Inc.
What looks like indecision may actually be a smarter way of thinking. People with mixed feelings often make better judgments because they question their assumptions instead of rushing to confirm them.
Science Says Being Indecisive Can Help You Make Better Decisions
Author: Jeff Haden
Imagine you’re a fly on the wall watching two people make an important decision. One of them speaks with authority: decisive, confident, self-assured. The other comes across as tentative, hesitant, and unsure.
Based on behaviors alone, which of them seems smarter?
Hold that thought.
In a study published in Personality and Individual Differences, researchers asked participants to rate themselves in regards to statements like:
- “I often find there are pros and cons to everything.”
- “My thoughts are often contradictory.”
- “I often feel both sides of a position pulling on me.”
- “I often find my thoughts and feelings are in conflict when I think about a topic.”
The more statements like those resonate with you, the more likely you are to rank high in what psychologists call trait ambivalence: in simple terms, often having mixed feelings, or tending to see both positive and negative sides of a situation or decision.
Trait ambivalence sounds like a bad thing, especially in business. Conventional wisdom says great leaders, and great entrepreneurs, are decisive. Ask someone who knew him to describe Steve Jobs, and you won’t hear “unsure” or “hesitant.”
Yet the researchers found that trait ambivalence has surprising upsides, especially where decision making is concerned. Snap decisions (and judgments) are often the result of cognitive biases, not reasoned analysis.
Take confirmation bias, the tendency to look for and favor data that confirms what we already believe, and avoid or disregard data that argues against. Pretend, like in this study, you’re asked to decide whether a person you just met is introverted or extroverted. First you’re told to make a guess, and then to test your assumption.
Imagine you guessed “extroverted.” Which of these two questions would you choose to ask that person to test your assumption?
- Do you like going to parties?
- Do you like spending time at home alone?
Picking the first question is a sign of confirmation bias; you’re looking for data that backs up what you already think. People high in trait ambivalence tended to choose question number two. Sure, they had guessed “extrovert,” but since they weren’t certain (how could they be?) they chose to test that assumption rather than confirm it, and therefore were much more likely to come to the right conclusion.
In the same study, participants were asked to read information about fictitious employees to decide whether they should be fired. Once they had their preliminary decision, participants were then provided with positive and negative comments about the employee made by “industry experts.”
What happened? People high in trait ambivalence gave more weight to statements that contradicted their initial assumption, while people low in trait ambivalence — the “decisive” ones — tended to ignore statements that didn’t support their initial judgment.
Or take attribution error, the tendency to underemphasize situational explanations for a person’s behavior (think in-the-moment context), and overemphasize personality-based explanations. Like assuming the person who is five minutes late to a meeting is unorganized and inconsiderate (personality) when in fact she was held up by a problem on the shop floor (situational). Or an employee who is texting during a meeting and you assume isn’t paying attention.
As you probably guessed, people low in trait ambivalence are quicker to make attribution errors. People high in trait ambivalence tend to test their initial assumption: They’re more likely to think, “I wonder if something happened that caused her to be late?”
Which means “indecisive” people — just like good leaders — are more likely to focus on the behavior, not the person. An employee who falls behind on a project isn’t necessarily “lazy.” An employee who interrupts someone during a meeting isn’t necessarily “rude.”
“Indecisive” people? They’re more likely to look at both sides of an issue.
So yeah: a little indecision can be a good thing.
But you still need to be able to make a decision.
According to the researchers:
The general experience of being ambivalent needs to be embraced. It can give us necessary pause, signaling that things are complex and that we need more time to engage in more careful thought about our decision.
Yet you can also take ambivalence too far. A bias toward action is important; that’s why Jeff Bezos thinks most decisions should be made when you have around 70 percent of the information you wish you had.
Seventy percent? For people high in trait ambivalence, that doesn’t sound like nearly enough information.
That’s where layering in a little intuition (the decisive person’s best friend) can provide balance. One way is to flip a coin.
As Friederike Fabritius and Hans Hagemann write in The Leading Brain: Neuroscience Hacks to Work Smarter, Better, Happier, flipping a coin can actually be a great way to help you make a decision:
If you’re torn between two choices of seemingly equal merit, flip a coin. If you’re satisfied or relieved by the decision the coin made for you, then go with it.
On the other hand, if the result of the coin toss leaves you uneasy and even makes you wonder why you used a coin toss to decide such an important decision in the first place, then go with the other choice instead.
Your “gut feeling” alerts you to the right decision. Sound odd? Actually, science backs up that approach.
Or you can take the equivalent bet test to fine-tune your judgment, since the equivalent bet test takes you out of the “this could happen, but then again that could happen” spiral of mixed feelings.
Say you can’t decide whether to offer a certain candidate the job. Assume the average cost of a bad hire is approximately 30 percent of their first-year salary, so let’s call the downside cost $20,000.
Now imagine there’s a wheel with 20 slots. Nineteen cost you $1, one costs you $20,000.
Which bet would you take? Would you hire the employee, or take a one in 20 chance of losing $20,000? My guess is you would spin the wheel.
But what if there were only nine $1 slots? Or five? At some point, you would say, “The odds are better that this hire will turn out well.” That point is where your bets are equivalent.
Maybe it’s one in five, or one in three. Or maybe the person is clearly a superstar and you’ll take one in ten odds. Where you wind up should help you determine how confident you really feel about hiring that individual.
The key is to use trait ambivalence — to use indecision — as a tool: not to dwell, but to gather more information. To seek other viewpoints. To consider various alternatives. To make smarter and better decisions based on logic and reasoning, not inherent bias.
And then, most important, to act.
Because nothing can change for the better until you actually make a change.
Credits: TCA, LLC.