59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot (25 page)

After everyone had made their selection and ratings, the experimenters carried out an act of unprecedented generosity, giving them their favorite poster as a free gift for taking part in the study. Finally, just as each person left the laboratory clutching their rolled-up booty, the experimenter casually remarked that it would be good to have their telephone number, just in case there was any problem with the data storage and they needed to rerun the study.

Now, if you take part in a study and the researchers explain that they need your telephone number in case of a hard-disk failure, they are up to something. The most likely scenario is that the experiment is far from over and they intend to call you at a future date. The call may take a number of forms. Your telephone might ring in the dead of night, and a market researcher might ask if you would mind taking part in a survey about soap. Alternatively, you might get a call from an alleged long-lost friend wondering if you want to meet. Or, as happened here, one of the team might call to say hello and ask how you are getting on with your poster.

About a month after the experiment, the researchers contacted the participants and asked them how satisfied they were with their posters and how many euros they would be prepared to sell them for. When they had originally chosen their posters in the laboratory, the participants who had been asked to carefully consider the pros and cons of each print were confident that they had made the right choice. In fact,
they were far more confident than those who had made their choice within moments of seeing the posters or those who had been asked to solve anagrams and then decide. However, four weeks later a very different picture emerged. The participants who had spent time solving anagrams before chosing their posters were the happiest with their choices and wanted significantly more money in order to part with their cherished print.

You might argue that the choices made in such studies are unlike the complicated choices that people have to make in real life. In fact, the researchers have obtained the same curious effect again and again.
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Whether it is deciding which apartment to rent, which car to buy, or which stocks to invest in, people who are shown the options but then kept busy working on a difficult mental activity make better decisions than others do.

Why should this be the case? Dijksterhuis believes that just as the power of the unconscious mind can be harnessed to help people become more creative (see the “Creativity” chapter), it can also be used to encourage better decisions. When having to decide between options that differ in only one or two ways, your conscious mind is very good at studying the situation in a rational, levelheaded way and deciding the best course of action. However, when the going gets complex, the mind has only a limited ability to juggle a small number of facts and figures at any one time, and so the result is not so good. Instead of looking at the situation as a whole, the conscious mind tends to focus on the most obvious elements and, in doing so, can miss the bigger picture. In contrast, your unconscious mind is much better at dealing with the complex decisions that pervade many aspects of our lives. Given time, it slowly works through all of the factors and eventually reaches a more balanced decision. Dijksterhuis and Van Olden’s explanation
for the effect, referred to as the “unconscious thought theory,” argues for a kind of middle ground when making complex decisions. Thinking too hard about an issue is in many ways as bad as making an instant choice. Instead, it is all a question of knowing what needs to be decided, then distracting your conscious mind and allowing your unconscious to work away on the issue. And how do you get your unconscious mind to work on a problem? Well, just as we saw in the section on boosting creativity, one technique involves keeping the conscious mind busy with a distracting but difficult task, such as solving anagrams or counting backward by threes.

Solving anagrams before making an important decision is, of course, not the only way of helping to ensure that you won’t regret the decision. In fact, according to other research, there is an even quicker way of minimizing the likelihood of regretting a decision.

Thomas Gilovich, at Cornell University, has been studying the psychology of regret for more than a decade. His findings make fascinating reading.
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Much of his work has involved asking people to look back over their lives and describe their biggest regret. About 75 percent of respondents regret not doing something, with the top three slots taken by not studying hard enough at school, not taking advantage of an important opportunity, and not spending enough time with friends and family. In contrast, only 25 percent of people regret doing something, such as making a bad career decision, marrying someone they didn’t love, or having a child at the wrong point in their lives.

It seems that part of the problem is it’s relatively easy to see the negative consequences of something that happened. You made a poor career decision, and so you were stuck in a job that you didn’t enjoy. You had kids when you were very
young, and so you couldn’t go out with friends. You married the wrong person, and found that you constantly argued. The negative consequences are known, and so although the potential for regret may still be substantial, it is limited. However, the situation is completely different when it comes to things that didn’t happen. Suddenly the possible positive benefits seem almost endless. What would have happened if you had accepted that job offer, been brave enough to ask the love of your life on a date, or spent more time at school studying? Under these circumstances, you are limited only by the power of your imagination.

Gilovich’s fascinating work provides scientific support for the words of the nineteenth-century American poet John Greenleaf Whittier, who once noted, “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.”

IN 59 SECONDS

Anagrams and the Unconscious Mind

When making straightforward decisions, stick with the conscious mind by thinking about the pros and cons and assessing the situation in a rational, levelheaded way. However, for more complex choices, try giving your conscious mind a rest and letting your unconscious work. The following exercise, based on the research of Dijksterhuis and Van Olden, is designed to aid the decision-making process.

A. What decisions do you have to make?

B. Work through as many of these anagrams as possible in five minutes. If you get stuck, don’t struggle for too long. Instead, move on to the next one.

C. Now, without thinking too much about the problem, write down your decision here.

ANAGRAM ANSWERS

1. Copenhagen. 2. Tomato. 3. Spaghetti. 4. Napoleon. 5. Triangle. 6. Triathlon. 7. Trinidad. 8. Tea. 9. Dandelion. 10. Chocolate. 11. Argentina. 12. Football. 13. Organ. 14. Martini. 15. Peach.

Containing Regret

Research shows that when most people look back on their lives, they tend to regret things that they didn’t do. Once you understand this, there are quick and effective techniques that you can use to avoid feelings of regret.

First, to prevent regret in the first place, adopt a “will do” attitude toward opportunity. As writer Max Lucado once suggested, “Go to the effort. Invest the time. Write the letter. Make the apology. Take the trip. Purchase the gift. Do it. The seized opportunity renders joy. The neglected brings regret.”

Second, if you do regret not doing something, see if there is anything you can do to remedy the situation. Write the letter, make that telephone call, spend more time with the family, mend broken relationships, go back to college and get the grades. Use the regret as a wake-up call, a way of motivating yourself

Finally, if it really isn’t possible to do anything to make things better, make a mental picture of a fence around the imaginary “what might have been” benefits that might otherwise occupy your thoughts. Instead of dwelling on the positive things that might have happened, spend time thinking about three benefits of your
current situation and three negative consequences that could have occurred had you made the decision that’s causing the regret.

   
ARE YOU A “MAXIMIZER” OR A “SATISFICER”?

Take a few moments to read the following ten statements and assign each a rating to indicate the degree to which it describes you.
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Don’t spend too long thinking about each statement, and answer honestly.

Assign each item a rating between 1 (“strongly disagree”) and 5 (“strongly agree”).