emotionless patients:

I suggested two alternative dates, both in the coming month and just a few days apart from each other. The patient pulled out his appointment book and began consulting the calendar. The behavior that ensued, which was witnessed by several investigators, was remarkable. For the better part of a half hour, the patient enumerated reasons for and against each of the two dates: previous engagements, proximity to other engagements, possible meteorological conditions, virtually anything that one could reasonably think about concerning a simple date.... He was now walking us through a tiresome cost-benefit analysis, an endless outlining and fruitless comparison of options and possible consequences. It took enormous discipline to listen to all of this without pounding on the table and telling him to stop.

Based on these patients, Damasio began compiling a map of feeling, locating the specific brain regions responsible for generating emotions. Although many different cortical areas contribute to this process, one part of the brain seemed particularly important: a small circuit of tissue called the orbitofrontal cortex, which sits just behind the eyes, in the underbelly of the frontal lobe.
(Orbit
is Latin for "eye socket.") If this fragile fold of cells is damaged by a malignant tumor or a hemorrhaging artery, the tragic result is always the same. At first, everything seems normal, and after the tumor is removed or the bleeding is stopped, the patient is sent home. A full recovery is forecast. But then little things start to go awry. The patient begins to seem remote, cold, distant. This previously responsible person suddenly starts doing irresponsible things. The mundane choices of everyday life become excruciatingly difficult. It's as if his very personality—the collection of wants and desires that defined him as an individual—had been systematically erased. His loved ones say it's like living with a stranger, only this stranger has no scruples.

The crucial importance of our emotions—the fact that we can't make decisions without them—contradicts the conventional view of human nature, with its ancient philosophical roots. For most of the twentieth century, the ideal of rationality was supported by scientific descriptions of human anatomy. The brain was envisioned as consisting of four separate layers, stacked in ascending order of complexity. (The cortex was like an archaeological site: the deeper you dug, the farther back in time you traveled.) Scientists explained the anatomy of the human brain in this manner: At its bottom was the brain stem, which governed the most basic bodily functions. It controlled heartbeat, breathing, and body temperature. Above that was the diencephalon, which regulated hunger pangs and sleep cycles. Then came the limbic region, which generated animal emotions. It was the source of lust, violence, and impulsive behavior. (Human beings shared these three brain layers with every other mammal.) Finally, there was the magnificent frontal cortex—the masterpiece of evolution—which was responsible for reason, intelligence, and morality. These convolutions of gray matter allowed each of us to resist urges and suppress emotions. In other words, the rational fourth layer of the brain allowed us to ignore the first three layers. We were the only species able to rebel against primitive feelings and make decisions that were dispassionate and deliberate.

But this anatomical narrative is
false.
The expansion of the frontal cortex during human evolution did not turn us into purely rational creatures, able to ignore our impulses. In fact, neuroscience now knows that the opposite is true: a significant part of our frontal cortex is involved with emotion. David Hume, the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher who delighted in heretical ideas, was right when he declared that reason was "the slave of the passions."

How does this emotional brain system work? The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the part of the brain that Elliot was missing, is responsible for integrating visceral emotions into the decision-making process. It connects the feelings generated by the "primitive" brain—areas like the brain stem and the amygdala, which is in the limbic system—to the stream of conscious thought. When a person is drawn to a specific receiver, or a certain entrée on the menu, or a particular romantic prospect, the mind is trying to tell him that he should choose that option. It has already assessed the alternatives—this analysis takes place outside of conscious awareness—and converted that assessment into a positive emotion. And when he sees a receiver who's tightly covered, or smells a food he doesn't like, or glimpses an ex-girlfriend, it is the OFC that makes him want to get away. (
Emotion
and
motivation
share the same Latin root,
movere,
which means "to move.") The world is full of things, and it is our feelings that help us choose among them.

When this neural connection is severed—when our OFCs can't comprehend our own emotions—we lose access to the wealth of opinions that we normally rely on. All of a sudden, you no longer know what to think about the receiver running a short post pattern or whether it's a good idea to order the cheeseburger for lunch. The end result is that it's impossible to make decent decisions. This is why the OFC is one of the few cortical regions that are markedly larger in humans than they are in other primates. While Plato and Freud would have guessed that the job of the OFC was to
protect
us from our emotions, to fortify reason against feeling, its actual function is precisely the opposite. From the perspective of the human brain,
Homo sapiens
is the most emotional animal of all.

It's not easy making a daytime soap opera. The demands of the form are grueling: a new episode has to be filmed nearly every single day. No other type of popular entertainment churns out so much material in so short a time. New plot twists have to be dreamed up, new scripts have to be written, actors need to rehearse, and every scene must be meticulously mapped out. Only then, once all that preparation is complete, are the cameras turned on. For most daytime soaps, it takes about twelve hours to film twenty-two minutes of television. This cycle is repeated five days a week.

Herb Stein has been directing
Days of Our Lives,
a soap opera on NBC, for twenty-five years. He's shot more than fifty thousand scenes and has cast hundreds of different actors. He's been nominated for eight daytime Emmys. Over the course of his long career, Stein has witnessed more scenes of melodrama—rapes, weddings, births, murders, confessions—than just about any other human being alive. He is, one might say, an
expert
on melodrama: how to write it, block it, film it, edit it, and produce it.

For Stein, the long road to daytime television began when he was a student at UCLA and read
The Oresteia,
the trilogy of classic Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus. It was the utter timelessness of the plays—their ability to speak to enduring human themes—that made him want to study theater. When Stein talks about drama—and it doesn't matter if he's talking about Aeschylus or
General Hospital
—he tends to sound like a literature professor. (He also looks like one, with his rumpled shirts and a few days' worth of salt-and-pepper stubble.) Stein talks in long, digressive monologues and finds grand ideas in the most unlikely plot lines. "Many of these classic plays have elements of the ridiculous," he says. "The plots are often completely implausible. That whole Oedipus thing? Totally absurd. And yet, when these stories are told well, you don't notice the absurdity. You're too busy paying attention to what's happening."

Soap operas work the same way. The key to being a successful soap opera director—and Stein is one of the most successful in the business—is telling the story so that people don't notice you're telling them a story. Everything has to feel sincere, even when what's happening onscreen is completely outlandish. This is much harder than it might seem. Let's say you're shooting a scene in which a woman is giving birth to fraternal twins fathered by two different men, both of whom are at the bedside with her. One of the fathers is the villain of the show: he impregnated the woman by raping her. The other father is the good guy, and the woman is deeply in love with him. However, if she doesn't marry her rapist, then members of her family will be killed. (This is an actual plot line from a recent
Days of Our Lives
episode.) The scene has several pages of intense dialogue, a few tears, and plenty of subtext. Stein has about an hour to shoot it, which forces him to make some crucial decisions on the fly. He has to figure out where each character should stand, how they all should move, what emotions they should convey, and how each of the four cameras should capture the action. Should they zoom in close, or get a reaction shot over the shoulder? How should the villain deliver his lines? These directorial decisions will determine whether or not the scene works. "You've really got to know how to milk the drama," Stein says. "Otherwise, it's just a bunch of people standing in a room, saying stupid stuff."

Although the scene has been mapped out in advance, Stein still needs to make many of these decisions in the midst of filming, while the actors are delivering their lines. Most of the fake rooms on the Burbank sound stage have only two flimsy walls, with one camera positioned on each side. An additional camera records the center of the scene. As soon as the assistant director yells out, "Action!" there is a frenzy of activity offstage as the cameras pivot and Stein snaps his fingers, pointing to indicate which camera he wants to capture the action for each specific part of the scene. (This makes it easier for the editor to assemble a working cut later.) During complicated scenes, such as that birth scene with the two fathers, Stein looks like an orchestra conductor: his arms are never still. He is constantly pointing at different cameras, crafting the scene in real time.

How does Stein make these directorial decisions? After all, he doesn't have the luxury of filming twenty different takes from twenty different angles. "Given the schedule [of a daytime soap opera]," Stein says, "there isn't time to be fiddling around with all the stuff that directors normally fiddle around with. You need to make the right decision the first time around." If a soap director makes a mistake while shooting, the scene can't be re-shot another day. When you're creating daytime television, you have only one day.

This relentless time pressure means that Stein can't afford to carefully think through all of his camera choices. He doesn't have time to be rational; he needs to react to the drama as it's unfolding. In that sense, he is like a quarterback in the pocket. "When you shoot as many scenes as I have," Stein says, "you just know how things should go. I can watch an actor say a single line and know immediately that we need to try it again. When we're filming a scene, it's all very instinctual. Even when we go in with a plan on how to shoot it, that plan will often change in the moment, depending on how it feels."

The reliance on instinct and "feel" is also a crucial part of the casting process. Soaps are continually bringing on new actors, in part because the longer actors are on the show, the higher their salaries are. (That's why established characters on
Days of Our Lives
are constantly being killed off. As Stein quips, "This isn't show
art.
It's show
business.
") For a soap opera, there are few decisions as crucial as casting. The size of the audience oscillates with the appeal of the actors, and a particularly appealing actor can create a spike in the ratings. "You are always looking for that person that people want to look at," Stein says. "And I don't just mean attractiveness. They've got to have
it,
and by
it,
I mean everything that you can't really put into words."

The question, of course, is how you identify
it.
When Stein first started directing television, he was overwhelmed by all the different variables involved in casting. First, he'd try to make sure that the person looked right for the part and could act in the soap style. Then Stein needed to consider how this actor would fit in with the rest of the cast. ("A lack of chemistry has ruined many a soap scene," he says.) Only after that was Stein able to think about whether or not the actor actually had talent. Would he deliver his lines with sincerity? Could he cry on demand? How many takes would he require before he got the scene right? "Given all of these factors," Stein says, "there can be a tendency to really outthink yourself, to talk yourself into choosing the wrong actor."

After directing daytime television for decades, however, Stein has learned how to trust his instincts, even if he can't always explain them. "It only takes me three to five seconds before I know if the person is right," he says. "A few words, a single gesture. That's all I need. And I've learned to always listen to that." Recently, the show put out a casting call for a male lead. The character was going to be the new villain on the show. Stein was up in his office, blocking a script, watching the auditions out of the corner of his eye. After a few hours of seeing dozens of different actors recite the exact same lines, Stein was getting bored and discouraged. "But that's when this one guy stood up," he says. "The actor didn't even know his lines because he had gotten the script late. I just saw him say a few words, and then I knew. He was unbelievably great. I couldn't explain why, but for me he completely stood out. What they say is true: you just get a feeling."

The mental process Stein is describing depends on his emotional brain. Those twinges of feeling that help him select the right camera and find the best actor are a distillation of all those details that he doesn't consciously perceive. "The conscious brain may get all the attention," says Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscientist at NYU. "But consciousness is a small part of what the brain does, and it's a slave to everything that works beneath it." According to LeDoux, much of what we "think" is really driven by our emotions. In this sense, every feeling is really a summary of data, a visceral response to all of the information that can't be accessed directly. While Stein's conscious brain was blocking the script, his unconscious supercomputer was processing all sorts of data. It then translated that data into vivid emotional signals that were detected by the OFC, allowing Stein to act upon these subliminal calculations. If Stein were missing his feelings—if he were like one of Damasio's patients—then he would be forced to carefully analyze every alternative, and that would take forever. His episodes would be constantly delayed and he would cast the wrong actors. Stein's insight is that his feelings are often an accurate shortcut, a concise expression of his decades' worth of experience. They already know how to shoot the scene.