Tough Choices: The Science Behind Making The Right Call

Keep your friends close, you'll need them when it comes time to make a tough decision.

Our lives are filled with one decision after another. Many are trivial but every now and then, a biggie comes along, one where you just know that you’re about to irreversibly shape your own future.

The bad news is our decision-making is hampered by the fog of human irrationality. Fortunately, science has shown us that there are tricks and habits we can use to improve our judgments and better light the path ahead.

Phone a friend.

We’re hopeless at predicting how future circumstances will affect us emotionally – this is what psychologists call “affective forecasting.” At a general level, most of us overestimate the impact of future events, good or bad. Think of the times you made a decision you had been putting off. When all was settled you likely thought, “That wasn’t so bad.” This myopia is accompanied by misplaced confidence in our own predicative abilities, so that our instinct is to rely on our own forecasts rather than finding out how the same experience affected others, especially when it comes to life’s big decisions.
If you want to know how you’ll feel if you take a given path, research suggests you should acknowledge your own biases and find out how a friend or neighbor felt after they made the same decision that you are considering. Moving to a new city? Ask someone that lives there. Looking for a new job in a certain field? Ask some new hires what they’d suggest. Don’t assume you “know” how things are going to turn out. Ask.

Don’t assume you “know” how things are going to turn out. Ask.  

By Christian Jarrett 

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