The Art of Decision Making

Blog entry by Mike Florette, speaker, organizational consultant, standup comedian, and author.

”Let’s be rational and act logically, and let’s not get our emotions involved.”

Mike Florette

Imagine the following scenario: you’re at home sifting through your mail and decide to pay the latest bill from your broadband provider, when suddenly you notice an advertizing leaflet from one of its competitors. This well-designed flyer provides concrete details for a special offer, complete with an informative graph comparing the different speeds and costs of their subscription plans.

This clear and factual promotion gives you the opportunity to make a rational decision about whether or not to switch providers, and if so, which subscription level to choose. And of course, it’s a rational decision you end up making. Isn’t it?

If we examine the supposedly rational information on this hypothetical (yet rather typical) flyer a little closer, we can see that it contains more than just numbers and facts.

1. For one thing, the scale on the graphs are quite arbitrary, but it’s clear that if you want the best possible service, you have to purchase the most expensive subscription.
2. In order to spice up the information a little, they’ve added a catchy phrase to describe each subscription level.
   1. The cheapest contract on offer is tagged with something like “The First Steps to Getting Connected…” That sounds a bit silly. You already have broadband, so you can skip this beginner’s level.
   2. The mid-price one is designed “For Those That Want a Bit More”. Everyone wants a little more, right?
   3. But the absolute fastest, and presumably best, connection is called “Faster Than Lightning”. Yes, that’s the one you want! You are modern and you want things to happen faster than lightning.
   4. And finally, they’re also throwing in a free 3-month trial to that cool new music streaming service you’ve been hearing about.

And just like that, you’ve decided on something. But make no mistake, the rational and factual information has been laced with emotions. This isn’t a new thing, or very uncommon for that matter. All advertising is designed to cater to our emotions and we’ve accepted this in a way. But have we really understood what this means and do we realize how strongly these emotions influence our decisions in other situations too? Why aren’t facts enough?

We need emotions.
Antonio Damasio is a Portuguese neuroscientist working in the US. He is a leading figure within neuropsychology and has written several pioneering books on how the brain is connected to emotions and rationality, of which Descartes’ Error is probably best known.

Damasio has shown that people with injuries to the brain’s emotional center exhibit difficulties with making rational decisions, despite having the all other cognitive abilities intact. You would think it the opposite were true – people without emotions are 100% rational.

The great thing about Damasio’s research is that now, without a doubt, people need emotions to make rational decisions. It’s emotions that tell us if something is good, bad, or uninteresting. We often base this on a past experience and what we felt at the time. Damasio described a patient that couldn’t decide what day he should schedule his next appointment: “Tuesday is good, because I’m off in the morning, but on the other hand, on Wednesday I could come here straight after lunch…” That process was never-ending. Damasio ended up deciding for him.

Damasio’s research had a great effect on our society. Western society loves to boast about its abilities to think logically and make rational decisions, but one look at our economy and, well, you know what that looks like… If we could think and talk about the economy without our emotions, and also make important decisions on something that is proven to have an objective, logical, and rational basis, why do we have recessions and booms? Wouldn’t we just have booms all the time? If there were an objective and rational truth society should live by, we wouldn’t need political parties.

Balance
And of course, it would be disastrous to just run on emotions – there are countless examples where decisions based solely on emotions end up costing time, money, and even lives. Ever hear a manager say, “My gut feeling told me to hire this person” when recruiting a new member to the team? This is not only a breach of employment laws, but it also increases the risk that you’ve hired the wrong person. It’s the balance between emotions and rationality that is the key.

If you are selling a product or service to others, then you know that how you sell is more important that what you sell. The sooner we realize that we are emotional beings and that our emotions allow us to be rational people, the sooner we can all improve our lives.

But so, what happened, did you switch broadband Internet provider? Actually, you decided to stick with your current company. Are they cheaper? Do they have a better product? Nope. They put a picture up of two ladies with red hair on their invoice and it makes you giggle every time you see it.

Blog entry by Mike Florette, speaker, organizational consultant, standup comedian, and author.

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