How to Make Better Decisions

What is the best way to make a decision? Making a list of pros and cons? Asking for others opinions? Deliberating back and forth? Or maybe resorting to the classic eenie meenie miney mo.As a general consensus it is widely believed that conscious thought and deliberation leads to good decision-making. People always tell us to think it through, don’t rush into anything, weigh up all options carefully etc. etc. But how true is this?Well recent research has suggested that this may not be the case. One study had participants choose their favourite poster among a set of five however they were split into two groups. One group made their decision after thorough contemplation while the other group looked at them briefly. Following their decisions it was found that participants who made their choice after thorough contemplation showed less post choice satisfaction than those who looked at them briefly. It appears that extensive conscious thought can make multiple evaluations less consistent over time. It may also inflate the importance of some attributes at the expense of others. So what is the opposite of conscious thought? Well it’s unconscious thought. Unconscious thought is thought or deliberation in the absence of conscious attention. It is still directed at the problem however thought processes are not in conscious awareness. During unconscious thought large amounts of information can be integrated to form an overall summary and judgment regarding the problem at hand. Using our intuition of gut feeling (see my blog to learn more about this phenomenon) has been suggested to be a more effective strategy.A team of researchers aimed to discover exactly this. In one study they had participants read information about four hypothetical cars. Each car was characterised by either four attributes (simple decision) or twelve attributes (complex decision). One car had 75% good attributes, two cars had 50% good attributes and one car had 25% good attributes. The participants were then split into two groups – a conscious thought group and an unconscious thought group. The conscious thought group were asked to think about the cars for four minutes while the unconscious thought group were distracted solving anagrams for four minutes.What they discovered that was for simple conditions, conscious thinkers generally made proper decisions however under complex circumstances the conscious thought group performed poorly. Conversely, the unconscious thought group did well under both circumstances.It appears that for simple decisions such as which restaurant to go to or which outfit to wear, conscious or unconscious thought processes may be effective. However for more complex decisions such as which apartment, or car to buy it may be wiser to rely on your unconscious mind. So the next time you are faced with a difficult decision you may actually be better off taking a step back, doing something else and letting your intuition do the work for you!