Thinking intuitively, Thinking analytically
The rationality in our decisions
It has been said that man is a rational animal. But much of the recent scientific research proves otherwise. One of the traps that analytical people fall into is the assumption that decisions are shaped primarily by logic and reason. The assumption that that if you could simply provide someone with the critical data or facts they were missing, they would be able to formulate a logical decision is not completely true. There is a common misconception known as the information deficit model, where an audience is simply lacking the information they need to fully understand a problem.
There are many examples where irrespective of data or information or facts provided, the decision or action taken still seem not completely in sync with what the facts suggests. And this happens everywhere across all walks of life. In these situations, it’s actually less about what people think, and more about how they think that really matters. Even analytical audiences are still subject to another powerful force that can lead to unanticipated outcomes: emotion.
When it comes to decision making, we often look down on emotions. We view them as something that can cloud our judgment and lead us to make rash or unwise decisions. When we share our findings, we don’t want them to be tainted by any emotional entrapments. As a result, we often take a clinical, detached approach when we share our insights as we attempt to “just stick to the facts.”
Head Vs Heart : The Two Systems
In Popular culture we often have this dilemma at times when making decisions in life. Where we are caught between trusting our heart or the mind. Sometimes it feels right to go by what the heart is saying and sometimes what the mind says. But in reality the source of these two systems is still the brain. In his best-selling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman has written a great deal about the these two systems of our brain. It is a phenomenal book with decades of research on behavioral economics and psychology of judgment and decision-making.
The research around decision making has been there for a while and it had always pointed towards man's rational decision making. Centuries of economic theory have been based on the principle that an individual will make a rational decision based on what will generate the greatest personal utility or benefit.
Not until the late 1960s did psychologists such as Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky begin to question whether people always make rational choices. Their research gave birth to the field of behavioral economics by highlighting how decision making is influenced by heuristics—mental shortcuts—and cognitive biases that lead fallible individuals to not always behave rationally or in their own best interests. Kahneman and Tversky showed that people making decisions under uncertain conditions do not behave in the way that economic models have traditionally assumed; they do not “maximize utility.” The two then developed an alternative account of decision making, one more faithful to human psychology, which they called “prospect theory.” It was for this achievement that Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002. In the book, Kahneman shares the results into how the human brain processes information. He popularized the theory that the human mind is comprised of two cognitive subsystems (see Figure 1).
System 1 is fast, intuitive, emotional, automatic, and subconscious. It acts as a sort of autopilot that uses heuristics or mental shortcuts to make rapid but sometimes rough interpretations, which are then passed along to the next system. This side can also be seen as the heart side of decision making.
System 2 is slow, analytical, logical, effortful, and conscious. It acts as the pilot that monitors and evaluates the quality of the information coming from System 1 and, as needed, evaluates it more thoroughly. While System 2 is often perceived to be running the show as the pilot, it is actually a lazy controller. System 2 doesn’t want to exert a lot of effort and will depend on System 1 to provide feelings and impressions that become the sources of its explicit beliefs and choices. In the end, Kahneman views System 1—the more emotional, intuitive system—as the real star of the cognitive show.
Systems 1 and 2 are both active whenever we are awake. System 1 runs automatically and System 2 is normally in a comfortable low-effort mode, in which only a fraction of its capacity is engaged.
Figure 1. Shows the two systems in decision making.
Stories from Popular Culture
One of the popular science fiction movies which many of us grew up watching is Star Trek. And Spock is an interesting character there. If you’re not familiar with the Star Trek universe, Spock is the chief science officer and second-in-command on the starship USS Enterprise. More notably, being half Vulcan, he strives to suppress his emotions and live by his people’s strict code of logic and reason.
Whenever the starship crew faced some new threat or crisis, Spock would provide his commanding officer, Captain James T. Kirk, with a cold, analytical assessment of each situation and the crew’s tactical options. While Captain Kirk valued Spock’s facts and probabilities, he also sought out the more emotional opinion of his fiery Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Leonard McCoy. Inevitably, the Captain relied on an intuition-based synthesis of the two perspectives when making decisions. Even though analytical people like to pretend emotion can be checked or removed from decision making, it’s always present and a highly influential aspect of the process.
Figure 2. The two factors in every decision making
The sweet spot of decision-making
Like Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, we may like to believe that decisions should only be based on logic and reason. However, emotion has a bigger influence on decision making than we care to admit.
So when making a decision, we should always focus on multiple factors. And consider both emotion and logic (i.e. intuition and reasoning). Most decisions are tied to weighing multiple factors, but sometimes we only focus on the one factor we're getting the most pleasure from, which can be a big mistake, because the factor that we initially find fulfilling often gives us less pleasure as time progresses.
Though sometimes not all decisions or judgement need both factors. But it is a good mental exercise to consider both when making important life decisions. In my personal view, visionary decision-making happens at the intersection of emotion and logic.
Kahneman has some advise on how we should make important decisions.
He says, "You should slow down and get advice from a particular kind of person. Somebody who likes you but doesn’t care too much about your feelings. That person is more likely to give you good advice."
