![]() ![]() We are constantly, largely unconsciously, assessing and appraising our surroundings and the people in it so that we can work out how best to respond. Our brains process huge quantities of information every single second. Those low impact decisions benefit from snappy certainty and to apply any more thought to them would, let’s be honest, be a waste of our precious time.Īnd our precious time is likely the reason why this form of decision making exists. We absolutely do not need to keep the people in the queue behind us waiting any longer while we grapple with the merits of raspberry ripple vs. Applied to choosing an ice cream flavour, heuristics are eminently useful. Even if, sometimes much later, the outcome of the decision was far from ideal. ![]() Later identified by Kahneman as a component of system 1, this is what us civvies might refer to as a ‘ gut decision’. In fact, as Kahneman and Tversky (1982) described it, it’s our ‘heuristics’ that dominate much of our thinking. It’s comforting to know that those really tough, important decisions will be processed entirely differently to our, often frivolous, daily decisions isn’t it? Because surely our brain will automatically guide us down the right psychological path so we don’t make any mistakes? Actually, no, not necessarily. Drawing on decades of research with fellow psychologist Amos Tversky, the book outlines the difference between system 1: where decisions are made quickly and influenced by memories and emotions, and system 2: where decisions are deliberate, logical and highly contextual. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s bestselling book, ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ (2011) introduced the idea that there are two distinct decision making ‘systems’ in the brain. How do we distinguish between decisions like, ‘what flavour ice cream shall I have’ and ‘which of these two job offers should I take’? Clearly we cannot - or at least should not - apply the same methodology to both, but how does this work and how do our brains know the difference? And, though we could speculate endlessly on why some people always stick with vanilla, actually, it’s not why we make decisions that’s most interesting, it’s how. Perhaps because of the instinctive nature of small decisions like these, we are tempted to see them as revealing. Lucky you.įor most of us, choosing an ice cream flavour feels pretty intuitive and requires no forward thinking or post-choice regret. Perhaps even one you’ve been forced to make multiple times. If you, like us, have been enjoying the extremely (okay, relatively) HOT weather in the UK then, inevitably, choosing an ice cream flavour will have been one of your top 5 ‘major’ decisions this July. How do you make decisions? There's more to it than you might think. ![]()
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