![]() ![]() Yet paradoxically, sometimes the more information you have the better off you may be going with your instincts. It stands to reason that extra information can help you make well-informed, rational decisions. Of course, as you get to know someone better you refine your first impressions. Given longer to look – up to 1 second – the researchers found observers hardly revised their views, they only became more confident in their snap decisions ( Psychological Science, vol 17, p 592). Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov from Princeton University found that we make judgements about a person’s trustworthiness, competence, aggressiveness, likeability and attractiveness within the first 100 milliseconds of seeing a new face. In our everyday lives, we make fast and competent decisions about who to trust and interact with. It is tempting to think that to make good decisions you need time to systematically weigh up all the pros and cons of various alternatives, but sometimes a snap judgement or instinctive choice is just as good, if not better. ![]() “Whatever the future holds it will hurt or please you less than you imagine” 2 Go with your gut instincts The worst might never happen – and if it does you have the psychological resilience to cope. Remember also that whatever the future holds, it will probably hurt or please you less than you imagine. So what is a poor affective forecaster supposed to do? Rather than looking inwards and imagining how a given outcome might make you feel, try to find someone who has made the same decision or choice, and see how they felt. “We’re very good at finding new ways to see the world that make it a better place for us to live in,” he says. He puts this down to our unsung psychological resilience and our ability to rationalise almost any situation. Yet Gilbert and his colleagues have recently shown that while loss aversion affected people’s choices, when they did lose they found it much less painful than they had anticipated ( Psychological Science, vol 17, p 649). So most people would only gamble £5 on the flip of a coin if they could win more than £10. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman from Princeton University has found, for instance, that most people are unwilling to accept a 50:50 bet unless the amount they could win is roughly twice the amount they might lose.
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