According to a new psychology article in Newsweek, the ways of writing down pros and cons in an attempt to come to a logical decision may be overrated. Benjamin Franklin used to give advice on reasoning out complex decisions- he called it "moral algebra". His theory states to divide a sheet of paper in half, write down a complete list of pros and cons, revisit the list in a couple of days and weigh the pros and cons, decide which pro and con seems of equal weight and then strike them both out. What's left in the balance is your best answer.
Wray Hebert writes "Such "balance sheet" calculation is still taught today as the most logical and systematic method for dealing with many of life's complexities. Kids are counseled to choose colleges and careers this way, and managers similarly deliberate the pros and cons in important business decisions. But is moral algebra really the best method for decision making in today's dizzyingly complicated world? Or is there virtue in simplicity for many life choices? A growing number of psychologists are questioning the soundness of Franklin's method, and its modern iterations, including data-heavy calculations by increasingly powerful computers".
A leading challenger, Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, is the author of "Gut Feelings", a book that collects a convincing body of evidence for the power of hunches over laborious data crunching. Hunches, gut feelings, intuition—Gigerenzer calls these "heuristics," fast and efficient cognitive shortcuts that (according to the emerging theory) can help us negotiate life, if we let them.
Maybe we are overcomplicating things and wasting time on unecessary details in everyday and life changing decisions. We should strive to be "satisficers": a term coined by Gigerenzer for people who practice "satisficing" decision making, as in "satisfying" enough to "suffice." Satisficers don't feel the need to know everything, in contrast to "maximizers," who do want to weigh every detail imaginable in making even minor life decisions. Interestingly, studies have found that satisficers are more optimistic about life, have higher self-esteem, and are generally happier than maximizers.
2 comments:
That sure is fancy way of saying "Just do it." Moral algebra, huh? I don't think anyone actually did that outside of Ross on friends. Oh and salespeople. They teach you the pros and cons chart in Sales 101. It works awfully well too.
I'm pretty sure there's a straw man fallacy going on here. I mean, does _anyone_ in the 21st century think that moral algebra is the best way to decide things? Probably no one outside of the author of that article!
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