I’ve just read one of Seth Godin’s recent posts (you can find it here – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/04/are-you-rational.html). His view is summed up in the last line of his post; “There’s room for both rational and irrational decision making, and I think we do best when we choose our path in advance instead of pretending to do one when we’re actually doing the other. The worst thing we can do is force one when we actually need the other.”
But Seth has missed an important point – you cannot put decision making into neat boxes (e.g. rational for economic decision, and irrational for artistic decisions). As an example he says that Black Jack players make rational decisions, when we know that they use emotions and gut feel as much as they use calculated judgement (see Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” and Antonio Damasio’s “The Feeling of What Happens” for more on this). Gladwell would go as far to say that seemingly “irrational” decisions are often more accurate that calculated rational ones.
Seth seems to suggest that we can pick and choose which decision modality we’re going to use for specific types of decisions. We can’t and we shouldn’t. Damasio points out that without emotional content we cannot make decisions. Every decision will be a combination of both, where one modality may have dominance over another (except where there is some pathology). Moreover, we all tend towards one modality or another; “irrational” intuition or “rational” judgement. If you are more comfortable judging at pros and cons you’re going to find it difficult/uncomfortable to just focus on using “gut feel”. And if you are more comfortable listening to that inner voice, you’re going to find it difficult/uncomfortable relying on “data”.
Interesting topic. I like to use the Rorschach Inkblot Method and one reason for that, is that it’s quite good at identifying a decision making style in terms of how emotion is involved or kept at a distance. Most people go one way or the other, and either is as effective as the other. This somewhat enduring personality trait affects learning style too; the “extratensive” who tends to involve emotion can learn well by trial and error whilst the “introversive” who likes to reflect and generate solutions internally, testing them imaginatively learns better when given all information in advance and does not like to experiment to the same degree. The only people at a real disadvantage (according to what I’ve read) are the “ambitensive” people who have no consistent problem solving process; but if one’s coping or problem solving approach is too fixed or pervasive that could also amount to a limitation. IOW sometimes it’s not possible to make a good decision unless we first consider all the facts, and sometimes it’s not possible unless we take into account how we feel.
So perhaps as is often the case, the issue here is how useful it it to invoke a polarity such as rational/irrational. A decision made by including emotion is not ipso facto “irrational” nor is one made by holding emotion at arms’ length necessarily “rational”, if we take “rationality” to mean the capacity for using our reasoning ability to best effect.
Hi Sally
Thanks for the thoughtful response. You’ve got me thinking. I haven’t seen a Rorschach test since university – an interest take on the topic and I am keen to learn more. The popular press is abuzz with the idea of us being “irrational” decision makers which frustrates me somewhat. It is of course a natural reaction to Descartian dualism and hopefully in the not too distant future we’ll see a synthesis of these two polarities in the popular press. If you’re interested in reading more about the topic from a cognitive neuroscience perspective I’d suggest any of Antonio Damasio’s books (“Descarte’s Error”, “The Feeling of Whatt Happens” (my favourite) and “Looking for Spinoza”.
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