Don't Think and, Especially, Don't Overthink

news@nature.com reports that the best way to make a complex decision is to think about something else . . . and then just decide. While simple decisions benefit from some forethought, "At least when making some complicated decisions, such as choosing a car or house, the results suggest that we would actually do better to go with our gut."

In a laboratory experiment, researchers at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, found that a group of graduate students did better on complex decisions when they didn't think about the problem. Then the researchers carried the study into the real world:

For the simple decisions, students made better choices when they thought consciously about the problem. But for the more complex choice, they did better after not thinking about it, Ap Dijksterhuis and his colleagues report in Science. To carry this idea into the real world, the team also studied people who were shopping: either in an Amsterdam department store, where they bought straightforward clothes or kitchenware, or in IKEA, where they bought furniture, which one might expect to be a more complicated decision-making process. The team asked the shoppers whether they had thought hard about their purchase beforehand, and a few weeks later asked them whether they were happy with it.

These results confirmed the earlier ones. Department-store shoppers who made simple purchases were happier if they had thought consciously about their choice in advance. IKEA shoppers, on the other hand, were happier with their choice if they hadn't mulled them over.

Ergo, for complex decisions, don't draw up a list of pros and cons and don't agonize over your choice. Instead, sleep on it and then just do it. Forethought need not apply.

The complete report--"On Making the Right Choice: The Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect"--is available online from Science or for free in the periodical section of Hinckley Library.