208 Understanding Intuitive Decision Making
to do so. Think of the millions of consumers who have been infl uenced to drink Coca-Cola by
slogans such as Coke is it! and Taste the feeling.
When audiences make decisions primarily on the basis on their intuitions, the form or
style of a message can have a greater persuasive impact on them than its content or substance.
Consequently, persuasive documents and presentations must not only appeal to them on a
rational level, they must also appeal to the audience on an intuitive level if only to ensure that
competing proposals are not more persuasive for purely subjective reasons. Chapter 5 explores
intuitive decision making and the techniques, such as framing, that appeal to audiences on the
intuitive level.
Some of the many differences between the rational mode of decision making and the
intuitive mode are highlighted in Table 5.1 , adapted from a paper by Nobel laureate Daniel
Kahneman and his colleague Shane Frederick.^1 Whereas rational decisions are based on objec-
tive experience and information, intuitive decisions are based on subjective experience or the
feelings of the decision maker. Unlike the rational mode, which is used consciously and only
if believed to be necessary, the intuitive mode operates automatically at all times. The rational
mode of decision making is a slow and deliberate process that requires effort to make the neces-
sary comparisons, calculations, and trade-offs. The intuitive mode, on the other hand, is fast and
effortless, and the decisions it comes up with are not based on comparisons or calculations but
on holistic impressions.
The rational mode requires abstract and quantitative information for its comparisons and calcu-
lations. It makes sense of the information it inputs using rules and deductive reasoning. The intuitive
mode, in contrast, responds best to concrete and attention-getting stimuli, a photograph of a shiny
red sports car, for example. It interprets the information it inputs by making associations with situ-
ations from the past that produced similar responses. In the rational mode information-acquisition
and information-integration processes are carried out in a serial sequence, one comparison at a
time. In the intuitive mode audiences carry out those processes beneath conscious awareness in a
parallel manner that allows them to recognize different confi gurations or patterns of information
immediately.^2
Brain Regions Activated. In his review of the neuroscience research, social psychologist Mat-
thew Lieberman concludes that rational-mode processing activates lateral and medial regions of
both the frontal and parietal lobes, as well as medial regions of the temporal lobe (see Figures 3.4
and 3.5 , p. 108). These regions have been linked to executive control and explicit learning.
TABLE 5.1 A Comparison of Intuitive and Rational Cognitive Processes
Intuitive Mode Rational Mode
Focus of awareness Subjective experience Objective experience
When activated At all times As needed
How activated Automatically Consciously
Speed Rapid Slow
Output Holistic impression Effortful trade-offs
Stimuli Concrete and attention getting Abstract and quantitative
Comprehension Associative, Similarity based Deductive, Rule based
Information acquisition Parallel Serial
Information integration Confi gural Feature by feature
Source: Adapted from Kahneman and Frederick (2002)