Decision-Making: Emotion vs. Reason

1. The high-reason view values pure reason and logical deduction above all else, and it assumes that in order to get the best results, emotions and passions must be set aside (since they cannot be objectively verified) and a pure 'cost/benefit analysis' must be calculated. A somatic marker is an bodily feeling (either positive or negative emotion) that is experienced prior to making a decision and that influences the decision. 
2. Teen brains work differently than adult brains in regard to decision-making because the myelin sheath, the fatty tissue coating the nerve cells that connect teenagers' frontal lobes is sluggish and not fully developed, causing poor communication between the frontal lobe and the rest of the brain. This lack of development makes teens less equipped to use insight and reasoning for decision-making than adults. 
3. The cerebellum helps coordinate thoughts in a similar way it helps coordinate movement. The cerebellum shapes our reasoning and thought processes, although it is not fully developed until we are in our early 20s.  
4. Although evidence corroborates the thesis that humans have a rudimentary moral sense for the very start of life, socialization is critically important since it refines a baby's sense of right and wrong, which significantly differs from what we adults want it to be. Studies have shown that babies have a small understanding of mental life from the start: expecting inanimate objects to move as the result of push-pull interactions, expecting people to move rationally in accordance with their beliefs or desires, and expecting someone who reaches for an object to reach for the same object even if its location has change. As babies grow, they continue to form a moral code. As adults, this moral code eventually becomes a fully- developed universal code that is the a product of cultural development, of the accumulation of rational insight, and of hard-earned innovations for each of use.  
5. When making decisions and taking actions, I know that the benefits outweigh the costs by determining how much I want something. For example, for the past several months I have woken up early each Saturday morning to study for the SAT (which I will take next week). If the colleges I hope to possibly attend did not want high SAT scores, then this extra studying for the test would surely be unbearable to me. To me, attending a highly competitive institution outweighs all costs. Making choices such as these matter since any choice affects a person's life for good or for bad. Making wise decisions (such as putting in extra time studying for the SAT) make me feel I am living my life to the fullest while making unwise choices (such as not putting in time to study for such an important test) muy ruin some of my hopes and goals.