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hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

UC Riverside psychologists' experiments explain which choice rules daily life:

Will you read this news release now or decide to read it later? "Precrastination [kut.org]," defined as the tendency to expend extra effort to get things done as soon as possible, could explain what you will do.

We have all probably precrastinated, that is, completed tasks right away, even if that meant putting in more work. An unresolved question about precrastination [theguardian.com] is: Do we rush to get things done because we want to simply act as quickly as possible and worry about decision making later, or do we want to get decision making over and done with, so we needn't have to worry about it subsequently?

A team of psychologists at the University of California, Riverside, may have an answer: Given a choice, we opt for the latter because we want to have our minds clear.

[...] "Precrastination is widespread," Rosenbaum said. "When you answer emails too quickly, when you submit papers before they have been polished, you are precrastinating. But why do we rush? What's the hurry? If there are scarce resources, it's wise to grab low-hanging fruit, but in other cases, rushing has another less clear basis.

"It has been shown by several labs that quite a few people are inveterate precrastinators," he added. "Many people simply want to get stuff done and will rush to do so. The connotation is that you are an impulsive person. You act for action's sake. In certain cases, that can have dire consequences. For example, convicting people in court cases before all the evidence is in because you want to get the case over and done with. Or graver still is going to war just so a leader can appear strong and be seen as having taken action."

[...] "In the reaction-time task, most people think for a relatively long time, make their first response, and then make the second response a fraction of a second later," he said. "But a small number of people respond very quickly and then change their minds. So it could be personality differences — or maybe they simply had too much coffee! Regardless, we would advise against hiring these particular people to work in nuclear silos or do brain surgery."

Journal Reference:
Rosenbaum, D. A., Sturgill, H. B., & Feghhi, I., Think then act, or act then think? Double-response reaction times shed light on decision dynamics in precrastination, J Exp Psychol Gen, 2022. DOI: 10.1037/xge0001253 [doi.org]

Original Submission