How would you answer these questions?
You are going to buy a new car. You should make this decision by:
- Research the cars online, make comparison sheet with all the car facts and pick the car providing the best numbers.
- After making a comparison sheet, do a cost/benefit analysis based on the car price.
- Test drive the hand full of cars that meet your basic criteria and pick which one you like the best.
You are at Target and need a new potato peeler. You would normally:
- Grab the one you see first and throw it in the cart.
- Grab the one that is the coolest looking.
- Look at the prices of all four offered and pick the least expensive.
More on how you answered these in a bit…
How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer, is a scientific look into the modern brain, and some of it may surprise you.
Since even before Descartes, the idea that decisions should be made with the rational mind has proliferated. Emotions cloud judgment, we have been taught, and our rational mind keeps a lid on those primitive impulses.
Then, in the 1990s, Dr. Antonio Damasio began studying patients suffering damage of their orbitofrontal cortex – the area in the prefrontal cortex responsible for integrating emotions in the decision making process. He found something no one expected: they couldn’t make decisions at all! Even though their rational brain was unaffected, their obsession with irrelevant details immobilized them. This opened the doors to a new hypothesis. Not only is pure reason insufficient for decision-making, emotions are essential.
Lehrer explains that, while the prefrontal cortex separates man from monkey, it is a relatively new part of our brain. Being so, it is much slower and has many limitations. The emotional brain, in contrast, has been refined over hundreds of millions of years of evolution. It is extremely good at making quick decisions. The emotional brain is like an unconscious supercomputer, processing and translating emotional signals in milliseconds. Without it we would take all day deciding whether we liked white or wheat bread better.
How We Decide is filled with fascinating studies and experiments that show how, in most instances, we are far better off allowing our primordial brain to make decisions. Too often, our rational mind hijacks our brain. We start to consciously think too much and tend to make more mistakes. Instead of going with what feels best, we go with what sounds best.
One simple experiment that demonstrated this tendency to “over think” was a jam taste test. Students were given a dozen jams to try and where told to rate them by which tasted the best. There was overwhelming congruity in the top three. Then, a second group of students were given the same task, but were to EXPLAIN WHY they preferred them. The results were a mess! Most people in the second group ended up picking the least favorite from the first group! When they went back to the second group and asked them to rate them again, this time only by taste, their results almost exactly matched the first group. The conclusion: don’t over analyze preferences. Let your emotions do the work.
So, how did you answer the top questions? I am sure many of you would think you should use analysis when making a big, important, and expensive decision. Likewise, I bet you would just grab whatever peeler looked the best.
Interestingly, Lehrer says the opposite is true. When making a complicated decision, our rational brain is lousy. It gets overloaded and tends to fail us. Best to look at a few key attributes, and let your gut do the rest. Taking a break between looking at the cars (for example) and deciding which one to buy can help ensure you are making the right EMOTIONAL decision.
As for potato peelers, who cares, right? Marketers know that about us, and play on our impulses through things like cool packaging. Since we know a peeler is a peeler, best to use the RATIONAL BRAIN and look at the price. That cool green handle may be costing you a couple more dollars.
Now that science is giving credence to emotions and gut feelings, decision-making should be much easier. Our emotions are giving us clues all day long, without any effort. I find that the times that I make the worst decisions are the times my brain is so overloaded, it masks the emotional information. My solution? A simple 10-minute breathing meditation to clear the mind can do the trick. Why do you think wise people say, “Let me meditate on it”? The act of clearing the mind allows your highly evolved emotional brain to make the best decision. So, clear you mind, take a deep breath, and go with your gut…
Dalai Lina 