There was a really interesting article in Newsweek on line recently. It reviewed some research by Gerd Gigerenzer who is a researcher at the Max Plank institute in Germany. Basically, the article argues that our gut instincts are often times better than making a careful deliberative decision. In other words, when making a hard decision, you could a) take a careful listing of all of the pros and cons and then decide the correct course of action or b) go with your gut instinct. There is increasing evidence that people are able to make snap judgments and be relatively accurate, and sometimes more accurate than with careful deliberation.

One reason this happens is because our brains have a difficult time weighing and prioritizing a lot of information. In fact, when we have a lot of choices, and a lot of information on those choices, we find it paralyzing. Imagine going to an electronic store to pick out a HD TV. When you get there you find 50 choices, all different sizes, different screen resolutions, and with different features. You might think, “Great! This means I will really get what I want.” But in reality it makes it much more difficult to make a decision on which to buy. Barry Schwartz, a professor at Swarthmore College, calls this the paradox of choice, the more choices you have the less likely you will make a good decision.

Also, we are very good at discerning some kinds of important information quickly. For example, Nalini Ambady, a professor at Tufts University, has shown that people are surprisingly accurate in judging people from what she calls “thin” slices of behavior. When people view someone for 30 seconds, it is enough time to understand what kind of a person they are. That is why we often get a “gut feeling” about someone we just met. And it is pretty important for people to be able to judge a new acquaintance quickly, so we have gotten good at it.

So is it true? Should we really listen to Stephen Colbert and “feel” our decisions rather than “think” our decisions? Well, sometimes we should, and sometimes we shouldn’t. When we have a lot of knowledge about a topic, when we are an “expert”, hunches will often times be better than deliberative thought. It doesn’t have to be something that you studied in college, or do everyday for your job. Parents are often “experts” at knowing when their child’s coughs are nothing to worry about and when they are something you should call the doctor over. People are experts at figuring out who is nice and who is mean. An expert has a vast amount of information in their brain about their topic of expertise. When experts need to make decisions on that topic the brain automatically knows what the right decision is. Experts process the decision without conscious thought because they don’t need conscious thought.

But when you are a novice in the area, don’t go with your gut. Then you are stuck with all shorts of mental shortcuts that will probably make your decision worse. (Like the last time my car wouldn’t start. I thought “well the radio works so I don’t think it is the battery”….wrong). That is when you should make a long list of pros and cons or ask someone who is an expert in that area.

Further Reading:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/71514/page/1

Ambady, N., & Rule, N. O. (2007). Thin slices of behavior. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Social Psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Schwartz, B. (2004). The Paradox of Choice. New York, HarperCollins.

Gladwell, M. (2005). Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Bay Back Books.