Why We Make Bad Decisions and How to Stop Doing It

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Three reasons and a quick guide to action from the author of the bestselling "The Subtle Art of Don't Care".

Any decision is a rejection of one in favor of the other. At the same time, every word, action and striving carries losses and benefits. Sometimes they do not become obvious immediately: the winnings are instant, and the payment for it is distant. Sometimes these losses and benefits are not tangible, but psychological.

From this point of view, living well is giving up bad options. That is, to make decisions that bring many benefits and few losses.

The problem is that we usually make a poor estimate of what we lose and what we get as a result of a decision. I don’t know about you, but I have experienced my share of failures due to the fact that I did not see the price of my choice. So today I want to talk about what is behind bad decisions and how to avoid them.

What is a bad decision

Imagine that I asked you to play a game like this: you give me one dollar, and I flip a coin. If heads, you win 50 dollars, if tails, you get nothing and lose your dollar. Is it worth playing? Of course, because the potential loss is small, and the potential gain is large.

This clearly explains what a good decision is: a step in which you risk little for the opportunity to get a lot. For example, start a conversation with a person you like, ask a question that you may find uncomfortable, apply for a job in a company that seems unattainable to work for.

A bad decision is a step in which you risk a lot for the opportunity to get a little.

For example, you break traffic rules in order to get somewhere, lie and pretend to please others, get drunk the evening before an important meeting or exam.

But how can one distinguish “much” from “small”? Most of the decision-making situations are nowhere near as simple as my coin game. They are confusing and biased. Is continuing education worth it to give up all social life for a year? Is it worth buying a house to save on everything for the next 10 years?

Everything is determined by your values. To make a good decision, you need to know what is important to you.

Looking at the examples above, you must have noticed something interesting. Good decisions are somehow difficult to make. Even when it is obvious to us which choice is the right one (and this is far from always the case), it is difficult for us to make it. On the other hand, with bad decisions, it is easy to follow the lead.

Why is that? Why do we deliberately do risky things that can harm us, but for a good choice we need to make incredible efforts? If you're thinking, "Because we're all a bunch of idiots!" - you are not far from the truth.

What factors influence decision making

We choose bad options because by their very nature we are so designed that we cannot objectively assess the risks and benefits. This is a feature of our brain that cannot be avoided. The only thing we can do is to know about it and take into account our bias when making decisions.

A whole book could be written about the various traps of thinking that prevent us from thinking sanely, but for the sake of brevity, I will group them into three categories and describe only them.

1. Emotions

Think back to some of your stupidest decisions. Chances are, you did most of them emotionally. For example, they got angry at something at work, quarreled with their boss, and quit. Or they drank a lot, suffering from parting, got behind the wheel drunk - and paid for it.

Emotions disturb our perception of reality. And now a clearly good decision seems terribly frightening and unpleasant, but an obviously bad idea attracts like a magnet.

The point is that emotions operate separately from thoughts. To understand this better, imagine that we have two brains: thinking and feeling. And the second is much stronger than the first.

What is essentially identical to playing with a coin (it takes 10 seconds to start a conversation with a girl, and from this attempt you have almost nothing to lose), suddenly starts to seem incredibly risky and intimidating. So you stay where you are, and then think about what could have been for another week.

Overcoming the influence of emotions is very difficult. I don’t know if you can master them completely. But the first step is to learn to notice them. Many people don't even realize they are sad or angry until they do something stupid. Be more attentive to your emotional state.

The next step is to get in the habit of thinking about important decisions out loud or on paper (more on this below).

2. Distorted perception of time

The brain loves to play and joke with us. For example, research confirms that people generally prefer to receive a smaller amount of money now than a larger one a year later.

The reward that awaits in the distant future seems to us not as valuable as the immediate one. This thinking error is called hyperbolic depreciation and manifests itself in a variety of areas of life.

It is because of her that we find it hard to save money and procrastinate. Because of her, they are ready to eat pizza every Saturday, without thinking about the extra pounds that we will have in a year. Because of her, we are going to have fun tonight, not thinking about how we will feel at work tomorrow.

The more distant the consequence in time, the less significant it seems to us.

And this is not the only "glitch" in our perception of time. Our brains overestimate the discomfort of performing a complex action today and underestimate the cumulative effect it would have if we performed the action regularly.

This is because we think linearly, not exponentially. “Just think, I'll miss a workout once! Nothing bad will happen. One missed class really doesn't make much difference.

But we keep repeating this over and over, year after year, and underestimate how much we are actually losing. After all, the effect of regular exercise accumulates as compound interest. That is, if you improve by 1% every day, at the end of the year your result will be better not by 365%, but by 3.778%. And by missing a day here and there, you lose a lot.

3. The social status of others

You may think that you absolutely do not care about this. That the status of a person or the prestige of a thing does not affect you at all. Only in reality it is not so.

We inherited cognitive distortions associated with status in the same way as distorted perception of time (our distant ancestors did not have time to assess the profitability of something in a year, it was more important to survive right now).

What is considered valuable and desirable from the point of view of society affects all of us, even if we do not notice it.

When faced with incredible beauty, wealth, or power, we all become a little dumber and more insecure. We overestimate people with high social status. We believe that the beautiful are smarter or kinder, the successful are more interesting, and those in power are more charismatic than they really are.

Marketers are well aware of this and make money from it. Think of celebrities promoting cars, cosmetics, or vitamins. How you love something because the person you admire likes it.

You need to deal with this in the same way as with the rest of the traps of thinking: know how ideas about status affect you, and take this into account when reasoning.

Observe how you behave around someone you think is successful and worthy of respect. Notice how often you agree with his words and attribute positive qualities to him. Then ask yourself: "If just an acquaintance, an ordinary person, said this, would I react in the same way?" Most likely the answer will be "No."

How to make healthier decisions

It is impossible to get rid of the pitfalls that keep us from thinking objectively once and for all. They are the result of our evolutionary development. But there are steps that will increase your chances of making a good choice.

1. Write down your thoughts

I know that all and sundry are advised to keep a diary and record thoughts in it, but there is a reason for that. By noting your ideas, you force yourself to look at them more objectively. When describing important life decisions, you stop acting on autopilot and evaluate opportunities.

When I think about a big decision, I like to just draw a line in the middle of the page and list the risks and costs on the one hand and the potential benefits on the other. This exercise alone is often enough to reveal your misconceptions.

2. Learn to Overcome Anxiety

Most bad decisions are made because they are comfortable and easy. The good ones, on the other hand, seem difficult, frightening, counterintuitive. To accept them, you have to go against your fear.

This skill only develops with practice. Someone calls it "getting out of your comfort zone." I sometimes think of it as "eating a shit sandwich." Yes, it’s unpleasant, but necessary.

3. Find your weak points

We all have our own weaknesses when it comes to decision making. Some people are more emotional, others are more in need of social approval, while others find it more difficult to assess the risks and benefits in the future.

Try to determine what is bad for you. And keep that in mind as you ponder your next decisions.

4. Protect yourself from weaknesses

It's easier than trying to deal with them with willpower. For example, I find it difficult to give up fast food, so I try to just not keep it in the house. I have found that it is easier for me not to buy it at all than to buy and limit myself.

Or another example. I have friends that I report to in Zoom or Slack when I work from home. This arrangement helps us all sit down at our desk at nine in the morning. Nothing complicated or ingenious, but it works. The fear of being the one who slept while everyone else was working helps me get out of bed. And be more productive.