Who really makes the decisions in our minds?

Researchers invite you to take part in a memory experiment. Your task is simple. You have to remember a seven digit number and transfer it from one end of the building to the other. You are given your task in the reception room, then you go down the hall towards the other end of the building where you have to communicate the number you had been told. While you are walking down the hall, struggling mentally not to forget the number, one of the participants in the experiment suddenly stops you and, as refreshment, offers you the choice between a delicious chocolate cupcake and a fruit salad. You pick one of the items available and continue your way to the designated room.

It is only after you have successfully passed on the message that the researchers tell you they were not even interested in your memory, but in your decision making. The main purpose of the experiment was to find out whether you would choose the cake or the fruit. The participants in the experiment were not all given equally difficult tasks. Some had to use their memory to pass on a seven digit number while others were only given a two digit number. The most unusual thing, though, was that a larger percentage of those who had been given the more demanding task chose the cake instead of the fruit salad. 59 % of all the participants who had to carry a seven figure number in their minds chose the cake, while only 37 % of those who were asked to pass on a two figure number opted for the chocolate dessert.

Do people really make rational decisions?

This and many similar experiments in which scientists observe people’s decision-making processes in different circumstances indicate that our decisions are not nearly as autonomous as it may seem. Since the early Greeks, it has been believed that people were essentially rational beings that make their decisions on the basis of careful consideration supported by arguments and logical analysis. However, the latest findings suggest that this thousands of years old presumption might not be completely true.

Let us mention another recently conducted experiment. In his book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (Harper, 2008), the American economist Dan Ariely describes his analysis of an apparently absurd offer for the subscription of The Economist magazine. The potential subscribers had three choices at their disposal: a cheaper subscription to the digital edition of the magazine, a more expensive subscription to the printed edition, and a third option which cost the same as the printed edition, but offered both the printed and the digital editions together.

Naturally, of all the people in the test group nobody decided to choose the subscription to the printed edition only, because he could get both the printed and the digital editions for the same amount of money. So why did the advertisement even include the option for subscribing to the printed edition only when, for obvious reasons, nobody would choose it? The answer to this question is hidden in the results of the second part of the experiment in which the potential subscribers were not offered the third option and could only decide between the digital edition and the combined subscription. Of 100 students who took part in the first part of the experiment 16 chose the digital subscription, 84 chose the double subscription and nobody decided to choose the subscription to the printed edition only. However, when just two options were available, 68 participants chose the cheaper digital edition while only 32 decided to go for the more expensive double edition.

The result of including the seemingly absurd additional offer for the printed edition was that a substantially greater number of people decided to choose the more expensive option. The offer for the subscription to the printed edition only was listed in order to create confusion in our brains and convince us to opt for the more expensive subscription, because it would seem to be a better bargain. The reason for deciding differently in each of the two cases is that the brain usually does not assess the absolute values of the offers, but decides on the basis of their relative values. The brain only wants to know how one offer compares to other available offers.

In fact, the brain is very bad at attributing absolute values to things. It is much more successful in comparing the values of individual offers and this is where it can be most easily fooled. That is also one of the reasons that, on their menus, restaurants usually offer a very expensive dish that nobody would actually order. The purpose of this dish is to make the visitors of the restaurants feel better when they order a cheaper dish, because they feel like they had made a good deal.

Which part of the brain can be trusted?

Scientists are learning that in our brains people have two separate systems for making decisions. The first is specifically human and is based on the rational analysis of a given situation. With it, we analyze all the available options until we have found the best one. The second decision-making system has been inherited from our animal predecessors and works on a subconscious level. Even though our brains carefully analyze the options and scan through the smallest of details, we are not really aware of this process, but simply feel that a certain choice is more attractive than the others.

This second system of decision-making informs us of its preferences through feelings or emotions that affect us when we are considering an individual offer. If an option is extremely unfavorable we can feel somewhere in our bellies that our body is telling us to decide otherwise. Nevertheless, both decision making systems have their good and their bad sides. The secret of deciding correctly is to know when to rely on your mind and when to follow your feelings.

A Dutch scientist called Ap Dijksterhuis observed how people made decisions when buying furniture at an Ikea store. He found out that the more time the customers spent deciding what to buy and analyzing their options, the less happy they were with what they bought later on. In a report on this unusual research that he published in Science magazine a couple of years ago, he wrote that when it came to complex decisions that required analyzing a great amount of data, people were making much better choices when they relied on their instincts. It was only with the easier choices that a logical analysis turned out to be the better strategy.

The latest research suggests that to make good decisions one should do exactly the opposite of what tradition or common sense tell us. Conventional wisdom teaches that when dealing with simple decisions, we should not rack our brains about making the right choice, but trust our instincts, while with more difficult decisions, we should put our minds to it and decide on the basis of a thorough analysis. Dijksterhuis and other scientists came to the conclusion that the best strategy was exactly the opposite.

The problem with the analytical part of our brains is that it can only process a limited amount of information at once. According to various measurements, a human being can rationally process only five to ten independent bits of data at the same time. When the amount of information exceeds this number, the analysis becomes unreliable, as the brain begins to generalize, which can cause a bit of data important for the final decision to get lost. When there is too much information, a person trying to decide on the grounds of rational analysis often makes the wrong or less than ideal decision.

In the first part of the experiment, people who had to pass on a seven digit number were more inclined to choose the cupcake because the rational part of their brains was occupied with remembering the number, so they left the decision to their feelings which made them pick the cake. The participants who only had to carry two numbers in their minds were left with enough space in their “brain processors” to think about the options rationally and chose the healthier fruit salad.

Ap Dijksterhuis believes that the transition from the rational to the instinctive system of decision-making can already occur when we are dealing with a problem that has more than four different variables. The general rule that his research has lead him to is: when making decisions that do not involve a large number of parameters that need to be taken into consideration, decide rationally; when it comes to complex decisions, trust your instincts.

With difficult decisions like buying a new car, an apartment or furniture, the best strategy Dijksterhuis suggests is to first collect as much information as possible, then let the brain to process it for a while. It is best to leave the decision-making at least for one day and sleep on it. Even if we are relying on our instincts, it is now much more likely that we will chose correctly and be happy with our choice in the long term.