Hi, I happen to read this on the net, thought I should mention
it here, just so in case if you are facing some complex decisions,
this hopefully can help abit.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8732&feedId=online-news_rss20
Complex decisions are best left to your unconscious mind to work
out, according to a new study, and over-thinking a problem could
lead to expensive mistakes.
The research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted only
with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven glove.
Sleeping on a big decision, such as buying a car or house, is more
likely to produce a result people remain happy with than
consciously weighing up the pros and cons of the problem, the
researchers say.
Thinking hard about a complex decision that rests on multiple
factors appears to bamboozle the conscious mind so that people only
consider a subset of information, which they weight
inappropriately, resulting in an unsatisfactory choice. In
contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the
information and produce a decision that most people remain
satisfied with
Ap Dijksterhuis at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands,
and colleagues recruited 80 people for a series of lab-based and
real-world tests. The participants were provided with information
and asked to make decisions about simple and complex purchases,
ranging from shampoos to furniture to cars.
Snap decisions
In one of the tests, half of the participants were asked to ponder
on the information they were given and then decide which among
similar products to buy. The other half were shown the information
but then made to perform a series of puzzles including anagrams and
simple arithmetic. At the end of the puzzle session, the
participants were asked to make a snap decision about the
products.
We found that when the choice was for something simple, such as
purchasing oven gloves or shampoo, people made better decisions
ones that they remained happy with if they consciously
deliberated over the information, says Dijksterhuis.
But once the decision was more complex such as for a house, too
much thinking about it led people to make the wrong choice.
Whereas, if their conscious mind was fully occupied on solving
puzzles, their unconscious could freely consider all the
information and they reached better decisions.
Expectation counts
However, the unconscious mind appears to need some instruction. It
was only when people were told before the puzzles that they would
need to reach a decision that they were able to come up with the
right one, Dijksterhuis told New Scientist.
If they were told that none of what they had been shown was
important before being given the puzzles, they failed to make
satisfactory choices.
At some point in our evolution, we started to make decisions
consciously, and were not very good at it. We should learn to let
our unconscious handle the complicated things, Dijksterhuis
says.
Journal reference: Science (vol 311, p 1005)
