The Myth of Rational Decision Making.

So, did you enjoy the recent election and the campaign that preceded it? I know I did (not!).

But I can’t deny it was interesting. If nothing else, we got to see decision making in all its pathological glory.
As a qualitative researcher, a lot of my work involves decision making. Clients often need to understand how people choose among alternatives. For instance, understanding how taxpayers choose among tax prep approaches can help a provider of tax tools design an appropriate range of service offerings.

So, I know a thing or two about decision making. One thing I know is how messy it can be.

Decision making is thought of as a process of choosing among options based on analysis and reasoning. Occasionally, that’s actually what it is. It would be nice to think that we consider all available information and make rational judgements. However, it’s usually the other way around.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s research shows that people tend to form beliefs and make decisions quickly and impulsively, frequently based on intuitive moral judgments. Afterwards, they back into a rationalization. This seems to be particularly the case when it comes to politics, which has become little more than a public morality play.

During political campaigns, voters of all persuasions form quick impressions of candidates and issues based on moral considerations – their intuitive sense of right and wrong – and vote accordingly. Questions to these voters about their decisions receive rational, after-the-fact explanations. But these justifications are unreliable, as they rarely get to the moral motivations behind these decisions.

So, if you’re struggling to understand why people vote as they do, realize that their decisions are probably based on different moral priorities than yours. Right now, the news media is putting out pat explanations for why voters acted as they did in the recent election. Be skeptical – the truth is far less tidy.

Decision making in the real world is messy. It isn’t what we’d like to think it is, and it doesn’t work the way we’d like to think it does. It’s not a neat, linear process that always yields good choices. And don’t think that this applies to everyone but you – you’re no more rational than anybody else.

So, why do we make decisions so impulsively? Look no further than evolution. The world in which we evolved was much simpler than our current one. The decisions we faced were also simpler, and being able to make decisions quickly was essential. This pattern of rapid decision making – which served us so well in ancient times – doesn’t work well in our modern and increasingly complicated environment.

So, when you face decisions, remember that your own evolved brain may not be perfectly suited to the task. Be skeptical of your initial instincts and force yourself to think things through. You might find yourself making better choices.