Debra L.

McCusker January 2007

Which should you trust more, your heart or your head?

In making the determination as to whether it is prudent, correct or wise to trust the heart or the head more on a decision, it is best to explore what really makes up a decision. Some pundits tout gut feelings and snap judgments as effective means of decision making. A case in point is Malcolm Gladwells book Blink: the Power of Thinking without Thinking. Gladwells analysis is an interesting take on the issue but I would like to suggest that no decision, not even a snap judgment, is ever made with no thought behind it. A feeling in the gut or a heart-felt decision is actually a result created from a confluence of past experiences, observances, and absorbed knowledge. The gut feeling will be correct if, and only if, the circumstances at hand explicitly cross-reference to a scenario retained in the personal database of experience and knowledge.

So, it can be inferred that a gut reaction or heart-felt decision is really just a subset of the fully formed analytical judgment (i.e., trusting ones head). Even though the snap judgment seems without thought, it clearly is not. Rather, the connections and pathways that devise the solution are made at such speed from the personal data store that the thinking part seems nonexistent. Which method is more trustworthy (heart or head)? Well, that conclusion must be based upon whether the current decision is being made about a purely personal pursuit or whether the decision affects or encompasses a group or society. On a personal decision, there are two basic things that make the snap heart-felt approach a little more plausible. First, the collateral damage is minimized due to the tightly defined nature of the individual problem. Second, the personal problem has a much higher probability of being within the grasp of the individual decisionmaker. That is, the decision-makers collection of internalized knowledge and experience has a fairly good likelihood of mapping correctly to the problem at hand.

Debra L. McCusker January 2007 When studying cognitive processes and intellectual expertise, scientists often turn to the game of chess as a test bed. In 1909, chess grand master Jos Ral Capablanca took part in an exhibition tournament where he won 168 games in a row. He often played multiple games simultaneously and typically pondered an individual move for only seconds. How could he do that? Studies show that the expert, like Jos, relies not so much on an intrinsically stronger power of analysis as on a store of structured knowledge. When confronted with a difficult situation, the weak player may sit calculating for half an hour, often factoring choices many moves ahead, yet still miss the right move. The grandmaster sees the best move immediately, without consciously analyzing anything at all. To the casual observer, the experts behavior may appear magical or providential. Rather than divine inspiration, though, it is the masters uncanny ability to recall a finite number of chunks of information and then connect and reconstruct scenarios; this talent produces the awesome edge.

Those TV commercials that present all of the unbelievable maneuvers of an SUV or highperformance sports car may be a metaphor for decision-making. And the same disclaimer should apply: Professional driver on a closed course. Do not try this at home. That expert, any expert, may look like he or she is making an easy maneuver. In truth, that trained individual chunks information and processes it so quickly that the rest of us are fooled into assuming that some jobs can be done without a thought. In the limited instances when intimate knowledge of a problem area does exist, the expert-level snap judgment may indeed work. But unless you are so absorbed with a subject area that it is simply part of your inner fabric, I suggest that you listen to what your mother always told you: Sweetie, Use Your Head!