Most texts on decision making, whether covering consumers or businesses, follow the Western ‘Scientific’ Psychology tradition and tend to discuss the ‘thinking side’ of making decisions. This is unsurprising given the hegemony of the Cognitive Psychology paradigm since the 1970’s.

The typical ‘econometric’ explanation of decision-making goes something like this: managers and consumers think about a range of options, think about the probability of the consequences, think about the value of each consequence, carefully consider all this information and then select the best alternative. This is all very logical, all very rational. We like this model because it makes organisations and marketplaces sound both sensible and reasonable.

However, more recent research, including Brain Imaging, is increasingly reflecting a more nuanced and perhaps, more worrying (for those that still think human beings are rational) explanation of human decision-making. Psychologists are coming to accept what Bernays^[1] knew all along, that making a decision is not just a matter of logic, it involves the emotions as well. Emotions are no longer treated as a distraction, a source of irrationality that infects ‘pure’ deliberation. The role of emotion in decision making is now a valid research area.

If you are unsure of the role that emotion plays in our decision making, please run through the two scenarios below.

A test of  your decision-making:

1) Imagine a runaway tube on the underground.  There are 10 people trapped inside the speeding carriage heading for a set of unforgiving buffers. You are stood next to a points switch that can divert the train into a soft sand-trap that will save the 10 occupants. Unfortunately, there is a maintenance engineer still working in the sand-trap who will be crushed and killed instead. Do you pull the lever to divert the train?

2) Imagine the same scenario as in 1) above, only this time the maintenance engineer is standing next to you near the points switch. The only way of stopping the train this time is by pushing the engineer (and his equipment bag) in front of the carriage wheels and letting the tangle of flesh and metal drag the train to a stop and save the 10 people trapped inside. Do you push the engineer in front of the tube?

How rational are you?

^[1] Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995) is considered the father of the field of public relations. Using the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Bernays was the first to attempt to manipulate public decision making using the psychology of the emotional subconscious.