“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.”
Here is the link.
I smiled as I listened to this story on NPR on the ride home. So much for model-driven intellectualization as the solution to all the world’s troubles! I suspect the invisible hand of intuition is related to invisible hand of the market, and generates superior results to hyper-rationalism in the same way the free economy outperforms central planning.
The piece is pretty vague about the ‘important’ decisions. In particular, how did the researchers know that people were making the wrong choice?
OTOH I like that they had the participants do puzzles and such before making decisions. Now I have a ready made excuse for playing games – I’m really making IMPORTANT DECISIONS.
I thought Gladwell’s chapter on the great Warren G. Harding was bloody awful.
You want your president to be a bit of a drunk.
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