Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation). Last week I shared an excerpt titled – ‘Understanding Ourselves and Solving today’s Problem’ from an article titled ‘An Ancient Brain in a Modern World’ contributing writers are Robert Ornstein, PhD; David Sobel, MD, MPH; and Sally Mallam. Through this and many interconnected articles the authors are trying to highlight that to solve today’s problems, we need to understand more about who we are and how our brain works every day.

Now, SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation) to the ones paying heed, this is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of your attention, and that is because, ‘Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to.

Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.

This week I bring to your attention an excerpt titled – ‘Shortcuts and Decision making’ from a book titled ‘Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion’ by Robert Cialdini, Ph.D. In this book the author explains the psychology of why people say yes and how to apply these insights ethically in business and everyday settings. Using memorable stories and relatable examples.

I am sure we all wonder sometime as to how do we take our decisions whether they be mundane or important ones.

Shortcuts and Decision making

Automatic, stereotyped behaviour is prevalent in much of human action, because in many cases it is the most efficient form of behaving, and in other cases it is simply necessary. You and I exist in an extraordinarily complicated stimulus environment, easily the most rapidly moving and complex that has ever existed on this planet. To deal with it, we need shortcuts. We can’t be expected to recognize and analyze all the aspects in each person, event, and situation we encounter in even one day. We haven’t the time, energy, or capacity for it. Instead, we must very often use our stereotypes, our rules of thumb to classify things according to a few key features and then respond mindlessly when one or another of these trigger features is present.

Very often in making a decision about someone or something, we don’t use all the relevant available information; we use instead, only a single, highly representative piece of the total. And an isolated piece of information, even though it normally counsels us correctly, can lead us to clearly stupid mistakes – mistakes that, when exploited by clever others, leave us looking silly or worse.

Our shortcut approach is like an automatic responding of lower animals, whose elaborate behaviour patterns could be triggered by the presence of a lone stimulus feature.

Where we are rushed, stressed, uncertain, indifferent, distracted, or fatigued, we tend to focus on less of the information available to us. When making decisions under these circumstances, we often revert to the rather primitive but necessary single-piece-of-good-evidence approach. All this leads to a jarring insight: With the sophisticated mental apparatus we have used to build world eminence as a species, we have created an environment so complex, fast-paced, and information-laden that we must increasingly deal with it in the fashion of the animals we long ago transcended.

Excerpt from ‘Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion’ by Robert Cialdini, Ph.D.

I am sure that you will find this book thought provoking and an interesting read and enjoy the memorable stories and relatable examples that form part of this book. To get your copy click on the following link:

https://humanjourney.us/books/influence-the-psychology-of-persuasion

Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.

Namaste!

Shortcuts and Decision Making