How indecision can make you smarter

Indecisiveness can be considered a totally undesirable trait. But research indicates that it can actually lead to smarter thinking.

in the tv series The Good Placethe character of Chidi Anagonye is defined by her inability to make the simplest of decisions – from what to eat to declaring her love for her soulmate.

The very idea of ​​making a choice often results in serious stomachaches. He is trapped in his permanent “analysis paralysis”.

We get to know Chidi in the afterlife, and the series shows us that it was indecision that ended her life. He was standing in the street, in an endless hesitation to decide which bar he should go to with his best friend, when an air conditioner falls from the apartment on his head, killing him instantly.

“You know the sound of a fork in the garbage disposal? It’s the sound that my brain makes all the time”, says Chidi in an episode of the series. And, in addition to making him unhappy, the character’s lack of confidence in his own judgments drives the people around him crazy.

If this sounds like an exaggerated version of yourself, just know that you’re not alone. Indecision is a common feature. While some people do very quick thinking, others have difficulty weighing options and may even avoid making any decisions at all.

Chidi shows that indecisiveness can be linked to issues like anxiety, but recent research indicates that it can also have a positive side.

It protects us from common cognitive errors like confirmation bias. As a result, when the person finally completes their analysis, their decision is usually smarter than that of people who judge quickly.

The key is learning when to wait and when to break the paralyzing inertia.

The Enemy of Good

Psychologists have several tools for measuring the degree of indecision.

One of the most common questionnaires is the Frost Indecision Scale, in which participants rate a series of statements on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Questions include:

• I try to postpone decision-making;
• I have difficulty planning my free time;
• I am often worried about making the wrong decisions;
• It seems I take a long time to decide on trivial matters.

Using this scale, psychologists have shown that indecision is often the result of perfectionism. Perfectionists are afraid of the shame or regret that can come from making a bad decision.

Therefore, they postpone decision-making until they are sure they are making the right decision. And in some cases, they simply never reach that level of trust.

The resulting frustration can be a barrier to happiness. Generally, the higher the rating on the scale, the lower the satisfaction with life, according to a study by professor of Psychology Eric Rassin, at Erasmus University, in the Netherlands.

They are less likely to agree with statements such as “the conditions in my life are excellent”, for example, or “if I could start my life over, I would change almost nothing”.

Jump to conclusions

Judging by these results, indecisiveness appears to be a wholly undesirable trait.

But recent research indicates that the difficulty of reaching a decision quickly – uncomfortable as it is – can also have a positive side, because it protects people from certain important cognitive biases.

Evidence of these benefits comes from recent work by researcher Jana-Maria Hohnsbehn and professor of Social Psychology Iris Schneider at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany.

Instead of using Frost’s Indecision Scale, Hohnsbehn and Schneider focused on the “trait ambivalence” measure, which looks more specifically at the thoughts and feelings underlying people’s decision-making (or lack thereof).

People were asked, for example, to rate statements such as:

• My thoughts are often contradictory;
• I often feel torn between two sides of an issue;
• Sometimes when I think about a subject, I almost feel like I’m physically moving from one place to another.

“If these statements resonate, we probably have high-grade feature ambivalence,” says Hohnsbehn.

People with a high degree of characteristic ambivalence are expected to take longer to make decisions. But Hohnsbehn and Schneider found that they are less subject to bias in their judgments.

In one experiment, for example, they asked participants to confront a series of scenarios, like this one:

You know a person and would like to find out if he is an introvert or an extrovert. You believe the person is an extrovert. Which of the questions below would you ask her?

• Do you like to be alone at home?;
• Do you like to go to parties?

Many people choose the second question, but this is a sign of confirmation bias – you are looking for information that supports what you believe and not looking for evidence that you might be wrong.

Hohnsbehn and his colleagues concluded that people with a high degree of trait ambivalence were less prone to this bias. They decide to question their belief, to be sure they have the information they need to arrive at a correct answer.

In another experiment, participants read about an employee, Mr. Müller, who wanted to renew his employment contract. After a preliminary decision on whether or not to keep Mr. Müller in office, attendees received additional affirmations about him from industry experts.

Some of these statements were in line with the participants’ initial decisions and others were not. The participants’ task was to assess the credibility and importance of each of these statements.

Hohnsbehn and Schneider concluded that people with a high degree of ambivalence were more likely to be more open-minded to statements contrary to their initial point of view and their assessment of credibility and importance was higher, while those with low characteristic ambivalence they were more disposed to belittle them.

These conclusions are important, because confirmation bias is one of our most common cognitive errors. It prevents us from rationally analyzing the evidence in all aspects of life, from personal relationships to our political views.

Characteristic ambivalence helps protect us from this kind of overly simplistic thinking—and it can help us in other ways as well.

Schneider’s studies indicate, for example, that people high in trait ambivalence are also less prone to “matching bias,” which is a tendency to ignore the context of one’s behavior and instead attribute failures and successes. directly to the people themselves.

To take a straightforward example: if someone slips, correspondence bias may lead us to conclude that he is inherently clumsy (internal factor), without recognizing that the floor may be slippery (external factor).

Correspondence bias can also lead us to consider that someone has learning difficulties simply because of a lack of intelligence, without considering their financial difficulties or family responsibilities.

People high in trait ambivalence are more likely to recognize these other factors than people who make quick, confident judgments.

Action over inaction

Hohnsbehn’s polls should be good news if you’ve ever felt impatient with your inability to come to a decision quickly.

“The general experience of being ambivalent needs to be accepted,” she suggests. “It can give us much-needed pause, signaling that things are complex and that we need to dedicate ourselves to thinking more carefully, for longer, about our decision.”

Only when this process becomes excessive do we start to experience problems. “As with most issues, there is a balance that needs to be struck,” adds Hohnsbehn.

This may explain why indecisive people often rate lower in terms of life satisfaction. Their ambivalence, when faced with important choices, is devastating.

A simple measure can be to set a time limit for your final decision, so you don’t spend too much time ruminating on different options without evaluating new perspectives.

Depending on what kind of problem you’re facing, Hohnsbehn even suggests considering a series of tasks—like spending two hours searching for new information, for example, before spending a certain amount of time deliberating.

If, even so, you still feel paralyzed, you can seek inspiration in a study by economist Steven Levitt, from the University of Chicago, in the United States, who examined people’s general happiness after making important changes in their lives.

Levitt is one of the authors of the book Freakonomics and created a website where people described various dilemmas they were facing in their lives – from getting a tattoo to moving house, going back to school or quitting. The participants are then asked to toss heads or tails so that the result determines whether or not they should take action.

As he followed the participants over the next few months, Levitt concluded that many people had been at risk. When the coin said they should move on, most made the life change.

And they reported being significantly happier than those who stayed as they were (regardless of the coin toss), without quitting their job, moving, or getting that tattoo.

We can assume that, prior to the study, most of these participants had already thought carefully about the situation at hand, but their worries about making the wrong choice had prevented them from taking the risk. The coin simply acted as a nudge for them to finally overcome their ambivalence.

The moral of the study, therefore, is not that we should base all decisions on a coin toss outcome. But that overcoming self-doubt and hesitation can make you happier than you think.

“A good rule of thumb in decision making is that whenever you can’t decide what to do, choose the action that represents a change rather than keeping your status quo“, concludes Levitt.

Like Chidi in The Good Placewe can weigh all the pros and cons of each situation, and this ambivalence will help us make smarter decisions.

But once ambivalent thinking has done its work, you must learn to put it aside – with the knowledge that any decision is often better than no choice at all.