Why do you make the options you make? Why do many people choose to exercise and eat healthily and others don’t. The day you are exposed to an enormous amount of information Every. Think about that for another (and if you did, 11 millions of bits of information were just missed by you).
Your brain filters information so that it doesn’t get overcome. Your system and brain use autopilot, short slashes, and what Daniel Kahneman telephone calls fast thinking all the time (see part 2 for a description of this system 1). Without it you would probably be paralyzed by indecision everyday. You up get, shower, clean your teeth, reach work without much thought.
These become habitual activities. Certain decisions have been taken out of your hands from an early age. Where you were blessed as well as your parents’ choices have identified the vocabulary you speak already, the meals you culturally like, the institution you visited, many of the hobbies and past times you selected.
You might not even be familiar with other options, you can’t miss a food you’ve never really had or aren’t even aware of. Which working job you drifted into after school or university, it may have not been your top choice, but possibly, only years you understand you should do another thing later.
- Prepare all the veggies, by washing, peeling if needed, and chopping
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- Alex Kanter
- 1 Yellow Onion
- Get A Gym Membership
- Theatrical fun to close out the summer
This fast system of shortcuts is useful. Venturing out for a coffee on your lunch break if you live in a big city could be overpowering. If the choice is bound it is easier, only one restaurant, you go there. Only one gym, you join that one. In fact, it has been shown the greater choice people receive the harder it is found by them to make a choice. In one study, given a selection between two different kinds of jam, you pick one without difficulty. Given the choice of 10 or 20, then what?
You are iced with indecision over the pot of jam. Extrapolate that to big life decisions like choosing a partner or career, the number of variables is mind-boggling. This is where the shortcut, intuitive system, is most effective. When buying a car, studies show people make smarter decisions when they don’t consciously think about all the variables.
Dijksterhuis et al (2006) got visitors to choose an automobile based on 4 features or 12 characteristics (safety, mileage etc). They were given 4 minutes to take into account their choice, or 4 minutes distracted by doing anagrams. Individuals who have been distracted doing anagrams and used their unconscious brain therefore, made a far greater choice whenever choosing an engine car when that they had to take into account 12 characteristics. We make driven choices all the time emotionally. We are not even aware we are making them. Marketers and Companies know you can be influenced, so they exploit these functional systems.
You are influenced by marketing, even though you think you aren’t. Think about all the advertising you are exposed to. Does it influence you? Of course not, you are smarter than that. Or maybe not. In a report by Bagdziunaite (2014) three group of individuals were shown advertisements before going directly into a store to buy paint. These were then informed to go and buy some color for redecorating.