Psychology
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POOR DECISION MAKING (http://www.livescience.com/7282-bad-decision-makerslack-reasoning-skills.html) People who are walking disaster areas—the types who bounce checks monthly, miss flights and vomit on the boss at the company picnic—are the same people who have poor reasoning skills, new research shows. Reasoning abilities are influenced by intelligence and socioeconomic status, but they may also be skills that can be learned and honed with practice, says a "decision scientist" at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Many people are affected by the way that information is framed, marketed or spun, as in advertisements, thereby exhibiting poor decision-making skills, says Wändi Bruine de Bruin. But people with strong reasoning skills make the same choices no matter how information is presented to them. Reasoning in the real world Research on decision-making relies on tests that present people with hypothetical situations and ask them to imagine what they might do. Some scientists have pointed out, however, that there is little evidence that a person’s performance on these hypothetical tests has any real world meaning. So Bruine de Bruin and her colleagues designed a study to determine whether these tests actually say something meaningful about the quality of the decisions people make in their everyday lives. Her team asked 360 people from diverse backgrounds to complete the standard hypothetical tests that assess reasoning skills. > Then the researchers asked the subjects about their real-life experiences and how frequently they ended up in bad situations—such as having spent the night in jail or racked up credit card debt. People who performed better on the hypothetical reasoning tests were, in fact, less likely to end up in bad situations. “Performance on those hypothetical paper-and-pencil tasks is related to the decision outcomes people experience in their lives,” she said. Smarts aren’t everything Bruine de Bruin’s study also looked at how different factors, such as intelligence and socioeconomic status,
affect decision-making. She was surprised to find that, although these variables affect how well a person reasons, they don’t explain it entirely—reasoning appears to be a separate skill. In other words, “smart people don’t automatically make good decisions,” said Eric Johnson, a professor at the Columbia Business School, who was not involved in the study. If reasoning is a distinct skill, then a big question is whether it can be taught. Bruine de Bruin hopes to answer this question by teaching people better reasoning skills and following them over time to see how their lives change. SNAP DECISION MAKING A snap decision can be better than mulling things over when facing quick quizzes, according to a new study that gives insight into the brain’s higher-level processing. Study participants were asked to identify an oddly rotated symbol on a screen of more than 650 identical symbols. Those who made quick, instinctive decisions did better at correctly identifying the symbol than those who gave a longer, more thought out answer. “This finding seems counter-intuitive,” said Li Zhaoping of the University College London, one of the authors of the study published online in the journal Current Biology. “You would expect people to make more accurate decisions when given the time to look properly. Instead they performed better when given almost no time to think.” The researchers detected when subjects had found the target symbol by tracking theireye movements. Once a participant's eyes located the rotated symbol, researchers turned off the screen, limiting the amount of time the subject’s eye could linger on the object from zero to 1.5 seconds. Participants then had to state whether the rotated symbol was on the left or right-hand side of the screen. Those who had only a small fraction of a second to look at the symbol identified it more accurately than those who had more than one second. Zhaoping attributes this result to the difference in the abilities of the subconscious andconscious minds to recognize the rotated symbol as different from the original. While the subconscious can spot the difference
between an apple that is rotated and one that is not, the conscious mind sees them both as only apples. When given time to engage the higher-level processes of the conscious mind, participants guessed wrong because their conscious brain overrode the decision of the lowerlevel subconscious. “If our higher-level and lower-level cognitive processes are leading us to the same conclusions, there is no issue,” Zhaoping said. “Often though, our instincts and higher-level functions are in conflict and in this case our instincts are often silenced by our reasoning conscious mind.”
Another mess I didn't plan. And I'll bet you thought you beat me, Wish you could only see I got an "I Heart ?" Written on the back of my hand! And when you're home all alone at night, You'll still wonder why You took everything I had, oh baby. I haven't thought about you and I, There's no you and I, and I know Someday you will... Wake up and smell the break up, Realize that we won't make up, It didn't go the way you planned. And you'll know you didn't beat me When you look down and see I got an "I Heart ?" Written on the back of my hand! Written on the back of my hand! An "I Heart ?", yeah. Written on the back of my hand...
Wish I had concentrated, They said love was complicated, But it's something I just fell into. And it was overrated, But just look what I created, I came out alive, but I'm black and blue. Before you ask me if I'm alright, Think about what I, Had to do... yeah, Wake up and smell the break up, Fix my heart, put on my make-up, Another mess I didn't plan. And I'll bet you thought you beat me, Wish you could only see, I got an "I Heart ?" Written on the back of my hand! I'd be fine if you'd just walked by, But you had to talk about why You were wrong and I was right. But I can't believe you made me, Sit at home and cry like a baby, Wait right by the phone every night. And now you ask about you and I, There's no you and I, Remember what you put me through, I had to... Wake up and smell the break up, Fix my heart, put on my make-up,
affect decision-making. She was surprised to find that, although these variables affect how well a person reasons, they don’t explain it entirely—reasoning appears to be a separate skill. In other words, “smart people don’t automatically make good decisions,” said Eric Johnson, a professor at the Columbia Business School, who was not involved in the study. If reasoning is a distinct skill, then a big question is whether it can be taught. Bruine de Bruin hopes to answer this question by teaching people better reasoning skills and following them over time to see how their lives change. SNAP DECISION MAKING A snap decision can be better than mulling things over when facing quick quizzes, according to a new study that gives insight into the brain’s higher-level processing. Study participants were asked to identify an oddly rotated symbol on a screen of more than 650 identical symbols. Those who made quick, instinctive decisions did better at correctly identifying the symbol than those who gave a longer, more thought out answer. “This finding seems counter-intuitive,” said Li Zhaoping of the University College London, one of the authors of the study published online in the journal Current Biology. “You would expect people to make more accurate decisions when given the time to look properly. Instead they performed better when given almost no time to think.” The researchers detected when subjects had found the target symbol by tracking theireye movements. Once a participant's eyes located the rotated symbol, researchers turned off the screen, limiting the amount of time the subject’s eye could linger on the object from zero to 1.5 seconds. Participants then had to state whether the rotated symbol was on the left or right-hand side of the screen. Those who had only a small fraction of a second to look at the symbol identified it more accurately than those who had more than one second. Zhaoping attributes this result to the difference in the abilities of the subconscious andconscious minds to recognize the rotated symbol as different from the original. While the subconscious can spot the difference
between an apple that is rotated and one that is not, the conscious mind sees them both as only apples. When given time to engage the higher-level processes of the conscious mind, participants guessed wrong because their conscious brain overrode the decision of the lowerlevel subconscious. “If our higher-level and lower-level cognitive processes are leading us to the same conclusions, there is no issue,” Zhaoping said. “Often though, our instincts and higher-level functions are in conflict and in this case our instincts are often silenced by our reasoning conscious mind.”
Another mess I didn't plan. And I'll bet you thought you beat me, Wish you could only see I got an "I Heart ?" Written on the back of my hand! And when you're home all alone at night, You'll still wonder why You took everything I had, oh baby. I haven't thought about you and I, There's no you and I, and I know Someday you will... Wake up and smell the break up, Realize that we won't make up, It didn't go the way you planned. And you'll know you didn't beat me When you look down and see I got an "I Heart ?" Written on the back of my hand! Written on the back of my hand! An "I Heart ?", yeah. Written on the back of my hand...
Wish I had concentrated, They said love was complicated, But it's something I just fell into. And it was overrated, But just look what I created, I came out alive, but I'm black and blue. Before you ask me if I'm alright, Think about what I, Had to do... yeah, Wake up and smell the break up, Fix my heart, put on my make-up, Another mess I didn't plan. And I'll bet you thought you beat me, Wish you could only see, I got an "I Heart ?" Written on the back of my hand! I'd be fine if you'd just walked by, But you had to talk about why You were wrong and I was right. But I can't believe you made me, Sit at home and cry like a baby, Wait right by the phone every night. And now you ask about you and I, There's no you and I, Remember what you put me through, I had to... Wake up and smell the break up, Fix my heart, put on my make-up,
