6 January 2012
Successful Intentions Newsletter
Hi ,
Can your unconscious mind outperform your conscious mind in making effective decisions?
Malcolm Gladwell’s 2005 book called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking captured a powerful idea: that complex decisions are often more accurate when made quickly, unconsciously, in the blink of an eye.
But recent research disputes this. A number of experiments have been conducted which point to the same conclusion: In stark contrast to the claims in the literature and the media there is very little evidence of the superiority of unconscious thought for complex decisions.
An example is Thorsteinson and Withrow’s 2009 study, which suggested that the very best way to make decisions was consciously and using pencil and paper. Participants who made notes were likely to make the best decisions.
So why have the benefits of unconscious thought received so much attention lately?
One of the things that makes the unconscious mind so fast is the dopamine system. Dopamine is the pleasure hormone, but happiness isn’t the only thing that it produces. Dopamine neurons constantly generate patterns based on experience: if this, then that. They help you build up a set of stable predictions about your environment, and then translate these predictions into emotions.
But the dopamine system can lead you astray. You tend to trust your feelings and perceive patterns, even when the patterns don’t actually exist. That’s why we see clouds in the shape of animals, and patterns in random processes like slot machines.
Conscious thought has its disadvantages too, particularly thinking too much. Research has shown that when asked to think about the reasons for our decisions we often go on to make worse choices. And consciously introspecting about a tricky decision can interfere with cognitive processing and blur the differences between choices.
Yet, it seems that conscious deliberation in complex decision-making currently wins the day. The power of unconscious thought is less dazzling than many would have you believe.
There’s a lot to be said for using simple tools and techniques to overcome the vagaries of memory and the uncertainty of emotions in making complex decisions.
Better to think rather than blink!
, you are invited to the inaugural Decision Apps for a Wiser World workshop in Sydney on January 18, or Melbourne on February 24.
We've combed the literature to put together a suite of tools for use in helping people better predict the outcome of their decisions. And we've successfully piloted a survey of decision-making "style" in conjunction with the University of Wollongong and a research grant from the NSW government.
I do hope you can join us!
Keep your intentions clear,
Peter Webb
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