The Power of What We Leave Behind: Emotions, Sacrifice, and Decision-Making

Carter-A259. A Halo spartan who was critically injured in an ambush. To save Noble Six and Emile (his fellow comrades), Carter flew his ship into a Scarab, destroying it and sacrificing himself.

Introduction

We are constantly at odds with ourselves, weighing outcomes and deliberating which aspects of our lives to prioritize. The paths we leave untaken often shape our lives as profoundly as the ones we choose to follow. Guided by the quiet pull of our emotions, our sacrifices reflect what we value most, helping us move toward what matters and away from what feels less meaningful. In this article, we dive into psychological research exploring how the salience of emotional processing influences our decision-making and sacrifice.

Moral Domain

Giving up a 30-minute jog for a hot jelly donut is probably a decision that does not generate intense internal turmoil. Unless the jelly donut brings a fiery vengeance on your enemies or will allow you to obtain an all-encompassing understanding of the universe and conscious beings, choosing to eat the donut is pretty low stakes. However, deciding whether or not you should risk your well-being by running into a burning building to save the lives of strangers may require more deliberation. The spectrum of situations where we wrestle between actions that support morality and self-interest is called the “Moral Domain” (Sachdeva, 2015). People are selfish, but also morally motivated, so how do we decide which is the best for us?

Psychological Research

The classic “trolly problem” is a psychological and philosophical test used to investigate our preference for moral actions. Subjects are told to imagine a fictional scenario and determine how they should behave. Research has indicated that the type of sacrifice and the subject's perspective alter the preference for performing a morally good action. 

For instance, imagine a runaway trolley car barrelling towards a group of people at the end of a track. You and a stranger standing at the top of a footbridge overlooking the railway are watching in awe as this unfolds. You can either jump off the footbridge to stop the trolley, push the unsuspecting stranger onto the tracks to stop the trolley, or do nothing and have the train kill the people at the end of the track. Researchers at Northwestern University presented this to subjects with an illustration from either the first-person or third-person perspective. Interestingly, those who viewed the situation from the first-person perspective were significantly more likely to perform an act of self-sacrifice relative to those who viewed the situation from the third-person perspective. This could be the result of a difference in emotional salience. Those who decided from a third-person perspective may have felt a greater detachment from the situation, diminishing the significance of performing a self-sacrificial act (Sachdeva, 2015).

Figure 1: An illustration of the trolly problem taken from two different perspectives (Sachdeva, 2015).

Neuroscience Research

The importance of emotional salience in determining the degree of sacrifice someone is willing to endure has been investigated through a number of different neurological studies as well. One investigation utilized patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in order to see how their ability to make decisions is altered relative to controls. 

In this experiment, participants were told to draw cards from 4 different decks of their choosing labeled A, B, C, and D. Each card had an associated reward or an associated penalty. Unbeknownst to the participants, decks A and B contained fewer penalties relative to C and D. The study found that control participants took a greater amount of cards from the “better” decks A and B. However, patients with a damaged vmPFC failed to effectively anticipate the rewards and punishments of each deck and therefore did not demonstrate any particular deck preference. The researchers attributed this effect to a decrease in emotional signaling that would typically arise in the frontal cortex from pulling a negative or a positive card. Because of this, patients in the damaged vmPFC group failed to avoid choices that lead to more punishment and instead continued to sample from the disadvantageous decks (Shiv, 2005). 

Significance

The direction of our choices is deeply rooted in the way we feel. Emotions are what allow us to recognize the significance of others and instill purpose in performing actions that improve their well-being. This same idea also applies to personal ambitions. We are more willing to perform acts of self-sacrifice in the presence of goal attainment, reducing the significance of short-term rewards to strive for long-term achievements (Clinton, 2023). If you really wanted to become a runner, and this goal was important to you, you would set aside the piping hot jelly donut and lace up those shoes. Our emotional connections to the many facets of our lives are significant because they serve as a catalyst to sacrifice the things that hinder our progress. In many ways, emotional investments transform fleeting desires into sustained commitments, enabling us to prioritize what truly matters. 

Fall back onto what is significant in your life and remove the rest.

References

Sachdeva S, Iliev R, Ekhtiari H, Dehghani M (2015) The Role of Self-Sacrifice in Moral Dilemmas. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0127409. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127409

Shiv, B., Bechara, A., Levin, I. et al. Decision Neuroscience. Market Lett 16, 375–386 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-005-5899-8

Clinton, M., Conway, N., Sturges, J., & McFarland, A. (2023). Giving it all You’ve Got: How Daily Self‐Sacrifice and Self‐Esteem Regulate the Double‐Edged Effects of Callings. Journal of Management Studies. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13013