In addition, indecisiveness is associated with the tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as threatening, and to engage in worst-case reasoning. In addition, indecisiveness is associated with procrastination , and particularly with a type of procrastination called decisional procrastination , which involves unnecessarily delaying when it comes to making decisions.
This means that indecisive individuals often tend to put off their decisions, and particularly ones that they struggle with. The main reason why people make bad decisions is that it can be difficult to conduct a proper decision-making process, and so people often end up using a flawed process instead. Issues can arise in any step of the decision-making process.
For example, when it comes to gathering information in a situation where we need to choose between several different colleges that we can go to, we might fail to properly collect all the relevant information that we need about each college, because doing so takes a lot of effort.
In addition, there are various things that can interfere with our decision-making and cause us to make bad decisions. Similarly, being tired and sleep-deprived can make it more difficult for us to process information, and more likely for us to suffer from various cognitive biases that get in the way of making good decisions.
For example, there is the confirmation bias , which causes us to search for, favor, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms our preexisting beliefs. This bias can, for instance, cause us to ignore warning signs about a potential job, because we want to believe that it will be good for us.
As one book on the topic states:. Overall, the main reason we make bad decisions is that it can be difficult to conduct a proper decision-making process, and so we often end up using a flawed process instead.
In addition, various things can interfere with our decision-making, including emotions, exhaustion, and cognitive biases. Intuition often plays a significant role in the decision-making process, where it can either lead us to make bad decisions or help us make good ones.
On the other hand, when it comes to helping us make good decisions, intuition can help us deal with large amounts of information quickly, in situations where we would struggle to do the same using our analytical reasoning. As such, when it comes to your decision-making, using your intuition is not inherently good or bad.
Rather, whether it hurts or helps you depends on various factors, such as the circumstances at hand and the way you use your intuition. Cognitive biases aren't the only things that can affect decision-making. More and more studies show that stress can have an impact—both on the quality of our decisions and on our ability to make them.
Take this well-known study about jam. At an upscale food market, researchers set up two displays offering free samples of jam. One gave customers six different flavors to choose from; the other gave them The larger display attracted more people, but they were six times less likely to actually buy a jar of jam compared to those who visited the smaller display. The reason for this is a phenomenon now known as choice overload.
Choice overload can happen any time we feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of options. We have such a hard time comparing them that we're less likely to choose anything at all. As in the jam example, many of us would sooner walk away empty-handed than deal with the stress of choosing from such a large selection. A similar thing happens when we're forced to make multiple decisions one after another—a common occurrence in everyday life. We experience an effect psychologists call decision fatigue.
Thus, one could imagine a recursive loop between deliberation time, difficulty, and perceived importance. Inferences from difficulty may not only impact immediate deliberation, but may kick off a quicksand cycle that leads people to spend more and more time on a decision that initially seemed rather unimportant.
Quicksand sucks people in, but the worse it seems the more people struggle. The problem, of course, is that the modern marketplace is a conspiracy to confuse, to trick the mind into believing that our most banal choices are actually extremely significant. Companies spend a fortune trying to convince us that only their toothpaste will clean our teeth, or that only their detergent will remove the stains from our clothes, or that every other cereal tastes like cardboard.
And then there is the surreal abundance of the store shelf. Do we really need 13 different varieties of Cheerios? Why does the average drug store contain 55 floss alternatives and more than kinds of toothpaste? While all these products are designed to cater to particular consumer niches, they end up duping the brain into believing that picking a floss is a high-stakes game, since it's so damn hard.
And so we get mired in decision-making quicksand. The good news is that some companies are starting to realize this is a marketing mistake, that people get turned off by the illusion of difficulty. Choosing oral hygiene products shouldn't feel like the SAT.
The line between major and minor decisions is blurred by uncertainty. Empty streets and silent stadiums remind us how the world has changed, and our entire experience has been transformed. Our experience is vital in effective decision-making, because the past is our best predictor. Today, even what you knew three months ago is out of date - the past has become a poor predictor. Memory used to matter. Today, decisions are more difficult because our brains are trying to process fresh inputs instead of relying on the way things used to work.
It doesn't just guess. In situations with great uncertainty , the brain turns to the most easily accessible information, faulty as it may be. But if you understand the power of memory in shaping your decisions, you can exert some control over it.
You can slow down and make sure you are using the memories that are most relevant to the future you want.
0コメント