Human beings are emotional animals driven by innate biological urges and unconscious biases, unprovable assumptions, and irrational psychology. Humans have limited knowledge and understanding of the world, their immediate environment and themselves. Everyone’s worldview is subjective, formed by one’s finite time and place, culture, education, upbringing, personal experiences, innate personality, and limited sensory abilities.
There is no objectively correct or single way to organize society, govern people or live one’s life. Every political ideology, governance and social model is imperfect, limited, and involves trade-offs and unintended consequences. Even when people agree on the desired ends, there often is strong disagreement about the means to get there.
We all make choices in areas where we are not experts, from picking a shampoo from the multitude of options in the store aisle to picking a new doctor. Many from both the American political left and right express strong opinions about critical race theory (CRT) when they do not know what it is and have distorted perceptions based on the partisan social and news sources they follow. People from both sides of the debates make judgments about vaccines and climate change without being scientists, much less immunologists and climatologists.
University of Oxford scientist and public science literacy expert Dr. Catarina Amorim told me that it is not just people within the religious right who don’t understand what is the theory of evolution. She says that many people within the left who say they believe in evolution also have significant misconceptions about it.
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Humans are overwhelmed with information
Humans are inundated by emails, social media, 24-7 news coverage, YouTube, and google search results. It’s impossible to entirely know which information is reliable and which is unreliable, with people using biased filters to sort the information.
Having too many choices can cause anxiety, prolong the choosing process and sometimes prevent people from choosing. Analysis paralysis is a term for what happens when, in the face of too many choices and overthinking, one is unable to make a decision.
Retailers may think that offering customers an abundance of choices will help sales. However, it can have the opposite effect, leading to analysis paralysis where customers decide not to buy anything.
The questions are how people make choices with all this information, and how should they? There are no simple or objective answers to these questions.
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How People Make Decisions
Princeton University psychologist and Economics Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and Stanford University psychologist Amos Tversky showed how humans have two methods of making decisions. One is a slow, logical method. The other a quick intuitive-emotional method.
The automatic emotional form of thinking is important. Unconscious decisions involving aesthetic taste and gut reactions inform us. Not all choices are or should be entirely about logic and reason. Quality of life, choosing about where to live and what university to attend, who to marry and what movie to attend require emotional thinking. However, emotional thinking is subjective, full of biases, blind spots and errors. It must be double-checked by reason and critical thinking.
Most decisions, including many that we think are come to logically, are made with the unconscious intuitive-emotional method that is riddled with mistakes and cognitive biases. About 95 percent of our decision-making is done at the unconscious level. Brain scans have shown that decisions are made unconsciously before we consciously believe we have made a choice.
Further, after making an emotional decision, the slow, logical method will then often come up with a false cover story, giving logical but false reasons why we made the decision. We think we have gone through a logical thought process when we have not.
Kahneman wrote, “If we think that we have reasons for what we believe, that is often a mistake. Our beliefs and our wishes and our hopes are not always anchored in reasons.” Behavior psychologist Susan Weinschenk wrote, “What people tell you is the reason for why they do what they do may not be the actual reason.”
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Two Ways of Choosing: Maximizers Versus Satisficers
People tend to lean toward one of two styles of making decisions. ‘Maximisers' want to ensure they get the most out of the choices they make. ‘Satisficers' have a ‘this is good enough’ approach. Each comes with benefits and drawbacks.
Maximizers usually get the best final results. However, they often put in too much time and effort into making the decision. As they are perfectionists, they often second-guess their choices and are left unsatisfied. They also are motivated to make the perfect choice even when it’s unnecessary and impossible, and their perfectionism and time-wasting frustrate others.
Satisficers is a combination of the words satisfy and suffice. Satisficers are people who prefer to make quick decisions. Instead of the best or perfect choice, they are comfortable with what is acceptable. Unlike maximizers, satisficers don't need or want a lot of options or outside information. They do less research and go with their gut reaction.
Satisficers don’t waste time, but do not make the best choice, and sometimes regret making the choice so quickly.
The best method is to combine maximizer and satisficer qualities. One should be a satisficer most of the time, and a maximizer when it is necessary. Maximizing should be reserved for high-stake situations. This includes picking a new career, buying a house or making a big financial investment. For less significant choices, such as buying a new shampoo or picking a restaurant for lunch, satisficing is usually the best. Psychology professor Barry Schwartz writes, “I think the best general advice is to avoid impulsive decisions and to avoid feeling the need to look at every option."
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What to do?
First, understand that there often are no objective or easy answers, and we always have limited knowledge about any situation or topic. There are usually different legitimate ways of doing things, legitimate different possible choices, and they all are imperfect. In a political debate, it’s often a matter of different legitimate priorities, values and approaches, and not that one side is right and the other side is wrong. We make decisions unable to know the outcomes and the inevitable unintended consequences.
Be aware that we all have cognitive biases, make logical fallacies, use emotional reasoning and are susceptible to being fooled by propaganda and emotional persuasion. Aware of this, make sure you take the time to examine our perceptions and decisions using logic, weighing the facts and getting input from others. Examine the ways you make decisions, realizing that the best way is a happy medium between the maximizer and satisficer approaches.
Listen to and invite diverse viewpoints, including that counter your beliefs. You may not agree with everything your opponents say, but they will give you important ideas, facts and perspectives you have not thought about. There are intelligent, thoughtful and knowledgeable people all along the political and ideological spectrum. At the very least, you will learn to understand and appreciate others’ points of view. Whether in business, government or daily life, we interact and work with people of different cultures, politics, religions and life experiences. It’s important to work to understand them.
Avoid echo chambers. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt says that, whether political parties, academic areas of study or non-profit organizations, groupthink that stifles dissent and heterodoxy are “structurally stupid” and will inevitably come to wrong conclusions and make foolish decisions. He says, “Whatever they are doing, it’s probably wrong.”