Well, the school year has officially started...and that means an inevitable inundation of decisions to make. Whether it be the bad decisions of NSO, or the stressful decisions of OCR, what classes to take, what activities to get involved in, or even the smaller decisions about where to sit in lecture...we make thousands of decisions every day.
Here at Penn especially, students tend to be scrupulous with even the most minute of details, listing out every possible pro and con before finally committing to a decision -- the curse of being perfectionists. Sure the Econ books will tell you that we are all "rational" agents, trying to maximize our utilities. However, what happens when there is simply too much to take in, in order to be truly "rational", especially within a realistic time frame?
Recent research suggests that our subconscious actually come out on top when making complex decisions. Sure, if you have a few options, each with a few qualities to analyze, it does not require too much cognitive effort to make an accurate comparison so to make the best decision. In fact, with simple decisions, our conscious reasoning will pretty much always beat out our unconscious (emotional, visceral) response. However, with very complex decisions, studies have actually shown that our gut instinct, while not perfect, is actually more accurate in achieving maximal utility than conscious deliberation.
If how decisions are made seems like an area of interest for you, I highly recommend a book, titled How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer. The book gets into how the subconscious should not be merely dismissed as the source of insignificant hunches and feelings. The emotional brain is constantly taking in thousands of pieces of information simultaneously, often unbeknownst to us, and so we tend to know more than we are consciously aware of. When there is a burst of positive emotion while considering an option, it may very well be in our best interest to listen to it. The book is a great read, and ultimately sparked my own interest in the interdisciplinary field of Neuroeconomics. In fact, I am conducting independent research this semester in Dr. Joseph Kable's lab, which focuses on the underlying biological/ psychological mechanisms of how we make decisions, so if you would like to get involved, there is an opportunity to right here at Penn!
Ultimately, research has hinted that we make better decisions when we at least consider what our intuitions are telling us. From an evolutionary perspective, our cognitive conscious has evolved for a reason, and so it is important to use that capability as much as we can. However, when there is too much information to process, we may just have to fall back and depend on our affective inklings. Sure it's primitive (our emotional areas of the brain were evolutionarily developed long before our higher-level cognitive ones), but isn't it comforting knowing that we at least have some sort of a backup system to refer to? So the next time you're staring at a test question, desperate for an answer... consider the cliche and "go with your gut". Chances are you're probably right.
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