Learn to be right in decision-making

On 17 February 2006 in Science, Ap Dijksterhuis and colleagues at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands report a psychological study on evaluating the individuals' decision-making [ 1a , 1b ]. As a result, they defined an effect of deliberation-without-attention and claimed that "contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not always advantageous to engage in thorough conscious deliberation before choosing"; Simple choices (such as between different towels or different sets of oven mitts) indeed produced better results after conscious thought, but the choices in complex matters (such as between different houses or different cars) were viewed more favorably when decisions had been made in the absence of attentive deliberation. Before taking a serious thinking about the topic, this "effect" surely surprises me. However, my intuition tells me that the authors have been confused and misled much by the topic's complexity.

We are always told that it's better to control the first impulse and give much more measured response. However, so often we feel lost and there is an attitude of play, because we can't get enough information at that corner for making a right decision. And upon this point, to take much time for evaluating (conscious deliberation) is just a waste of time! This could be a reason why the authors find out that the unconscious thinking should give a much more sound choice, but what is unconscious (intuitive)?

At one time or another, most of us are easily misled to certain extent because we don't know what we should do and unconsciously try to follow the right recommendations kept in our minds, which could be originated from an advise of teacher or parent, a book once read, a report of the successful person or our own experiences and so on. This is typically the kind of response we will continue to get. However, just what a choice is right? What are the general bases of the feeling of right? Unfortunately and interestingly, in many cases, we don't know exactly before we have to try. The counterintuitive is surprise but does not always mean a discovery, for get a "scientific" conclusion on decision-making, the authors omitted too much beyond the process to claim a convincible effect:

(a) The influence of the social norms;

What an average standard for certain choice is right, that is, gives an individual post-choice satisfaction? No matter what the individual propensity is, our education tells us that we should act reasonably with care in all the varying situations of life, and it's better to keep pace with the judgment that society requires of its members for the protection of their own interest and the interests of others. Before we have a perfect world, we have better to trust and obey our forefathers' belief of survival of the best fit [ 2 ]. Whether you note or not, there is implicit social standard underlying your decision, that is, to be a reasonable person. We must do suitably to get social acknowledgment (reputation) that would make us to feel successful and satisfactory. This topic is chiefly related to history, culture and religion belief.

(b) The uncertainty due to the individuals' differences: The effect of aptitude-of-play

The reasoning ability--The influence of the education and experience levels:

If there has not enough time and not enough knowledge, we have to forget right and toss the possibility. For example, like what we do in an examination. If you can solve simple problems as soon as possible, you can allocate much time on the puzzles. However, if you do not know the answer of a question, no matter how many minutes you would take for thinking, the score is statistically determined by the possibility, that is, the conscious or unconscious thought just gives the same result at this corner.

The law of marginal utility and the trade-off effect [ 3 ]--The uncertainty due to the differences of the individuals' character, personalities, gender and religion belief; and the personal IQ, EQ, remembrance and so on:

This point is sensitive to the initial conditions and cross-links with the education level. In ordinary decision-making, just what a selection is so-called complicated? What properties are make-up the feeling of post-decision's satisfactory? There is no exclusive standard for different persons.

Firstly, a decision-making action depends not only on what we currently know, but also on our reasoning ability, i.e., what we are able to infer within specific amount of time within which a decision must be made (the classical examples are the time-limited chess and examination); In common situation, the more complex the decision, the more time and effort were invested in thinking about it. But we often note that one person can assess then take an action just with the first glance, however, for the same case, the other one may think seriously for a long time. Therefore, without reasonable assessment of the efficiency of the thinking, it is difficult to determine what kind of thought they use. Unfortunately, the definitions of the conscious and unconscious thoughts presented by the authors omitted it completely. For intelligent and skillful persons who also possess profound knowledge and experiences and so on, the complexity of thinking to choose a car seems no difference with that of ball pen, that is, for these persons, the authors' tests will give nothing at all. The post-choice satisfaction does not rest with whether or not we have been disturbed during thinking.

Furthermore, and more importantly, a decision-making action depends on how much time we would like to take. We unconsciously assess possible cost (opportunity cost) in order to maximize utility with right choice. Whether or not this assessment is right according to a personal or/and social standards determines much our post-choice satisfaction.

When making choices, individuals are influenced by what others think is best, making the final outcome unpredictable. Concerning a scale of an individual's action, this process is mainly based on the empirical judgment; while for large system such as social interactions and movements, the processes are highly path-dependent because what others have done in the past influence what we do in the present [ 8 ]. The uncertainty mainly result from the fact that small deviations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce arbitrarily large variations in the long term behavior of the system [ 4 ].  It has been sketched with the butterfly effect [ 5 ] and the prevalence's influence or superstar effect [ 6a, 6b , 7 ].

After formal education in school, ubiquitous media like Web, TV, radio, newspaper and magazine etc. are major sources for information. We are unconsciously accumulating the knowledge and learning to be right from the 'successful' experiences reported. The standard of being-right is changing with the society evolvement as well as the personal experiences. The original intent of the decision doesn't always matter right. It just could be the past right. We can be very selective about which past selections have a bearing on our present feeling. Obviously, it is difficult to predict what the influence should be.

This issue could be studied with the method addressed by Salganik and the co-workers [ 9 ]. They conducted a large-scale Internet-based experiments on individuals' music preferences in order to scale the strength of social influence exposed on the individual's action. As expected, Salganik and the co-workers found that individuals' music preferences were altered when they were exposed to information about the preferences of others. Furthermore, and more importantly, they found that the extent of social influence had important consequences for the collective outcomes that emerged. The greater the social influence, the more unequal and unpredictable the collective outcomes became, said P. Hedström [ 8 ].

(d) The relativity of the case's complexity;

For many persons, the choices have no difference in complexity between a car and a ball pen. For these decisions related to purchasing daily life goods, the complexity is generally up to the personal reasoning ability and income. However, for some cases such as predicting the next wave of the market and the voting trend in a Presidential election, almost everybody will lose completely. Another special case is a game of chess between two players who belong to the same class. Although we have 50% probability to predict the winner, the last result is so uncertain because the developing procedure is full of interactions; every single step will lead the game to a completely different direction. Sometimes, it is not only determined by the accurate calculation because IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer also lost one game with Garry Kasparov in 1997 [ 10 ].

(e) The uncertainty due to testing: Heisenberg uncertainty principle [ 11 ] 

Concerning the concluded results just deduced from the test rather than true situations, what is the choice's uncertainty due to test? The test is based on survey data--that is, on data derived from the designed questionnaires. One uncertainty results from the implicit standard underlying the questionnaires; The other is due to the unconscious self-disguise or/and self-display of the inquired candidates [ 12 ]. This effect is similar as Heisenberg uncertainty principle (principle of indeterminism) in quantum mechanics [ 11 ], namely, we can not know the original state of a system: if you want to know the situation by measuring, the obtained data is imposed with a weight due to measurement.

The authors really reported an interesting topic with sociological and psychologic importance, however, although they try to narrow the tests so much and define the procedures exactly, they completely lost their way with their poorly designed test to give so specious conclusion-don't think too much for making your choice. This is only because the topic itself--on making right choice--is too complicated to be addressed scientifically with just one test. What the wrong is not our intuition on decision-making action but just their survey definitions and testing design.

Intuitively, even if we do not know exact information concerning every aspect of a car, and there are so many natural or designed references for assessment, and more unfortunately, we are asked to say yes-or-no at once, that is, time is surely not enough for taking suitable options, we have an unconscious ruse to cope with the complexity and time limit. What we will think immediately is not about the car itself and its concrete guidelines, but only to ask ourselves: Whether or not do we believe in this old-line producer and their clever designers who are reasonable and outstanding like us? Why not?... For the developed economy, and for the developed producers with reasonable social-responsibility, trusting in the producers gives you more chances to be right than that of tossing the probability; Furthermore, if the price is far lower comparing with our income, it is better...We feel easy that any choice will give post-satisfaction after this reasoning! Certainly, this procedure and the post-choice feeling are entangled with complex physiological phenomena such as life aptitude, self and social acknowledgment and understanding of the life meaning...

Herein, it should be noted that for the authors' decision-cases, this kind of reasoning should be the true base to explain the authors' findings: think little for more post-satisfaction. However, just what is the underlying dominator? It's empirical/case judgment or analogism! This skill helps us for saving much of time. In fact, the accurate definitions for two different thoughts during decision-making have already developed and discussed for a long time: empirical judgment and deductive judgment. Let us concern a complex case such as constructing a company. It's better to classify the company first, then try to find out the successful examples belonging to the same category. No matter how abundant the concrete information of the present case is, this empirical processing directly bypasses it based on an axiom: all the successful are fit-for-survival. In an economic opinion, this action has maximum utility due to minimum time cost. If it is possible to get enough information about successful counterparts, even we can take the same decision-making procedures just with minor modification during the operating period. However, it is beneficial to analyze the concrete situation such as capital operation by using of scientific deduction. This example also points out that the thoughts during decision-making possibly intermix with two thinking skills of analogism and deduction in many cases. However, the exact situation is individual- and case-sensitive.

Therefore, before fulfilling the authors' intent, serious studies should be conducted and tell us a clear thinking map in the period of decision-making. With what kind of thought should we use and how much extent does that thought get involved in? For different person and certain case, there is an implicit ratio between empirical thought and scientific deduction. It is so interesting to think how we feel that critical point! Scientifically, it is helpful to classify the decisions as exact as possible, then just analyze (avoid to ask interviewee) the large amounts of data accumulated by Internet. It should be emphasized that determining the category of decisions (individual- or/and social-related) is not only up to evaluating the individual- and case-sensitive complexity (individual's reasoning ability and income, the intent of the decision...), but also analyzing the basic social norms and average social standards of income and consumption. On the other hand, because most decisions are economic-related today, the developed laws of micro and macro economics as well as mathematics and physics are also beneficial to the analysis of decision-making. However, who can persuade Googles to open their deepest caches? Providing that they dare to open users' secrets, who can predict the logical rhythm of our emotion? No matter how elaborate science is, the theme of this world will be always full of happiness and regret, but we can just learn as much as possible to be right... ♦

* Lin PU is in the Physics Department of Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, CHINA.

References

Citation