How do we decide? From "Trust your head or your gut? How we decide depends on experience":
Whether we make everyday decisions based on our gut or our reason has little to do with what kind of a decision maker we are. Instead, the content of the decision plays a big role, as does whether we are knowledgeable in the particular subject. These were the results of a study by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and the University of Basel.
As the study shows, we tend to decide on clothing, restaurants, and choice of partners intuitively, whereas our decisions in areas such as medicine, electronics, and holidays are apt to be knowledge-based. "For that reason it's inaccurate to speak of rational or intuitive decision makers, as is often done"... Instead, people prefer one or the other type of decision based on the topic in question. This is entirely independent of sex; the assumption that women are more likely than men to make gut decisions was not confirmed.
The full report appears in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition as "Domain-specific preferences for intuition and deliberation in decision making" with doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2015.07.
Meta: how will an editor decide whether or not to run this story?
Editor's Note: I decided to run it via reason, and a little intuition about what the community will want to read, and what won't get me too much gruff in the comments.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @06:54PM
gruff
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @07:12PM
I'll see your "Gruff" and raise you "Much".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @07:32PM
I'm glad I didn't say "boobs".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Friday October 30 2015, @07:43PM
which one, the little goat, the medium goat, or the big goat Gruff?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @07:08PM
It's a very simple pattern.
1. Data
2. Data + Context (experience) = Information
3. Information + Context (experience) = Knowledge
4. Knowledge + C(exp) = Wisdom
5. Wisdom + C(exp) = Grok
When people are sufficiently along this pattern, their Intuition is really Reason based on Data/Information/Knowledge/Wisdom; their minds are automatically filtering out what it believes to be cruft, so they're choosing from a pre-sorted list. Most don't realize this is even happening - if they think about the decision at all, they'll think they're just going with a gut feeling.
If you are insufficiently far along the pattern then you will automatically try to gain more information, and you'll believe you're using Reason.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 30 2015, @07:14PM
I believe that AC has it, or he's really close to having it. With enough experience, you don't need to reason your way through every decision. Of course, there are those who over estimate their experience, and make snap decisions which are unwarranted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @07:26PM
That is way too overthought and filled with assumptions. Try this:
Objectivity available? Reason.
Not? Then it's a subjective choice. Reason is worthless. Use intuition.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 31 2015, @04:35PM
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 30 2015, @10:45PM
Nah, most people see something happen once or twice and assume it will always happen that way.
Thus: prejudice, and the success of advertising.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @07:16PM
They left out weather, chicken bone, tea leaves, spot's poop geometry, smell of your car exhaust, chromatic shade of the sun, the quality of your hair day, level of the spouse' psm symptom, the length of that lone long hair on your big toe... damn I'm exhausted.
Please, no more such autistic pseudoscience.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Friday October 30 2015, @07:41PM
Yes, this is deliberation in decision making.
Lies and statistics provide the same thing, but the statistics may have a bit of truth to them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @08:00PM
There are reasons, and there are reasons. Even more so, "intuition" is a catch-all term for whole loads of things, and each such "intuition" has reasons of its own. Reason vs. intuition? Marvel vs. purple?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 31 2015, @09:06AM
the length of that lone long hair on your big toe... damn I'm exhausted.
And this is why you fail! Pay not attention to hair on toe do! Follow the Force! It is in your midi-chlorians, level 2, chapter 4, paragraph "The Force and Podiatric Hair Growth: An Unsolved Problem".
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @07:27PM
(flips coin)
Reason.
(Score: 1) by zaxus on Friday October 30 2015, @07:51PM
OK...we're cool, Twoface.....for now....
"I do have a cause, though. It is obscenity...I'm for it." - Tom Lerher
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Friday October 30 2015, @10:43PM
This is what game theorists call a mixed strategy. Actually probably not even a bad one.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday October 30 2015, @09:52PM
There's a strong divide between what we should use to make decisions, and what we do use to make decisions.
In situations where there is sufficient time and data available, we should make use of our brains, gather data, run computations, and so forth. In a lot of cases, we can indeed reach the optimal solution through this process, because science has taught us a great deal about how the world works.
When there isn't enough time and/or data, we have to use our gut instincts to fill in the gaps. That's common.
But in practice, what humans actually tend to do is make decisions with their guts (actually, the non-rational portions of our brain) and gather data and other rational arguments to justify our already-arrived-at conclusions. Or as Michael Shermer points out, "Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Friday October 30 2015, @10:56PM
If it doesn't really matter, I don't give a fuck. I'll do whichever my body leans toward in the breeze.
For important stuff, and especially ethical decisions, logic is always best.
Only gotcha is, faced with two equal choices, and one benefits you, choose the OTHER. People tend to subconsciously bend things in their favor.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Saturday October 31 2015, @07:38PM
Okay, so define "intuition" ...
... oh, wait, you can't.
Is intuition the cumulative weight of experience, such as when I "know" where to look for a bug because I've seen it so many times before? If so, then that's just distilled reason. Is "intuition" like the guy above who flipped a coin?
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)