How Do We Decide...We Don't

Through extensive research, I’ve examined various aspects of the process of decision making. As in most studies, researchers have different opinions on how we make decision or in some cases, the possibility that we don’t make any of our decisions. In the very first post I did, I talked about an article where the writer, who married a woman just like his mother despite first believing that he wouldn’t, stated that he thinks we make decisions based on trial and error. While his friend on the other hand, did and believes the complete opposite: our decisions are based on how we were raised to make decisions, and the only way to actually make a good one is to overcome that “knowledge”. This was one of my favorite articles, because of its in depth look at personal opinions and real life situations.
The book I read about my topic is called blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Blink is all about the subconscious reasoning of the mind. It’s all about the way we make decisions without actually thinking about it. Maybe you’re an expert on sculptures and can tell that the one you’re looking at isn’t real in a mere glance. Or perhaps you’re a police officer and you suspect that the person you’re following has a gun, and you need to decide whether or not to shoot him before he shoots you. Gladwell hopes that one day everyone will believe that “the task of making sense of ourselves and our behavior requires that we acknowledge there can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.”
As for the interaction part of this project, I chose to get a group of diverse people to complete the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The test takes what Gladwell says in blink, and lets the taker explore what they’re really thinking subconsciously. I asked my volunteers to take the Gender-Career test and/or the Weight test. The Gender-Career test asks the volunteer to choose between a connection with men/career and women/family or men/family and women/career. The basis is to figure out whether or not someone believes women are more family driven than men and vice versa. The Weight test is the same way. The test taker is asked to choose between a fat person’s relation to bad words (ex. horrible, terrible, ugly, etc.) and a skinny person’s relation to good words (ex. happy, pretty, loving, etc.); compared to a skinny person’s relation with bad words and a fat person’s relation to good words. Results can vary between slight, moderate, strong and little to no preference.
Through all my research, what I learned is that we don’t make our decisions. At least, not consciously we don’t. Even though I do believe this, I also believe that there is no real solution to how we make decisions. No one has fully figured it out. I’m not sure if it can be figured out. There is so much information and so many various opinions out there on the brain and how it works. Everyone is different. There’s always the chance that on person’s heart may rule over their head. While another person may stick strictly to completely logical based facts for every single scenario they encounter in life. The only things I wish I would have done are being more motivated/ doing everything in a less stressful manner, and reading How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer along with blink. I know the point of this was to answer the question you were curious about at the beginning, but in this case I’m not sure I can choose between conscious/subconscious and heart/head.

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Project Implicit is a research project between scientists/researchers at Harvard University, the University of West Virginia and the University of Washington. The study is full of different test that “explore the unconscious roots of thinking and feeling.”(Implicit Association Test Home) For my interaction, I asked a variety of people to complete the Gender-Career test and/or the Weight test. The Gender-Career test asks the volunteer to choose between a connection with men/career and women/family or men/family and women/career. The basis is to figure out whether or not someone believes women are more family driven than men and vice versa. The Weight test is the same way. The test taker is asked to choose between a fat person’s relation to bad words (ex. horrible, terrible, ugly, etc.) and a skinny person’s relation to good words (ex. happy, pretty, loving, etc.); compared to a skinny person’s relation with bad words and a fat person’s relation to good words. Results can vary between slight, moderate, strong and little to no preference. For the Gender-Career test, my volunteers’ results varied from little to no preference between men and women with a certain “job” and a slight association with women and careers over men and careers. The results of the Weight test was between a moderate preference of thin people to fat people and a little to no preference.


This was a really cool test to me. The people that ended up taking it relayed back to me how hard it actually was based on the way it’s set up and everything. And I completely understand. I took it too and there’s no way to actually describe how they like trick you. The only real option would be to go take one yourself. It’s not as if their goal is to trick, but to more so make you reevaluate in a way. I really like the fact that they have demos for you to try. It’s not one of those things where you have to sign up to get your answers or anything like that. It’s very straightforward and informational. I believe that they are just trying to get the information out there for people to read. However, I don’t really think a large amount of testing will give very much information. Anybody who takes the test is going to have a certain view based on how they’ve grown up, what kind of people they interact with, and even just who they are as a person. So I don’t really think the results are very helpful in a mass majority type of way. Other than that, I would recommend trying a test to anyone who thinks they treat everyone the same. These tests definitely show that there’s more under the surface in your own mind than you may think.

"Implicit Association Test Home." Project Implicit. IAT Corp, n.d. Web. 28 April 2010. .

How We Decide

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How We Decide is a book by Jonah Lehrer based on “the historic dichotomy between ‘emotional’ decision-making and ‘rational’ decision-making and what modern neuroscience can tell us about these two modes of thinking” (Doctorow). In an article on the website, boingboing, Cory Doctorow discusses some of the aspects of the book. Things discussed vary between how someone with damage to the emotional part of their brain is unable to make a decision “because their rational mind dithers endlessly over the possible rational reasons for each course of action,” (Doctorow) and the difficulty of making decisions in certain situations. One example given was based on two groups of 10-year-olds that were given an easy test. One group, the control group, was praised for their work, while the other group, the experimental group, was given the trying hard speech. Next the two groups were given another test, only difference being that it was harder this time. The kids that were originally considered the smart group did worse, while the other ones improved. The choices they made on the second test were affected by the praise they received after the first test.

This article was great insight into the book. In all books, you get the background information on what’s going on inside. However, sometimes these summaries can be misleading, or even lacking in information that could make you want to buy it. A review like this helps in this decision. It gives examples but it doesn’t give you too much to the point that you feel like you already read the book. The author makes me want to buy not only this book but also others that pertain to the subject of decision making.
Doctorow, Cory. "How We Decide: mind-blowing neuroscience of decision-making." boingboing 8 Sep. 2009: n. pag. Web. 16 Apr 2010.

Battle in the Brain

Bjorn Carey writes about how your brain has a battle with itself in the article, “Battle in the Brain: How We Make Tough Choices.” The basis of this article is how the brain chooses between a rewarding decision and a logical decision. The study covers “when a person decides whether to exploit a known commodity or explore a potentially better option” (Carey). As part of the study, researchers analyzed the brain activity of volunteers in a gambling game. A specific area would show up when someone went to what they believed to be a higher paying machine, and the same if they stayed at their own. Would you rather wait 10 minutes to eat tow cookies or eat one now?
Another interesting article on the internal battles of the human body. The author’s exploring/exploiting theory can be used in practically every single choice made. I think that’s the thing that most interest me about this theory. It ended really fast, though. It didn’t go as in depth as I expected.
Care, Bjorn. Battle in the Brain: How We Make Tough Choices. Live Science. 14 Jun. 2006. http://www.livescinec.com/health/060614_choice_activity.html

blink

Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink, is about the choices people make without even thinking. He covers everything from thin-slicing and snap decisions to first impressions and mind reading. The main thing that Gladwell is trying to get his readers to understand is that most decisions are usually made within the subconscious mind. Maybe you’re an expert on sculptures and can tell that the one you’re looking at isn’t real in a mere glance. Or perhaps you’re a police officer and you suspect that the person you’re following has a gun, and you need to decide whether or not to shoot him before he shoots you. Gladwell hopes that one day everyone will believe that “the task of making sense of ourselves and our behavior requires that we acknowledge there can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.” (Gladwell)
Okay, so I guess I should start off with what I hated about this book. It’s excruciatingly long. Normally, I don’t consider a 255 page book long, especially after reading Breaking Dawn. However, in this case I must make an exception. I’m guessing that’s because this wasn’t an adventure or a romance, there wasn’t a storyline that kept me interested. Even though I know that it’s not that type of book. The constant use of psychological terms on top of the topics used for examples just seemed to bore me every now and then.
I know that I just complained about the topics, but here I think I can admit that I enjoyed them at the same time. Gladwell took these seemingly casual topics, gave them a twist and made them interesting to me. I kept reading, not because I had to finish the book, but because I actually wanted to see what other real-life situations I would read about. To learn in the first chapter about a museum taking in this sculpture after months of research to make sure it was real, only to wait until after they bought it to show experts who told them it was a fake, is amazing to me. It just goes to show that sometimes research can do absolutely nothing for you.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. 1st ed. . New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2005. Print

Gambling

On the Discovery Channel website, there are a series of videos on understanding odds. The Decision Making edition covers horse racing and the jobs of handicappers. It mentions that "psychologists tell us that part of the attraction of gambling is in the fact that it mirrors the uncertainty we experience in life" (Understanding Odds: Decision Making). The video explains that people gamble because they learn whether or not their decision was a good one in a short period of time, but in real life, decisions on a job or marriage can take years for a person to figure out that it was the wrong decision for them (Understanding Odds: Decision Making). One thing that researchers have noticed while watching handicappers is that even though tons of information may go in to a race, it’s not all important. The more information they have doesn’t help improve odds on figuring out which horse might win.

Thankfully, this video was short, sweet and to the point. One good example used to tell me exactly what they wanted me to know. No fluff. The worst part of the whole thing was having to stop and look up what the term “handicappers” meant. For future reference, a handicapper is a person that predicts the outcome of a horse race. Other than that it was good watch.
"Understanding Odds: Decision Making." Discovery Channel. Web. 2 May 2010. .

Cognitive Reflection Test

In the video, Intelligent, Cognitive Reflection, and Decision Making, Shane Fredrick talks about his cognitive reflection test (CRT). In the test, Fredrick is able to “predict an individual’s predilection,” (Intelligent, Cognitive Reflection, and Decision Making). In other words, he’s able to predict a person’s preference for something. The test involves only 3 questions and a survey on financial gambles and other risk based decisions. These topics are questioned because of Fredrick’s findings that “people have widely varying tastes for risks, and different levels of patience.”(Intelligent, Cognitive Reflection, and Decision Making)

I found this video to be intriguing and long. The length of things has seemed to really mess me up on this project (facebook is only a click away). After all the research I’ve done, one of the biggest trends I’ve noticed is the lack of need for a lot of information to be able to make a conclusion about someone or something. Like with the CRT only having 3 questions. In most other cases it takes way more than 3 questions to learn about a person. Another thing that gets me is that this video was made 4 years ago. I hadn’t really noticed much on when most of my information was dated. So, I hadn’t thought about how long researchers have been working on this topic. But I guess now I know.
"Intelligent, Cognitive Reflection, and Decision Making." MIT World: Distributed Intelligence. Web. 14 April 2010. .