Written by: Mark Wilkes, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
You’ve probably been faced with this question before. You’re sitting in the car with a spouse, friend, or colleague, and they ask you, “Where do you want to go eat?” For some people, this innocuous question induces paralysis. There are so many options! Which is best? Even worse, what if I pick the wrong restaurant, and everyone else hates it and then hates me!? How can I possibly make the right choice?
Even if the thoughts that run through your head aren’t quite that dramatic, you might be able to relate to the distaste that often comes with the task of sorting through all of the pros and cons of a choice and feeling good about the outcome. This kind of thinking is sometimes called rational or optimized judgment. In this scenario, a hungry person, a business executive, an athlete, or someone wondering whether they should ask that one person out on a date attempts to take in the entirety of the data or the available information, consider each part, and then act on the mathematical dictates of the exercise. This approach, while sometimes useful, can lead to the dreaded analysis paralysis, and you might wind up sitting in a parking lot for half an hour while you consider the virtues and vices of all thirteen eating options in your area, getting hungrier all the while.
When decisions must be made, there typically isn’t an infinite amount of time in which to conduct your analysis. This is where the idea of heuristics and bounded rationality come in. A heuristic is like a little cognitive shortcut you develop over time that, most often, is correct, even though it may not consider the entirety of the available information. In the restaurant example, the thought of “I liked that restaurant last time; it would probably be good again” might be a great basis on which to choose a place for lunch. In an example explored by Bruce Bower in an article on the topic, he cites the experience of professional baseball players making decisions in the flow of the game. One player notes that after a while, the decision of which pitch to throw to a given batter should be made in under five seconds. Not enough time to go through each hitter's career stats. Bounded rationality, unlike rational or optimized judgment, purposely ignores some pieces of information that lead to a decision that is more efficient and just as correct as an optimized one.
In clinical practice, I often speak with people who are stuck in a decision or a series of decisions. Where to go to university, whether they should stay with a partner or separate, or what direction they should take in their professional life. In these scenarios, it sometimes comes down to minimizing the inputs involved in the choice to the most obvious or weighty ones—the visible ones, the ones that may serve as cues, pointing to or acting as accurate representation of other underlying data. In minimizing the amount that has to be considered, people can come to conclusions faster and, in most cases, with an accuracy comparable to one where every bit of minutiae is parsed and weighed out.
So, how can you apply the principles of heuristic thinking and bounded rationality to your life? While it’s not quite as simple as “trusting your gut,” you might think of it as trusting your subconscious inclination. If you’re in charge of choosing a restaurant for lunch, the first one or two that pop into your head are probably good choices. If the preponderance of significant evidence points toward a particular decision, but you haven’t had the chance to review every single line item, the first set of limited inputs will most likely produce the optimal choice.
So the next time you’re in the position of decision maker, don’t hesitate to follow your first instinct, take in the few largest inputs, and make a choice. We can’t know everything, and in many cases, trying to defy that reality will leave us in a state of indecision, a state that is, generally, totally avoidable.
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Mark Wilkes, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Mark Wilkes is a therapist and writer obsessed with space where cognitive and physical performance intersect. In clinical practice, Mark works with athletes, musicians, and business professionals to overcome the psychological impediments stopping them from reaching their potential. Outside of clinical work, Mark can be found in the mountains near his home in the Salt Lake City, UT area, trail running, mountain biking, or backcountry skiing.
Citations;
Bower, B. (1999, May 29). Simple minds, smart choices: For sweet decisions, mix a dash of knowledge with a cup of ignorance. Science News, 155, 348-349.
Gigerenzer G, Gaissmaier W. Heuristic decision making. Annu Rev Psychol. 2011;62:451-82. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. PMID: 21126183.
