What Happens When Heart and Mind Are in Conflict?

Susan is a 30-year-old regional manager for a major retailer. She decided that she needed assistance with managing her finances. A true self-starter, Susan had been working since the age of 16, when she got her first job in a grocery store. Growing up in a working-class family, she understood the value of hard work and saving money. She waited tables to pay her way through college and got a job as a retail store assistant manager immediately after college. She quickly worked her way up, and by the time she was 29, she was a regional manager for all of the East Coast.

When Susan was 27, she unexpectedly became pregnant and had a healthy baby girl. She had an on-again, off-again relationship with the father of her child but was thrilled to be a mother. Susan ended up leaving her boyfriend. Her daughter’s father was negligent with paying child support, so Susan took him to court and racked up hefty legal bills. Despite this, she was an excellent saver and was ready to learn more about investing her savings by hiring a financial planner.

Susan decided to meet with two financial planners and select one. Because of her history with money and her determination to save for her daughter’s education, the decision of who to hire was an important and complex one. She knew that she would need to trust the advisor but beyond that wasn’t sure how she would decide.

Both financial planners were middle-aged men from midsized financial services firms. The first, Bill, was dressed professionally in a navy blue suit, white shirt, and red “power” tie. He had an impressive background, including degrees from Ivy League institutions and substantial wealth management experience. Bill was very detail oriented and believed in giving his clients all of the information they needed to make an informed decision. As such, he went through several models of financial planning, extensive decision-making tools, statistics from past client experiences, and details of his own background, including his education, training, and so on.

The second advisor who Susan met with was named Steve. Steve had a more casual style than Bill. He didn’t have the prestigious background that Bill had and didn’t go much into his background at all. Instead he asked Susan questions, shared a few key pieces of information for her to consider, and answered her questions. She liked Steve and felt comfortable with him.

Who did Susan choose?

Susan was stumped. She went over all the facts (most of which were provided by Bill) for hours. She worried about making the wrong decision. When she wrote a pros and cons list, Bill emerged as the best choice, so she decided on Bill.

Just as she was about to call Bill to get started, however, she noticed an uneasy feeling in her stomach. She couldn’t shake the idea that she liked Steve and wanted to hire him even though the data seemed to point to the contrary. Because she’d learned over time to trust her instincts, she decided to go with her gut and hire Steve. Susan and Steve ended up working very well together, and she could not have been more pleased with her decision.

Going with the heart leads to happiness

Susan made an excellent decision—and one that seemed to fly in the face of reason. When faced with an important and complicated decision, wouldn’t she have been better off to weigh all of her options in detail? Wasn’t Bill better, showing up so well prepared and giving her all of the information to consider?

Actually, no.

Research on decision making tells us that people are happier with decisions when they go with their emotions. This seems strange because we’ve learned to make rational decisions and make pros and cons lists or conduct cost-benefit analyses.

Benjamin Franklin said of his process for making decisions:

My way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns, writing over the one Pro, and over the other Con. Then, during three or four days’ consideration, I put down under the different heads short hints of the different motives, that at different times occur to me, for or against each measure … I find at length where the balance lies; and if, after a day or two of further consideration, nothing new that is of importance occurs on either side, I come to a determination accordingly … When each [reason] is thus considered, separately and comparatively, and the whole lies before me, I think I can judge better, and am less likely to make a rash step.

Have you done something like this yourself?

We all have, and it seems to help. Benjamin Franklin was a pretty smart guy, and his approach is consistent with what has been taught for years about how to make decisions—that we should objectively weigh all of the variables.

After all, the ability to problem-solve and think through all of the options is a uniquely human characteristic. Our prefrontal cortex (the part of the top and front of the brain behind our foreheads) is the most evolved part of the brain and allows us to consider options, weigh contingencies, plan for the future, and so on. Shouldn’t we use it? And shouldn’t we give our clients extensive information so they can use their prefrontal cortexes? Not necessarily.

Too much analysis leads to unhappiness

Researchers Timothy D. Wilson and Jonathan W. Schooler were curious if overanalysis was linked with unhappiness. So they investigated real-life choices of college students about what course to take the following semester. The students were give in-depth information about the psychology courses being offered and were asked to think about how all of the different variables impacted their preferences. For “expert” ratings, the researchers looked at the ratings of students who had already taken the courses. These ratings showed that some courses were rated more favorably while others were rated less favorably. The results showed that the students in the study who were given all of the information and asked to analyze their choices changed the way they rated the courses. Like the jam preferences, they ended up making less optimal choices. The students who reviewed all of the information were more likely to select the courses that were rated less favorably by the experts than those in the control group who did not analyze their reasoning.

In the last chapter, we discussed how people faced with many options of jam ended up not purchasing any. Here is another interesting study about jam and decision making: Timothy Wilson from the University of Virginia and Jonathan Schooler from the University of Pittsburgh and their team purchased five brands of strawberry jam ranked 1, 11, 24, 32, and 44 by Consumer Reports. The undergraduate student participants were assigned to one of two groups: a control group where they were just asked to rate their opinions of the jam, and a reason analysis group where they were asked to rate their opinions and then say why they felt that way. After tasting the jam on little spoons and crackers, those in the reason analysis group completed a questionnaire about their reasons for liking the jams. Those in the control group completed no questionnaire or a filler about their major. All were asked to indicate how much they liked the jam on a scale of one (did not like) to nine (liked). The results showed that those in the control group rated jam similarly to the Consumer Reports expert ratings. On the other hand, those who were asked to explain their ratings came up with reasons that didn’t correspond to the way experts rated the jams.

Those who were asked to think about their reasons changed how they felt about the jams (how much they liked them) because they focused on certain aspects from their analysis that were not important in their initial evaluations. For example, someone may have loved jam number two, but when asked for a rationale, more reasons came to mind for jam number four. Because the ratings of those who had to explain their feelings differed substantially from expert ratings, we can conclude that a rational thought process distorts our views and can lead to less favorable choices. This is similar to how Susan initially liked Steve, but when she weighed all of her options, she started focusing on facts about Bill—such as the name of his college and the fact that he graduated at the top of his class—that were less important in her initial reaction. Because of this analysis, she felt like she should choose Bill, but she probably would have been less happy if she had.