A study from the University of Amsterdam suggests that under some circumstances we make better decisions by avoiding conscious deliberation altogether. In the study, two groups of people were given lists of up to four attributes of a number of cars, including fuel consumption and leg room. One group was allowed to deliberate for a few minutes before being asked to choose which car was best. The other group was distracted with puzzles then asked to make an immediate decision. For relatively simple comparisons, the group which deliberated performed better. However, once the number of vehicle attributes became longer and more complex, the deliberative group actually performed worse. The researchers speculate that for complicated decisions, people lack the cognitive tools to accurately choose the best option, and the extra attention they spend on the decisionmaking process causes them to assign too much weight to some attributes, skewing their result.

I’d love to learn more about the microdynamics of this effect. At what level of complexity does further deliberation start to hurt the quality of your decision? What specific biases come into play when complex situations are dwelled upon? Are these biases general enough that they apply to a large class of decision contexts, or can we manage decisions to minimize their impact?

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