DECISIONS AND EMOTIONSSchool, illustrated this in 2009
when they asked male students
to pick between two sports maga-
zines: one with broader coverage,
the other with more features.
Cleverly, the researchers manip-
ulated the magazines so that
one or the other also included
a bikini special-feature. Predict-
ably enough, the students picked
the magazine with the swimsuits
on three-quarters of occasions,
whether this happened to be
the broader-content magazine
or the feature-filled option.
Crucially, when asked to justify
their choice, the students always
pointed to either the breadth
of coverage or abundance of
features (depending on where
the bikini special appeared),
but never once admitted to the
appeal of scantily-clad women.
TWO MODES OF THOUGHT
We’re not equally prone to decision-making biases all of the time. In
fact, psychologists say we have two modes of thought – an automatic,
intuitive system and a deliberate, reflective system – and the extent to
which our choices are swayed by mental short-cuts often depends on
how much each of these systems is engaged. Take the phenomenon,
mentioned above, known as anchoring: if we really concentrate and
consider the question at hand we may find we can overcome an irrel-
evant anchor. It’s our intuitive system that latches onto an anchor as a
crude but often effective way to guide our guesswork. After all, we don’t
always have the time or inclination to consciously contemplate every
choice and decision before us. That said, you shouldn’t take away the
impression that the intuitive system is always fallible, while the delib-
erate system is always superior. There are some circumstances where
our gut instinct serves us well.
In 2002 Daniel Kahneman became the
only psychologist to win the Nobel Prize
for Economics. It was awarded for his
research on judgement and decision-
making conducted with his long-time
collaborator Amos Tversky.